Kapic on Owen's Communion with God

Mark your calendars! March 2007 will finally see the release of Kelly Kapic's excellent Communion with God: The Divine and the Human in the Theology of John Owen by Baker Academic.

Communion with God is an adaptation of Kapic's PhD thesis from King's College, London. He provides a fascinating discussion of Owen's important and much neglected work by the same title. He focuses specifically on Owen's theological anthropology and argues that he is best understood as an 'anthroposensitive theologian' meaning that Owen refused to drive a wedge between divine theological truth from human application. Employing a wide range of primary and secondary material, Kapic covers key topics such as the imago Dei, Christology, justification by faith, Trinity, and the Lord's Day and Lord's Supper. This book will be a must for anyone interested in Puritan theology, Owen studies, and post-Reformation thought.

Here is a short summary of Kapic's work taken from his thesis abstract:

The work outlines John Owen's conception of human communion with God. We argue that his anthropology is best understood by placing it within a framework of relations between God and humanity. What we discover is a Puritan approach that seeks to emphasize a holistic understanding of human existence and a Trinitarian sensibility grounded in an incarnational theology, held together by an experiential concern for the believer. Throughout our study we will see that Owen is best understood as presenting an anthroposensitive theology: he aims to avoid divorcing theological considerations from practical human application, since theological reflections are always interwoven with anthropological concerns. This is achieved primarily through this acknowledgement that fallan humanity's lack of communion with God can only be answered with a consistent Christological and Trinitarian emphasis.

Kapic is Associate Professor of Theological Studies at Covenant College. He is co-editor of The Devoted Life: An Invitation to Puritan Classics (IVP) and co-editor of the forthcoming re-make of Owen's Overcoming Sin and Temptation (Crossway).

For more information about the book, see the Baker Academic site here.