One of the defining principles of being a Reformed Baptist is that we ¹Added 3/18/2020: I agree with the theology of Reformed Baptists but I don’t consider myself part of their tribe. I am an evangelical with Reformed theology and a baptistic approach to the sacraments. So when I say “we” I mean those who hold to that theology. have a confession of faith that is in the theological stream of the Reformers. ²Actually, we have two, the 1644 and the 1677/1689 confessions. The reason we focus on the second is not an abandonment of the first but that the second fleshes out the theology in the first. Therefore, I would be remiss if I ignored the Confession in this discussion so I’m going spend some time in this post looking at the confession and highlighting some of the hermeneutical principles found there. There isn’t a chapter specifically on hermeneutics so I’m going to have to do some reading between the lines to try to detect the principle used.

This is but a humble blog entry and the Confession covers a lot of territory so I’m going to focus on two chapters that I know well and that should illustrate our hermeneutic approach: Chapter 7 ‘Of God’s Covenant’ and Chapter 22 ‘Of Religious Worship and the Sabbath Day.’ I think these two chapters will serve us best in trying to address this subject in small scope of a blog post. Chapter 22 should highlight the Reformed aspect of our hermeneutic and chapter 7 the Baptist portion.

Chapter 22 addresses more than the Sabbath but I’m going to confine my comments to only the Sabbath portions. That isn’t to say that there aren’t some interesting things in the other portions of that chapter but I had to pick one. So let’s start with the first part of paragraph 7:

As it is the law of nature, that in general a proportion of time, by God’s appointment, be set apart for the worship of God, so by his Word, in a positive moral, and perpetual commandment, binding all men, in all ages, he hath particularly appointed one day in seven for a sabbath to be kept holy unto him…

Notice that the Sabbath is spoken of as being part of “the law of nature”. What are the hermeneutics behind this conception of the Sabbath? ³I’m fighting the impulse to allow this to turn into a defense of the idea of a Christian Sunday Sabbath. There are Reformed Baptist explanations elsewhere (20kb PDF). Richard Barcellos has an interesting series on the subject as well. I’m trying to stick to the hermeneutic that includes that principle. The Sabbath is what is called a “creation ordinance”, that is, a rule or principle that was established in and at creation. Since it is rooted in creation, it transcends any of the specific covenants just as marriage or work do. That isn’t to say that the covenants don’t add to things it, simply that the principle transcends them. So in the Mosaic Covenant, God appends rules to the covenant that pass away with that covenant, but the Sabbath itself abides. Time set aside from work to be used to worship God in is a creation ordinance and is called a Sabbath in scripture.

This is the Reformed understanding of how the covenants relate. Hermeneutically, we presume continunity from one covenant era to the next. We needn’t see God reestablish his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Mosaic Covenant to know that that covenant is in effect in the Mosaic. The continuity is presumed and, in the case I mentioned, it is affirmed in Scripture also (Ex 33:1).

Next we’ll consider chapter 7 on the covenants. This is where we will differ from our other Reformed brothers. The part I want to focus on is in paragraph 3:

This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament

What is unique and Baptist here may not be obvious at first glance but it is important. Our confession handles redemptive history in a more inclusive fashion than our paedobaptist brothers’ confession does. See if you can spot the difference. Here is a similar paragraph from the Westminster Confession of Faith:

This covenant was differently administered in the time of the law, and in the time of the gospel: under the law it was administered by promises, prophecies, sacrifices, circumcision, the paschal lamb, and other types and ordinances (WFC 7.5)

Did you catch it? What about the time from Adam to Abraham? In the Westminster it is unintentionally excluded whereas in the Baptist Confession it is gathered into the consideration. Though I don’t want this to turn into a criticism of paedobaptism, I need to highlight this point. From Adam to Abraham there was not an external, objective sign of the covenant. People were brought into the Covenant of Grace only by faith (see Hebrews 11 on Abel, Enoch and Noah.) As we Baptists consider the nature of God’s covenants, we incorporate this time period and acknowledge that for a significant portion of redemptive history children of covenant members were not automatically covenant members. That the sign of the covenant was not automatically applied to them.

The hermeneutic principle I detect here is that we will incorporate all periods of redemptive history when considering the relationship between the covenants. Because there was a long period of time when the covenant was not made with those without faith we must admit that it is possible in the New Covenant that this situation could apply once more. When we consider the nature of the New Covenant, the blessings of the New Covenant and the example of our Apostle’s in propagating the New Covenant, we see that it is not beyond what God has done in the past to establish his covenant only with those whom he has given the gift of faith. Our formulation of the New Covenant comes not from only the New Testament (the Dispensationalist error) and not from only redemptive history since Abraham (the paedobaptist error). Instead we consider all of the eras of God’s work in redeeming a people unto himself.