James Discusses the LBCF with Dr. James Renihan

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line. The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence. Our host is Dr. James White, Director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an Elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church. This is a live program and we invite your participation.

If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is James White.

Introduction to Jim Renihan and the Program Topic

And welcome to The Dividing Line. On a Thursday afternoon, I am joined today on The Dividing Line by simply one of the most Christian men I know. An odd introduction you might say, but better than some I've gotten, let me assure you of that.

Jim Renahan is a brother-in-law with a deep heart for the things of God and a commitment to the Gospel and to Christ's Church. You will notice I have said all these things before I was spoken of his many academic accomplishments, because for me, his Christian character is far more important than anything else.

Dr. Renahan is also a fellow elder in a Reformed Baptist Church, the Escondido Reformed Baptist Church. He has more than 20 years of pastoral experience. And he is also Dean and Professor of Historical Theology at Westminster Seminary in California and the head of the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies.

He has written numerous journal articles. He is one of the best-known Reformed Baptist scholars living today and can honestly boast that he has survived being my debate partner. No small feat, I might add.

Of course, I hope Tom Askle isn't listening right now as he will be joining Dr. Renahan in that small group of debate survivors in the not-too-distant future. Today we'll be discussing the great John Owen and his influence upon the development of the Westminster Confession, the Savoy Declaration, the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, and all sorts of historical stuff that Jim Renahan is really good at talking about.

And so I'm very thankful that you're taking the time to join with us this afternoon here on The Dividing Line. Dr. Renahan, how are you doing today? I'm fine, thank you, James. How are you? I'm going to be using this little cough button there once in a while, so don't let that slow you down.

In fact, I may just give you some of those nice big lead-in questions and then go outside, cough up a lung, and come back later. But if you can live with that, we'll make our way through here. In fact, you're probably sitting there going, well, I wish you had felt like that during the debate.

I would have gotten a word in edgewise. No comment. No comment, yes. See, far too much truth in that particular comment of mine. Now, before we get into John Owen and the history of particular Baptists in England and things like that, give us a little insight into what you do over there at Westminster.

What's the Institute for Reformed Baptist Studies? What do you teach and what's going on over there in Southern California? Yes, well, thanks.

About eight or nine years ago, Dr. Godfrey, who's the president of Westminster, went to one of the Reformed Baptist pastors here in Southern California and asked him if there was any possibility that Westminster could cooperate with Reformed Baptist training men for the ministry.

Ultimately, ARBCA, the Association of Reformed Baptist Churches of America, formed a ministerial education committee. They put together a proposal that was approved by the faculty and trustees of Westminster and then approved by the churches and the association.

They sent me out here eight years ago to begin teaching. I teach five courses that are offered for students who want to prepare for ministry in a Reformed Baptist church. I teach a first-year course in pastoral theology.

In the second year, I teach a course that's essentially the relationship of the Testaments, covenant theology, and baptism. In the third year, I teach Doctrine of the Church to our men. And then every other year, and the students take it in their second or third, I teach either Baptist history or a course we call Symbolics.

So it's 17 academic hours. It fits the Westminster program. The students graduate with a...

Well, all those classes sound fascinating, and Westminster is to be commended. Now, I understand you are the dean and professor of historical theology. When did that happen?

Well, I have been dean from the beginning. I was associate professor for the first seven years, and then this last year I was promoted to full professor. There you go.

Well, historical theology. Now, you've got to admit, there are probably a few titles you could come up with that would excite your average evangelical a little bit more. In fact, there's probably a few people in our audience that are going, Baptists have history?

Let's face it. A lot of our Baptist brethren, their knowledge of their own history, let alone church history as a whole, goes back to Billy Graham, maybe, and that's about as far as it goes. We do have a history, and it's actually a rather fascinating one.

Your specialty, would you say that your specialty would be the English Baptist, the particular Baptist of a particular time period, or what would you identify as your real bailiwick?

