James Discusses the LBCF with Dr. James Renihan

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. 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 the Lord 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 have 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 Askell 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 will be discussing the great John Owen and his influence upon the development of the Westminster Confession, the

Savoy Declaration, Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, and all sorts of historical stuff that Jim Renahan is really good at talking about.

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 every 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 Seminary, approached 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, which is primarily an exposition of the

Second London Confession of Faith. So it's 17 academic hours. It fits seamlessly with the

Westminster program. The students graduate with a Westminster Master of Divinity degree.

It's been a great relationship. I've really enjoyed being here for a long time. 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.

So, we do have a history, and it's actually a rather fascinating one, and 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.

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, and 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 great question.

You know, it's a curious fact of history that though we frequently refer to it as the 1689

Confession, it actually saw the light of day first in 1677. 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, there were strong advocates in the

Church of England for persecution, and so they believed it was really important to express as clearly and 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.

So that's the particular, in particular Baptist. There's over against the other group, who also have a noble history, but they're called the general

Baptist, because they believe 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. You know, 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

Baptist 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 was meeting, at least beginning its deliberations and putting together the standard

Presbyterian documents that we know today. So it was in existence.

It was well known, certainly, in London, and it was accepted by churches around the country. Now, at the

Westminster Assembly itself, there were significant debates over a variety of issues, one of them being church government.

And there were particularly five men who were called the Dissenting Brothers, or Dissenting Brethren, I suppose is what they would have said, who argued for a congregational form of government as opposed to a

Presbyterian form of government. And these men, through just a variety of circumstances, most of it political, after the

Civil War was over, after Charles I was executed, the Presbyterian leadership in Parliament lost its power and was replaced by an essentially

Congregationalist power in Parliament, Oliver Cromwell being the most obvious example of this.

The Congregationalists began to be very powerful, or their views of church government began to spread in the churches, and they felt that it was important in 1658 to revise the

Westminster Confession of Faith so that it would better reflect their own views of church polity.

They didn't have a Presbyterian system. They believed that each church had the right within itself to practice its own discipline, that it was directly answerable to the

Lord Jesus Christ, that there wasn't a higher body that was over it. They were concerned about some of these things that characterized

Presbyterianism. And so in 1658, men like John Owen 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 revised the Westminster Confession and they published their own independent or Congregationalist document which has been called the

Savoy Declaration. Now that became the basis in 1677 for the

Second 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, which is present in the

First 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 present to the churches and also to any interested

Christians or even non -Christians who wanted to know a document that could clearly express what their views were all about.

That's just a brief summary of where it came from. And the date, so how long does this take them?

Well, I don't know that. The first known literary reference to the Confession is found in the

Church Minute book. It's a manuscript book. It's on file at the Guildhall Library in London.

I've been there a couple of times. I actually have digital photos of the thing that I was looking at this afternoon.

The first literary mention of it was in August of 1677 in that Church Minute book.

And it says something like, a confession of faith having been read by the brethren, it should be published.

So the assumption that is made, and 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 across the board that the Confession probably came out of that church, the

Petty France Church in London, and was probably edited by its two pastors, whose names were

William Collins and 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.

Karl 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 the Death of Christ, in regards to Hebrews 10 .29. And yet a friend of mine had sent me a quotation from Owen saying the exact opposite in regards to Hebrews 10 .29.

And I had 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 really is a towering figure.

I realize that this could be debated. In my opinion, he's probably the greatest writing English -speaking theologian.

I think he's astute. His exegesis is brilliant. He understood the whole flow of theology, just 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 was that was in controversy in their churches.

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 Baptist circles, you'd have to say that Owen had the most profound effect on the development of particular

Baptist theology as a contemporary in the 17th century. I think that's clear.

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

Baptist 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 on it to see what he says, and usually what he says is repeated in one way or another in the particular

Baptist literature. So I would say that largely across the board,

I'm sure that you know last year I was involved in a project to publish a book by two authors that we entitled it

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 transcribed the whole thing.

I wrote an introduction and I wrote a life of the author whose name is

Nehemiah Cox. As I said, I mentioned him before. He's one of the editors of The Confession, I think. He wrote this book called

A Discourse 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 a well -read Baptist. When you work,

I've read all of his works, he has read all of the major theologians in English and in Latin.

