Theopedia

London Baptist Confession of 1689

Definition

The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, known from the date of its public adoption as the 1689 London Baptist Confession, is the confessional statement of the Calvinistic, or Particular, Baptists of England. It was probably first drafted in 1677 and was formally adopted in London in 1689 by representatives of perhaps a hundred Calvinistic Baptist churches.1 Rather than writing fresh articles as the First London Baptist Confession of 1644 had, its authors worked from the Westminster Confession and the Savoy Declaration, modifying them where their Baptist convictions required it.2

Historical Development

The push for a fuller confession

Particular Baptist congregations had already stated their faith once, in the First London Baptist Confession of 1644. By the 1670s, a newer generation of these congregations sought a fuller confession, one that would also demonstrate their agreement with the wider Calvinistic Puritan movement on nearly everything but church government and baptism.2 The result kept the Particular Baptists’ distinctive doctrines of the church and believer’s baptism while adopting Westminster’s own language everywhere the two traditions already agreed; the confession’s statement on effectual calling and regeneration, for instance, is almost identical in wording to Westminster’s own.3

The 1677 drafting

The 1677 confession took shape as Particular Baptists sought to demonstrate their doctrinal unity with other Calvinistic dissenters under pressure from the Anglican state church, softening its critics’ suspicion that Baptists departed from settled Reformed teaching. William Collins and Nehemiah Coxe served as its editors.4

The 1689 General Assembly

Persecution kept the 1677 confession from formal, public endorsement for over a decade. Once conditions allowed it, Benjamin Keach was among the Particular Baptist leaders who called together a general assembly in London in 1689 to reaffirm the document, now known as the Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, on behalf of the gathered churches.2 Keach himself illustrates the distinction the confession states: baptized as a believer in 1655, he first held General Baptist convictions before coming, by 1672, to the Particular Baptist theology the confession would later put in writing.5

Reception in America

The confession became the founding statement of the American Reformed Baptist movement in 1742, when the Philadelphia Baptist Association adopted it, with two minor revisions, as the Philadelphia Confession of Faith.1

Relationship to Westminster and Savoy

The confession’s authors treated the Westminster Confession and its Larger Catechism as carrying real doctrinal weight, departing from them only where their Baptist convictions required it.2 Chapters on the Trinity, the divine decree, sin, and the person and work of Christ largely restate Westminster’s own wording. The clearest differences fall in two areas: church government, where the confession states a congregational rather than presbyterian polity, and baptism, where it restricts the ordinance to professing believers rather than extending it to their infant children, continuing the position the Particular Baptists had already confessed in 1644.2

Historical Significance

The confession remains, today, the confessional standard most closely identified with churches that call themselves Reformed Baptist. Most Baptist churches, however, do not intentionally follow it; many instead hold to later, shorter statements such as the New Hampshire Confession of 1833.6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Samuel Eldon Waldron, Faith, Obedience, and Justification: Current Evangelical Departures from Sola Fide (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2005), 122. ↩ ↩2

  2. Daniel David Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach: Baptist Expositor of Puritan Doctrine,” in “Eternal Covenant: The Trinitarian Shape of an Historic Baptist Doctrine” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2022), 20-51, at 21. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  3. Matthew Michael Barrett, “Exploring the Relationship Between Effectual Calling and Regeneration in the Reformed Ordo Salutis,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 432-72. ↩

  4. Jared Heath Moore, A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), chap. 3, “On Concupiscence, the Roman Catholics Rejected Augustine and the Reformed Tradition Followed Augustine,” 121. ↩

  5. Scheiderer, “Benjamin Keach,” in “Eternal Covenant,” 24-25. ↩

  6. Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 29-93, at 73. ↩