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Topic

Confessional Theology

3 sermons · All topics

Mar 16, 2025

The Use of the 2nd London Confession

Jim Butler

A confession of faith is not a human addition to Scripture but a tool the church uses to define, defend, discriminate, discipline, and delimit its doctrine. Drawing on passages from the Pastoral Epistles, Jude, and Ephesians 4, this Sunday School address argues that the Second London Baptist Confession of 1689 serves the local church in six concrete ways: it establishes doctrinal boundaries, equips members for apologetics, vets candidates for ministry, grounds church discipline, protects Christian liberty by identifying what lies outside its purview, and anchors the church in the catholicity of the Reformed tradition. The session closes with a call to reject autonomous biblicism in favour of confessional theology understood as the fruit of the Spirit's ongoing work in the teaching ministry of Christ's church.

Jan 4, 2025

CTF 2025: Why This Conference?

Unknown

This recorded conversation introduces a Reformed Baptist theological conference structured around a chapter-by-chapter study of the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith. The speakers explain that the conference was conceived to promote edification among pastors and laypeople alike by gathering around the central doctrines summarized in the confession. The format draws on the pattern of a long-running Southern California Reformed Baptist conference that worked through confession chapters progressively over successive years. The vision is explicitly confessional: to equip God's people to know what Scripture teaches and to receive faithfully the theological heritage passed down through the Reformed Baptist tradition.

Apr 27, 2024

CTF 2024 Session 7 - Q&A Panel Discussion

Jim Butler

A conference Q&A panel addresses a wide range of confessional, theological, and pastoral questions arising from lectures on the 1689 Second London Baptist Confession and its relationship to broader Reformed orthodoxy. Topics range from the nature of creedal subscription and what it means to be Reformed, to the hermeneutics of typology, the mystery language of Ephesians 3, the humanity and knowledge of Christ, divine immutability and impassibility, and the differences between the Second London Confession and the Three Forms of Unity. The panel consistently grounds its answers in the churchly authority of confessions over individual interpretation, the centrality of the means of grace for generational faithfulness, and the necessity of theological humility before the accumulated witness of the church.