John Davenant and Hypothetical Universalism Part 2

In the last post I attempted to introduce a couple key conclusions which I find to be crucial in understanding hypothetical universalism during the 16th and 17th centuries.

In this post and the subsequent posts I want to begin an exposition of John Davenant's (1572-1641) Dissertation on the Death of Christ. In many ways, as shall become apparent, Davenant's work is the alternative (17th C.) Reformed view of the atonement to the view espoused by John Owen. In other words, the two mainline Reformed views of the atonement found in the 16th and 17th C. are ably defended by John Owen and John Davenant respectively.

While John Davenant was unaware of Owen's work (Owen's first work, The Display of Arminianism, was not published until after Davenant's death), Owen was fully aware of Davenant's work . In Owen's preface to his work titled The Death of Christ (see Vol. 10, Works (Goold Ed.), 432), Owen notes that he had received Davenant's work after his own The Death of Christ had already been written and found Davenant's Dissertation "repugnant unto truth itself." Further, Owen asserts that its main foundation is not "founded on the word." Owen even charges Davenant's work as "tempering the truths of God so that they may be suited to the self-indulgency of unsubdued carnal affections...[and] remov[ing] that scandal and offence which the fleshly-minded doth take continually at those ways of God which are far above out of his sight."

John Davenant's Dissertation was appended to Davenant's Colossians commentary (Allport edition). Volume 1 and Volume 2 of Davenant's commentary on Colossians can be found online.

Exposition of Davenant's Dissertation:

Davenant introduces the controversy lamenting

that those mysteries of our religion, which were promulgated for the peace and comfort of mankind, should be turned into materials for nothing but contention and dispute. Who could ever have thought that the death of Christ, which was destined to secure peace and destroy enmity, as the Apostle speaks, Ephes. ii. 14, 17, and Coloss. i. 20, 21, could have been so fruitful in the production of strife?

Davenant, with a pastoral heart, suggests that instead of inclining oneself to debate the question "for whom did Christ die?" the believer should press on "applying to ourselves the death of Christ, by a true and lively faith, for the salvation of our own souls."

Davenant, seeking to get at the heart of the differences between the two views on the extent of the atonement, remarks that for both those who limit redemption to the elect and those who hold to universal redemption, the death of Christ

is regarded as an universal cause of salvation applicable to all mankind individually is they should believe, and as a special cause of salvation applied effectually to certain persons in particular who have believed.

Because of this common ground, "it will perhaps appear that in some things which are contested with eagerness, there are rather various modes of speaking than different opinions."

However, before Davenant will give his own exposition of the death of Christ, he will survey the history of the controversy up until his own time-period. This will be the subject of our next post.