Podcast: What an Old Puritan Can Teach Us about the Holy Spirit (Andrew Ballitch)

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

Holy Spirit, Helper, Comforter

In today’s episode, Andrew Ballitch discusses John Owen’s writings about the Holy Spirit and insights into spiritual gifts, the illumination of Scripture, and how the Spirit indwells believers.

The Holy Spirit—The Helper

John Owen, Andrew S. Ballitch

Volume 7 of The Complete Works of John Owen includes 2 treatises on illumination and biblical interpretation—written by 17th-century theologian John Owen and edited for modern readers by Andrew Ballitch.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

00:53 - Who Was John Owen and Why Should I Care?

Matt Tully
Andrew, thank you so much for joining me today on The Crossway Podcast.

Andrew Ballitch
It’s good to be here.

Matt Tully
Let’s just start big for those who aren’t familiar with him. Who was John Owen? When did he live, roughly? Where did he live? What’s the significance of his life and his work for us today?

Andrew Ballitch
John Owen was a Puritan. He was born in 1616 in England. He died in 1683, and so his life spanned some of the most significant years, when we think of the Puritan movement. When we think about Puritanism, we can talk about it in terms of a political movement, which we’ll probably get into. John Owen was very involved in Puritanism as a political movement and the English Civil War and the Commonwealth period and the rest. We can talk about Puritanism as an ecclesiastical movement. Often we think of it as the Puritans were those who thought that the Church of England needed to go further with its reformation and its turn to Protestantism.

Matt Tully
Further away from the Roman Catholic Church.

Andrew Ballitch
That’s right. They would see what happened in the 1550s and 1560s under Queen Elizabeth as the Church of England being Reformed in its doctrine, but not yet Reformed in its practice and its worship. And so the Puritans were those who said, *No, we want to be Reformed in our doctrine, yes, but we want that to have all of its implications on our worship, when it comes to what liturgy is, what the calendar is, what worship looks like, feels like, and the rest. They wanted it all to be brought under the authority of Scripture. And so we think of it as a political movement; we think of it as an ecclesiastical movement. The way that I often think about Puritanism, and I think one of the more helpful ways to think about it, is like a spiritual revival type movement. When you start to think about who’s Church of England and who’s a Separatist or who’s part of this official political movement and who’s not, you start to get difficult definitions of who’s in and who’s out of Puritanism. But if you define it as these are sincere people who were concerned about both theology and practice that lived during this period in England from the 1550s up through most of the 17th century, I think it’s more of a helpful definition. And John Owen very comfortably fits into that definition, as well as the definitions of ecclesiastical and political Puritanism as well. But John Owen made his name for himself in London in the 1630s and 1640s. This was a time of social upheaval, as there was a civil war. Charles was basically trying to push his version of Anglicanism, of prayer book worship, on all of Great Britain. He called Parliament, and Parliament declared civil war. They had Puritan sympathies. And so it was in this context of civil war and Parliament being in control in London that John Owen makes a name for himself. He didn’t actually participate directly in the Westminster Assembly, like some of his peers and contemporaries did, but he did regularly preach to Parliament. Later on in the 1650s, he was very close to Oliver Cromwell, who was the Lord Protector during the Commonwealth period, actually serving as his chaplain.

Matt Tully
The Commonwealth period is a period when England didn’t have a king. Is that correct?

Andrew Ballitch
That’s right. The culmination of the civil war was the execution of Charles I.

Matt Tully
We think we live in boisterous times today, but nothing compared to this time in history.

Andrew Ballitch
No, not in English-speaking history. The English Civil War was all kinds of upheaval. First of all, it was unthinkable that somebody would commit regicide—kill a king. You would fight against him, maybe exile him, but to take his head was extremely radical. Censorship was non-existent during this time, so you have all kinds of ideas exploding, you have all kinds of radicalism happening. And this is where John Owen is coming into prominence. And when we get into talking about his understanding of the Holy Spirit, this is what’s informing it—kind of the lid coming off in English society and theological ideas. John Owen was a prominent person during this time of upheaval, serving Oliver Cromwell, serving in the administration at Oxford. And then when the fall of the Commonwealth period happens, we call it the Restoration, when basically Parliament has been disbanded by Oliver Cromwell. He dies, his son Richard doesn’t have the same command of the military, the same kind of charisma, if you will, as his dad, and the whole thing starts to kind of unravel. The fall of the Cromwells and the fall of this political climax in Puritanism was really the fall of John Owen from, at least, the highest parts of society.

