#71 Dr. James Renihan Explains the Importance of Confessional Faith
The central inquiry of this discussion revolves around the pivotal question: to use a confession or not to use a confession? In our dialogue with Dr. James Renihan, a prominent figure in the realm of historical theology and the current President of the International Reformed Baptist Seminary, we delve into the considerable significance of confessions of faith within local church contexts. Dr. Renihan elucidates that a confession serves as a written affirmation of beliefs that not only articulates the doctrines held by a congregation but also fosters stability and continuity within the faith community. Throughout our exchange, we explore the historical lineage of confessions, particularly the 1689 London Baptist Confession, and how these documents anchor contemporary believers to the rich theological heritage of the church. This episode stands as an invitation to reflect upon the necessity of confessional statements in the pursuit of theological clarity and communal coherence among Christians of diverse backgrounds.
Takeaways:
- The utilization of a confession serves to articulate and define the beliefs held by a church community, providing clarity in a time of doctrinal ambiguity.
- Every church possesses an unwritten confession, which underscores the necessity of a formal, articulated statement of faith to guide its members.
- Engagement with historical confessions connects contemporary believers to the rich theological heritage of 20 centuries of Christian thought and doctrine.
- The confession of faith acts as a stabilizing force, allowing Christians to anchor their beliefs in an established theological framework rather than subjective interpretations of Scripture.
- In evangelism, a confession provides essential guardrails, ensuring that the proclaimed message aligns with orthodox Christian doctrine as understood through history.
- The act of reciting historic creeds fosters a sense of unity among believers, linking individual congregations to the global church across different cultures and eras.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- G3
- Westminster
- Savoy
- CS Lewis
- Augustine
- John Calvin
- John Owen
- London Confession
- Second London Confession
- Soul Fishing Ministries
Transcript
To use a confession or not to use a confession?
Speaker A:That is the question among us this morning.
Speaker A:Thank you for taking this time to stop and think about it.
Speaker B:Hello?
Speaker A:Hello?
Speaker A:Anybody home?
Speaker A:Think, McFly, think.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker C:I'm thinking.
Speaker C:What were you thinking?
Speaker B:I'm trying to think, but nothing happens.
Speaker B:Didn't say anything.
Speaker C:Now just think about it.
Speaker C:You're listening to Steve Stop and Think About It, a podcast for the Christian Thinker.
Speaker C:In a day when sound biblical preaching has been replaced by man centered entertainment and the church has become increasingly anti intellectual, this podcast will encourage believers to think biblically and theologically.
Speaker C:So please join me as we get ready to stop and think about it.
Speaker A:Well, greetings, friends and foes, saints and sinners.
Speaker A:Welcome to another episode of the Stop and Think about it podcast.
Speaker A:We have Professor Jim Renahan with us and we're very excited.
Speaker A:We're here at the G3 conference.
Speaker A:Brother Renahan is an expert in the confession.
Speaker A:Written books on it, preached on it, taught on it, and we want to see why this is so important to use in local churches.
Speaker A:Welcome, brother.
Speaker B:Thank you.
Speaker B:It's great to be here.
Speaker A:Thank you so much.
Speaker A:What is a confession?
Speaker A:Because some people may not even know.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:A confession of faith is a statement of some length that helps us to express what we believe that the Bible teaches.
Speaker B:It helps Christians to define their faith and to show others what their faith is.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:And so there are some churches that think we just use the Bible, we don't need a confession.
Speaker A:So why should we use a confession?
Speaker B:Well, the simple answer to that is they do have a confession, even if it's unwritten.
Speaker B:Every church, every evangelical church, to one degree or another, has doctrines that they believe.
Speaker B:And if you go in there and you start to preach something different to the unwritten doctrine of the church, you'll have a big problem.
Speaker B:A confession of faith allows us to be public with what we believe.
Speaker B:It allows others to look at us.
Speaker B:It allows us to state, I hope with humility that these are the things that we believe.
