Program Schedule

Dr. James Renihan will provide a helpful overview of the Second London Confession of 1677/89. The lecture will provide the historical context in which our theological forefathers produced this lasting, and most orthodox statement of the Christian faith. Dr. Renihan will also provide an overview of the theological content of the Confession to demonstrate its systematic treatment of the faith, along with a helpful outline to aid the reader in understanding, not only the content of the specific chapters, but how the Confession functions together as a whole.

Dr. Richard Barcellos will provide a helpful treatment on the words “the scope of the whole” which are found in chapter 1, paragraph 5 of the Confession. He will conduct a survey of relevant historical theology to demonstrate that older divines understood this to be a reference to the Lord Jesus Christ, specifically salvation by grace through faith in the only Redeemer of God’s elect. He will then demonstrate the validity of this position from the Scriptures of both the Old and New Testaments.

Dr. James Renihan will demonstrate that confessions of faith are not additions to the authority of Holy Scripture but are in fact articulations of the teaching of Holy Scripture. The church throughout its ages has always sought to provide helpful summaries of the Christian faith to assist the people of God in their understanding of Scripture, but also to provide a defense against the enemies of the church (both internal and external) that have sought to undermine the teaching of Holy Scripture.

Dr. James Renihan will show that the Second London Confession of Faith of 1677/89 does not exist in a vacuum but is the contribution of our Baptist forefathers to the stream of creedal and confessional theology throughout the entirety of the church. He will show that the Second London Confession of 1677/89 was constructed with great dependence upon the Westminster Confession of Faith (Presbyterians) and the Savoy Declaration of Faith (Independents). Dr. Renihan will also show the solidarity between the Second London Confession and the Three Forms of Unity used in the Dutch Reformed tradition.

Chapter 1, paragraph 9 of our Confession deals with the subject of the interpretation of Holy Scripture. Our forebears utilized principles of interpretation that predated them and the Reformers. Both the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith were not invented during the era of the Reformation. In fact, the Reformed followed the early church fathers and the fathers followed Scripture itself. Lectures 5 and 6 will cover these and other related issues, such as Scripture’s use of itself and what that teaches us about interpreting Scripture today.