Matt Tully
He’s eventually exiled to some extent, right? He’s prevented from preaching.

Andrew Ballitch
Because of his positions in the Cromwellian government, because of his name recognition and bow big of a deal he was, he was honestly sheltered from a lot of the more extreme persecution that some of his other Puritan contemporaries went under. But he continued to preach and he continued to pastor, but he was very much removed from the public eye because at the Restoration, the Church of England becomes increasingly the only kind of show in town. So those who are meeting in other churches (like Owen is) and pastoring, they’re doing that kind of under the radar. But he spends the last decades of his life doing what I think the Puritans are known best for, which is pastoral ministry and piety and writing works of spirituality and devotional things and doing theology.

07:19 - Common Misconceptions about the Puritans

Matt Tully
You say that’s what the Puritans are best known for, but my sense is that the general public, even the general Christian public, maybe doesn’t have that sense for the Puritans. You’ve clearly spent a lot of time with the Puritans. You did your dissertation on William Perkins, and you also have edited these couple of volumes on John Owen. What would you say are some of the common misconceptions that fellow Christians—people in your church, people that you know—have about the Puritans when you tell them, Yeah, I’m studying the Puritans. I’m working on this book by a Puritan?

Andrew Ballitch
People have different views of the Puritans. Their reputation has been rehabbed in the last few years, which has been a good time to be working on them. But a lot of times people see the Puritans as killjoys, people who didn’t enjoy the good gifts that God has given. One of my favorite quotes about the Puritans is a guy named Lord Macaulay who said, “The Puritans disliked bear-baiting because it caused joy to the spectators, not because it caused pain to the bear.” The point is they just didn’t want you to have fun. That’s what they’re kind of known for.

Matt Tully
Life should be hard and miserable.

Andrew Ballitch
Yeah. There’s that kind of stigma.

Matt Tully
Is there any truth to that?

Andrew Ballitch
I don’t think so. The Puritans were largely Sabbatarians, so they did have strict views on what you were allowed and not allowed to do on the Christian Sabbath, on Sunday. It was supposed to be the market day of the soul. It was supposed to be devoted to the Lord. They were serious about their faith and their Christianity, but they enjoyed life. They were married, they had children, they had social gatherings together, they enjoyed beer, they enjoyed recreation and leisure. They write about these things and they just saw that they needed to be in balance. The Lord needs to be first in your life, and then all of these good gifts of the Lord fall in place. And so I don’t think there’s much to the accusation that is accurate.

09:28 - Owen’s Contribution to the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

Matt Tully
You’ve edited the very first two volumes that Crossway is releasing in this new 40-volume The Complete Works of John Owen set, coming out progressively over the next few years. And these first two volumes are volumes that contain works that he wrote on the Holy Spirit. You argue, in your introduction to these, that Owen’s contribution to the doctrine of the Holy Spirit was purposefully and self-consciously new. Unpack that a little bit for us. In what ways was Owen trying to do something new when it came to the Holy Spirit?

Andrew Ballitch
I think he was trying to give an all-encompassing vision of the Holy Spirit based on the biblical data that’s available to him, as well as systematizing the insights of the 16th century Reformers and the Reformed tradition up to this point. And so if you think about some of the other Puritans, maybe Thomas Goodwin who is known for his magisterial work on Christology, John Owen is, in my mind, really the preeminent theologian among the Puritans on pneumatology, just because of the sheer size of the treatment. There’s the volumes that we’re talking about here today, and then there’s his primary treatise on the Holy Spirit—these five smaller treatises that make up volume seven and volume eight. And so his self-consciously doing something new is just the size and the scope and the ambition of what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to give an exhaustive treatment of the Holy Spirit, both his person and his work.