Yeah, I think the 17th century, the English Baptist of particular Baptist, which of course means Calvinistic Baptist of the 17th century, is what I have spent most of my time on over the years.

The Origin of the 1689 London Baptist Confession

And so that would give you a lot of insight into the 1689 London Confession of Faith. Now, for those who are new to these particular areas of study, maybe for some of our Presbyterian brethren that are tuning in, give us a little background of where the 1689 came from, especially as it relates to the Westminster Confession.

Some folks don't even realize we have these things called Confessions of Faith, and that they're that historical, they've been around that long. So what are we talking about when we talk about the London Baptist Confession of Faith?

Yeah, that's a curious fact. It's frequently referred to as the 1689 Confession in 1777. And so far as I can tell, it was never actually printed with the date 1689 on it. It was printed in 77 and 88 and 99, but not 89.

The reason it got that date is that there was a general assembly of over 100 particular Baptist churches held in London in September of that year, and they adopted it as their own and promoted it. And for that reason, the date has been associated with it.

But to answer your question, the Baptists from the very beginning, they really began to appear, the Calvinistic Baptists, in London in the 1640s. And it was a volatile political time. They were under tremendous pressure.

They were strong advocates in the Church of England for persecution. And so they believed it was really important, plainly as they could, to the world around them, meaning the literate population of England, what their beliefs were.

And so they published a Confession of Faith in 1644. It was criticized by some leading ministers of the Church of England and then revised by the Baptists, published again in 1646 and then in 1651. And it became the general confession of the particular Baptist.

It was widely held, regarded, held in esteem. It expressed their views.

Now, Dr. Anaheim, before you discuss the relationship with the Westminster, just in case some of our listeners, particular Baptists, does that mean there was only certain kinds of food they ate, or what do you mean by that?

Well, that was a name that came out of their view of particular redemption, meaning they were distinguished, especially by their Calvinism, and in specifics, their view that the Lord Jesus, in the intention of his death on the part of his Heavenly Father, was that he would die for the sins of the elect only and not for the sins of all men at all times everywhere, in particular Baptists.

There's over against the other group, who also have a noble history, but they're called the general Baptists because they believed in a general atonement.

So there's always been, as far back in history as we can trace things, there's always been the same kind of divide that is exemplified in a certain debate that's going to be taking place on the 19th at the Thomas Road Baptist Church, where I and Tom Askell will be representing what would be historically called the particular Baptist perspective, and yet it seems that our opponents don't think we existed that long ago, or something along those lines.

So we now have documented evidence of our previous existence. That's good. I didn't mean to interrupt you there.

No, that's okay. Let me say one thing about that. In the historiography, in the written histories that are being done right now in the studies, the older histories tended to emphasize more the general Baptist because they were first.

Let's admit that. They were earlier. But now the consensus in the academic historians of the 17th century Baptists is that the particulars are the more important and that they deserve greater attention than they have historically received because, in fact, the strain, the continuation from the 17th century has been far more consistent among the particulars than it was among the generals.

They apostatized many of them, most of them, by the end of the 17th century, early on into the 18th century, where the particulars maintained an evangelicalism all the way up to today. They're still in existence in England today.

Some of the original churches, and they still preach the gospel.

Yes. Well, that is an interesting observation to make. So we had gotten the 1644, then 1646. It had gotten criticized, so on and so forth. Pick her up there.

Well, the date there is very important because that first confession preceded the writing of the Westminster Confession, or maybe we should say the publication of the Westminster Confession. It came out almost at the same time that the Westminster Assembly.

It was in existence. It was well known, certainly, in London, and it was accepted by churches around the country. Significant debates over a variety of issues, and there were particularly five men who were called the dissenting brothers, or dissenting brethren, I suppose, who argued for a congregational form of government as opposed to these men through just a variety of circumstances.

Most civil war was over after Charles, especially congregationalist power, and Cromwell being the most obvious example of this. The congregationalists began to be very powerful. Their views of church government, and they felt that it was important in their own views of church polity.

