27 August 2018

John Owen and Oliver Cromwell's Irish Campaign of 1649


This article encouraged me. Having embraced Calvinism in the mid-1990's I followed paths that led me to the Puritans and as someone inclined toward Congregationalism I had a special affinity for figures like the theologian John Owen.


A discussion of Owen leads to a reckoning with Oliver Cromwell and the English Civil War. I recall being torn over this issue and somewhat surprised to read Martyn Lloyd-Jones praising Cromwell and during the same period while interacting with English chapel-goers, I was surprised to find out that they too praised the man. I wasn't so sure and found myself vacillating in my opinions of the man and the events surrounding him.
Of course the Presbyterians I knew despised Cromwell. He dashed their designs, broke his oaths and ruined their plans to make the Solemn League and Covenant universal. They plotted with the House of Stuart and as a consequence Cromwell taught them a harsh and bloody lesson... which is still resented.
I have never had any sympathy for the Presbyterians and indeed I chuckle recalling the words of Martyn Lloyd-Jones regarding the divisions among the various Puritan parties and the disastrous Restoration and Great Ejection of 1662:
I do not want to be unfair to any section, or any one group amongst them, but I am compelled to say that, taking a detached historical view – and especially for one who has been brought up as a Presbyterian – the really guilty party in all this was the Presbyterian party.
On what grounds do I say that? I do so for this reason, that they were the most intransigent. Not only that, they were always ready to make agreements with the king, whether it was Charles I or Charles II. It is almost incredible but actually in 1650 the Presbyterians in Scotland came to an agreement with Prince Charles, afterwards Charles II, and brought him over from France. There was that brief war which fortunately ended in disaster for the Royalist party and their Presbyterian supporters in the Battle of Worcester. But is it not a tragic thing that the Presbyterians should be found in such company, and fighting against the men who on the vitals of the Christian faith were in such entire agreement with them?
And then later, at the end of the Interregnum or Commonwealth, and the early part of 1660 you come across that character, General Monck. What can one say about him? He was the man in many ways who 'sold the pass' and made possible the return of Charles II and his Laudian entourage; and it was very largely because of this Presbyterian interest that he did so.
(pp. 61-62 The Puritans: The Origins and Successors c.1987 The Banner of Truth Trust)
John Milton known for his criticisms of Presbyterianism also added:
'Woe be to you, Presbyterians especially, if ever any of Charles's race recovers the English sceptre! Believe me, you shall pay all the reckoning.'
(from p.737 The Creeds of Christendom vol. 1, edited by Philip Schaff)
And yet even then, over twenty years ago I could not fully subscribe to what Cromwell and the regicides did. Again I was still wrestling with these issues and it would take a few more years for me to begin my break with not only socio-cultural Calvinism but eventually a great deal of its theology as well.
But in the spring of 1997 I was still a rather zealous Calvinist and I remember visiting Oxford and seeking any history related to John Owen who was dean of Christ Church and later Vice-Chancellor of the University.
The following December I was in London and a friend and I made a point of visiting Bunhill Fields cemetery where Owen is laid alongside figures like John Bunyan, John Gill, Thomas Goodwin, Daniel Defoe, Isaac Watts, William Blake and Susanna Wesley. It's a pretty interesting place to say the least. I was content to have my photo taken alongside Bunyan's monument but my friend was so excited about Owen's simple tomb that he hopped the fence in order for me to take his picture alongside it. I know, very American to be sure but Owen was revered by us and a figure of some fascination.
Over time, the excitement waned. Ironically it was probably Iain Murray's two works on Spurgeon, The Forgotten Spurgeon and Spurgeon v. Hyper-Calvinism which stoked Biblicist fires and began to drive me (and some friends) to question some of the premises of Systematic Theology and the limits of logic vis-à-vis doctrine and the interpretation of Scripture.
Obviously Murray would have never intended for us to venture off the reservation (as it were) but that's what happened. What he meant to outline as nuance was (for us) something like a bomb going off. For years I slogged my way through Calvinist circles fighting against the very kinds of rationalism that I believed Spurgeon was combating, a type of Hyper-Systematic Post-Enlightenment thinking strongly represented by many of the 'great' theologians of the 19th century. Many were revered as stalwarts but I wasn't so sure. I'm not so sure Spurgeon himself was always consistent.
I dug deeper and by the end of 1998 I was solidly in the Calvin vs. the Calvinists mindset. I wanted to defend the legacy of the early Reformation as opposed to what I viewed as Scholastic downgrade. I continue to stand with figures like Alan Clifford, RT Kendall, and Brian Armstrong (and countless others outside of Reformed circles) in their reading of the historical theology and insistence that the later Calvinists departed in principle and spirit from the Renaissance-influenced hermeneutics of the Reformers. I am fully aware that Helm, Muller and others have sought to repudiate this position but I remain unconvinced.
Owen's star certainly faded a bit during these years and I must say I was reeling a bit when it dawned on me one day that Owen's famous Triple Choice in The Death of Death in the Death of Christ was little more than a fallacy, a false dilemma if ever there was one. What I had once reckoned a sword-stroke of unassailable and Biblical logic I discovered to be little more than a deductive exercise in pseudo-profundity.
