What I’m working on: John Owen Biography
Between sermons (which, like any good Spurgeonist, I prepare late into Saturday evenings), I get space here and there to write. I’m the founding author of Wrath and Grace Publishing and, after a fairly productive 2017, I put my pen down for most of 2018 (we published a phenomenal book in 2018 that should be read by every pastor, young and old: In Praise of Old Guys by my dear friends Nicolas Alford and Nick Kennicott).
Well I’m back at it and nearly finished with my next project. John Owen: The Prince of Puritans is next up in our Wrath and Grace Biographies, a series including well-known and lesser-known Reformed Christians throughout history. They are short and sweet, but not (I hope) without some heft to them. They serve as introductory sketches that get the reader into the life and times of the subject fairly quickly. We believe this is important because studying church history can be an intimidating and overwhelming task. Our aim is to do the hard work for you and serve church history up on a silver platter…er, at least on a paper plate. The point is it’s cooked and ready to eat and should go down pretty easy.
John Owen remains a mysterious figure of church history. While his writings are largely known—they are heard of, at least, and sometimes bought (it is the reading of Owen that is so much in dispute)—his person is largely hidden. There are biographies in plenty, and we are thankful for new advances in the study of this great theologian which have been produced in recent years. We hope to add a fast-paced and hard-hitting (and laugh-inducing, it may be) production to the pile.
I have sought to put Owen’s personality, as far as we can discern it, on display in this little book. We will see his sometimes surprising connections with other subjects of our studies (such as John Wycliffe, Lemuel Haynes, and Olaudah Equiano), and we will also see how delight in Christ became the powerful fuel of his very high-octane and not uneventful life.