They didn't have a higher body that was over it. They were concerned about some of these things, and Thomas Goodwin. Now, Goodwin had been a member of the Westminster Assembly. Owen was not. But men like Owen and Goodwin met together in London in a place called the Savoy, and they published their nationalist document, which has been called the Savoy Declaration.

It became the basis of the London Confession of Faith, or what I mentioned before we often call the 1689. When the 1689 or, well, when the Second London was published, it seems to me that this is what happened.

There were some men, I have an idea as to who they were, sat around a table and worked very hard at putting together a statement that would reflect everything they had in common with the broader Puritan movement, but also reflecting the distinctives that they had come to believe the Word of God taught and required to be practiced in the church.

And they had on that table with them several different documents that they used. The primary document that they used was this 1658 Savoy Declaration, which John Owen and Thomas Goodwin had been deeply involved with.

They also very clearly had on the table with them a copy of the Westminster Confession of Faith, because there are about 11 times in the Second London Confession where they prefer the reading of Westminster rather than the reading of the Savoy, the changes that were made by Savoy.

So they restore that original reading. And then a lot of times throughout the document they incorporate explicitly the language of the First London Confession. For example, in Chapter 8 of Christ the Mediator, they incorporate some of the material about his offices in London.

So as they edited this document that we call the 1689, they had those three other sort of parent documents on the table in front of them. They worked hard to put them together.

And the date, how long does this take them?

Well, I don't know that. The first known literary reference, Church Minute Book, it's a manuscript book library in London. I've been there a couple of times. I was looking at it this afternoon. The first literary mention of it in that Church Minute Book, and it says something like, having been read by the brethren, I think it's a fair assumption.

There's a long argument that backs this up, but I think it's a fair assumption that it's made. The Confession probably came out of that church, the Petit France Church in London, and was probably edited by its two pastors, Nehemiah Cox.

Now, those names ring major bells for those who've studied particular Baptist history. But John Owen. Now, John Owen strikes me a little bit. In my discussions with my Presbyterian brothers, and when we start getting into the inevitable discussions that Presbyterians and Baptists get into, it seems to me that John Owen is a little bit like Augustine was for the Reformers.

That is, both sides want to be able to quote from John Owen on various sundry aspects of the arguments that they're putting forward about various aspects of theology and things like that. And you could do that with Augustine, because the Catholics could quote Augustine from his anti-Donatist writings, and the Protestants could quote Augustine from his anti-Pelagian writings, and as Warfield said, the Reformation inwardly considered was just the victory of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church.

And so Owen, however, for example, one of the reasons that he gets cited is comments that he made regarding the nature of the New Covenant. One of the things that I remember discovering, not in seminary, because at Fuller Seminary there wasn't much discussion of John Owen, and Carl Barth had eaten up all the time you could possibly have when you went to Fuller, but in looking at some of the key texts regarding, for example, the nature of apostasy, the nature of the Covenant, Owen had been cited from his book, probably the only book most people have actually read of Owen, unless they've obtained his commentary on Hebrews or something like that, that is the death of death and death of Christ in regards to Hebrews 1029, and yet a friend of mine had sent me a quotation from Owen saying the exact opposite in regards to Hebrews 1029, and I had to go and find out, well what came first?

Was it the death of death or was it the commentary on Hebrews? And of course I discovered that death of death was one of his very first writings, and the commentary on Hebrews, a result of a much older gentleman much farther down the road, and so on and so forth.

And so that kind of situation arises in quoting from John Owen. How important is he to the discussions that take place and to the development of the particular Baptist position that, for example, your church and my own would both trace ourselves back to that and would utilize the London Confession in a functional way today?

Well, Owen would be debated. In my opinion, he's probably the greatest writing English-speaking theologian. I think he's astute. His exegesis is a truly great man, and that was recognized by his contemporaries.