11:10 - The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit, Spiritual Gifts, Liturgical Prayer, and the Illumination of Scripture

Matt Tully
Now I’d love to turn now to some topics related to the Holy Spirit. I wonder if you could summarize what Owen would say about some of these. Some of them are particularly relevant to his time and maybe emphases that he had. Let’s start with indwelling. That’s one of these core ideas about the Holy Spirit. We believe that he indwells us as Christians. How would Owen have explained what the indwelling of the Holy Spirit was?

Andrew Ballitch
I think he views the indwelling of the Spirit as what’s referred to in Ephesians as “the seal of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit is the down payment of the glorification that is to come. It’s what we talk about with the Spirit taking residence with us as Christian individuals, as the body being the temple, but also in the midst of the church being the body of Christ. And so the indwelling of the Spirit is really the Spirit coming, not just to dwell in the believer but to apply all of the benefits that Christ has purchased for his people in the atonement.

Matt Tully
What about spiritual gifts? That’s another topic that, obviously in our circles today, at different points has been controversial. We’ve debated what are the spiritual gifts and how do they apply to us as Christians today. How did Owen see the spiritual gifts?

Andrew Ballitch
It’s interesting. He makes the distinction first between ordinary and extraordinary spiritual gifts. And when he talks about extraordinary spiritual gifts, it’s what we would often talk about as the miraculous gifts—the manifestations of the Spirit, whether it’s tongues or prophecy or healing and these sorts of things. And then he also wants to tie ordinary and extraordinary spiritual gifts to certain offices. So, there are the ordinary offices that are a part of the church throughout the ages, like elder or pastor or overseer—he would see those as the same office—and deacon. There are ordinary gifts that God equips church leaders in those offices with. And then there are the extraordinary offices that are things like prophet and evangelist and apostle. And these we see being talked about and being in operation in the New Testament, especially the book of Acts. And so as those extraordinary offices pass from the scene, those extraordinary spiritual gifts that are tied to those offices also pass from the scene. Now, what’s interesting is you would automatically say, Well, that makes John Owen a cessationist.

Matt Tully
If we’re trying to put him in our modern categories.

Andrew Ballitch
And he is a cessationist in the sense that there is nobody walking around that has the authority or the gift of healing like Peter does and says, “I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!” (Acts 3:6) So there are no spiritual gifts operating like that because there is no extraordinary office; only the ordinary offices are in operation. But it’s not quite so simple because Owen will make interesting statements about things—revelation or healing or tongues—and he’ll say it’s not that the Holy Spirit can’t or doesn’t use that. He actually makes the comment that there’s probably places around the world that the Holy Spirit does work that way, but he doesn’t view it as a gift. So it’s not that the Holy Spirit can’t work miraculously in the world—

Matt Tully
Interesting. Even through other Christians, humans.

Andrew Ballitch
Through humans. Through other Christians, yes, but he wouldn’t call that a gift. He would call that the operation of the Spirit, because the Spirit works in mysterious ways, the way that the Spirit wants. So he doesn’t want to say the Holy Spirit can’t work miraculously today, but when the Holy Spirit works, it’s his prerogative. It’s not a gift in the sense of something somebody has.

Matt Tully
Someone could continue to use that at will as more of a normal part of their ministry.

Andrew Ballitch
He doesn’t want us to expect, as local churches, for there to be miraculous manifestations of the Spirit. He says once the extraordinary offices cease, then those extraordinary manifestations cease with any type of regularity. But he wants to leave room open for the Holy Spirit to work miraculously.

Matt Tully
That probably fits pretty comfortably in today’s cessationist camp, even with that little asterisk, that God can do what he wants to do.

Andrew Ballitch
Sure.

Matt Tully
What about prayer? As I was reading some of your introduction, you made the point that Owen was pretty down on liturgical prayer. That’s something that it seems, in the milieu today of Reformed evangelism, is sort of maybe experiencing a bit of a renaissance. People are coming to appreciate the liturgical elements of worship services and the idea of praying prayers that have been written and passed down for centuries. Owen was pretty skeptical of the value of that for the Christian. Why so?

Andrew Ballitch
He talks about prayers of human composure, and these forms of not just forms of ancient prayers that you might appropriate from another period of church history or, for us, from the Reformation period itself. But he’s just talking about rote prayers in advance. That’s what he—

Matt Tully
Not even just liturgical prayers that the church has been using for years. It’s like, even writing a prayer ahead of the service and then delivering that prayer he would be dubious about.

