When Christians Disagree E-Book

Tim Cooper

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 219

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Two Oppositional Figures in Church History Shed Light on Division in the Church Today Our current culture seems to be increasingly divided on countless issues, including those affecting the church. But for centuries, theological disagreements, political differences, and issues relating to church leadership have made it challenging for Christians to foster unity and love for one another. In this book, author Tim Cooper explores this polarization through the lives of two oppositional figures in church history: John Owen and Richard Baxter. Cooper highlights their individual stories while showing how their contrasting life experiences, personalities, and temperaments led to their inability to work together. After exploring these lessons from the past, readers will gain insights into their own relationships, ultimately learning how to love and live in harmony with their fellow believers despite their disagreements. - Timely: In today's deeply divided culture, this book offers past examples to help spur unity among believers today - Historical: Biographical examination of two Puritan writers from the 17th century: John Owen and Richard Baxter - Accessible: Short format and crisp writing style offer an engaging story with no background knowledge required

Leseprobe

Thank you for downloading this Crossway book.

Sign up for the Crossway Newsletter for updates on special offers, new resources, and exciting global ministry initiatives:

Crossway Newsletter

Or, if you prefer, we would love to connect with you online:

“We live in an extremely politicized and polarized age with many big personalities out in front. But this isn’t exactly a new phenomenon. Tim Cooper’s wonderful little book gives us realistic historical reflections that then generate relevant practical advice for us. He encourages us to look back in order that we might learn from (flawed) heroes of the past even as we seek to navigate our own (flawed) engagement in the present. This is a genuinely helpful volume.”

Kelly M. Kapic, Professor of Theological Studies, Covenant College; author, You’re Only Human

“In When Christians Disagree, Tim Cooper investigates the impact of personality and pride, history and hostility, and experience and environment on the tragic breakdown of peace between two giants of the Puritan movement—John Owen and Richard Baxter. Demonstrating that every believer (and pastor) has blind spots, struggles with sin, and wrestles with pride, Cooper draws practical implications for Christians striving to cultivate unity and humility in the body of Christ. The reflections of this insightful, balanced, and accessible work are invaluable for pastoral ministry, historical analysis, and practical Christian living. Above all, the failures that Cooper highlights in the lives of Owen and Baxter should encourage us to boast alone in the one perfect man—the spotless Lamb of God whose glories these men rejoiced to proclaim.”

Joel R. Beeke, Chancellor and Professor of Homiletics and Systematic Theology, Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary

“In an age of increasing tribalism, this little book gives us an important lesson in wisdom. While well written, it is a painful read, for as Cooper describes it, it is like watching a car crash in slow motion to see the clash between Baxter and Owen, two godly but human giants of seventeenth-century English Christianity. There is much here for us to learn: the complexity of factors, prejudices, and (potentially distorting) filters that make for disagreements between Christians. May God use this volume to increase our humility and our prudence as we navigate disagreements today and strive for healthy unity in the gospel.”

Michael Reeves, President and Professor of Theology, Union School of Theology, United Kingdom

“Disagreements in the family of God are rarely dispassionate affairs because they are born out of the most deeply held convictions of complex creatures. Tim Cooper masterfully illustrates this dynamic in his account of the tragic feud between John Owen and Richard Baxter. This volume represents the best kind of church history—personal, probing, and directly applicable to contemporary Christian life.”

Rhyne R. Putman, Vice President of Academic Affairs, Williams Baptist University; Professor of Theology and Culture, New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary; author, When Doctrine Divides the People of God

When Christians Disagree

When Christians Disagree

Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter

Tim Cooper

Foreword by Michael A. G. Haykin

When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter

© 2024 by Tim Cooper

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Small portions of text in this book have been taken from John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity, by Tim Cooper © 2011 and published by Ashgate. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group.

First printing 2024

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated in whole or in part into any other language.

Any emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-9295-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-9296-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-9297-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cooper, Tim, 1970– author.

Title: When Christians disagree : lessons from the fractured relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter / Tim Cooper ; foreword by Michael Haykin.