In my own reading of the literature in the 17th century, it's very frequent among the Baptists that they would make reference to Dr. Owen. They were obviously reading his works. You read Benjamin Keech and he'll speak about that great man, Dr. Owen, or they will speak about the deference that is due to the writings of Dr. Owen.

They're frequently looking to him. I have even found in some of the church books, this is one of the things that I've worked on for a long time, is reading the manuscript church books of these churches.

Once or twice I found reference to controversies that had erupted in the church, and they would send a letter off to Dr. Owen to ask his opinion so that he could help them to solve whatever the doctrinal matter.

So he was not just a distant figure. He was a man who was known among them, who was known to some of them. They had personal relationships with him. They read his works. They were deeply influenced by him.

I think outside of the church,.

John Owen, Covenant Theology, and the Particular Baptist Tradition

Now, his works cover a wide range of issues. You mentioned his role in the Savoy Declaration, and so there's clearly a direct stream right into particular Baptists from that perspective. What other influences do you detect immediately in the particular Baptists from him on theological issues, shall we say?

Well, what I usually do if I have a question about some issue that comes up in the 17th century, I get out my John Owen CD and I do a search. Usually what he says is richer. So I would say that largely across the board, I'm sure that you know the last project to publish a book entitled Covenant Theology from Adam to Christ.

And the first part is a book that I had wanted to put into print for years and years and years. And a friend in Kentucky of the author, before he was one of the editors of the Confession, I think, of the covenants that God made with men prior to the law, before the law.

And he exegetes much of the book of Genesis in seeking to open up the nature of covenant theology. And in the introduction to that book, very interestingly, he says that he had begun to gather materials for a second volume, which would deal with the law itself and then the Davidic and the New Covenant.

But he says, I was happily prevented from doing so by the recent publication of Dr. Owen on Hebrews 8. And so I got the bright idea of taking Cox and Owen from Hebrews 8 and excerpting that material out of the seven-volume Hebrews commentary and putting it together in one binding.

So we have this book here, which is Nehemiah Cox in the first 150 pages and then John Owen in the next 150 or 200 pages. And it works very neatly together. And it's pretty amazing, when you think about it, what Cox says.

Here's a Baptist. And really, one of his works' instruction to the Baptist is about covenant theology. Go read Dr. Owen. Pretty amazing, when you think about it. And, of course, that's not to say that Owen was a Baptist.

He was not. Let's be clear about that. He believed in infant baptism. Covenant theology is so consonant, readers off to this independent congregationalist, and say, go read him, and basically you'll probably get better.

Yeah, when you can say that, you're definitely commending someone. Now, you had mentioned something to me that I found quite interesting. I had stumbled into a major hornet's nest, and I can only call it stumbling into it, a couple of years ago, when I started doing a little brief review on my blog of a professor at a Southern Baptist seminary who was commenting on the issue of the nature of imputation.

And in my writing of just these blog articles, these are not theological journal articles or something. They're meant for general distribution and reading. I had to focus upon the difference that exists between the Westminster Confession of Faith and the London Baptist Confession of Faith in regards to that issue, which is such a huge issue in New Testament theology today, and that is in regards to the subject of imputation, and specifically the active and passive obedience of Christ, which is under attack today from every possible angle, not just from the angle of New Perspectivism, which attacks the entirety of imputational language, but we have, from the perspective of dispensationalism, over at the Master's Seminary right now, you have a large portion of the staff there attacking the issue of the active and passive obedience of Christ because they reject covenant theology, and therefore from dispensationally particular perspectives, they're denying that.

New covenant theologians, some of them likewise, have picked that up and are attacking the idea of active and passive obedience. And active and passive obedience is a part of the London Baptist Confession of Faith, but it is not.

That language, that specific language in the section on justification, isn't there in the Westminster. And yet, where did it come from? Why is there more particularity and clarity in the London Confession on this point than there is in the Westminster?

Where did that come from?

