Theopedia

Thomas Goodwin

“The object of faith is Christ as he is presented to us in the gospel. Now he is presented not as justification only, but as sanctification also; therefore he that takes Christ as he is given, takes Christ for both.”

Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 8

Overview

Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680) was an English Congregationalist Puritan divine, a member of the Westminster Assembly, and one of the framers of the Savoy Declaration of 1658.12 He held, with several of his fellow Assembly divines, that the Father and the Son entered an eternal covenant of redemption (pactum salutis) to accomplish the salvation of the elect, and he wrote at length on union with Christ and the Holy Spirit’s work in applying redemption to believers.13

Life and Ministry

Goodwin was educated and converted to Puritan convictions at Cambridge, and by 1634 had adopted Congregationalist views of the church, which he held for the rest of his ministry.4 He was a member of the Westminster Assembly in the 1640s, where he stood among the Assembly divines who held the doctrine of the covenant of redemption.1 In 1658, after the Westminster Confession failed to secure Parliament’s approval in full, Goodwin was one of a small group of Congregationalist ministers, including John Owen, Philip Nye, William Bridge, Joseph Caryl, and William Greenhill, who met to draft a new confession suited to their own church government: the Savoy Declaration.2 He died in 1680.1

Theological Contribution

The covenant of redemption

Goodwin was one of the Westminster Assembly divines, alongside Samuel Rutherford and Obadiah Sedgwick, who held that the pactum salutis, an eternal covenant between the Father and the Son concerning the redemption of the elect, undergirds the Bible’s language of Christ as mediator.1 Scholarship on the doctrine has argued that the Savoy Declaration’s addition to the Westminster Confession’s own chapter on Christ the Mediator, the phrase “according to a covenant made between them both,” reflects the covenant of redemption that Owen and Goodwin had both used extensively in their own writing, made explicit in the confession they helped to draft.3

Union with Christ

Goodwin grounded both justification and sanctification in the believer’s union with Christ himself, rather than treating them as two separate grants. As he put it, faith takes hold of Christ as he is offered in the gospel, “not as justification only, but as sanctification also.”5 In his own treatment of the Holy Spirit’s work in salvation, Goodwin distinguished three kinds of divine action accomplishing redemption: God’s eternal, immanent love that chose the elect; Christ’s transient work accomplished for them on the cross; and the Spirit’s applicatory work, “wrought in us and upon us,” by which that love and that finished work are given to believers as calling, justification, sanctification, and glorification.6

Historical Significance

The covenant of redemption that Goodwin held at Westminster reappears later in Particular Baptist theology: Benjamin Keach, writing later in the century, built his own account of the “everlasting covenant” on the same doctrine.7 Goodwin has also been the subject of dedicated modern scholarship in his own right: Mark Jones’s 2009 doctoral dissertation at the University of Leiden studied his Christology specifically, rather than treating him only as one Puritan among several.8

Related Doctrines

Further Reading

References

  1. J. V. Fesko, quoted in Daniel David Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 36n52: “a number of proponents of the pactum were members of the Westminster Assembly including: Samuel Rutherford (1600-61), Thomas Goodwin (1600-80), and Obadiah Sedgwick (ca. 1600-58).” Cf. J. V. Fesko, The Covenant of Redemption: Origins, Development, and Reception (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 9-11. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  2. Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 120: “John Owen, Thomas Goodwin, Philip Nye, William Bridge, Joseph Caryl, and William Greenhill were present to craft the document,” referring to the Savoy Declaration of 1658. ↩ ↩2

  3. Carol Man Fen Chen, A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 136-137: “some scholars argue that since John Owen and Thomas Goodwin extensively used covenant of redemption in their writings, the Savoy Declaration’s added phrase ‘according to a covenant made between them both’ reflects what was implicit in the Westminster Standards.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Peter Toon, “Thomas Goodwin,” in New International Dictionary of the Christian Church, ed. J. D. Douglas (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974). ↩

  5. Thomas Goodwin, The Works of Thomas Goodwin, 8:476, 478-479, quoted in Chen, 204. ↩

  6. Thomas Goodwin, The Work of the Holy Ghost in Our Salvation, in The Works of Thomas Goodwin, vol. 6 (Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1863), 405: “There are three sorts of works whereby our salvation is completed and accomplished. 1. Immanent in God towards us, as his eternal love set and passed upon us… 2. Transient, in Christ done for us… 3. Applicatory, wrought in us and upon us, in the endowing us with all those blessings by the Spirit; as calling, justification, sanctification, glorification.” ↩

  7. Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach,” 33. ↩

  8. Mark Jones, “Why Heaven Kissed Earth: The Christology of Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680)” (PhD diss., University of Leiden, 2009), cited in Daniel David Scheiderer, “Introduction,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 8n11. ↩