This article reviews James Renihan’s To the Judicious and Impartial Reader, a commentary on the Second London Confession of Faith (“1689).
Most popular works on 2LCF seemed to ignore the Confession’s own wording and instead used its framework as an outline for their own theology. Treatments of the Confession’s language, its historical and theological precursors as well as the interpretive traditions it was founded upon, were hard to find – aside from isolated lectures, articles, and the occasional monograph. Now with the publication of Renihan’s exposition, the help that I looked for over 15 years ago is finally available.
If you’re familiar with James Renihan’s prior work in lectures and other books, you will recognize his “contextual-historical” method (2) and its guiding principle: “From my perspective, the key question is what did the Confession mean? to its readers in its own context” (7).
Read the entire article here.