And as I continued to study the Scriptures and move away from rigidly Reformed categories and thought, I finally began to wrestle with something that continued to gnaw at me, the questions of violence, power and the larger context of the Magisterial Reformation. Wrestling with Theonomy in 1995-1996 had driven me to think constantly of these matters and I was very uncomfortable with the language, rhetoric and concepts flowing from pulpits on many a Sunday morning during Bill Clinton's second term. No fan of Clinton I was nevertheless hearing (and reading) many things that just did not resonate with Scripture. I had already soured on the whole Christian-America deception but had not yet fully abandoned the notions of Christian culture and politics.
I dug in and continued to wrestle, read and re-examine. I realised a lot of Calvinistic Church histories were biased and in some cases unreliable. I began to understand that the particulars of Theonomy were not the issue but Dominionism itself was the problem, the real and very dangerous elephant in the room.
Just as my years as a stormtrooper in service of the empire were formative, the election of George W. Bush, the Christian excitement regarding his 2001 accession and then the turmoil and tumult of 9/11 drove me to keep reconsidering everything.
By then I was re-reading books like Iain Murray's The Puritan Hope and becoming discouraged. My trip to Scotland in 1997 had practically been a John Knox pilgrimage and now I found myself less than excited about his thought and legacy, though I will certainly grant him first prize for the best book title of the 16th century. The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women is unrivalled if somewhat misguided and even foolish. If I can speak anachronistically for a moment, though I might share a bit of Knox's anti-egalitarianism, the whole premise of the work is in the context of assumed Christendom and thus is flawed at its foundation. Practically speaking the book was a dumb move and harmed his agenda. Written in 1558, Knox targeted Mary of Guise and Mary Tudor but when the Protestant Elizabeth I took the throne that very same autumn, she didn't appreciate it and Knox was not welcome in England even while many Protestants were able to return. Knox had burned his bridges with the English court and could only return to Scotland.  
Later I was put off by much regarding Knox and Oliver Cromwell's star certainly dimmed. I was repulsed reading of John Owen's participation in Cromwell's Irish and Scottish campaigns. In fact I began to seriously question Cromwell himself. Again at one point I had almost championed him and viewed him as something of a hero... especially because he so thoroughly thumped the scheming Presbyterians. I look back with shame that I found humor or solace in such acts of violence. Later with what I hope was a little more wisdom I grew ambivalent about him but eventually I turned against him and those (like Owen) who stood with him.
While not harsh by the standards of his time Owen's rule at Oxford is something less than admirable. During my years in the Owen fan-club I would have defended Quaker 'whippings' and the like by arguing that everyone believed such. That's not true. There were most certainly voices of dissent but no one would hear, and many still will not.
Eventually I came to view Owen as part of the Protestant Scholastic mold who like their Medieval antecedents were engaged not just in theological work but in forming a thorough all-encompassing philosophy, what folks today would refer to as a comprehensive worldview. Intuitively such a project sounds good but actually it represents a deviation from Scripture and a synthesis of Biblical ideas with the philosophies and ethos of the world. Owen was a part of this error. He was a man of his times to be sure and unwilling to place Scripture above the assumptions of his age. I still view him this way.
I have always appreciated him on certain points but I must say Cromwell's Irish Campaign was such an anti-Christian abomination that Owen's participation in it (even or perhaps especially as chaplain) forever tarred his reputation and (for me) cast him as an ethically dubious sort, a person not to be admired, a person lacking a serious conscience. He also preached to the English Parliament the day after the execution of Charles I. If that isn't an ecclesiastical imprimatur I don't what it is. For all of these reasons I all but lost interest in John Owen and did not pursue a fuller understanding of his biography.
Again it cannot be overstated, Cromwell's Irish campaign was monstrous. To them he is the equivalent of Genghis Khan and his conduct in Ireland is indeed a source of shame. And yet unlike the abominable Mongol leader, Cromwell's slaughter was done in the Name of God. Of course the whole history of Irish conquest at the hand of England is one of infamy. If you want to know why Ireland became so Catholic, the reason is simple. It's the English.
For the folk that would become known as the Ulster-Scots, they were (and probably still are) both victims and opportunists, manipulated and exploitative all at once. The Irish had used brutal violence, brutal enough even without the gross exaggeration of Protestant propagandists and yet it was they who had been gravely wronged to begin with. The cause of truth was not served by the 12th century Norman invasion, Tudor consolidation, the Ulster Plantation nor Cromwell's crusade.
I must say I am glad to read of Owen's revulsion and that he spent some of his remaining years arguing for toleration. This is the great tension among those associated with the Commonwealth. There are waves of intolerance and violence coupled with a spirit of toleration and a plea for peace.
One wonders how 'affected' Owen was by Ireland given that he accompanied Cromwell once more in 1650 when he invaded Scotland. He did not treat the Scots as he did the Irish though he wasn't kind either.
Owen's accompaniment on this campaign and continued involvement in Commonwealth politics leads one to question his post-Irish transformation but the Irish Times article at least gives me some hope. The truth is he should have denounced the whole business but the world is complex as are men and their motives.