Speaker B:But everybody has a confession, whether it's written or not.
Speaker A: So the one you use is the: Speaker A:Do you reference the other ones at any time as well?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:In the work that I've done, I have frequently made reference to other confessions.
Speaker B: confession, first written in: Speaker B: rts of it are included in the: Speaker B: The: Speaker B:So all of those are the family from which it comes.
Speaker B:I like to say Westminster is the grandparent and Savoy is the immediate parent.
Speaker B:And you can't really think about our confession of faith without recognizing those other documents.
Speaker B:And let me say this, too.
Speaker B:In key places in our confession of faith, you'll find reference to the ecumenical creeds of the early church.
Speaker B:So the language of the Apostles Creed is laid out for us in chapter eight of Christ the Mediator.
Speaker B:So also is the technical language of the Nicene Creed in chapter eight, where it comes to speak of Christ.
Speaker B: ge that had been accepted for: Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:Do you have a particular favorite chapter among the confession that you know, I love to teach this particular one that might be hard to pluck out.
Speaker A:Is there one particular one?
Speaker B:Okay, I'm going to cheat and give you two.
Speaker B:I have a friend who years ago was asking pastors who visited his church to record their favorite chapter, and he wanted to put together an audio recording of the whole confession done by different men.
Speaker B:So I said, brother, can I do two?
Speaker B:Oh, sure, you can do two.
Speaker B:So I wanted to do chapter two of God and of the Holy Trinity, because I think it's just wonderful.
Speaker B:And I wanted to do chapter 21 of Christian Liberty, because I believe that that's a really important doctrine that is frequently forgotten in our day.
Speaker B:So I love them all.
Speaker B:Those are probably the two that I would pick and say, yeah, I really, really appreciate them.
Speaker A:Does the Westminster use adoption?
Speaker A:Is that one of theirs?
Speaker A:I don't remember that it was.
Speaker A:But what do you think is the impetus behind the paragraph on adoption or the chapter on adoption?
Speaker B:Yeah, yes, Westminster does.
Speaker B:It's chapter 12.
Speaker B:It immediately follows justification.
Speaker B:And the reason that it's there is that as far back as Calvin recognized that, I think his language was that adoption is a necessary accompaniment of the doctrine of justification.
Speaker B:Now, if you get justification wrong, you lose the gospel.
Speaker B:If you get adoption wrong, you don't lose the gospel, but you lose the blessing of it.
Speaker B:But still, it is something that God gives to us as a result of the gift of justification that comes to us.
Speaker B:So it's in all the confessions, the Puritan era confessions, and it is an important and wonderful doctrine.
Speaker A:So how do you think having a confession strengthens the members of the church.
Speaker A:So in our church, we use it for Sunday school.
Speaker A:We do one paragraph at a time until we go through.
Speaker A:Once in a while we combine a paragraph.
Speaker A:I don't know how you teach it.
Speaker A:Maybe large chunks, small chunks.
Speaker A:Do you have any wisdom for us on that?
Speaker B:Yeah, when I teach it in class, I actually go line by line, sentence by sentence, paragraph.
Speaker B:I read it, then I comment on it.
Speaker B:That's where the book that just got published is all about.
Speaker B:It takes that material from my class and puts it in a form people can read and benefit from.
Speaker B:What does it do for the people of the church?
Speaker B:I think that's where your question began.
Speaker B:Well, it gives them an objective standard that they can look to.
Speaker B:You know, many, many people say, I believe the Bible.
Speaker B:But when they say that they have an understanding of what the Bible means, and if it's unwritten, look out, watch out, because you never know what kind of mud puddle you're going to step into.
Speaker B:But if you have a written confession of faith for the people of God, it gives them stability.
Speaker B:I think another thing that it does is we live in a day and age where our culture makes us think that this is the best time, this is the final time.
Speaker B:It couldn't be any better than what we have now.
Speaker B:Even the future probably isn't going to be as good.
Speaker B:And CS Lewis called that chronological snobbery.