Andrew Ballitch
Right. He’s uncomfortable with that, or un unsatisfied with that, because he sees it as a stifling of the Spirit’s work. Extemporaneous prayer is when someone is communicating sincerely there to the Lord and can be led by the Spirit in certain ways. And so what he’s reacting against though, and this is important to understand contextually, he’s reacting against the Church of England, in all of its liturgy that goes way beyond just a prayer that’s written in advance. He’s reacting against the Church of England because he sees the carryover of Roman Catholic elements into its worship. And Owen would basically promulgate what we call today “the regulative principle.” The regulative principle of worship, saying that only those things that we see in Scripture as positively proposed for worship or apostolic precedent, those are the things that can be included in worship. Scripture regulates worship, as opposed to the normative principle, which would be in the Anglican tradition or in the Lutheran tradition, that as long as Scripture doesn’t expressly forbid something, then it can be included in worship. And so written prayers fall into this category of not expressly forbidden, so a lot of people in traditions are comfortable with it. But in a Reformed tradition that has a robust application of the regulative principle, which Owen would be, he’s uncomfortable with that, because we don’t see New Testament precedent for this in worship. And so part of it is it doesn’t fit his idea of how we’re supposed to conduct worship services according to Scripture. And two, he sees it as a stifling thing, as less than what prayer could be if we are doing it extemporaneously, being led by the Holy Spirit.

Matt Tully
Why was it that he viewed that as stifling? Why couldn’t the Holy Spirit be at work ahead of time, or out of time, in working to direct someone in a prayer? What was it about the worship service context itself where he thought that was where the Spirit would want to work most fully?

Andrew Ballitch
He definitely talks about layers, or a spectrum, if you will. So it’s not a matter that the Holy Spirit can’t or wouldn’t or doesn’t work through a written prayer. It’s just that there is better and best. There’s another level of that where the Holy Spirit is going to work in the most uninhibited way, through an extemporaneous prayer through the person, whether it’s the urgings of the Spirit or the sensitivity of the pastor to what’s going on as he has been in worship with his people that morning through song and through seeing faces and fellowship. There is a special way that the Spirit works that is mysterious that is stifled in a way when you come in thinking that you already know what you’re going to say.

Matt Tully
Was this suspicion related to liturgical prayers shared by other Puritans in his day and even after him? Or is this kind of a unique thing that he was really stuck on?

Andrew Ballitch
No, it’s not a unique thing. There are other Puritans that share this concern. And his treatise on the Holy Spirit and prayer is talking about rote prayers. It’s also talking about something that he calls mental prayer and trying to conjure up images. Basically, prayer is supposed to be communication with the Lord, and when you try to add various ways to help that, you end up hindering it. It’s supposed to be a conversation. It’s supposed to be to the Lord and on behalf of the people and on behalf of the person. Prayer is also speaking the truth to the people too, right? It’s both ways. Again, I would say it’s the spectrum of what the Holy Spirit will use, and ideally what the Spirit uses and what is most unencumbered. It’s not an exclusive thing to Owen. One of the other things that Owen and the Puritans are doing, especially, is these treatises that we look at in volume seven and eight are written at the end of Owen’s career—pretty much the last decade of his life. Some of them are published after his death. But they’re at a point now, just like the Puritans found themselves for a while earlier in the 1600s before they rose to power, they find themselves in a precarious situation because they’re censured if they push against the official Church of England, because those who are proponents of the Church of England are in power. So this happened earlier in the Puritan experience, and it’s happening for Owen later on in his life, where what they’ll do is they’ll attack Roman Catholicism. But everybody knows what they’re really attacking are those elements of Roman Catholicism in the Church of England. And so he’s focusing, just like other Puritans, on liturgical prayer, on rote prayer, usually in the context of an attack of Roman Catholicism, because he sees that as a problem in the Church of England.

Matt Tully
He’s not trying to reform the Church of Rome; he’s concerned for his own church in his own backyard, but he can’t quite say it as clearly as that.

Andrew Ballitch
Right. He has to have another foil, but it wasn’t lost on anyone who the Puritans really were talking about. But it gave you plausible deniability.