Active and Passive Obedience of Christ and the Westminster Debate

Yes, well, the simple answer is John Owen.

If you were grading the paper, would you accept the simple answer?

No, it depends on how I phrase the question, actually. There was debate at the Westminster Assembly over the issue of justicatures about it, but I have not seen the manuscript. It was a very heated debate whether or not to incorporate into the language of the Westminster terminology of active and passive obedience.

In the end, they did not incorporate it, although I think the evidence probably already of the men, and they tried to find a Savoy Declaration in 1658, and after 11 paragraph 1, the specific terms of obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death being imputed for their whole and sole obedience.

And so also, leading lights among the Congregationalists who are in favor of the Savoy Declaration. And so I think it's a failing in terms of the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience. And so the Baptists, when they have these documents on their table and are working to put them together into their own confession, and look at the language of Westminster, and they say, We want to be identified.

It may be that they said, We want to hear what Dr. Goodwin and Dr. Owen said. We agree with it. We want to promote that confession as it ends up identical to the Savoy Declaration by using that language.

Now, the background of that concern for Owen and for Goodwin, is Rome back there somewhere? Absolutely. There's no question.

In one way or another, to some degree, to incorporate the language would be to give offense to Rome. And so they argued against incorporation, but those who were willing to incorporate it into their document.

Now, I think a lot of our listeners, especially since we have Roman Catholic listeners, we have those who are currently still Roman Catholic but are listening seriously to what we have to say, we might want to expand on that just a little bit because most people have the idea that this was not a period where anyone would be overly concerned whatsoever about what Rome did or didn't think.

And Rome certainly wasn't concerned about what we did or didn't think, but that's not really a thoroughly accurate picture of what was going on. Why would Richard Baxter be concerned about giving offense to Roman Catholicism in the 17th century?

Richard Baxter, Rome, and Justification by Faith Alone

Well, that's really a complicated issue when it comes to Baxter himself. There are a lot of factors that enter into the positions that he took. I think that Baxter was a brilliant man. He was an autodidact, a self-taught individual who seems to have read everything and almost memorized everything and tried to hammer out a self-consistency.

And one of his concerns was against what he called antinomianism, which was a high Calvinist doctrine, we'll call it what it was, that said for those who are elect in Christ and justified, how one lives has no... live as you please, you do as you please, God looks down upon you as his son, he can never be displeased with you, he can never chastise you, all that he will do is love you whatever you do.

And so, in many ways, the implication, whether stated or unstated, is that the flesh can run wild because one is elect and God will not look upon you with disdain. And there were some who were preaching those doctrines in the mid -1640s, and Baxter was horrified by them.

And so he came to the conclusion that some kind of doctrine of participatory obedience on the part of the Christian was essential to the doctrine of justification. And he came to the conclusion, after what he calls long study, that the differences between the Lutherans and the Reformed and Rome, putting Lutheran and Reformed in the same category, maybe I should say Protestants and Rome, were not so great as most people seem to have thought that they were.

In making that statement, it's a blanket condemnation of virtual theologians and Lutheran theologians after the Reformation who did understand the issues and saw that the doctrine of justification by faith alone was the article of a standing or falling church.

But Baxter was some kind of unity. Now, he wasn't a Romanist because he had concerns about the Pope, and there were other things that concerned him. You can't call him a classic Reformed theologian, either, because he wanted to find a way to acknowledge the nature of a wide variety of churches.

Eastern Orthodoxy, Rome, the various sects. It was, if not from Jesus, then from the mouth of Jesus' apostles. The Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed, right. Oh, really? So that for Baxter, anyone who could assent to the Apostles' Creed had to be treated.

And to him, when the Savoy Declaration was published with the language of active and passive obedience, he explicitly states in his book called Catholic Theology, he explicitly states because active and passive obedience were the imputation of any kind of participant.

Wow. That has not changed in a long period of time. That is still the issue that we deal with with regularity in our day to day. It's amazing how these issues have not gone away, and we keep repeating them.

