Introduction
The members of Covenant Baptist Church subscribe to the 2nd London Baptist Confession of Faith published in 1689. This confession exmplifies the historical understanding of baptist covenant theology.
Historically, Baptists have been, and thankfully many still are, a confessional people. Yes, they are supremely a people of the Book, the Holy Scriptures. But confessions have been central to their experience of the Christian life. The twentieth-century attempt to explain Baptist life and thought primarily in terms of soul-liberty seriously skews the evidence. Of course, freedom from external coercion has always been a major concern of Baptist apologetics. But up until the twentieth century, this emphasis has generally never been at the expense of a clear and explicit confessionalism.
Of the many confessions of faith that Baptist have produced—and they have produced a goodly number—none has been more influential than the Second London Confession, popularly known as The 1689 Confession. It was not only the confession of faith adopted by the majority of Baptists in the British Isles and Ireland from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, but it was also the major confessional document on the American Baptist scene, where it was known as the Philadelphia Confession of Faith (1742) and which added an article on the laying on of hands and also one on the singing of psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Among Southern Baptists this confession played an influential role as The Charleston Confession (1767), which became the basis of The Abstract of Principles, the statement of faith of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary that was drawn up in 1858 by Basil Manly, Jr. (1825–1892).
The truths that this confession promoted fell out of favour for much of the twentieth century, but in the last fifty years there has been a great recovery of gospel truth among Evangelicals and once again there are those deeply committed to the doctrines of this confession.
We commend the words of C.H. Spurgeon, which he issued along with the republication of this historical confession in 1855, when he wrote:
This little volume is not issued as an authoritative rule, or code of faith, whereby you are to be fettered, but as an assistance to you in controversy, a confirmation in faith, and a means of edification in righteousness. …Cleave fast to the Word of God which is here mapped out for you.
Resources
CBC Podcast Series on the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith
CBC Sermon Series on Baptist Covenant Theology (Video)
CBC Biblical & Systematic Study of Baptist Covenant Theology (Video)