Matt Tully
So interesting. Maybe one other doctrinal area that he hits on is this idea of the illumination of Scripture—how we approach the Bible, how we read the Bible, and how the Spirit works with us in that. How would you summarize his understanding of the Spirit’s role in illumination?

Andrew Ballitch
He writes a lot on this, both treatises in volume seven—“The Reason of Faith” and “Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God”—are together his twin treatises on illumination. In “The Reason of Faith” he’ll talk about understanding Scripture and illumination—think about the “what” we believe. He’ll get to the content of it in “Causes, Ways, and Means of Understanding the Mind of God.” But there’s also the “why” we believe Scripture and the “how” we believe. He spends a lot of time in “The Reason of Faith” saying that Scripture is itself authenticating. The reason why we believe Scripture to be true is because Scripture is true, basically.

Matt Tully
And the Spirit impresses that upon us.

Andrew Ballitch
The “how” is the work of the Spirit’s illumination. So what he doesn’t want to do is move away from Scripture’s self-authentication and Scripture being true because it’s God’s word and it’s true. So that’s established; that’s the “why” we believe. But the “how” we believe is the Holy Spirit’s impressing that upon us. And so the Holy Spirit’s work of illumination is partially for us to accept Scripture as true, and then secondly, the Spirit plays a role in giving us understanding in the truth as well. And so those of us who want John Owen to give you a dissertation on hermeneutical method and how to go about starting with a passage of Scripture and A, B, C, D, he doesn’t do that, because it is a work of the Spirit. He spends the majority of his time, after he’s grounded Scripture’s self-authentication and he’s grounded and talked about the Holy Spirit giving us that impression so that we can accept it as true, then he talks a lot about prayer, preparing the heart, making sure that you are not living in sin and you are living faithfully and with a clear conscience before the Lord. All of this sort of thing is part of allowing the Holy Spirit to illumine the Scripture for us. Towards the end of his treatise, he does get to reading in community and the understanding of original languages and some of church history and biblical geography and some of these things, but it’s very much at the end. It’s after this Holy Spirit’s work of giving us insight into the truth.

Matt Tully
So when it comes to talking about this and how he understood the Spirit’s role in helping us understand the truth through Scripture, he also is responding and pushing back against other sects—sectarian groups—that were out there that had different views that he found to be problematic. My favorite one that you mention in the book is the Muggletonians. I just love that name, for obvious reasons. But another group was the Quakers. He had major problems with the Quakers. Summarize what it was about what they were saying that he found problematic.

Andrew Ballitch
In his historical context—and he’s clear about this, so I’m not putting these categories into his understanding—he wants the regular Christian to be able to understand the Scripture. He doesn’t want them to have to appeal to the immediate witness of the Holy Spirit, like the Quakers do. Kind of like new, special revelation.

Matt Tully
An experience right now.

Andrew Ballitch
And so there’s the mystical type of experience that goes too far in the special revelation, in the quakings of the Quakers and the rest. So he’s trying to avoid that pitfall. At the same time, there are the sectarians known as the Socinians, who don’t see any role for the Spirit and only view the Bible through a rational lens. And so you don’t need any help from the Spirit. You just need to apply your reason to the text of Scripture, and therefore you get the proper interpretation. And so he doesn’t want to avoid an over-spiritualization of the process. He wants to avoid over-rationalization of the process. And at the same time, avoid what the Roman Catholics do, which is appeal to tradition as the authority, or the Roman Curia, for interpretation. He’s trying to create space for the regular Christian to understand Scripture through the help of the Holy Spirit, while avoiding all of those things in his context that he sees as problematic.

Matt Tully
It’s so fascinating as you describe it that way. He’s got this over-emphasis on the Spirit and the subjective approach to Scripture on the one hand. On the other hand would be this overly rationalistic approach. And then finally, an over-dependence on tradition and history. That feels so familiar to us. We wrestle with those same dynamics in our own conversations and our own Christian denominations and how we should approach the Bible. It’s amazing to me how often so much of what Owen was wrestling with and dealing with are the same kinds of things that we struggle with today. Have you found that to be the case as you’ve dug into his works more deeply?

