John Owen and my Analysis

Christian Alexander

I am reading up on John Owen and his views on atoment and the death of Jesus Christ. In my analysis, Owen never uses the deep language of “limited atonement,” but it seems he used more complex language. He preferred to call the death of Christ “effectual” or “efficacious” but I cannot understand why. I have tried to search for answers but cannot find anything. Does anyone have a clue of how to find this information using Logos? 

Weinne Santos

I think he uses a distinction of terms derived from scholastic theology (especially, from Peter Lombard) between the sufficiency and efficiency of Christ’s satisfaction. In other words, Christ’s satisfaction is sufficient for all, but efficient for some (Works, vol. 10, p. 296). Trueman talks about this in his book, The Claims of Truth.