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2024. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023032991 (print) | LCCN 2023032992 (ebook) | ISBN 9781433592959 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433592973 (pdf) | ISBN 9781433592966 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Puritans—England—History. | Owen, John, 1616–1683. | Baxter, Richard, 1615–1691. | Polarization (Social Sciences)—Religious aspects—Christianity—History.

Classification: LCC BX9334.3 .C67 2024 (print) | LCC BX9334.3 (ebook) | DDC 285/.9092242—dc23/eng/20240222

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023032991

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023032992

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2024-05-24 09:41:33 AM

Contents

Foreword

  Michael A. G. Haykin

Introduction

1  Two Good Men

2  Experience

3  Personality

4  Theology

5  Contact

6  Collision

7  Memory

Conclusion

Chronology

Glossary

Further Reading

General Index

Scripture Index

Foreword

Teaching and reading about the history of Christianity inevitably entails significant consideration of the controversies that have divided men and women in the church: from serious conflicts such as those about Arianism and Pelagianism in the ancient church to divisions over secondary matters like the nature of church governance, baptism, and the gifts of the Spirit in more recent times. One way of reflecting on such conflicts, often found in handbooks of historical theology, has been to see such controversies as fundamentally doctrinal in origin. With the rise of social history in the past half century or so, socioeconomic factors have also been brought to bear on the explanation of these theological disputes. Both of these ways of understanding ecclesial conflict in the past—and present—are helpful. Given the complexity of human life and the human person, however, we must invariably take other, more personal factors into consideration.

In this exceptional study of the relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter—chief among the leaders of later seventeenth-century Puritanism—such personal factors are key to understanding why they failed to work together in the face of a hostile state church. Of course, neither of them could admit that their differences were not simply theological. But Tim Cooper shows that there was more going on in their relationship than a failure to agree on how to read and exegete the Scriptures. In doing so, he demonstrates that church history is about more than theology and biblical reflection. It involves human personalities and their deepest affections. And the failure of Owen and Baxter to get along to some degree as fellow pilgrims to the same heavenly city had dire effects for the earthly fortunes of their respective ecclesial communities.

This is a must-read for anyone who wishes to understand something of why and how Christians can fail to live up to their calling to be men and women brimful with the fruit of the Spirit. May we, in this day when Christians must be all that Christ calls us to be, learn from the failure of our older brothers in the faith.

Michael A. G. Haykin

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Louisville, Kentucky

Introduction

Not long ago I was driving to my local supermarket when I noticed a sequence of small billboards that encouraged people to moderate the force of their online disagreements. “Tone it down,” urged one message. “There is more that unites us than divides us,” observed another. There can be no doubting the need for those encouragements. We seem to live in a world of increasing polarization in which the members of warring tribes address each other with remarkable vitriol in the online environment, and our disagreements show no sign of narrowing. Technology has played a large part in that development, not least the rapid emergence of social media platforms in which people use words and sentiments they would much less likely deploy if they were speaking to the other person face-to-face. We do indeed need to tone it down before our differences become unbridgeable.

So I was struck by the relevance of that billboard campaign for our current cultural, societal, and political moment. More than that, I was struck by how precisely pertinent those sentiments are to a much older story, one that unfolded nearly four centuries ago. They apply now; they applied back then. That was a world away from the omnipresent social media we now experience, but those who lived in seventeenth-century England were coming to grips with the rapid proliferation of another new technology: printed books, which opened up enormous opportunity for one person to wound and insult another via the printed word on the page, if not the screen. So there are technological continuities between their age and ours, but far deeper than that, there are also simple human continuities. Human nature has not budged over the intervening centuries, so the kind of dynamics we see at work in the breakdown of relationships back then are mirrored in our own present-day experience. What this means, of course, is that there are lessons for us to learn in those older divisions and disagreements. This book offers a detailed account of one relationship breakdown in particular and provides ample material to help us soberly reflect on our own differences or on those differences we see played out around us.