Andrew Ballitch
Absolutely. He’s trying to articulate in his doctrine of illumination, what he spends two treatises on. As Christians, we want to say that yes, the Holy Spirit has a role in our accepting and our understanding of Scripture. But at the same time, we don’t want to downplay the rationalization. We intuitively know that there has to be something different between the secular New Testament scholar that doesn’t believe any of orthodox Christianity, but yet knows Greek better than most of us, and understands the content of Scripture. What is it about the Holy Spirit’s help to Christians that actually does give them an edge, so to speak? Is it all a matter of just the will that he allows us to apply these things? Or is there actual work of the Spirit in giving insight into the truth? Owen is trying to articulate that in a way that I think we intuitively know that there’s got to be something there. When it comes to his discussions on prayer, certainly. The discussion that we just had—what’s better, what’s proper in worship, what’s proper in our own devotional lives—is important. We talk about the Holy Spirit as the comforter and the doctrine of assurance. What Christian has not dealt with doubting their salvation at some period in their life. And the spiritual gifts discussion is alive and well today as well. And so he’s wrestling with similar questions in a very different context, which I think can often make him helpful because he’s going about it with a different kind of view and understanding of the world. A different angle than maybe we would come at those same sorts of questions.

Matt Tully
And that’s such an interesting point because I think sometimes our default assumption can be because he’s coming from a different context, because there’s all these historical things happening that we don’t understand and we have to maybe spend some time studying to understand and get to know better, that that can make him less helpful for us today because we have to translate everything he’s saying through that historical context lens. But I hear you saying that actually it can help us maybe understand these doctrines a little bit better as we hear someone articulate them from a different angle, with different priorities perhaps, than we would have coming to the text.

Andrew Ballitch
I think that’s exactly right. I think most people are not going to read all forty volumes of Owen and not come away with thinking he’s got it wrong in certain places. He’s got blind spots, and we could talk about some of those, but we have blind spots too. I think in general that’s part of the beauty of historical theology and studying church history is it allows us to confront somebody from a very different context, place, and experience that can help point those things out and give us insight. New is not always better. Going back to people who have reflected very deeply on God’s word and sincerely on God’s word I think can be helpful for us today.

31:15 - Is John Owen Just Too Hard to Understand?

Matt Tully
That’s a nice segue into my last couple questions. Although Owen is often lauded in our Reformed circles that we live in as one of the greatest Puritan writers, he’s still not particularly well-known outside of Christian circles. But even within Christian circles, I would say it seems like most laypeople would probably be like, Maybe I’ve heard that term. He’s certainly not a Martin Luther or even a John Calvin for many Christians. And a part of that is probably due to just certain assumptions that we might make about him. And I wonder if you could just respond to a couple of those, the first being that he’s just too hard to understand. If you’ve done any reading of Owen, his sentences can be complex and he can kind of go on for a while and use terminology. How would you respond to the Christian who says, I can’t understand what he’s saying.

Andrew Ballitch
I think you can understand what he’s saying if you give him the time that it takes. He’s not going to read like a novel. He’s not going to read like a popular level work on theology or church ministry. He’s not going to be as colorful as a Martin Luther. He doesn’t stand as historically significant as some of those early Reformers. So all of that being said, I think he can be understood if you’re willing to put in the time and attention and the work to understand him. I think it’s difficult for us for the reasons you just said. Our attention spans aren’t what they were in the 17th century. Puritan sermons often went several hours. You wouldn’t get away with that in modern churches. And so one of the things that I think will really make Owen more accessible is this Crossway series, as editors have gone through and tried to explain the big words in footnotes. When we do run into a historical figure that’s obscure, a short articulation of who that person is and why it’s important. Putting in subheadings that break up the text, and splitting up the long paragraphs and some of the sentences to try to make it more accessible without changing in any way what Owen said. In a way, you have to outline Owen sometimes, as you read him, to know where he is in your argument. We’ve tried to do that in these volumes through helps to the reader. And so there are aids, but he is worth it, and you can understand him if you want to devote the time and attention and effort. Anything that is very valuable in our lives takes those sorts of things.

Matt Tully
Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time today to introduce us to John Owen a little bit and help us to understand a little bit of what he has to offer us on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

Andrew Ballitch
Thanks, Matt. I really enjoyed it.


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