June 3, 2019 Show with Dr. James M. Renihan on “The Biblical Nature of Confessionalism”

Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

Proverbs 27 .17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions. And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth, who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this third day of June 2019.

And I'm thrilled to have a returning guest to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, who has not only become a friend and one of my favorite guests, but he is involved with an organization that is a primary sponsor of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

And I'm speaking of Dr. James M. Renahan, the President and Professor of Historical Theology at the IRBS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. Today, Dr. Renahan and I will be addressing the theme, The Biblical Nature of Confessionalism.

And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Jim Renahan.

Hi, Chris. Thanks very much. Nice to be here.

Oh, it's great to have you back. And first of all, for our listeners who are hearing you for the very first time on this program, why don't you let them know something about IRBS Theological Seminary.

Sure. We just last week completed our first academic year here in Mansfield, Texas. We are focusing on training men for the Gospel ministry with both a Master of Divinity and a diploma program that is intended to be a traditionally...

Praise God. Well, it might be also helpful, believe it or not, there are some people who listen to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio who are not theologically reformed. In fact, we even have listeners on occasion who are not even Christians.

Sometimes we have Muslim listeners that send in questions and those outside of the Christian faith. We have Roman Catholic listeners that on occasion chime in with a question. So why don't you explain to our listeners the concept of what a Reformed Baptist is in summary form.

Whenever I think of this, I chuckle because I remember years ago, many years ago, in the 1990s, when my friend Dr. James R. White of Alpha Omega Ministries, and I know he's a friend of yours as well, he was coming out to Long Island to be involved in a theological debate that I had organized with a Roman Catholic apologist.

And a friend of mine who hosted his own radio program, a lot shorter than this one, but he was not Reformed and really didn't know the buzz phrases and so on of Reformed theology. And he did not know what a Reformed Baptist was, so it was kind of humorous when he introduced Dr. White with the first question.

You say that you're a Reformed Baptist. What are you now? He thought that he had reformed out of being a Baptist. But if you could tell our listeners, what exactly does that mean?

Sure, that's a good question. People who don't know who he was, baptism?

Yes, and of course I know that you want to emphasize that the Catholic connection is with a small c, nothing to do with an affiliation with Roman Catholicism at all. In fact, I'm sure that you would agree that soteriologically, there is no theological system of faith within Protestantism that is more unlike the Roman Catholic Church than those who are theologically Reformed or Calvinistic, as they have been nicknamed.

The Sovereignty of God in Salvation

Yeah, that's an important point to make. You know, I was watching a church history video that Ligonier Ministries puts out with Dr. Bob Godfrey, and he was making the point that many of the Reformers...

Yes, we who are theologically Reformed believe that we, unlike other brothers and sisters in Christ that we have, who may readily disagree with us when I say this, but I don't think that they could really be logically consistent in agreeing with this statement.

We actually believe that God is to receive 100 of the credit and the praise and the honor and the glory for our salvation. Anything that men do involving our Christianity is a response that we give to God by what He has already done on our behalf.

Am I right?

Yeah, all that we contribute is our sin. We invoke the wrath of God because we are born as sinners. Salvation is God saving us from His own wrath by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die. The death of a sinner hanging upon the cross to satisfy the wrath of God.

If He hadn't done that, we would be sort of dead in their fists.

And when we believe, when we follow Christ, when we obey Him, and when we repent of our sin, all those things that we do are things that He enables us to do. For instance, even the faith that we possess is a gift from Him.

And we can do nothing that is good and pleasing in His sight without Him first bringing us the gift of regeneration and giving us the gift of faith and preserving us as we walk on this earth in our journey of faith.

And even though all of us sin daily more numerous times than we can count or care to admit, but He always brings us, if we are truly regenerate, to a state of repentance.

Yeah, that's right. You know, you've heard that phrase, and I'm sure everybody who's listening has heard that phrase, God helps those that evil so that no one can take even that half-step.

Amen. And if anybody would like to hear a more exhaustive and more detailed explanation of Calvinism or Reformed theology, if you go to the archive of ironsharpensironradio .com where it says Past Programs Podcast or Past Shows Podcast.

If you type in Calvinism or Reformed theology, you'll have a number of programs that dedicated their entire two-hour length to an in-depth discussion on this issue. Now, let me also give our email address.

If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, for Dr. Renahan, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. C-H-R-I-S-A-R-N-Z-E-N at gmail .com. Please, as always, give us at least your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the USA, and only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter.

Let's say you are starting to reconsider some beliefs that you hold to that perhaps you are being taught at the church where you are a member. First of all, I would not want you to identify the name of your pastor or your congregation, so even if you don't remain anonymous, I'll make you anonymous.

