We had a good day at the John Owen Centre Reading Group (which used to be called the Theology Study Group) on 23rd February. WE had set yourselves the challenge of reading our great mentor's work on The Person of Christ, the first work in volume one of the 16 volume set.
Reading it was a pleasure once one got into its 272 pages, including 27 page preface, but at times, with much else to do, I felt frustrated at not having time to do it justice, though I did get to the end. I had read it long ago, in about the year 2000, and was gratified to see some marginal scribbles along the way.
Owen gets rid of some inadequate formulations of the mystery of the incarnation and hypostatic union, and is magnificent on the functional importance of the doctrine of Christ's dual nature and unipersonality. Some of his passages rise to the sublime as he soars with his subject; some, it has to be said, plod clunkily along and take some deciphering.
His relatively brief section on the doctrine of the hypostatic union itself is faithful to Chalcedon and repays several readings and much study - more time than we had.
Owen is adamant that all the acts of the mediator are done by the person of the God-man and not by either one or the other nature.
Go to this book for yourself - there is no more edifying subject in all of theology than to study the person of Christ.
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