6 comments:

  1. Owen's subsequent feud with Baxter over, to put it anachronistically, who was TR saps my sympathy. In a lot of ways, Owen's story parallels the Presbyterian Rutherford: hope, swagger, confusion, disenchantment, sorrow, and self-pitying through pieties of suffering remnant. Obviously on different sides of the conflict, both felt moments of riding high. When the Covenanters bested Charles, followed by their conjunction with parliemantary armies, winning the first civil war, they seemed unstoppable. Of course, they didn't quite know who they were dealing with. Charles Stuart was an impossible man to play. The years of Denzil Holles represented real excitement that the Presbyterian settlement would be real, only to overplay their hand, failing to extract a real settlement from the king and pissing off the army and the City.

    And yet, unlike Rutherford, Baxter, who lived into the return of the Stuarts, continued the work of Christian unity and charity. He too was an army chaplain and he too was horrified by the bloodletting, the functional atheism of the soldiers, and the various insane theologies proliferating. And in his attempt to work out life after, he gets constantly harassed by Owen. TR neo-Puritans will repeat Owen's accusations of crypto-Arminianism so often that they're taken verbatim, as if Owen represented 'the' Reformed tradition and Baxter was some deviant 'rationalist'. I'm not trying to say Baxter was perfect, or his work was really all of that useful. But it represented, if I may say so, a visible repentance.

    For me, Owen represents a failure who never really repented, but was cursed(blessed?) with watching his world and life's work crumble. Granted, he had a tragic life, losing all of his children, a brother, stripped of many of his privileges, etc. But he represents the kind of self-pity that should be an object lesson, a dark road to avoid.

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  2. I remember the bit about his children. Heartbreaking.

    And I'm with you on Baxter. He's complicated too but I've always respected him and (no surprise) I am somewhat sympathetic with his way of thinking on certain points. I would certainly be on his side contra Owen. On that same trip, you better believe we rolled into Kidderminster but apart from the monument and the plaque on his house, I don't recall there was a whole lot to see.

    Later I remember being surprised when discovering that Tolkien had grown up nearby. I would have wanted to have a look at the area but the friend I was with would have certainly protested. Additionally I think the world Tolkien knew is gone, swallowed up by Greater Birmingham. Same with Kidderminster really. It didn't seem like a 'small place'. I think the Shire has been mostly turned into sprawl.