He is able to quote even obscure continental authors who are writing in Latin.

So he's a very aware theologian, and he's writing to a

Baptist audience. And his instruction to the Baptists is, if you want to know more about covenant theology, go read

Dr. Owen. It's pretty amazing when you think about it. Yes. 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. But the way that he puts together his covenant theology is so consonant with Cox's own views that Cox can send his

Baptist readers off to this independent congregationalist and say, go read him, and basically you'll probably get better than I could say it, what

I'd want to say. You know? It's amazing. 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 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? Yes, well, the simple answer is

John Owen, but of course there's a more complex answer than that. If you were grading the paper, would you accept the simple answer?

No, it depends on how I phrase the question, actually. Chapter 11 of the

Three Confessions is entitled of justification, and of course Westminster was first, and there was debate at the

Westminster Assembly over the issue of justification. I've heard lectures about it, but I have not seen the manuscript material, the reports of those who were present.

From the lectures that I've heard, it was a very heated debate about whether or not to incorporate into the language of the

Westminster Confession the specific terminology of active and passive obedience. In the end, they did not incorporate it, although I think the evidence probably is that it was favorable to the majority of the men, and they tried to find a way that they could phrase themselves so that they would at least implicitly approve of that doctrine.

Well, the Savoyans, those who published the Savoy Declaration in 1658, added to the language of Westminster in Chapter 11,

Paragraph 1, the specific terminology of Christ's active obedience to the whole law and passive obedience in his death being imputed for their whole and sole righteousness.

Now, I would say that Owen, of course, in his work on justification, is very concerned about imputation of active and passive obedience, and so also is

Thomas Goodwin, who was present at the Westminster Assembly. These are the two leading lights among the

Congregationalists who are directly involved in the production of the Savoy Declaration, and so I think it's a fair assumption that under their leadership, the

Savoy was published with this explicit language stating that the gospel of justification is to be defined 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 of faith, look at the language of Savoy and look at the language of Westminster, and they say, we want to be identified with Savoy.

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.

Let us keep it in our confession as we publish it. And so the Second London 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 that Rome is back there.

And from my own reading, those who were opposed to it, in one way or another, to some degree, seem to have had a sense that to incorporate the language would be to give offense to Rome.

And so they argued against incorporation, but those who did not fear giving offense to Rome were willing to incorporate it into their document.

Baxter is the great example, Richard Baxter of that. 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?

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 -consistent system.

And one of his concerns was against what he called antinomianism, which was a high

Calvinist doctrine that was really a heresy, let's call it what it was, that said for those who are elect in Christ and justified, how one lives has no bearing at all upon Christianity.

You 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 it.

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 seemed to have thought that they were.

Of course, in making that statement, it's a blanket condemnation of virtually all of the

Reformed 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 very concerned with 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. But you can't call him a classic

Reformed theologian either, because he wanted to find a way to acknowledge the essentially

Christian nature of a wide variety of churches, Eastern Orthodoxy, Rome, the various sects,

Lutherans, Protestants, Church of England, all the rest. To Baxter, the

Apostles' Creed was the essence of Christianity. In fact, he believed that it was more ancient than any of the scriptures in an authentic statement that came, if not from Jesus, then from the mouth of Jesus' Apostles.

The Apostles' Creed. The Apostles' Creed, right. So that for Baxter, anyone who could assent to the

Apostles' Creed had to be treated as a Christian. 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 that Rome could take offense at that language because the doctrine of active and passive obedience, or I should say the imputation of Christ's active and passive obedience to the believer eliminates from the gospel any kind of participatory obedience.

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.

So 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.

And 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. I'm just helping everybody to know that you don't just sit around all day reading

Nehemiah Cox. That's all. 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.

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 Baptist 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 that this problem continues to afflict the church.

I've got some material that I have been able to present to pastors in different circumstances in a couple of different times.

And I read them a quote and ask the question, when was this written? And 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 the question of 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. No. We're talking about the gospel itself.

Right. 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 are 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're 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

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 you 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? 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 also consider how it affects the rest of the theology of the

Confession as well. Having said that, again, I don't know even what kind of body you might have in mind.

