Featured Understanding John Owen's argument.

I don't think Romans 14:9 has anything to do with the highlighted section from the Owen quote. By the way, you are getting into some heavy reading that will explode your head. Most people never make it past the "To The Reader".

 

a "4 point Calvinist?"

I remember Pops saying that and I never really knew what he meant. This Calvinist title is relatively new to me. It's hard enough for me to follow The Word, let alone remember who offered what in their major or minor.

 

You're right on that JonC. To be a 4 pointer really doesn't make sense. But to many Baptists, who treasure sermons by Spurgeon and some of the puritans like Bunyan being a 4 point Calvinist allows a place to exist and show you are not a Methodist or Church of Christ person. If you are a 4 point Calvinist, and you take the time and trouble to wade through "The Death of Death in the Death of Christ" you will come out a 5 point Calvinist.

 

As a primer for the John Owen classic, folks should get the Grace Publication. Many Christian classics have been put into easier-to-read versions. And abridged version of The Death Of death In The Death Of Christ is the more manageable Life By His Death. H.J. Appleby prepared this. The original by Owen is 282 pages. This one is 87 pages. J. I. Packers Introductory essay was originally 25 pages. In Appleby's treatment it is just over three pages. It will warm people up to the original.

The same can be said of Tony Lane and Hilary Osborne's abridgement of John Calvin's The Institutes Of The Christian Religion. This is published by Baker Book House. The original was around 1,500 pages. The briefer treatment is 250 pages. It deals with about 15% of the original. Of course his very first edition was quite short --about 3/4 the length of the N.T. It was basically a handbook. He kept expanding it over the years until his final edition made five years before he died.

 

That passage ONLY applies to the elect in Christ!

 

he is Lord in that passage over the saved dead and alive

 

In the passages that you have cited, yes indeed

 

The meaning is simply this: that if the Lord Jesus shed His blood for people who will not not be saved by Him that only adds to the guilt of such people.
The Death of Death was written in Owen's youth. At that time he had not come to the proper understanding of Hebrews 10:29, which I think he is referencing in his comment. 'Of how much worse punishment do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?' When he wrote Death of Death, Owen though that the 'he' referred to the sinner. In his mammoth commentary on Hebrews, which was the product of his more mature years, he realised that the nearest antecedent to the 'he' is 'Son of God.' It is Christ who sanctified Himself to suffer and die in the new covenant (John 17:19).

 

I am told that John Calvin himself is technically a "4 point Calvinist" since he would not go so far as to affirm Limited Atonement since it was a "logical" conclusion, but he could not find it "explicitly" stated in scripture (unlike the other 4 points). [... and I know the actual "T.U.L.I.P." came along much later, but the ideas go back to Calvin's day].

I can sympathize with a weaker stand on "Limited Atonement" because the case from Scripture really is 'circumstantial'. There are a lot of "worlds" and "all men" in verses that require gymnastics to reach the WCF conclusions. There are just too many "His sheep" type verses to drink the Kool-Aid and embrace "Universal Atonement".

I reckon it is an issue that is more complex than a simple "either/or".

So I am a 5 pointer, but only willing to "fight" on 4 of the "hills". Neither side has a lock on "Atonement" IMHO.

 

Do the damned need to be "deeper damned"?
Does God need to go out of His way to increase the earned torment?

(Maybe I am the only person in the world that finds that mental image troubling.)