Category Archives: Confessions

A Sevenfold Prayer

Pray this prayer today. It is a modified form of the sevenfold prayer of the baptismal life found in the Book of Common Prayer.

Deliver me, Lord, from the way of sin and death.
Open my heart to your grace and truth.
Fill me with your holy and life-giving Spirit.
Keep me in the faith and communion of your holy Church.
Teach me to love others in the power of the Spirit.
Send me into the world in witness to your love.
Bring me to the fullness of your peace and glory.

Here is the original with the structured liturgy of the BCP:

Leader Deliver them, O Lord, from the way of sin and death.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Open their hearts to your grace and truth.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Fill them with your holy and life-giving Spirit.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Keep them in the faith and communion of your holy Church.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Teach them to love others in the power of the Spirit.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Send them into the world in witness to your love.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

Leader Bring them to the fullness of your peace and glory.
People Lord, hear our prayer.

The Celebrant says

Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection and look for him to come again in glory; who lives and reigns now and forever. Amen.

Confession of St. Augustine – Free Audiobook

ChristianAudio.com is giving away a great audio book this month. I encourage all of you to download it and listen to it. It will be one of the most edifying books you will have ever read (or listened to). 🙂

Here are the details:

Saint Augustine’s Confessions

Saint Augustine’s contributions to Christian theology are second to no other post-apostolic author in the whole sweep of church history. Yet along side his doctrinal treatises, Augustine tells a story of his life devoted to Christ as his only satisfaction. The Confessions is at once the autobiographical account of Augustine’s life of Christian faith and at the same time a compelling theology of Christian spirituality for everyone. Among the most important classics in Western literature, it continues to engage modern readers through Augustine’s timeless illustrations and beautiful prose. Augustine’s Confessions is a book to relish the first time through and then profoundly enjoy over a lifetime of revisiting.

Browse to the Free Download Page to receive this offer.

Select the Download format and add it to your cart.  Then use the coupon code AUG2008 during checkout to receive your free download.

Free Audiobook: Confessions of the Reformed Church

This month’s free audiobook from Christianaudio.com is the best one I’ve seen yet! I encourage everyone to download it ASAP for FREE! 🙂

Confessions of the Reformed Church

Here are some details:

The Augsburg, The Westminister, and the Heidelberg Confessions. Quite simply, these are three of the most important and well-known confessions of the Reformed faith. Concise, yet with excellent detail, there is no better way to get an introduction and background of historic Reformed faith.

Add the Download format of The Confessions of the Reformed Faith to your cart and then use the coupon code MAR2008 during checkout to receive this title for free.

Amend ETS?

Ray Van Neste and Denny Burk have started a web site for the co-sponsoring of an amendment dealing with the minimal doctrinal requirements of the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS). For an introduction to the site, see the changes that they want to make below:

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Read Amendment

Before introducing the amendment to you, a little background is in order. In 2001 at the 53rd annual meeting of the ETS, Ray Van Neste proposed that the ETS adopt the doctrinal basis of the U.K.’s Tyndale Fellowship. The Tyndale fellowship unites around evangelical truths a broad group of Christian scholars from varying denominational and theological perspectives (Calvinists, Wesleyans, Baptists, Anglicans, etc). The members of the Tyndale fellowship agree to the statement of belief used by the U.K.’s Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship (UCCF).

The current ETS doctrinal basis has two parts: (1) a statement on inerrancy, and (2) a statement on the Trinity. It reads as follows:

“The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.”

We are proposing that the ETS adopt the UCCF statement with the current doctrinal basis of the ETS incorporated into it. One other addition defines the “written word of God” as the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. So we propose to amend the current doctrinal basis as follows (underlined words indicate where the current doctrinal basis has been incorporated into the UCCF statement):

ARTICLE III. DOCTRINAL BASIS

1. The Bible alone, and the Bible in its entirety, is the Word of God written and is therefore inerrant in the autographs. This written word of God consists of the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments and is the supreme authority in all matters of belief and behavior.

2. God is a Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each an uncreated person, one in essence, equal in power and glory.

3. God is sovereign in creation, revelation, redemption and final judgment.

4. Since the fall, the whole of humankind is sinful and guilty, so that everyone is subject to God’s wrath and condemnation.

5. The Lord Jesus Christ, God’s incarnate Son, is fully God; he was born of a virgin; his humanity is real and sinless; he died on the cross, was raised bodily from death and is now reigning over heaven and earth.

6. Sinful human beings are redeemed from the guilt, penalty and power of sin only through the sacrificial death once and for all time of their representative and substitute, Jesus Christ, the only mediator between them and God.

7. Those who believe in Christ are pardoned all their sins and accepted in God’s sight only because of the righteousness of Christ credited to them; this justification is God’s act of undeserved mercy, received solely by trust in him and not by their own efforts.

8. The Holy Spirit alone makes the work of Christ effective to individual sinners, enabling them to turn to God from their sin and to trust in Jesus Christ.

9. The Holy Spirit lives in all those he has regenerated. He makes them increasingly Christ-like in character and behavior and gives them power for their witness in the world.

10. The one holy universal church is the Body of Christ, to which all true believers belong.

11. The Lord Jesus Christ will return in person, to judge everyone, to execute God’s just condemnation on those who have not repented and to receive the redeemed to eternal glory.

As stated above, the UCCF statement unites a broad constituency of evangelicals in the U.K. We think there is great potential for it to be a unifying doctrinal basis for the various evangelical constituencies represented in the ETS as well.

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The current supporters of this amendment can be found here at this link.

My Use of the Reformed Confessions

John Frame has an excellent article on the use of Reformed Confessions.

The quote I enjoy the most is, “I look forward to the time when God will equip his church to write new confessions. The Reformed confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries are wonderful documents that have served the church well. But we need confessions that speak to the issues of our own time: abortion, postmodern ideology, egalitarianism, new spiritualities, ecumenism, the gifts of the Spirit, common grace, the precise role of the Mosaic law the status of non-Christian religions, the obligation of Christians to the poor, the nature of worship, biblical standards for missions and evangelism, and, indeed, the nature of confessional subscription. We need confessions also that can state the old Reformed and biblical doctrines in contemporary language and support those doctrines with the biblical scholarship that has developed over the last 400 years.

[HT: Mark Horne]