Each generation has to struggle with these things over and over again. We're going to open the phone lines if you would like to participate in the program today and ask Dr. Renahan a question on these issues.

877 -753 -3341. 877 -753 -3341. Yes, we did just have someone try to call. Please try to call again since our call screener has returned from being absent and MIA from his duties. So not MIA, Mission in Action.

What is it when you're away from your base? AWOL. AWOL, yes. AWOL from duty. He's back, and the phones have begun to ring. It used to be, Dr. Renahan, that as I did this program, I was staring at my computer screen and I was surrounded by blank walls, but we now are in our own offices and we have a glass window, so I can now look at the call screener and he can make faces at me and I can make faces at him.

It has really changed the entire dynamic of the entire program, so you ought to try that someday. Very nice. Sounds great. I mean, you don't just sit around all day reading Nehemiah Cox. I know that you actually enjoy doing other things.

We, in fact, even dragged you on a cruise once, and you had to have fun for at least a few moments during that period of time. I have lots of fun.

I have five kids and I have a grandson and I have three wonderful daughters-in-law and one wonderful son-in-law.

There you go. See? I'm just helping everybody to know that you don't just sit around all day reading Nehemiah Cox. That's all. They want to know that.

No, not at all. I have lots of fun, lots of things to do.

Oh, good. 877 -753 -3341. Now, I personally would love to expand even more upon what we were just discussing, but I think it might be good to let some of our phone callers address some other issues, because, for me, I just know that that particular issue is not going to go away.

I don't think it can go away. I mean, I think it goes back to Luther and Luther's problems with James. I mean, this whole issue just keeps coming up with each and every generation, and, unfortunately, if we don't keep emphasizing the importance of what justification is and what it means and its biblical parameters, and especially today in so many seminaries, there has been such a loss of a confessional and a heartfelt belief in the inspiration and authority of the scriptures that it results in all this mess of teaching that we have and the confusion that exists in so many churches regarding what it means to be a Christian, what the gospel is.

These are just exceptionally vital issues, and to me, to recognize that this has been going on over and over again, and it explains why we need to discuss church history in our churches so that our people know where we've been before, why we've gotten to the point where we've gotten, and yet there's so little discussion about church history in most of our churches.

Now, would you agree with me, though, Dr. Renahan, that at least Reformed Baptists of almost all the Baptist groups, we probably talk more about it than almost anybody else does?

Wouldn't you say that's true? Well, yeah, I think that that's probably true, and I think that that's because we're very conscious of the importance of this doctrine and its centrality to the gospel itself.

You know, it's interesting what you were just saying, how the problem continues to afflict the church. I've got some material that I have been able to present to pastors in different circumstances and a couple of different times, and I read them a quote and ask the question, when was this written?

Most of the time they think that it was written last year or the year before, and it was actually written by Benjamin Keech in the 1690s that directly addresses our obedience and participation in our justification.

It is very true that this issue just doesn't seem to go away, and that's why it's incumbent upon us to hold on to and present the gospel as clearly and plainly as we can. We're not talking about peripheral issues here.

We're talking about the gospel itself, and that gospel must be maintained or we have nothing.

And I think it's encouraging to our people to recognize that that is not just a call for the leaders. This is what people were willing to suffer for. It was not easy being a Baptist in England in those days.

They were willing to put up with a great deal of difficulty in their lives. They were willing to suffer for these things, and while we don't have to suffer for these things in the ways that they did, there are times where Reformed Baptists do sort of wonder, boy, it would be nice to have a McDonald's in our foyer too, and there's a reason why we don't, and there's really a good reason to continue not having a McDonald's in the foyer.

Anyway, 877 -753 -3341, that is the number that Andrew called. Now, all of our callers, let me just make sure you hear me right up front. Since we're using two phone lines, it is incumbent upon all of our callers to speak clearly, and if you have one of those 1978 vintage telephones that makes you sound like you're calling from Moscow, you might want to refrain from using that and use one of the old Ma Bell models that actually allows us to hear you.