But things like that, perhaps you're even a pastor and you're starting to reconsider your own denomination's position on things we're addressing today. There could be a number of reasons why you would want to remain anonymous, and we will grant you that request.

But if it's just a general question on theology, please at least give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence. The theme that you have picked for our discussion is quite fascinating to me because to many Christians, even many Baptists, the biblical nature of confessionalism would sound oxymoronic to them because they think that there is no biblical nature to confessionalism.

They have a wrong idea that we are elevating, just as Rome does, the traditions and thoughts and teachings of men to the same level of authority as the Scripture, and obviously even our confession, right off the bat, says that that is exactly not what those confessions or our confession is intended to do at all.

So let's start even with the word confessionalism. Some people who are unexperienced with confessional Protestantism, they may immediately have their minds transported to a little booth with a curtain where somebody confesses their sins to a Roman Catholic priest.

That obviously has nothing to do with what we're talking about.

Yeah, that's right.

Tell us, what does that mean, a confessionalism?

Yeah, confessionalism, you're right to identify that. It has nothing to do with the common in what we all believe. We hide that in the fourth confession, and you literally transfer the temptation.

Perhaps if I miss something here, you can include it in this list, but those confessions that Reformed Christians typically look to as biblically faithful and primary confessions would be the Westminster Confession of Faith that the Presbyterians adhere to, the Three Forms of Unity, which would be the Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the Canons of Dort, which our Dutch Reformed brethren would be primarily using as a summary of their statement of faith, of their belief.

The Savoy Declaration, which is a Congregationalist Confession of Faith. The 39 Articles of Religion, which is a Reformed Anglican Confession of Faith. And then, of course, we have the First Baptist and the Second Baptist Confession, or the First and Second London Baptist Confession of Faith.

And the second is the one that primarily Reformed Baptists worldwide adhere to. And it also has a cousin confession appearing on the scene much more recently in church history, the Philadelphia Confession of Faith.

And there's even a New Hampshire Confession of Faith, which is a more, I think, reduced confession in the specific aspects of Reformed theology. But would that be pretty much the major list?

Yeah, that would be the major list. And the odds of it would be, if you could somehow take those, all of those confessions, overlay them one on top of another, there would be a massive amount of agreement.

Now, there would be differences. Not all of them have exactly the same statement.

Yes, I absolutely love to tell some of my Episcopalian and Anglican friends who are not Reformed that I am more Anglican than they are, because I actually believe more in the 39 Articles of Religion than they do.

Yeah, you know J .C. Ryle, of course. And it's kind of interesting, and I also get a kick out of reminding my Anglican friends this,.

Is that their confession, the 39 Articles, although Anglicans have always baptized infants, the 39 Articles just says that we should not forbid children from being baptized. And I always say to them, we don't either, when they repent and believe upon Christ.

We baptize children, too. Let me take, before we go to our first break, we do have a listener in a thigh in Ireland, in County Kildare, Ireland, Joe. And he says, Dear Brother Chris, please greet Professor Renahan for me.

We were discussing how he was the originator of the bow-tie trend amongst our Reformed Baptist ministers when he was at a conference on the 1689 Confession at Dundalk Baptist Church over a month ago.

I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly.

That's right, that's right.

And he says, On a serious note, though, I have a question for your guest. I have observed amongst many fellow Calvinists today a tendency to recoil at adopting the label Calvinist or even Reformed in some cases.

Some don't want to be associated with some aspects of John Calvin's theology that they disagree with and also refer to the Apostle Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 1, verses 10 -15 about some following Paul, Cephas, and others, and Apollos.

What is Professor Renahan's take on this? Is there wisdom in using or setting aside such labels?

Yeah, hi, Joe. Joe and I had an opportunity to talk back in April and really enjoyed that. I think that we have to be careful. We don't want to be sectarian. Someone wants to call their liberty. That's not what it's like.

Yeah, in fact, you no doubt know who Amrish Simarath is. Mm-hmm, yeah, I do. And he has a church where he pastors in Trinidad. I'm assuming he's still pastoring. And they specifically did not call their congregation a Baptist church because in Trinidad there are many animist groups and other heretical sects that call themselves Baptists.

Mm-hmm, yeah. Yeah, that's a good example. You may not want to use it. So if somebody wants to use the word Reformed or they want to use the word Calvinist or they don't, let's give each other liberty to do that.

Right, one thing that I have warned a couple of my friends about, though, I have a couple of friends, at least a couple, who agree with me nearly identically on theology. And if someone asks them, Are you a Calvinist?

They will say, No, my teachings are from the Bible. And I have told them, I believe that that is an incorrect response because you might be labeled as a liar if you say something like that. I think it's best just to say, Well, I have a lot in common with those brothers in Christ who call themselves Calvinists, but I prefer not to use that label because I attribute what I believe to God, not to any man.