Those of us who count ourselves among the Christian community face the unsettling reality that the kinds of disagreements we witness in society at large also occur among our Christian brothers and sisters: even the most conscientious of Christians disagree. These are men and women who are respected and trusted. God seems to have blessed their life with fruitfulness. They may well be effective leaders or communicators. At a minimum, they are brothers and sisters who have been adopted into the family of God. They may also be part of the same group or congregation within the Christian church. They read the same Bible, with all its many encouragements and injunctions for unity. And yet they disagree. They do not get along. They fall out with each other.

Chances are, we have all seen instances of this disunity or been part of a controversy that has broken out even among fellow believers. Personalities clash. Disputes over beliefs arise. Changes in church practice create winners and losers. Wounds mount up; resentments accumulate. A follower of Jesus worships him in a Sunday morning service, all the while studiously avoiding a fellow believer just a few seats away. Or tensions reach the boiling point, spilling over into outright conflict with outbursts of hurt and anger. People leave; the church divides; relationships are never repaired. It seems it has been this way from the beginning. The apostle Paul had to rebuke the Christians in Corinth for dividing into rival factions (1 Cor. 3:1–4). The subsequent history of the church right down to the present day is littered with examples of disunity, division, fragmentation, and the very things that Paul warned against: “quarreling, jealousy, anger, hostility, slander, gossip, conceit, and disorder” (2 Cor. 12:20).

This is a difficult challenge to meet. Part of the problem is that we are too close, too invested in the disagreements we see around us. What we need is some distance and the objectivity to see things as they are and to discern all the different layers of what is really going on. One way of gaining that distance is by examining in detail a complex controversy we have no stake in, one that took place, in this case, nearly four hundred years ago. Richard Baxter (1615–1691) and John Owen (1616–1683) were two very important and respected leaders within seventeenth-century English Christianity. No one should doubt their godliness, their devotion to God, or their commitment to the cause of peace and unity. But they did not like each other, and we are about to see why. We will understand the multilayered reasons for their hostility and observe how their relationship—never bright to begin with—deteriorated over the decades, finally settling into a fixed and mutual dislike. Spoiler alert: there is no happy ending. This is a classic, timeless story no doubt repeated with minor variations countless times over the centuries but in this case one for which we have ample evidence. It offers an archetype of conflict between Christians that, for all the distance between them and us, is enduringly relevant to our own day.

The fact that their story is an old one is to our advantage. We have nothing at stake in these two men, so we can observe them dispassionately and objectively. We can identify patterns and draw lessons in the hope that we can apply them to our circumstances. The four hundred years of distance help separate us from the emotion of our own entanglements. Returning to our context, we might be able to see ourselves in a more detached fashion. Ordinarily, we are too close to our own conflict to easily understand the complex, unspoken, dimly recognized layers of what is actually taking place. Whether we are one of the protagonists or a disagreement is simply taking place around us, conflict is messy. It is difficult to see things clearly. But when we step back into the seventeenth century, we silence the emotional noise. In that relative stillness, it becomes possible to make observations and draw conclusions that serve us well as we return to the twenty-first century to negotiate our own context of conflict. That is my hope with this book.

I am very aware that for most of us, seventeenth-century England is a foreign country, so I have done my best to keep the story simple and accessible. Written for a popular Christian audience, this is a much shorter version of my earlier book for a scholarly audience, John Owen, Richard Baxter, and the Formation of Nonconformity (Ashgate, 2011). I am grateful to my good friend Michael Haykin for suggesting that I write a more accessible account. In this version, I have not said everything I might have said about this relationship. Anyone seeking the fuller story or more detailed evidence can consult that earlier book (I give some further guidance in the “Further Reading” section at the end of this book). When I quote from seventeenth-century sources, I have silently updated the language and grammar to a more contemporary English. In the first chapter, I have provided a brief outline of each man’s life, one that emphasizes their similarities and positive qualities in a way that the subsequent chapters do not. There, the story unfolds in a little more detail. This makes some repetition inevitable in those following chapters, but I imagine the reader who is unfamiliar with the seventeenth century might appreciate the reinforcement. In the same vein, a glossary of key terms is available in the back matter if you would like to know more about what a word means. Also in the back matter is a chronology that provides a time line of events.