You know, some local churches at one point or another have amended the

Confession. They've added some articles to it where they believe that certain subjects need to be addressed or they have changed some things in it.

But that only affects their own 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. 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, but I didn't hear what the third example was.

You mentioned elect angels in Chapter 3. Oh, okay. That helps me.

In something like, let's say, let me give an example. As I see it, there's a pretty major difference between the form of what's called the

Baptist Faith and Message at 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. 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. We're going to address it. It was addressed. From my understanding, you could not 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 a, 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 and 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?

Let's say we take this as a historical statement with these additions that address issues that simply weren't a part of the context of the 17th century.

Is that something that would be a possibility in light of some major challenge within the context of Reformed Baptist churches as a whole?

Right. Well, there's two ways that I want to answer that question that I hope complement each other.

The first is to say, yes, I think that there is a possibility for something. It would need to be really grave.

It would need to be a serious, serious issue that affects the church at large. And I think always there has to be a possibility for Christians to be able to speak to their generation and promote the truth and deny error.

But before doing that, here's the other part of my answer. I think that it's important to remember that an extensive confession like the

Second London, the 1689, it doesn't just reflect the theology that existed in 1677.

But in drawing upon those other documents, which themselves draw upon other documents, there is a tie between the

Baptist confession of faith and all of the historic creeds of the church, so that the language of Nicaea is present, the language of Chalcedon is present, and there is a sense in which that confession of faith reflects all of the great truths that have always been held by all

Christians who are Orthodox, who believe the foundational issues of the faith.

And one has to ask the question, for example, and I think your illustration of the Baptist faith and message and the statement about open theism really makes the point well.

You have to ask the question, in an extensive system like that, is it possible that this topic is already addressed, because at one point or another in the history of the church, it did arise, it has been forgotten, but it was addressed at this point, and therefore we already have the language in some form or another that helps us to maintain our orthodoxy.

Right. Yeah, so Sinianism is really nothing new, but when your confession does not explicitly address the issue, you've got to find some way of addressing that issue, and that's what we did.

Absolutely. Andrew, a follow -up? Not at this time, thanks.

Okay, thank you very much for your phone call. All right, thank you. God bless, bye -bye. 877 -753 -3341.

Now, it's interesting what you just said. I'd like to follow up on that a little bit. Because the language of the early

Trinitarian councils, the Christological councils, the recognition of the hypostatic union, deity of Christ, doctrine of the

Trinity, inspiration, inerrancy of the scriptures, all these issues, it's part and parcel, but are there places, let's say, from my perspective, one of the greatest changes over the past, well, since the

London Confession was written, one of the things that I would imagine some of the founding writers probably foresaw the trends going toward it, but could not have imagined how far it's gone, is that you and I both know, in a large portion of seminaries in our land today, let's just take all that would call themselves

Christian, whether we would actually explicitly acknowledge them to be so or not, there has been a complete shifting of the grounds in regards to the view of divine revelation, especially in regards to the accuracy and authority of the scriptures as the foundation for the

Christian faith. And in fact, someone who would explicitly confess the

Bible to be the inspired word of God, that it's divine in its nature, as all of the early writers of our confession would have viewed it to be, we're in the minority in the broad spectrum of, quote -unquote, religious education in the world today.

And as a result, in a large portion of seminaries, it's not even believed that you can do systematic theology, let alone put something like this together.

They would view the London Confession as synthetic, in essence, and not really derived from scripture or things like that.

And that's being taught in a lot of seminaries that are a lot closer to us from the world's perspective than we might be comfortable with these days.

And so in that kind of a context, isn't it rather vital that as we look at a statement like the 1689, that we have some concept of what the foundational beliefs of the writers were, even when we're dealing with those issues that they may not have felt it necessary to just explicitly make statement

X, because, well, that's never been challenged. But today, especially in a postmodern world, there's nothing that isn't challenged.

Everything is up in the air now. So we have to know where they were coming from. We have to be students of those things to be able to utilize these confessions in a meaningful fashion.

Yes, absolutely. And the best work for that, in terms of the confession itself, is two works by Richard Muller.