Speaker B:A confession of faith ties us to the past.
Speaker B:It allows us.
Speaker B:You know, Jude says twice in his Epistle, he uses language that's similar, that there is a faith once delivered to the saints.
Speaker B:And our task is, is not to innovate and develop a new faith.
Speaker B:Rather, it's to recognize this faith that is contained in the word of God.
Speaker B:It was delivered to the saints when the can was closed.
Speaker B:That was it.
Speaker B:Everything that God wanted us to know.
Speaker B:All the doctrines are present there.
Speaker B:So those doctrines that the apostolic churches believed are the same doctrines that are of great benefit to Christians in the 21st century.
Speaker B:And a confession of faith expresses those things.
Speaker B:So all of a sudden, we're connected to 20 centuries of Christians.
Speaker B:We can say, this is what they believe.
Speaker B:This is what we believe.
Speaker B:You know, I love to think in our church, when we observe the Lord's table, we recite the Nicene Creed.
Speaker B:One of the things I love to do when I'm reciting it is imagine that I'm standing in the midst of millions and millions of people who have different languages and different ethnicities and who lived at different times, but they all confessed the same thing, and it makes me feel like I'm part of something great.
Speaker B:That's the people of God of all ages who are able to say that God is Trinity and Christ is God and man truly God, truly man, two natures united in one person, that the Holy Spirit is God.
Speaker B:To think.
Speaker B:It just gives me chills, really, to think about the fact that many, many, many millions of Christians have confessed that.
Speaker B:So I'm not alone.
Speaker B:It's not my faith.
Speaker B:It's a faith that is common to all of God's people.
Speaker A:Amen.
Speaker A:You're not alone.
Speaker A:I'm catching your chills right now.
Speaker A:Reform.
Speaker A:Chills are good.
Speaker A:So let's say that a Romanist or a Roman Catholic was hearing from you on this podcast.
Speaker A:What would you say to that Roman Catholic in the context of our confession versus what they believe?
Speaker B:Yeah, good point.
Speaker B:You know, one scholar who wrote about John Calvin and his use of the Church Fathers made a really good point.
Speaker B:And the point that he made is that in some ways, the Reformation was a debate over the use of the Fathers of the Church, that the Reformers and the Puritans after them and the Reformed on the continent wanted to employ the Fathers and say Rome deviated from the path.
Speaker B:We're the ones who are recovering what was believed in the early Church.
Speaker B:And I'll give you a great example of that.
Speaker B:The Puritan John Owen wrote a book.
Speaker B:There's one of his books right on your table there.
Speaker B:He wrote a book on the work of the Holy Spirit, and there's a long chapter in it, it's chapter four, that deals with conversion and what the experience of conversion is, how to know what true conversion is.
Speaker B:And he uses Augustine's Confessions and Augustine's conversion as he narrates it in the Confessions, as an illustration of what true conversion is.
Speaker B:And it's great.
Speaker B:You know, Augustine walks us through what he did, and Owen is able to use that.
Speaker B:But there's another agenda there.
Speaker B:And the other agenda is to say Augustine belongs to us, not to you, Rome.
Speaker B:He's ours.
Speaker B:And we can use him to talk about regeneration, conversion, justification by faith.
Speaker B:You guys have misused him.
Speaker B:He belongs to us.
Speaker A:Yes, because both camps are the wrong camp and the right camp.
Speaker A:Both camps are pulling Augustus and he's ours.
Speaker B:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:And, you know, through the history of the Church in the Middle Ages, they did the same thing with many of the famous Church Fathers is they pointed out that they understood the Gospel and they proclaimed the Gospel.
Speaker B:And so there's a long history of let's use the word evangelical, by that I mean gospel believing, gospel preaching, churches.
Speaker B:It didn't end with Augustine, but it continued on.
Speaker B:And, you know, it's really interesting.
Speaker B:In England, one of the things that they argued for was that oftentimes there's no need to write a new book about an error because somebody in the past has already written it.
