Robert, I am having difficulty identifying what you mean by "this" in "this could not even be regarded as a christian statement or part of the christian religion." Does this refer to the voluntarist argument or to the position it argues against?
For John Owen's earlier view one may consult Death of Death, Works, 10:205:
It might also be observed that although Owen changed his mind on this particular point, he did not alter his fundamental belief that all goodness towards the creature comes from a voluntary act of God's will. As he wrote in Christologia, Works, 1:59:
For John Owen's earlier view one may consult Death of Death, Works, 10:205:
The foundation of this whole assertion seems to me to be false and erroneous, — namely, that God could not have mercy on mankind unless satisfaction were made by his Son. It is true, indeed, supposing the decree, purpose, and constitution of God that so it should be, that so he would manifest his glory, by the way of vindicative justice, it was impossible that it should otherwise be; for with the Lord there is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning," James i. 17; 1 Sam. xv. 29: but to assert positively, that absolutely and antecedently to his constitution he could not have done it, is to me an unwritten tradition, the Scripture affirming no such thing, neither can it be gathered from thence in any good consequence. If any one shall deny this, we will try what the Lord will enable us to say unto it, and in the meantime rest contented in that of Augustine: "Though other ways of saving us were not wanting to his infinite wisdom, yet certainly the way which he did proceed in was the most convenient, because we find he proceeded therein."
It might also be observed that although Owen changed his mind on this particular point, he did not alter his fundamental belief that all goodness towards the creature comes from a voluntary act of God's will. As he wrote in Christologia, Works, 1:59:
As wisdom is the directive principle of all divine operations, so goodness is the communicative principle that is effectual in them. He is good, and he doth good — yea, he doth good because he is good, and for no other reason — not by the necessity of nature, but by the intervention of a free act of his will. His goodness is absolutely infinite, essentially perfect in itself; which it could not be if it belonged unto it, naturally and necessarily, to act and communicate itself unto any thing without God himself. The divine nature is eternally satisfied in and with its own goodness; but it is that principle which is the immediate fountain of all the communications of good unto others, by a free act of the will of God.