Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 26:1 (Spring 2022)
Article: Above And Beyond: Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist Covenant Theology
Author: Samuel D. Renihan

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Above And Beyond: Seventeenth-Century Particular Baptist Covenant Theology

Samuel D. Renihan

Samuel D. Renihan is Pastor of Trinity Reformed Baptist Church in La Mirada, California. He earned his MDiv from Westminster Theological Seminary, Escondido, California, and his PhD from the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He serves as an adjunct professor at International Reformed Baptist Seminary. He is author of various books on theology proper, covenant theology, and Baptist history, including The Mystery of Christ, His Covenant, and His Kingdom (Founders Press, 2019).

Introduction

It is well known that many Baptists of today trace their theological lineage to the early decades of the seventeenth century when priests and parishioners in the Church of England began to question the biblical validity of the baptism of infants. This reevaluation was neither sudden nor unexpected, considering the preceding one hundred years of history known as the Protestant Reformation. Like the larger Reformation movement, the reexamination of the subjects and mode of baptism was a matter of studying what the Scriptures taught, with special regard for the positive institution of the ordinance by Christ in Matthew 28 and the illustrative examples of baptisms in the books of Acts. Based on these passages, and others, some concluded that the Scriptures commanded baptism to be administered upon profession of faith in the mode of immersion.

What is less well known is that the practice of exclusive administration

SBJT 26:1 (Spring 2022) p. 91

of baptism to professing believers, or credobaptism, was not only based on an argument from positive law, but also on a complementary foundation of covenant theology. This article focuses on the covenant theology of one group in the seventeenth century which later came to be known as “Particular Baptists” and are identifiable by their two confessions—the First London Confession of Faith, published in 1644, and the Second London Confession of Faith, published in 1677.1

Those who practiced credobaptism did not have a clear name or identity in the early decades of the seventeenth century. There was no “Baptist” denomination made up of “Baptist” churches. In fact, the most consistent name applied to credobaptists was that of “anabaptists,” an epithet attributed to them by those who believed that the baptism of infants, or paedobaptism, was biblically faithful. Among those who endured this label, despite disowning it over and over, there were very diverse groups with diverse geneses. It would be a mistake to conflate these various...