About a year ago or more,[1] I started diving into the 1689 Baptist Confession of faith to study it. My main purpose was not to study the Confession per sé, but to study the doctrines asserted by the Confession and to see if they were biblical. My main focus was to teach myself to make a biblical case for cardinal doctrines which Reformed folk believe, and I believe that I have been able to make a biblical case for every (or almost all?) doctrine which is espoused by the Confession to my satisfaction. If you want a study which focuses on the words of the Confession[2], this is not what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for a study which intends to make a case for the doctrines asserted, you may be blessed by this study. Basically, the purpose was to teach myself systematic theology and teach myself to defend Reformed doctrine biblically.
I cannot say that I disagree with any doctrine in the Confession, but there may be some who may question whether I hold to the Confession, especially chapter 1, because I consider myself a theological continuationist. I stress theological, because I do not practice “prophecy” or “speaking in tongues.” Practically, I’m a cessationist with a very high view of Holy Writ and critical of charismania and those weird things which you see on the Net of charismatics. The study on the gifts is one which I started, but have not finished yet (I have not read all the books which I have purchased from both sides). But I must honestly say that I’m not convinced of cessationism because I don’t believe the Bible teaches it. The statement in 1:1 which says “those former ways of God’s revealing his will unto his people being now ceased” may be the only one which I would interpret differently.
I’m not big on names, it doesn’t matter to me if one considers me a Reformed Baptist or not, I will not pride myself in that, either way it is not essential to me what title I have besides Δοῦλος Χριστοῦ.
Footnotes
- ^ The dates of publication which every post has for the Confession, do not mean that I finished the commentary on that day. At the beginning I commented very briefly (few lines) on the whole Confession, just because I was simply willing to know what it taught. Sometime after, I’m not sure when, maybe a year ago, I started enlarging the chapters and adding more of my thoughts and comments. The first longest chapter was chapter 7 on God’s Covenants, which makes a case for 1689 Federalism.
- ^ https://1689commentary.org/ is such a study.
