Spiritual Habitus

Spiritual Habitus January 16, 2015

Mike Allen and Scott Swain summarize John Owen’s account of the “spiritual habit of grace” (Reformed Catholicity, 39-40):

“According to Owen, in regenerating fallen human beings, the Holy Spirit plants a new spiritual habit within them, replacing the old sinful habit inherited from Adam and purged by the blood of Christ. This new spiritual habit exists preeminently and in the fullest measure in Jesus Christ, the head of the new humanity, and flows to the church from Jesus Christ, who is the fountain of ectypal theology – that is, human knowledge of God. Owen defines this habit as ‘a new, gracious, spiritual life, or principle, created, and bestowed on the soul, whereby it is changed in all its faculties and affections, fitted and enabled to go forth in the way of obedience unto every divine object that is proposed unto it.’ This habit is distinct from the rational faculties of the soul, but it is essential to their functioning in the knowledge of God. Far from replacing our rational faculties, this new spiritual habit energizes their operations toward God and creatures. It enables the mind to discern spiritual things: ‘All sanctified believers have an ability and power, in the renewed mind and understanding, to see, know, discern, and receive, spiritual things, the mysteries of the gospel, the mind of Christ, in a due and spiritual manner.’”

Allen and Swain raise Barth’s objection that the notion of habit turns grace into “a given, a static possession rather than an ever-new event of divine giving and human receiving,” but they think that this actualist alternative “fails to appreciate that the permanents of this particular divine gift constitutes its particular modality.” They point to 1 John 3:9 (“God’s seed abides in him”) to answer Barth.

They also think that Barth’s criticism doesn’t land on Owen, who claims that the habit is “preserved in us by the constant powerful actings and influence of the Holy Ghost. He which works it in us doth also preserve it in us. And the reason hereof is, because the spring of it is in our head, Christ Jesus. . . . If this be not actually and always continued, whatever is in us would die and wither of itself” (40-1).

But if the habit depends on the constant sustenance of the Spirit, do we really need the notion of “habit” at all? Can’t we say that the Spirit Himself enables the believer to “see, know, discern, and receive, spiritual things, etc.” As an exegetical matter, Jesus Himself seems to be God’s seed that abides in the believer.

If we can account for everything Owen wants to account by the Spirit’s work in the believer, why do we need the extra spiritual principle planted within? Why the duplication? 


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