Welcome to the 2023 Presbyterion
Welcome to the 2023 Presbyterion, the Spring Pastors’
Fraternal of the Reformed Baptist Fellowship of Virginia.
For our program today we decided to offer a selective review
of James M. Renihan’s work, To the Judicious and Impartial Reader: A Contextual-Historical
Exposition of the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Baptist
Symbolics, Volume II (Cape Coral, Florida: Founders Press, 2022).
This work has already been welcomed and acknowledged as a
landmark exposition of the Confession which will likely serve as an
interpretive standard for decades to come among Reformed or Confessional
Baptists.
Dr. Renihan serves as President of the International Reformed
Baptist Seminary in Mansfield, Texas and previously directed the IRBS at Westminster
Seminary in California.
Rather than attempt to review the entire book, four of us
will today offer a brief review (c. 15 minutes, or as I like to call it, the
time it takes to do a short introduction to the sermon!) of four different sections
of the book, covering the exposition of five chapters in the Confession.
Jeff Riddle, Christ RBC:
Confession ch. 1 on Scripture
Ryan Davidson, Grace
Baptist Chapel: Confession ch. 22 on Worship and the Sabbath
Steve Clevenger,
Covenant RBC: Confession 26 on Church Officers
Van Loomis, Redeeming
Grace BC: Confession chs. 28-29 on Baptism
Introduction
Before, we move to look
at the exposition of chapter one, let me make a couple of observations on the
Introduction (1-20):
Renihan begins by noting
that though we call this the 1689 Confession, “there is no extant evidence that
the Confession was published in 1689. It seems to have acquired this
designation because it was subscribed at the 1689 London General Assembly” (2).
He declares that locating
this confession “as a species within the genus of Reformed theology is straightforward”
(4). So, Reformed Baptists are reformed.
Further on he states, “The
aim of this book is not primarily polemic but rather explanatory.” For Renihan
the “key question is what did the Confession mean to its readers in its
own context” (7).
He also tells us, “There
are times when I must express my enthusiasm” (7).
Finally, he suggests the
confession bears an “internal structure” and can be divided into “four main
units” (11). It is a “woven document” which must be read “back and forth” (11).
Renihan’s outline:
Unit 1: First Principles
(chs. 1-6).
Unit 2: The Covenant
(chs. 7-20).
Unit 3: God-Centered
Living: Freedom and Boundaries (chs. 21-30).
Unit 4: The World to
Come (chs. 31-32).
Finally, at the end of
each chapter Renihan incorporates devotional material. So, there is an emphasis
on piety and doxology in this exposition.
Chapter 1: Of the Holy Scriptures
After an explanation and
presentation of the Epistle or Preface to the Confession whose beginning supplies
the book’s title (“To the Judicious and Impartial Reader”) (21-26), Renihan begins
his exposition of chapter one (Unit One) (29-78).
Time will not allow
today for a thorough review of the chapter, so I will just offer seven
observations about or highlights from the exposition in this opening
chapter.
First: Renihan acknowledges that by addressing Scripture in this
opening chapter the confession follows “the traditional method of expressing
theological loci” in Puritan confessions by beginning with Scripture as “the principium
cognoscendi, the principle of knowing” (epistemology) (29).
Second: Renihan notes that the opening sentence in paragraph one “is
not found in the WCF or Savoy and had been added by Baptists” (30). That sentence
reads: “The Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule
of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience….” He gives three reasons why it
was added: () polemics against Quakers; (2) polemics against RCC; and (3)
polemics against paedobaptists.
Third: Renihan insists that the framers of the confession held a
high view of the Scriptures as inerrant and infallible, contrary to interpretations
of their Bibliology given by moderate SBC scholars of the past like William
Lumpkin and James Leo Garrett, Jr. He even offers a quote from Keach in which Keach
“advocates a dictation theory of inspiration,” as opposed to “the better concursive
theory” (37).
Fourth: In his discussion of the confession’s emphasis on the insufficiency
of natural (general) revelation in 1:1, Renihan notes that “this was a disputed
point among seventeenth century Baptists” and offers an extended contrasting citation
from the General Baptist Thomas Grantham’s work St. Paul’s Catechism
(39-41). The wording of the Confession “refutes the doctrine of religious sincerity
and the virtuous heathen. According to the Confession, there is no salvation
apart from the grace of faith in Christ” (42).
Fifth: Renihan addresses the change of the wording in 1:6 from
the WCF and the Savoy’s which affirms that the whole counsel of God is “either
expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequences may be
deduced from Scripture” to the Baptist Confession’s wording that this counsel “is
either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture.”
Renihan argues that the Particular Baptists did not explicitly deny the general
concept of “good and necessary consequences” being deduced from Scripture. He even
cites a quotation from Nehemiah Coxe’s (in
Vindiciae Veritatis) that appears explicitly to affirm it (55). The
reason for the change, according to Renihan, was the Baptist framers' “logic in
interpretation” as they made a distinction between necessary consequences and merely
good consequences (55). He concludes, “They could accept necessary
consequences as binding, but not good consequences” (56). So, they
were trying to ground their theology more closely to Scripture and not to human
reason alone (57).
Sixth: Also in his discussion of 1:6 Renihan draws on the
distinctions made by Heiko Oberman between Tradition 1 (Scripture and its truths)
and Tradition 2 (Scripture supplemented by church tradition) to suggests that
the framers of the confession warmly affirmed sola Scriptura, and yet
they were not “biblicists.” He writes, “They were not biblicists who required
an explicit text for every doctrine; they were churchmen who viewed themselves
as part of that long line of believers stretching back through the millennia”
(60).
Seventh: Perhaps the most refreshing and insightful exposition of
this chapter comes in Renihan’s treatment of 1:8. Under the influence of
Richard Muller, he notes the distinction made by the framers between the autographs
and the apographs. He approvingly cites Richard Brash’s observation that
the framers saw a “‘practical univocity’ between the immediately inspired autographa
and the providentially preserved apographa” (67). He paraphrases the
view of William Bridge, a member of both the Westminster Assembly and the Savoy
Synod, as saying, “We have the word of God in our texts. God has always
preserved it” (69). With respect to translations, Renihan also draws upon
Muller’s discussion of the Authoritas Divina Duplex, noting that the originals
are authoritative in both matter (content) and form, while translations are
authoritative only in matter (content) and not in form.
In closing, I think
Renihan has provided our generation and ones to come an outstanding survey,
analysis, and framework for understanding the Confession’s affirmation of
Scripture as the preeminent authority for our doctrine and practice.
JTR
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