Why John Owen and Richard Baxter Didn’t Like Each Other
How People See Us
When I first entered full-time pastoral ministry many years ago, there was someone in the congregation who, I’m sorry to say, I did my best to avoid. He was an old man with a grim visage, firm views, and old-fashioned ways. But in a small church there could be no avoiding him for long, and the more I interacted with him the more I came to like and respect him. Far from ducking for cover when I noticed him heading towards me, I began to intentionally seek him out.
Much more recently I had the opposite experience. Someone who I have occasionally engaged with over many years who I thought was utterly professional and trustworthy said something about me in a public setting that was, in my view, not just unprofessional but also deeply personal. Given our earlier positive interactions, I was surprised, to say the least, by what I was hearing. I had no idea that was in her.
The fact is that we do not see people as they actually are. This should be no surprise. I am fifty-four years old and I’m not sure I know myself, let alone anyone else. Only God sees us as we truly are. When we see other people, we do so through a filter that operates on the basis of the only evidence we have: what we see them do and hear them say. It’s easy to get that wrong.
When Christians Disagree
Tim Cooper
When Christians Disagree explores the lives of two opposing figures in church history, John Owen and Richard Baxter, to highlight the challenges Christians face in overcoming polarization and fostering unity and love for one another.
When my sons were younger, they delighted to take a photo of me—and not for any flattering purpose. They would apply all sorts of distorting filters that turned my face into something grotesque and disturbing. I could still see myself in the image, but it was mangled almost beyond recognition. I think we do a similar thing when we view other people. If we’re not careful, we allow their actions to distort our view of them even to the point where they can become almost unrecognizable.
Seventeenth Century Disagreement
This is no new thing. Some years ago I set out to understand why two towering seventeenth-century English Puritans came to dislike each other so deeply. John Owen (1616-1683) and Richard Baxter (1615-1691) had so much in common that they should have gotten along famously. But they didn’t. That was partly due to their contrasting personalities and life experiences that predetermined the trajectory of their relationship before they even met. But it also came down to the nature of their interactions once they did come into contact. Looking back, we can see how their respective filters came into play.
It hardly helped that Baxter had earlier criticized Owen’s theology in print, even if he did so in what was, for him, a relatively measured way. Owen was not one to accept criticism easily, especially public criticism. So when the two men met in 1654 as part of a small group of leading English ministers to advise Parliament on a new religious settlement, Baxter reinforced by his behavior what Owen had already assumed from their printed dispute: that Baxter was an insufferable irritant. Baxter, who observed that Owen was “the great doer” within the group, felt he saw with his own eyes Owen’s pride and touchiness. Thus, their personal interaction simply reinforced their pre-existing beliefs, and each one’s filter was reinforced and sharpened. As a consequence, their subsequent written exchanges became noticeably more bitter and personal.
Two years earlier a fellow Puritan had identified the general dynamic we are seeing. In his book The Moderator, Joseph Caryl explained that the person who “does not confide in his neighbors hinders them from confiding in him, and he that fears others creates in them a fear against himself.” If one thinks the other does not trust him, he “will readily suspect him”. Thus, “if I give way to these thoughts, I am at war with him in my heart and the only thing that can foster confidence in him, the affection of Christian love and generous sincerity, is lost between us.” This is exactly how relationships break down. In our early interactions and as conflict begins, those precious qualities of love and generosity are quickly lost, and from there a relationship is almost impossible to recover.
Only God sees us as we truly are.
So it was with Baxter and Owen. The worst came in 1659 when Owen committed what was, in Baxter’s eyes, his unpardonable sin. At that time Owen was chaplain to England’s foremost army leaders who engineered, in effect, a coup d’état. Their actions brought down the republican regime of the Lord Protector, Richard Cromwell (the son of the better-known Oliver Cromwell). Baxter had invested in Richard Cromwell extremely high hopes for a transformation of English religion, but all his expectations and optimism collapsed in dust and ruin with Cromwell’s demise. A year later the monarchy was restored, England’s Puritan reformation was reversed, and Baxter, along with around two-thousand other Puritan ministers, were on their way to being ejected from their positions in the Church of England.
Who was to blame? John Owen. At least, that was Baxter’s view. But while Owen was on the fringes of these events and, perhaps, may have helped nudge them along, he was far from the most powerful player. He was just as dismayed at those eventual outcomes as Baxter was. As for Baxter, he was working off second-hand information that was tenuous at best. But he believed it. He believed it because it meshed all too easily with his filter, through which it was only too plausible that Owen had wrecked everything. For the rest of his days, he continued to blame Owen for the tragic end to godly reformation in England. And this mattered. These two men were the foremost leaders during the thirty years in which the Puritans came under state persecution for their nonconformity to the demands of the established church. Where they might have brought their respective streams together in a common cause, their history and their mutual animosity kept them from working in unison. That damaging, distorting filter had done its work.
I think there is a lesson in this for us. It is all too easy to allow perceived slights and offenses to accumulate so that in the end we see the other person only through a prism of hurt and offense. I am determined to reflect on that myself as I continue to engage with the person who recently let me down. I know I can’t be as unguarded as I have been with her—trust is a precious commodity that is hard to rebuild once it is lost—but I will not let that one action determine our relationship, and I will find ways to keep open communication and collegiality. The sobering example of Owen and Baxter teaches us that much. May we all demonstrate the fruit of the Spirit—not least love, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, and self-control—and when we encounter the worst in others, may it bring out the best in ourselves.
Tim Cooper is the author of When Christians Disagree: Lessons from the Fractured Relationship of John Owen and Richard Baxter.
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