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  3. Well isn't that point with the Return of the King's ending? Tolkien's world was gone within his own lifetime, swallowed up in the fires of Saruman's industry and Orcish task-masters. I sometimes sigh for that vision, the Merry Old England, even if it is a fantasy that, when read backwards, justified rather brutal feudalism.

    Back to Owen and Cromwell, the characters always left out of the picture were the Levellers and Diggers, who are more complex than being proto-Communists. In the history, Thomas Rainsborough strikes a heroic posture, rejecting parliament, the city-fathers, the grandees, for a more just society for peasant folk. In essence it was a reverse of many economically lucrative for few, impoverishing for many, ventures: draining fens, building ports, and fencing the commons. But here the theological history makes a mess for many because it involved a whole lot of antinomianism, odd cultish groups, heretical theology, and the origins of Quakerism. But, still, I'd prefer Honest John or Gerrard Winstanley over the army chaplains.

    As almost in every instance of looking at the mid 17th century, Roger Williams is a hero of mine. He kept much of the politics at arms length, even as he was glad to see the king go and parliament melt. I guess living in America helps.

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  4. Yes, the Scouring of The Shire. I don't think JRRT would be very happy with England today. That said, in some ways the Midlands and North were probably worse in the early 20th century than they are today. Less populated but probably more industrial sprawl.

    I'm sure you've read Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down, a great read. Winstanley I know but I'm afraid it's been awhile since I dug deep into that period. It's fascinating and yet a mess. I remember thinking of Cromwell when visiting Ely. He wouldn't recognise the place.... the Fens were drained. Tolkien's Marish with its causeways is no more. I wouldn't be surprised if Tolkien somehow associated Saruman with Puritanism and Protestantism.

    Yeah, I cringe when I think of Williams because back in the period I wrote about in the piece I used to say bad things about ol' Roger. Cotton Mather was my hero. I wish I could take back things I said and also recover wasted time.... but maybe it wasn't wasted. And yes, I think being in North America helped. There were places you could go. On that same trip we visited Scrooby, Austerfield, Gainsborough etc... all the sites associated with the Pilgrim Fathers. I rather liked those places even in the 20th century but obviously there was a real appeal to escape. Not an easy move but understandable.

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  5. As a follow-up: I was doing some more thinking about Baxter and Puritanism more generally. While Weber's Spirit of Capitalism theory requires modification, and is broadly misunderstood, he's correct to put his finger on a certain approach to life that produces the "spirit of capitalism", where Progress (one of the spirits that haunts the Babel tower) becomes an end unto itself. I've still got some more thinking to do, but it seems to be a conjunction of depreciating the concept of mediation and a hyper-providentializing of all mundane things, resulting in a drive to see in all things God's hand that, nevertheless, only speaks an unbridgeable gulf. There's nothing in the Reformation or Scripture that contains this logic, but when secularized, one can see the malignant spiritualism of Wall Street, whether of the Gordon Geckos or the Patrick Batemans, the banksters or the yuppies.

    For Weber, Baxter was an exemplar of this spirit. And I've done some more reading on him to see a rampant kind of scholasticism running his attempt to create a system that corrects the perceived antinomianism in someone like John Owen. Which is not to say that John Owen is any better, but perhaps Baxter is not so good. Perhaps he represents some of the worst trends in action, even as he's trying to grapple with a difficult situation. I'm also in the middle of reading Gribben's book on Owen, so perhaps that will shed some more light.

    Anyway, if you care, I plan on writing some more about it in the next few weeks.

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  6. Progress is a concept that immediately sends up red flags. Many on the Right decry the notion even while embracing it.

    What about the Reformation concept of Vocation? I agree there's nothing in Scripture but I think the Protestant error (in this regard) is quite old. Granted it has changed over time and in the industrial-nation state- capitalist context but it's deeply ingrained.

    I am intensely interested in what you might have to say on these points. Your writings have always been interesting and thought provoking but they've been especially rich in recent months.

    I am not familiar with Gribben's book. Feel free to say more about it or I will look for you to do so at your site.

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