Baptist Confession of Faith, the 1689

ist Confession of Faith teach? Advanced systematic theology. All the major doctrines of the Bible are present and accounted for with proof texts.\r\n\r\nWhy do I say it contains 'advanced' systematic theology? This confession was shaped by some of the greatest theologians who ever lived and every word of it is carefully chosen. This is not a document you skim read, but one you read carefully and meditatively. Thus, it is truly 'advanced' reading.\r\n\r\nIs it for everyone? If you claim to come from the Reformed tradition I would recommend you try reading through it at least once. Firstly, to expose yourself to first class teaching even if you don't understand it all. Secondly, to give yourself some awareness of historical theology. Not everything in the document is supported by all those who call themselves Reformed today. Nevertheless it is good to see where your forebears stood on something like children dying in infancy and whether we are warned against the pope in Scripture.\r\n\r\nWhy read the Peter Masters' edition? The theology is hard enough without the additional struggle of reading older English. So this edition helpfully updates the Confession by making it more accessible to modern readers. Masters writes: 'In this edition the Confession has been updated so that archaic, antiquated words (and word endings) have been replaced with their modern equivalents. The punctuation has also been updated, and difficult-to-follow sentences have been reconstructed, but as little as possible to ensure faithful reproduction of the original sense. Where further explanation was felt to be necessary, or where much more modern words were called for, these have been inserted additionally in italic brackets.'\r\n\r\nYou may not get a Masters of Divinity by reading the writings of these doctors, but no doubt you will learn a thing or two and bring benefit to your soul. Read LessRead less about To get a good understanding of

nt NOT the anabaptistic movement as explained in the introduction.\nI would highly recommend this small booklet to any baptist to purchase and read, it comprises of 33 chapters on all the major themes of doctrine beginning with their understanding on Scripture all the way to the end times teaching. each chapter has a number of subsections, the one 'on the church' is quite detailed and is worth a look for this was the main departure from the Westminster Confession of Faith on which it was based. Read LessRead less about the most famous and well known of the