One of them is his Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, which is absolutely brilliant. And the other is his four -volume

Post -Reformation Reform Dogmatics, which both really give the climate, the theological climate of all of the 17th century confessions.

And they are, for any kind of serious study, you just can't do it without those works. But how many people really are obtaining that kind of information, or how many pastors?

I mean, obviously, I would assume that the students at the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies are going to be having those particular works on their shelves, and they're going to be challenged to utilize them, and they're going to know about Nehemiah Cox and all the rest of that type of thing.

But still, let me sort of play the devil's advocate here for a moment.

And a lot of folks look at you and I and our churches, and the way that our churches function, and the way that our churches worship, and the focus of our churches upon the proclamation of the

Word of God, and the eschewing that seems to be pretty much universal amongst

Reformed Baptists of a lot of modern mechanisms to quote -unquote grow the church, we would say, from an artificial perspective.

A lot of people look at us and they say, you're dinosaurs. You're on the verge of extinction.

Some would be overt in the statement. The emerging church would say that of evangelicalism as a whole.

But even those fairly close to us would say, well, aside from the resurgence that we see at this particular period of time, look, you can't expect to reach this culture when you're still reading people who are so far removed from the modern worldview and the modern mindset.

You're becoming insulated. You're no longer connected. How do you respond to people who make that kind of an objection to you?

Well, I would say the truth of God is the truth of God. And the power of God is not hindered by postmodernism.

I would say that if you look at the beginning of the 18th century, it was a bleak time in the

English -speaking world, at least in England, and things were picking up on this side of the water. But in England, it was very bleak.

The Enlightenment had come in, and there are parallels between the Enlightenment and postmodernism and the way that the

Enlightenment took over the universities and the intelligentsia and all the rest. And it was very bleak.

And yet God blessed his truth, and he sent preachers, and there was a great forward advancement of the

Gospel in the 18th century. And I would say that right now, we have to maintain the same perspective and say, yes, things may look very bleak, at least here in the

United States. That may be true, but the power of God is no less. And if he and his providence has chosen this time to withhold his hand of blessing, that's not to say that in 10 years or 20 years or 50 years, he won't give it again.

Our task is to be faithful, to proclaim his word, to trust him, to save all of those he has elected, and bring the

Gospel to the world and wait for him to open the gates of heaven if he so chooses to do so.

Oh, but I thought what's going on right now in our little corner of the world is the be -all and end -all of all things.

How dare you take such a wide view of history? I mean, don't you determine what the church is supposed to do based upon growth charts from the last quarter?

I mean, come on now. What's this multi -generations thing you're talking about?

That's no fun. Well, I want to have a God -centered perspective on life and on the church. And I think it's a constant struggle that we have to bring ourselves back to look up to heaven and say, your will be done, not mine.

And we always are trying to force the will of God when what he says is, do what you've been called to do, and I will do what

I determine to do. And I will bless you as you are faithful to what I've called you to do. And it's very encouraging,

Dr. Renahan, to know that the young men who are going through the program there are being encouraged to think that way.

We both know that when they get into ministry, there is going to be every possible kind of temptation placed before them to short -circuit that biblical mentality.

And so it needs to be drilled home in a proper way, no two ways about it.

I want to thank you very much for joining us today on the program. How could folks get hold of you for more information on the

Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies? Yes, they can check out our website, which is reformedbaptistinstitute .com.

Reformed Baptist Institute, is that one word? Yes, and it's actually .org. Oh, .org, okay.

reformedbaptistinstitute .org is where you can get information about what Dr. Renahan is doing. And sir, very, very thankful that you joined with us today.

I hope the audience was blessed. And who knows, maybe there's a young person listening out there who will someday be sitting in one of those classes you were describing and first heard about you here.

That would certainly be my guest. Thank you very much for joining us today. You're welcome, thank you. Alrighty, God bless.

Thank you for being with us here on the Dividing Line. And we will be with you again next

Tuesday here on the program. God bless. I must contend for the faith the fathers fought for.

We need a new reformation day. Alpha and Omega Ministries.

If you'd like to contact us, call us at 602 -973 -4602. Or write us at P .O.

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World Wide Web at aomin .org. That's a -o -m -i -n .org. Where you'll find a complete listing of James White's books, tapes, debates, and tracks.