Does anyone know where I could find a list of authoritative documents (most often confessions of faith) and the denomination they apply to?
Examples - feel free to correct me:
Orthodox Bishop Hilarion Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."
I took a quick look in Wikipedia, beginning with world religeons and worked my way to Christianity. It was just overwhelming, all the branches and subgroups. It will be interesting to see what the responses are.
Christian Reformed Church - The Heidelberg Catechism: http://anglicansonline.org/basics/thirty-nine_articles.html
Dutch Reformed, as above
Hope that helps. Great thread idea; really useful.
---
Edit: Probably worth noting that though these might be historically the authoritative documents, the degree to which they are recognised as such will obviously vary from church to church, minister to minister, congregant to congregant.
Carpe verbum.
MJ. Smith:Presbyterians - Westminster Standards
Presbyterians have a whole bunch, at least PCUSA does. I used to be a member of a PCUSA church in Seattle, and we had the Book of Confessions, a collection of historical and contemporary creeds, confessions, and catechisms, that formed the constitution of that church body. Most individuals didn't own a personal copy of it or refer to it, but it was available for sale at our book table, and being a theology nerd, I bought one. It includes:
I've now thrown in my hat with the Mennonites for this stage of my life. My church is an inter-Mennonite congregation, so we are guided by the statements of faith of both Mennonite Brethren and General Conference Mennonites, though I must say confessions of faith are not emphasized that much in the life of our church.
Other historic and contemporary confessions of faith of importance to Mennonites are:
But as this helpful article, Confessions of Faith in the Anabaptist/Mennonite Tradition , points out, "Mennonites are neither a creedal church nor a confessional one in the sense of adhering to a single authoritative confession. They are confessional, however, in the sense of having authored numerous confessions that at times have played important roles in church life."
MJ. Smith:Does anyone know where I could find a list of authoritative documents (most often confessions of faith) and the denomination they apply to?
I doubt that such an exhaustive list exists anywhere. It seems you might need to take it upon yourself to create one.
How to Ask for Help | Logos Wiki | My Machine Specs | My Blog
MJ. Smith:Examples - feel free to correct me:
Southern Baptist Convention - Baptist Faith & Message 2000 (comparison to 1925 & 1963)
Evangelical Free Church of America -
Assemblies of God - Foundational Truths
While not a "denomination" many non-denominational congregations derive their Confessions from these standards: National Association of Evangelicals, Moody Bible Institute, Dallas Theological Seminary.
Making Disciples! Logos Ecosystem = Logos8 on Microsoft Surface Pro 4 (Win10), Android app on tablet, FSB on iPhone, [deprecated] Windows App, Proclaim, Faithlife.com, FaithlifeTV via Connect subscription.
MJ. Smith: Does anyone know where I could find a list of authoritative documents (most often confessions of faith) and the denomination they apply to?
I hear the term Confession of Faith used a lot but am not sure what you mean by it. Similarly authoritative document. Do you mean a document that one is expected to accept in order to be accepted as a member by a denomination, church or other group of christians?
What I am looking for are documents that one or more denominations speak of as "authoritative" or "normative". Different theological streams mean different things by "authoritative' - an issue I am not addressing at this point. In the early church these tended to be creeds (such as the Nicene Creed or the Apostle's Creed) or baptismal vows. At the time of the Reformation, they became much longer documents with a variety of names the most common being Confession of Faith (Schleitheim Confession, Somerset Confession of Faith, Confession of Cyril Lucaris ...) or catechism (Heidleberg Catechism, Keach's Catechism, Anglican Catechism). "Statement" is a more contemporary term (Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, Statement of Faith of the United Church of Christ) ...For confessional churches, these documents are a player in theological thought (think Lutheran and The Book of Concord). The degree to which the documents are used currently as a rule of the beliefs of the congregation is high variable. Many congregations have their own versions on the websites, often tagged "what we believe" but without any statement regarding the status of the statement in defining membership or theology. Because of the volume of these they are not what I am interested in.