WHAT WE BELIEVE

St James’ Guyra is an Anglican Church.

Which means that we stand on the Holy Scriptures (God’s written Word) as the final authority in all matters of faith and conduct.

In line with Biblical Truth and our Anglican heritage, we affirm:

  1. A belief in the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; three distinct Persons co-equal in Glory and co-eternal in majesty and of one substantial Godhead, such that there are not three gods but one God.
  2. A belief in the Holy Scriptures as divine revelation, inerrantly inspired by God, carrying the full measure of His authority, containing all things necessary to salvation, and to be submitted to in all matters of faith and practice of life.
  3. A belief in the One Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, who in His person is both fully God and fully man; of one substance with the Father in regard to his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us in regard to his manhood.
  4. A belief in the perfect obedience of Christ, His true and actual suffering, His substitutionary and atoning death on the cross, and His bodily resurrection and ascension as the only means given for our salvation and reconciliation with God.
  5. A belief that God’s Holy Spirit is given to all believers at conversion, so they might be convicted of their sinful nature and need for Christ as their saviour. And that God’s Spirit is subsequently alive and dwells within the Christian to cause ongoing repentance, faith and the ability to act in a Godly manner.
  6. A belief in faith alone as the only grounds for the righteousness of Christ being imputed to us for our justification before God (justification by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone).
  7. A belief in the return of Jesus Christ in glory to judge the living and the dead, and a belief in the bodily resurrection from the dead of all people and their entrance into either eternal damnation or everlasting blessedness and communion with God.
  8. A belief in the one, holy, catholic (universal), and apostolic church as those persons that have been redeemed entirely by the work of Christ and called out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of error into truth, out of death into eternal life.
  9. A belief that the visible church exists to worship the Triune God and to proclaim Jesus Christ as Saviour to everyone in all areas of public and private life. This includes sitting under faithful biblical preaching, and participating in the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper (also known as Holy Communion). As is befitting the ‘priesthood of all believers’, the whole church (not just the clergy) is also called to faithfully minister Christ’s word to one another and to devote ourselves to prayer and song.
  10. A belief in the historic creeds of the Church (namely the Apostle’s Creed, Nicene Creed, & Athanasian Creed) as accurate representations of the essence of the Christian faith, and in the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church, as a coherent and concise expression of Anglican doctrine.