Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Refreshed

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (commonly called the "1689") has become the doctrinal standard for most of those Christians who denominate themselves with the term Reformed Baptist in this new millennium. It is the conviction of this editor that a "new" edition is needed. You have that "new" edition in your hand. It is likely that you have surmised that I mean "new" in the sense of reprint of the first edition in facsimile rather than "new" in the sense of reworking the wording or even the theology of the original. I am admittedly a bit of a historical purist especially when it comes to authoritative documents that summarize "those things most surely believed among us." My preference is to move toward the future by looking to the past.

Many subtle changes have been made to the language of this Confession in the years since it was introduced. This first published edition should help to put those subtleties in historical and theological perspective. One of these slight changes was the omission of the single word "elect" at the start of Chapter 10, Paragraph 3.

Another subtle quirk is the name by which many know this Confession, the "1689." Many find the following surprising, however, the Confession was never published that year. The General Assembly of Particular Baptist Churches adopted the Second London Baptist Confession in that year. That is how it came to be published with the signatures of the messengers of the church shown those things that were most surely believed among them. However, for the historical record and bibliophiles of that era, the record needs to be set straight. The first edition of the Confession was published in 1677 with a helpful introduction and appendix demonstrating the theological unanimity among the Westminster family of confessions and the Particular Baptist understanding of the Covenant of Grace. It saw subsequent editions in 1688 and 1699. Thus, the "1689" is an historical misnomer. The Confession, if it is to be named by its date of origin, should be known as the 1677 Baptist Confession. Being a purist historically is moderated by being a realist practically. People would be confused by such a sudden change in the naming convention used for this document. Many of our sermons, our series teaching through this magnificent document and essays about its theology would need to be corrected in a consistent manner. That is not going to happen. But, what may happen is this-people can learn the origin of the document and use this edition as a rear view mirror to see where the heritage has been in order to see where it needs to go in the future. In some ways, I believe, we need to go back into the past in order to move into the future. We need to recover the richness of our theology by looking to the bright lights of the past. And, the 1677/89 is such a luminary. May the Lord use it again to clear the truth from error. First with those who denominate themselves and profess adherence to the Confession. Then, from us, may it go out into the world to show one of the uses for which the Scriptures were given-to teach doctrine (II Tim 3:16). Amen.