Dear William,

I think I remember being arrested by the same statement when I first read the book years ago, but it doesn't bother me at all now. Here's why.

I will agree with you that Owen's primary meaning seems to be as you said, that it would have been possible for God to save His elect without displaying His vindicative justice at the cross. But he is stating this to refute a flaw in a premise of the Arminians, not for idle philosophical speculation. They argued, in effect, that SINCE God was BOUND to save mankind in ONLY the particular way that He actually did--requiring His justice to be satisfied with the blood of His Son on the cross--THEREFORE the satisfaction of His justice in the death of Christ was the ONLY means available for God to come close to His HOPED-FOR DESIRE that He could really be reconciled to all of mankind. According to this argument, God has done ALL HE COULD DO to make it possible for His justice to be satisfied, but the individual sinner still gets to make the final CHOICE as to whether the satisfaction is actually effectual in his case.

So Owen--bless him, he was like Darth Vader against the Arminians--rather than entering into the argument, grabs the bull by the horns and denies the premise, namely the assertion that God was bound to display mercy in a particular way, because that assertion was so central to the argument. Note that he is extremely careful to qualify himself in his second sentence, saying in effect that of course God bound Himself to accomplish what actually happened; if he had argued otherwise he would have been wrong and we would be right to say so. But he does not say that; rather he is talking, as the Arminians were, about whether God was bound to show mercy in a particular way BEFORE the covenant of redemption was inaugurated. And he is quite correct to say that there is no scriptural basis for making the Arminian assertion.

Owen does not speculate as to the other possibilities, there being no need for his counter-assertion, but examples could perhaps include some alteration of how God treated Satan, Eve and Adam in Genesis 3. What if God slew an unrepentant Adam on the spot, created a second Adam who would not fall, and produced through Eve a new humanity to whom neither Eve's nor Adam's sin was imputed? Justice would be satisfied and mercy would have been displayed, both without need for the Incarnation. Again, these speculations are unfruitful because we must deal only with what we know what He DID CHOOSE to do; Owen's point was simply that prior to the decrees and covenants, there is no record of God being EXTERNALLY BOUND to a redemptive plan in which He was SELF-LIMITED in respect to the execution and application of His justice and mercy, as the Arminians were falsely arguing.

How's the singing coming along? On warm nights when a gentle breeze wafts down along the Hudson, I will be keeping my ears cocked for a faint echo of your increasingly-resonant voice!

In Christ,
Paul S