In putting the book together, I have been very conscious of my limitations as a historian—I am not a psychologist or a counselor, though I have been a church pastor. While I go on to offer my own reflections, I am determined to open up space for you to reflect on the story for yourself and to bring your own wisdom to bear. For that reason, I have ended each chapter (except the first) with a series of questions that you might ponder, either by yourself or in a small group. I have not given any indication of what I think the most important present-day issues of contention might be. For one thing, I do not want the book to become dated as issues that seem urgent and pressing today begin to fade and pass, to be replaced by other issues that come to dominate our minds tomorrow. For another, I want to empower you, the reader, to apply the lessons of this story to the issues that seem most important and obvious to you. The reality is that I have no easy answers. The tale I unfold presents us with any number of important questions, and I have left open as much space as possible for you to reflect and come to your own conclusions.

Perhaps I should offer a word of warning. We are about to learn why two men came to dislike each other so intensely. Here we see Owen and Baxter in their worst light, not in their best light—indeed, they brought out the worst in each other. This is not a flattering account. John Lardas Modern has said that “the burden of church history is, among other things, the call to converse more humanely with the dead.”1 I have no wish to denigrate these two men, but I do seek to interpret them accurately and humanely. This means taking account of the ways in which they were all too human and, I hope, not writing with any hint of condescension, as if I am somehow above the fallenness they shared. The point of their story is not so much that Christians disagree but how they go about their disagreement. It is really quite remarkable that mature believers who are, in so many respects, magnificent examples of what it means to follow Jesus with faithfulness and sincerity can also be Christians with pronounced blind spots who demonstrate brittleness, selfishness, and ego in their relationships with others and who damage those around them. We are all human; we are each a mixed bag. As Martin Luther once observed, we are sinners and saints all at the same time. Baxter and Owen are not going to come out of this book looking like saints. That is just not the story I need to tell. But let me place on record the high regard I have for both men. The achievements and the example they have left behind are mightily impressive. I would not have spent my life studying them if they were not worth studying. There is much to admire, and I do admire it, but my admiration must be the focus of a different book.

I am compelled to acknowledge a group of friends and readers who generously gave their time and insight to make this book far better than I could have made it on my own: Raewyn Booth, Kelvin Gardiner, Gareth Jones, and Joseph Wingfield. I am deeply, sincerely grateful for their responses and suggestions. If you find the end result at all readable, accessible, and helpful, much of the credit goes to them.

Here, then, are these two giant leaders of the seventeenth century, warts and all. They are a lived example of how even the most godly Christians disagree and do a pretty poor job of it and how relationships break down even between the most sincere believers. I hope their conflict can help us understand and manage our own difficulties with each other so that we might, as far as we possibly can while we live in this world, all be “of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind” (Phil. 2:2).

1  John Lardas Modern, “The Burdens of Church History,” Church History 83, no. 4 (2014): 990.

1

Two Good Men

When the rich young ruler came to Jesus with his pressing question, addressing him as “Good Teacher,” Jesus responded with a question of his own: “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone” (Luke 18:18–19). This is important. Only God is good; none of us are good. We have many fine qualities, to be sure, and we retain the image of God, but we are flawed, deeply flawed. Even the best of us is shot through with human sinfulness and frailty. We are all vulnerable to blind spots and besetting sins. Our best efforts are colored by imperfection. There are no exceptions. Only God is good.

Yet the evident truth of Jesus’s observation does not prevent us from saying that someone is good: “He is a good man.” “She is a good woman.” We know what we mean. We do not intend to convey that such a man or woman is a model of perfection, but there is something about each one that we can say is genuinely good. Within the confines of human weakness, they are doing their best. They stand out for their presence and contribution. In these terms, John Owen and Richard Baxter were two good men. There is much to admire in their character and achievements. Even today, four centuries on, a great many contemporary Christians hold them in high esteem. In this first chapter, I want to sketch out their life story to introduce these men to you in such a way as to emphasize their many positive qualities, accomplishments, and commonalities. That is because the remaining chapters, necessarily, accentuate the negatives and draw attention to their differences. Neither man comes out of this book looking that great. While we can say that they were both good men, we must add that “no one is good except God alone.”

