I wanted to recommend a free software program I’ve used for quite a few years now, available on-line. It’s called Reformed Confessions. Information about it can be found here. I use it often when doing research. Many thanks to Daric Bossman, who provides this free program. I use if often when working on blog entries, or preparing material I’ll be teaching on.
“Reformed Confessions is an MS Windows Help file that contains many of the historic and Reformed Christian creeds, confessions, and catechisms. It runs on Win3.1, Win95, Win98, and most likely Win2000, and is about 600k in size.”
It contains the following documents:
· The Apostles’ Creed
· The Nicene Creed
· The Athanasian Creed
· The Chalcedonian Creed
· The Belgic Confession
· The Canons of Dort
· The Heidelberg Catechism
· The Westminster Confession
· The Westminster Larger Catechism
· The Westminster Shorter Catechism
· The French Confession
· The Second Helvetic Confession
· The Waldensian Confession
· The Children’s Catechism (from Summertown Texts)
· Savoy Declaration
· London Confession of Baptist Faith
· Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
· Lausanne Covenant
· Manila Manifesto
· Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
“Reformed Confessions is an MS Windows Help file that contains many of the historic and Reformed Christian creeds, confessions, and catechisms. It runs on Win3.1, Win95, Win98, and most likely Win2000, and is about 600k in size.”
It contains the following documents:
· The Apostles’ Creed
· The Nicene Creed
· The Athanasian Creed
· The Chalcedonian Creed
· The Belgic Confession
· The Canons of Dort
· The Heidelberg Catechism
· The Westminster Confession
· The Westminster Larger Catechism
· The Westminster Shorter Catechism
· The French Confession
· The Second Helvetic Confession
· The Waldensian Confession
· The Children’s Catechism (from Summertown Texts)
· Savoy Declaration
· London Confession of Baptist Faith
· Thirty-nine Articles of Religion
· Lausanne Covenant
· Manila Manifesto
· Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
It has a topic index, and under Win95 it has the equivalent of a concordance of the material. A brief description of each document is given, as well as references.
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10 comments:
I've been using this for years now myself! What a great resource!
James,
This will work on XP as well. I don't know if it will work with Vista, as Vista does not use the Help files that the other Windows systems use. When using Vista, I've had problems with some programs that use the Help system to read them.
Thanks for the info Gene- I'm still using an older version of windows, and i've had this program for years.
Funny, everytime I upgrade windows, i long for the older version.
My laptop still runs windows 98, and I never have any problems.
Heehee! Welcome to Windows!
I use XP on my desktop and Vista on my new laptop. Honestly, I'm not a fan of Vista and I'm thinking of reformatting my laptop with XP.
Hey James, I hate to tell you this, but you must upgrade to XP or Vista for Windows 98, 95, etc... are no longer supported by Microsoft (meaning no new security updates nor new protection against new malware, spyware, and other viruses that your firewall and anti-virus programs will not catch or fix.
I'm willing to bet that right now anytime you go on to the internet with any 98 or older version of Windows that someone is tracking your every move - and you are a public figure with people who'd like to shut down your ministry.
In God's Grace,
Ric
It's my old laptop Ric, I don't do very much with it. If it's ever online, it logs into ProsApologian Chat, and stays there. But thanks for your concern, i'll take it into consideration.
James,
This is one of the examples that the Calvinist Prots did, they have regional confessions and so many of them.
In the Lutheran tradition there are no such thing. We do not have a Scandinavian Confession or Slovak Confession.
Lutherans point you to one - the BoC. at least this is what determines a Lutheran. You do not subcribe to it then you are not.
In Calvinism you can be a WCF confessor or a London Bap confessor and you are still considered Calvinist.
Keep up the good work.
It's true many of our confessions are regional, but it's also true that those confessions were drawn up in dialogue with representatives from those regions. The LBCF2, for example, draws on the WCF and Savoy; so it isn't as if there is a wide difference, since many of the articles are repeated verbatim. The LBCF differs over issues of religious liberty, church polity, and lacks the strict covenantal structure of the WCF. However, it was composed, in part, to show the Presbyterians and Congregationalists that we are of like faith, but not like order. There is no key doctrine on which we disagree. The First London Confession was drawn on the True Confession and bearing the marks of the Dutch, though it is itself an English confession; and there were representatives from all the Reformed churches at the Synod of Dort. The earliest Reformed confessions were drawn up specifically to be inclusive of other regions, not exclusive.
Further, the Lutherans were largely confined to the Germanic estates, the Reformed reached much further politically, and our confessions are "regional" because they reflect the nationalism of the eras in which they were drawn, so the reason for their regionalism is partly political; and, in that respect the Lutherans are no different.
No problem James!
God Bless!
Gene,
My point is that you can not be a Lutheran (at least an orthodox one) if you can not affirm the BoC, whereas you can be a Calvinist if you do not affirm say the LBCF but the 3 forms of unity.
In othewords, the Lutherans insist on unity in confession without variation. They have a thing called adiaphora which covers style and practice but not the core Lutheran thought
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