Journal: Journal of the Institute of Reformed Baptist Studies
Volume: JIRBS 03:1 (NA 2016)
Article: The Covenantal Theology Of John Spilsbery
Author: Matthew C. Bingham

JIRBS 3 (2016) p. 65

The Covenantal Theology Of John Spilsbery

Matthew C. Bingham*

* Matthew Bingham is a Ph.D. Candidate, School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University, Belfast.

Confessional Reformed Baptists have often struggled to locate themselves on the ecclesial map. Because they reject paedobaptism, they are immediately united with a broad and diverse coalition of other Christians who share their commitment to believers’ baptism. And yet, confessional Reformed Baptists hold closely to many other theological principles that would align them, not with other Baptists, but with confessional Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Those who wish to be both “Reformed” and “Baptist” are thus caught between two seemingly irreconcilable poles, forever searching for a settled identity that can comfortably accommodate all aspects of their theological position. And, of course, in this pursuit, those who subscribe the 1677/89 London Confession of Faith (2LCF) are simply following after the document’s drafters—churchmen who explained their decision to mirror the language of the Westminster Confession of 1646 (WCF) and Savoy Declaration of 1658 (SD) in terms of their earnest desire to “manifest . . . consent with both, in all the fundamental articles of the Christian Religion.” Having “no itch to clogge Religion with new words” those seventeenth-century Baptists followed, in the main, the “wholesome Protestant Doctrine” set forth by theologians who were certainly not Baptists.1

During the past several decades, the search for a theological identity that is at once both Reformed and Baptist has led many to reconsider some of the most fundamental theological assumptions upon which the statements of the 2LCF rest—namely, the confession’s understanding of covenant or federal theology. In its treatment “Of God’s Covenant” (2LCF 7), the Confession varies in subtle but significant ways from its paedobaptist counterparts, a fact that has sometimes been overlooked by subsequent Reformed

JIRBS 3 (2016) p. 66

Baptist readers.2 More recently, however, a surge of books and articles have attempted to take seriously these nuances which distinguish the 2LCF’s federal theology in order to define what might be regarded as an authentically baptistic federalism.3 Rather than beginning with the covenantal theology of the Westminster Confession and then attempting an ex post facto reattachment of believers’ baptism, this new approach is appealing in that it looks to build a baptistic federalism from the ground up, constructing a more satisfying...