John Owen

my paper was called "Will the Real John Owen Please Stand Up? A Preparation to Read Owen's Works." if you really want to read the whole thing, which is like 13 pages long, let me know and i'll email it to you. in the meantime, i'll give you a few snippets you may not have known about the great puritan theologian.

fact #1) owen was married twice, first to mary for 31 years, then a year and a half after she died, to dorothy (who was widowed as well) for 8.

fact #2) mary bore john 11 children. only one of them survived to adulthood, and she too died before owen. that's an average of one child dying every three years throughout his adulthood.

fact #3) neither of his wives and none of his children are mentioned in any of his published works, and as far as i could find out, they aren't mentioned in any of his surviving letters. in fact, the only family member he does mention is his father, and only in a sentence.

fact #4) owen was a calvinist before he was a christian.

fact #5) owen was, in turn, a country preacher, a tutor, a private family chaplain, a military chaplain, dean and then vice chancellor at oxford college christ church, where he was responsible for the worship services, and a city pastor. and the whole time he was writing book after book. he also regularly preached before parliament, and his favorite sermon topic on these occasions was religious tolerance within orthodoxy.

fact #6) owen was tight with oliver cromwell.

fact #7) owen drives biographers and historians crazy because of the paucity of info on him.