And I told them, I should say, that that is a far more honest way of answering that question. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, I think about it a little bit before I answer the question to somebody that way myself. But I see...

Yeah, because if you say, I'm not a Calvinist, and then somebody finds out, Wait a minute, this guy believes in unconditional election. He believes in limited atonement. He's lying to me. That's what I'm really referring to, is that we have to be careful not to be making some kind of claim.

Then upon further investigation, somebody is looking at perhaps a church bulletin that you have where you list out primary doctrines, and they are identical with what would be historically labeled Calvinism or Reformed theology.

The other side of that argument is three cults.

Yeah, in fact, I jokingly said to a friend of mine who is theologically a believer in the doctrines of sovereign grace, as they are nicknamed, and he said, I prefer to call myself a Biblicist. And I said, that's interesting.

When you preach from your pulpit, do you wear T-shirts and shorts and sneakers, and do you have rock music playing in the worship service? And he said, absolutely not. I said, well, a Calvary Chapel pastor just told me he was not a Calvinist, but he was a Biblicist.

So no matter what kind of label you choose to use, it can be a confusing label to those who are hearing you identify yourself or describe yourself.

Yeah, that's right.

Well, we're going to our first advertisement right now, or station break, I should say. If anybody would like to join us on the air, as I said before, with a question for Dr. Jim Renahan on Reformed theology, or specifically confessionalism, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

And as always, please give us your first name, city and state, and country of residence if you live outside the USA. Don't go away. We will be right back with Dr. Jim Renahan and our discussion on confessionalism.

Hello, my name is James Renahan, and I'm the president of IRVS Theological Seminary in Mansfield, Texas. The Word of God says, If a man desires the office of an overseer, he desires a good thing. Do you have the desire to serve Jesus Christ in pastoral ministry?

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Yes. If anybody would like to join us on the air, we are discussing the biblical nature of confessionalism with Dr. Jim Renahan today. And our email address is chrisarnsen at gmail dot com. And Dr. Renahan, now if you could explain what exactly you mean by the biblical nature of confessionalism.

Confessionalism and the Authority of Scripture

Yeah. Okay. That's a good question. I teach a course that's called Prison Confession. I think for, well I don't know how much it is, I think it's 50. Let me try to summarize in the Old Testament. That's where I got the word.

For example, that is, Jesus is... Then I would argue that in the rest of the time that there are various things, in relationship to that...

We have John in Bangor, Maine who has a question. And John says, Would you agree that those that are vehemently anti-confessional are not really being consistent with their own rhetoric unless their pastors merely get up to the pulpit and read the Bible rather than exegeting it?

And any time you explain the Bible you are really doing something more in alignment with confessionalism rather than some kind of a mutation of sola scriptura.

Well John, you know it's funny because that's exactly what I had in mind. Exactly that.

Praise God. And my friend John Thornberry, the brilliant church historian, I remember years ago, back in the... I think it was the late 1980s, I saw him at a conference where he was defending confessionalism.

And he said... He was responding to an article in the American Baptist Association magazine, the denomination to which John once belonged before he had to withdraw because of their liberalism. But there was an article in the magazine that said that we as Baptists do not believe in creeds and confessions.

We only believe in the Word of God. And John wrote a rebuttal to that saying, that is a confessional statement. That's right.

Yeah, it is. It's interesting.

Yeah, and every church has a confession that's either biblical or unbiblical or good or bad or a combination of good and bad.

Yeah, exactly.

Let's see here. We have... We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania who asks, historically, would the predominant number of Baptists throughout history be confessional or non-confessional? Hmm.

Yeah, that's a good...

Yeah, in fact, I interviewed both of those brothers.

Okay, yeah. Well, when you get to the 19th...

A somewhat humorous occurrence just popped into my head. I remember years ago, I was in attendance at a Bible conference being hosted by a Church of Christ congregation. And the speaker said the Churches of Christ historically have not been a church that have used creeds and confessions.

We believe the Bible to be our only creed and confession. And I raised my hand and I said, just out of curiosity, I'm looking at a tract that I found in the lobby of your church, in the tract rack. And it said, we are the Churches of Christ.

Our ministers do not wear clerical robes or different types of clothing other than the average man. We wear business suits and so on. And we believe in baptism by immersion only, by a repentant believer for the forgiveness of sins.

We only believe in exclusively male headship in the church. And we do not use musical instruments. And the list went on and on. And I said, you know, this is your confession of faith. That's right.

That's exactly right.

So it's ironic that people would make those claims when they clearly violate the claim. But we have to go to our midway break. This is a break that is longer than our normal breaks because Grace Life Radio 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show because they, well, we air our own commercials which are heard globally.

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Don't go away. We'll be right back with Dr. Jim Renahan right after this station break. God bless.

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