Early Formation

Baxter and Owen had a lot in common. To begin with, they were both Puritans, which means they were deeply committed to seeing the Church of England reformed according to the prescription laid out in the pages of the New Testament. The label of “Puritan” was deployed against them as an insult. Baxter referred to it as “the odious name,” and no one liked being called a Puritan.1 They preferred to label themselves “the godly” or “the saints.” The nickname comes from the word “purity”: Puritans sought to purify the Church of England from anything that was a merely human innovation and to see the church return to its pure form in the age of the apostles. Over the centuries, “corruption” had crept into the church as its worship and leadership structures had become ever more elaborate and complex. For the Puritans, that corruption was embodied most comprehensively in the Roman Catholic Church.

Inheritors of the sixteenth-century Reformation, the Puritans sought to re-create the initial simplicity of the church in its earliest and purest form. They also tried to purify the society around them, publicly attacking such sins as swearing, drunkenness, sexual immorality, and the failure to acknowledge Sunday as the Sabbath, a day of rest from work but filled for them with activity such as church services, prayer meetings, and discussions of the day’s sermons. Indeed, Puritans loved their sermons. They revered the Scriptures and traveled many miles to hear them preached—and not just on Sunday. But their tendency to attack sin on a societal and national level did not endear them to their “ungodly” neighbors.

Owen and Baxter were both born into the Puritan tradition, and they were born at pretty much the same time: Baxter on Sunday, November 12, 1615; Owen sometime in 1616. Baxter was raised in the county of Shropshire, far to the west of London in the Midlands near the border with Wales. For reasons he did not explain, he lived with his maternal grandfather for the first ten years of his life before moving to live with his parents. He was an only child in a family that privileged Puritan piety. Baxter shared in that piety from an early age, persuaded that the seriousness with which his parents pursued their faith by far excelled the much more profane way of life he witnessed in the community around him. Owen, one of at least six children, was also raised in a devoutly Puritan household, in the village of Stadham (today, Stadhampton), about six miles from Oxford. His father was a deeply conscientious minister in the Church of England.

Owen received an excellent education. While young, he attended a school that met in a private home within All Saints Parish in Oxford. In 1628 he entered Queen’s College, Oxford, at the age of twelve, which was not an unusually young age to begin university study in those days. Four years later he graduated with a bachelor of arts. In 1635 he graduated with a master of arts. England’s two universities (the other being Cambridge University) trained England’s ministers. By the time Owen graduated with his MA, both universities were well into a period of reform led by the archbishop of Canterbury, who was also chancellor of Oxford University, William Laud. These reforms tended to pull both the Church of England and Oxford University away from its Calvinist moorings toward a style of theology and ceremony that seemed worryingly Roman Catholic to England’s staunch Protestants. Unhappy with these developments, Owen left Oxford in 1637. This was no easy decision. It seems that this transition threw him into a state of depression (he withdrew from human interaction entirely “and very hardly could be induced to speak a word”).2 While its intensity lasted only around three months, the aftereffects lingered for several years.

Baxter’s education took an entirely different path. He attended a few mediocre schools in his locality, but he did not go on to university. He was persuaded to take up the offer of learning under a private tutor, who, in the event, proved wholly inadequate. But he did provide the young Baxter with two things conducive to his education: plenty of books and plenty of time to read them. Thus Baxter was an autodidact (that is, he was self-taught), but we should not underestimate his intelligence or his education. If anything, his self-discipline and lifelong inclination to compensate for his lack of university training made him only more studious and industrious. He certainly never lost his early love of reading books (and writing them!). Both he and Owen possessed a formidable intelligence, and both would deploy their considerable intellectual and literary abilities in the service of God.

Indeed, both men developed a genuine, personal faith, if again in different ways. For Baxter, he discerned a deepening awareness of God’s call on his life, even though still very young, but there was no single, decisive moment he could point to. “Whether sincere