Speaker B:So they would reprint these books from the early church or the Middle Ages that refuted errors because they believed there was continuity among them.
Speaker A:So we go out on the streets.
Speaker A:We're street preachers.
Speaker A:I'm also a pastor of a local church in Queens, New York City.
Speaker A:We do expository preaching.
Speaker A:As far as evangelistically, how does the confession inform our evangelism on the streets?
Speaker B:Yeah, well, that's a good point, too.
Speaker B:It sets up guardrails that you have to stay within.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:When you're preaching about Christ, his person and his work, because that's essentially what you're bringing people to do.
Speaker B:It's giving you guardrails so that you're sure that you say the right things about them.
Speaker B:You haven't invented something in your mind and express that.
Speaker B:But if you know the doctrine that is expressed in the confession that has been believed by Christians for centuries, you're able to proclaim the same gospel and be confident that what the apostles preached is the gospel that you're preaching as well.
Speaker B:Now, you ever think about the method of apostolic preaching in the Book of Acts?
Speaker B:It's really interesting when you think about it.
Speaker B:I'm sure you have.
Speaker B:But there's basically two methods that they used when they went into the synagogue.
Speaker B:They could assume a common theology, and the message is basically the promises that were given to the Father are fulfilled in Jesus.
Speaker B:That's essentially what you find when they're in synagogues, but when they go out into gentile venues, Paul in Athens or somewhere else, they don't start.
Speaker B:They can't assume that common theology.
Speaker B:So they have to begin with creation and God.
Speaker B:You know.
Speaker B:You know that that's what you have to do.
Speaker B:You look at your audience and you're asking the question, what do they know?
Speaker B:What do they believe?
Speaker B:And can you.
Speaker B:You know, in New York, many Jewish people can, you say to them, you've missed it.
Speaker B:And what you need to recognize is that Jesus fulfills the promises that were given to your fathers, receive the Messiah.
Speaker B:But when you're talking to secular New Yorkers, you have to talk about creation.
Speaker B:You have to talk about who God is, because they don't know we use the word God in our secular World people have all kinds of strange ideas of who God is.
Speaker B:So we have to go there.
Speaker B:And the confession of faith helps us in both cases.
Speaker B:See, chapter eight of Christ the Mediator gives us the answers to the Jewish questions.
Speaker B:Chapter two of God and of the Holy Trinity gives us the basis for speaking to secularists.
Speaker B:And of course, the doctrine of God doesn't end with just statements about who God is.
Speaker B:Chapter three of God's decree, chapter four of creation, chapter five of Divine Providence, all those are recognized as part of the doctrine of God.
Speaker B:Chapter two deals with what's called the internal works of God.
Speaker B:Trinitarianism 3, 4 and 5 speak about external works of God, what His purpose is and his decrees, and then he brings them to pass in creation and providence.
Speaker B:So you need the doctrine of God to be able to preach to secular Americans.
Speaker A:Well, thank you very much.
Speaker A:Tell us the name of your book that you just wrote.
Speaker B:Okay.
Speaker B:It's right over there in the next booth on the shelf.
Speaker B:Volume one is called for the Vindication of the Truth.
Speaker B: It's an Exposition of the: Speaker B:Volume 2 is called I have to look over there and See to the judicious and impartial reader.
Speaker B: Confession, often called the: Speaker B:Both titles are taken from the Confessions themselves and that's why I've given them those titles.
Speaker A:Well, thank you for your time, brother.
Speaker A:Let's pray for you.
Speaker A:Father, we thank you for our brother Renehan.
Speaker A:Lord, will you continue to use his ministry to bless the church, to bless students, to bless the people of God, to evangelize that which is lost?
Speaker A:I pray that you just bless the work of his hands and the books that he's written, the teachings, the sermons, everything that he's done as he's put his hands to the plow and refuses to look back because he's plowing for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.
Speaker A:And we thank you in Jesus name name.
Speaker A:Amen.
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