CrawfordGribben and John W.Tweeddale, eds. <i>T&amp;T Clark Handbook of John Owen</i>. London: T&amp;T Clark, 2022, 571pp. $39.95

The editors of this volume state its purpose as establishing a ‘defining text’ in scholarship on John Owen (vii, 4). Their stated goal was certainly achieved in this volume, which is now available in both hardcover and paperback. Since a brief review could never do justice to the material content of the 20 chapters in this book, my goal here will be to provide an indication of what this volume signifies for the study of Owen and about the study of Owen today. This volume is a gift to the study of John Owen, and it will likely remain relevant for years to come—maybe even increasingly so as the publication of Crossway's Collected Works of John Owen project gathers momentum, and new readers look to find their bearings in the Owen ocean. While there have been multiple handbook-like collections on Owen and his theology published in the last 15+ years, this book is a better introduction to Owen's thought for the uninitiated and it is a more well-rounded treatment of Owen as a person than any of its predecessors. The book has three sections: ‘Part I: Owen's Contexts’ ‘Part II: Owen's Writings’, and ‘Part III: Owen Today’., Part I's contribution for Owen studies is particularly found in its depth and breadth of historical research. Nearly every chapter presents a thorough treatment of Owen in light of his particular context, and many balance the use of Owen's primary sources with his historic and contemporary interlocutors. Also notable is the freshness of much of the content, especially from contributors that might have otherwise simply recycled their own work on Owen. Further, the breadth of the project was demonstrated through entire chapters allocated to ‘Owen and Education’, ‘Owen and Scientific Reform’,. and ‘Owen and Philosophy’ Such a broad treatment rounds out a vision and picture of Owen that is too frequently reduced to a devotional writer or theological polemicist. Part II's contribution to Owen studies lies especially in orienting the reader to each of the eight different texts selected from Owen's corpus. While this section is likely most beneficial for those less familiar with Owen, the details in it provide value for any reader of this Puritan's works. Every chapter in this section possesses a dogged commitment to the primary text and structure of Owen's thought, and many of them provide clarifying notes on the historical/theological contexts of Owen's claims. As a result of these commitments, there were fewer direct points of dialog between the authors and contemporary scholarship on specific questions on the interpretation of Owen's material claims—which adds to the volume's ‘definitional’ nature and longevity. The level of detail in each of these chapters also means the inevitable omission of several important works by Owen (e.g., Perseverance, Vindiciæ Evangelicæ, Communion with God, Theologoumena Pantodapa, Christologia, or Animadversions on ‘Fiat Lux’/Owen's Vindication of it). The finite constraints of page limits and readers' attention spans are meaningful, and the editors' selections of various works throughout Owen's career on different topics bear much wisdom—even though, in my opinion, including the above list of omitted works would have more fully demonstrated Owen's continuity with the historic catholic church, conflict with the contemporary Catholic church, and creative covenantal claims. The publication and content of this volume also say much about the state of Owen studies. This volume presents a fairly unified vision of how Owen is studied. Specifically, the influence of Crawford Gribben's scholarship in this volume is abundant. Gribben's excellent 2016 biography and additional publications are referenced over 100 times in the first 150 pages of the book—and Gribben's own 37-page chapter has fewer Gribben references than nearly any other! Further, Gribben has critiqued previous generations of Owen scholarship for being too ahistorical and, instead, (alongside scholars such as Tim Cooper) he has recommended a more careful methodological commitment to studying Owen in his historical and cultural contexts. This methodological commitment is evident in nearly every chapter in the book, even in the volume's citations of Owen's works—which are all formatted to include a reference to the original publication and the nineteenth-century Gold edition. The book's structure, likewise, reflects a historically driven contextual study of Owen, especially when contrasted with other T&T Clark Handbooks on theologians (e.g., Torrance, Schillebeeckx, Gunton, etc.) or the Oxford Handbooks/Cambridge Companions to theologians (such as Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth)—which are frequently more explicitly dogmatically and thematically organized. However, while the extended dogmatic treatments of Owen's theology (which readers of this journal are likely looking for) may be lacking in this text, we theologians would do well to remember that ‘fields’ of study may need additional (historical) tilling before they can produce high dogmatic yields. There already exist multiple solid evaluative treatments of Owen's theology and those that exist in the future will be improved because of the work accomplished in this volume. Further, the volume reveals much about where Owen studies are occurring. Given the rather narrow state of scholarship focused on Owen just 30 years ago, this book demonstrates a surprising breadth in more recent Owen scholarship. The field is more institutionally established and geographically extended than one might have expected. For example, the contributors to this volume write from institutional homes as distinct as Baylor and Bob Jones, Vanderbilt, and SBTS, and from geographic locations as distant as New Zealand and Northern Ireland. While several historical theologians from the post-Reformation era are experiencing a contemporary revival (e.g., Charnock; Turretin; Baxter; Van Mastricht; Fuller; Bavinck), few sub-fields reflect the range of institutions that are demonstrated in this volume. In conclusion, the volume certainly stands as a ‘defining’ text in Owen studies. However, I do not think that it is (or was intended to be) the ‘definitive’ text in Owen scholarship. As best exemplified in the final chapter of the book (and the only chapter in Part III), Kelly M. Kapic discusses the abundance of unexplored areas in this field and potential avenues for the future. Yet Kapic is not alone; several authors point to underappreciated themes and aspects of Owen's life and thought along the way. Even as this book carefully defines the boundaries and contours of the field, it invites further exploration and engagement.