And so I will let you know if we can hear you well when you begin your question, and of course I'll be asking Dr. Renahan if he's able to hear you clearly as well. So let's start with Andrew in Louisville.

Hi, Andrew. Hi, Dr. White, how are you? Doing good. You're coming through real loud for me, so hopefully Dr. Renahan can hear you well as well. Great.

My question was concerning the 1689 Confession. That is the church confession that my church holds to. Several Christians, or many Christians, aren't comfortable with some of the language in the 1689 Confession, such as naming the Lord's day as the Christian Sabbath, talking about the Pope as the Antichrist kind of singling him out in that way, or talking about elect angels predestined through Christ in Chapter 3.

But there doesn't seem to be a body that could make amendations to that, because we know it's not an infallible document that it could need revision, but it doesn't seem like there's any body that could deliberate that and give a definitive clarification on some of these points.

And I was just wondering if y 'all could address that issue. If you think that there's anything that could be amended possibly, and if there's any body that could do that, any body of believers that could do that.

Excellent question. Dr. Renahan?

Whether and How a Confession of Faith May Be Amended

Well, I'm very reluctant to think about amending the Confession of Faith just because it is a carefully worked out system of theology. And I realize that there are, I think that the three examples, Andrew, that you gave to us, are sort of of a different level.

The pope being antichrist, there's a way to understand that that I think most people can agree with. The question in Chapter 3, I don't think that that one's too much of a problem either. The subject in Chapter 22 or Chapter 19 about the law and the Sabbath day being the Lord's day is a much more important issue just because it is tied up to a whole thread that runs throughout the Confession of Faith.

It's not just a matter of particular language in a particular place, but it reflects a thread of theology that's woven all the way through. And so I think that it's very difficult to contemplate any kind of substantive emendations to the Confession of Faith without recognizing that probably in making a substantive emendation, if you understand the distinction I'm making, you have to, having said that, again, I don't know even what kind of body you might have.

Some local churches at one point or another have amended the Confession. They've added some articles to it to be addressed, or an individual local church. In terms of a larger body, I suppose an association of churches could do that if that were the desire of those churches.

I don't know beyond that what to suggest, really.

Well, let me first ask a word of clarification because I had something else going on that I was trying to get taken care of. You said there were three. I heard about the Sabbath and I heard about the Pope.

I didn't hear what the third example was.

You mentioned elect angels in Chapter 3.

Oh, okay, okay, all right. That helps me. In something like, let's say, let me give you an example. As I see it, there's a pretty major difference between the form of what's called the Baptist Faith and Message of the Southern Baptist Convention and the 1689.

The Baptist Faith and Message becomes amended fairly regularly. There's been a lot of different additions of it. There's been changes made over the past decade. One of the examples that was interesting is the addition of a specific statement against the concept of open theism.

It strikes me that the reason that there was a need for that was because in comparison, if you try to compare the Baptist Faith and Message with the 1689, they're almost not comparable because of the massively greater fullness of the 1689 Confession of Faith itself.

But basically what was felt in the convention was this is an issue that's coming up and it's not addressed in our Baptist Faith and Message, and we need to address it. So we're going to address it, and so it was addressed.

From my understanding, you cannot be a faithful Southern Baptist and also hold to a position of open theism in light of that. Of course, I suppose that could also be changed if they decide to do so. Now, the question that I would then have for, let's say for ARBCA as a whole, the Association of Mormon Baptists of America, you've got a large number of people that get together.

Is there a mechanism within an associational context like that? If something were to arise that could not have been foreseen in the 17th century, that just is simply beyond what they could have even pondered as a possibility, let's say something in regards to history and archaeology in the text of Scripture or something along those lines, would you see the possibility of not so much an emendation but an addition of extra statements that an association could add to it?