The PC(USA) is a “confessional church.”  This means that our basic beliefs are embodied in a series of statements.  Every few generations we try to put our beliefs into writing, in what is called a creed, or a confession, which is a statement of what we understand the teaching of the Bible to be.  These statements must reflect the truths found in Scripture and are sometimes revised by vote of the whole church through the presbyteries and the General Assembly.

 
Our denomination is governed by a Constitution.  The first part of our Constitution is called The Book of Confessions.  This collection of eleven (11) documents tells us who we are, what we believe, and what we resolve to do.  They were written throughout history, from the time of the early church to the present day.  The Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed are the earliest.  The Brief Statement of Faith (1991) is the newest.  In the 1640s, Britain’s Christian leaders gathered at Westminster Abbey to spell out their beliefs in the form of a confession, which became the main document of Presbyterians in the New World.  Reading these documents will help you know you are stepping into and can serve as a guide for the maturing of your personal faith.  Presbyterians believe that the spiritual life of the individual is essential to faith but that it must also have obedience to a disciplined mind.Every few generations we try to put our beliefs into writing, in what is called a creed, or a confession, which is a statement of what we understand the teaching of the Bible to be.  These statements are sometimes revised by vote of the whole church through the presbyteries and the General Assembly.

Reading these documents will serve as a guide for the maturing of your personal faith.  Presbyterians believe that the spiritual life of the individual is essential to faith but that it must also have obedience to a disciplined mind. 

There are 4 types of documents in the Book of Confessions.

• A Creed.  This is a brief statement of faith which summarizes key beliefs.
• A Confession.  This is a more comprehensive statement of faith and usually begins with the words “I believe…”
• A Catechism.  This is a teaching tool and is usually written in a question-and-answer format.
• A Declaration.  This is a statement which declares that because we believe one thing we can’t believe or do something else.

The Eleven Documents in the Book of Confessions

1.    The Nicene Creed

Date:           325-385

Place:         Nicea and Constantinople

Issue:          The Nature of Jesus Christ

In the first three centuries, the church found itself in a hostile environment, struggling with the challenge of interpreting a Jewish-Christian gospel to a Greco-Roman world while fending off unbiblical concepts about God and experiencing persecution.  In A.D. 312, Constantine won control of the Roman Empire in a victory he attributed to the intervention of Jesus Christ, he elevated Christianity to favored status in the empire. “One God, one Lord, one faith, one church, one empire, one emperor” became his motto.

The new emperor soon discovered that “one faith and one church” were fractured by theological disputes, especially conflicting understandings of the nature of Christ.  To counter a widening rift within the church, Constantine convened a council in Nicaea in A.D. 325. A creed was written and signed by a majority of the bishops.  Nevertheless, the two parties continued to battle each other. In 381, a second council met in Constantinople. It adopted a revised and expanded form of the A.D. 325 creed, now known as the Nicene Creed.

2.    The Apostles’ Creed

Date:           180-750

Issue:          The God of the Old and New Testaments

Although not written by apostles, the Apostles’ Creed reflects the faith of the first century church. The creed’s structure may be based on Jesus’ command to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.   In a time when most Christians were illiterate, memorizing the Apostles’ Creed, along with the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments, helped preserve and transmit the faith of the western churches.  Around A.D. 180, Roman Christians developed an early form of the Apostles’ Creed to affirm that the God of creation is the Father of Jesus Christ. Candidates for membership in the church were asked at baptism to state what they believed. They responded in the words of this creed.  By the eighth century, the creed had attained its present form. 

3.    The Scots Confession

Date:           1560

Place:         Scotland

Issue:          The Nature of the True Church

The Scots Confession was written at a turning point in the history of the Scottish nation. When the Queen Regent Mary of Guise died, the Protestant nobility of Scotland secured English recognition of Scottish sovereignty, the Scottish Parliament declared Scotland a Protestant nation.  While affirming that the Bible is the norm by which the kirk (church) judges itself, the Scots Confession also sees the Scriptures as a sacred history in which the present day church, through the Holy Spirit, participates until the end of time. God’s providential deliverance is a continuing, not merely a past, reality.  “Cleave, serve, worship, trust” are key words in this document. As a call to action in a turbulent time, the Scots Confession reflects a spirit of trust and a commitment to the God whose miraculous deliverance the Scots had experienced firsthand.

The Scots Confession sets forth three marks of the true and faithful church: “the true preaching of the Word of God,” “the right administration of the sacraments of Christ Jesus,” and “ecclesiastical discipline . . . whereby vice is repressed and virtue nourished.”

4.    The Heidelberg Catechism

Date:           1562

Place:         Germany

Issue:          The Lord’s Supper

Because the Reformed tradition did not believe in the real, bodily presence of Christ in bread and wine, Lutherans believed that they were desecrating the Lord’s Supper.  To end the controversy, Frederick the Elector, ruler of the Palatinate, asked two young men of Heidelberg to prepare a catechism acceptable to both sides. They revised an earlier, using its outline and some ninety of its questions and answers.

The Heidelberg Catechism opens with two questions concerning our comfort in life and death. The knowledge that our only comfort is Jesus Christ frames the remainder of the catechism. Each of its three parts corresponds to a line of Romans 7:24–25 (NRSV), where Paul cries:  “Wretched man that I am; who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  Providing a basis for peaceful coexistence between Lutheran and Reformed Christians, the catechism affirmed that “by this visible sign and pledge . . . we come to share in his true body and blood through the working of the Holy Spirit . . .”

5.    The Second Helvetic Confession

Date:           16^th Century

Place:         Switzerland

Issue:          The Authority of Scripture for Church Government

The word “Helvetic” is Latin for “Swiss.”  In 1531 Heinrich Bullinger became minister of the church in Zurich.  Bullinger was a model Reformed minister. He expounded Scripture at least twice a week, wrote Latin commentaries on many books of the Old and New Testaments, initiated a system of schools for Zurich, was in correspondence with leaders of the Reformation and with rulers throughout Europe, and welcomed religious refugees into his own home. When the plague swept through Zurich in 1564, he insisted upon ministering to the afflicted, even though he knew he might become infected and die.  In 1561, Bullinger composed the document that later became known as the Second Helvetic Confession, intending to attach it to his last will and testament to the Zurich church.  It emphasizes the church and its life and affirms the authority of the Scriptures for the church’s government and reformation.  The confession asks the church to trust in God’s free and gracious election of its membership in Jesus Christ. It also addresses the practical life of the church, detailing matters of worship, church order and conflict, ministry, the sacraments, and marriage.

Westminster Standards

Date:           1649

Place:         England

Issue:          Relationship between God, church and government

In 1643, the English House of Commons called for an assembly to meet in Westminster Abbey.  The Westminster Assembly conducted its work during a civil war between three contending parties. The Anglican party stood for royal rule in England with the sovereign also head of the church’s government. The Presbyterian party sought to vest authority in elected representatives of the people, both in Parliament and in church presbyteries. An emerging third party wanted local autonomy for churches and limited powers for both king and Parliament.  The assembly eventually completed the “Form of Presbyterian Church Government,” a “Directory of Public Worship,” “The Confession of Faith,” “The Larger Catechism,” and “The Shorter Catechism.”

The standards came to New England with the Puritans (Independents) and to the Middle Atlantic states with the Scotch-Irish Presbyterians. In 1729, the standards were adopted as the confessional position of the newly organized Presbyterian synod in the colonies and have played a formative role in American Presbyterianism ever since.  In appealing to Scripture to prepare a covenant theology, the standards had important implications for political thought and practice, reminding both ruler and people of their duties to God and to each other.

6.    The Westminster Confession of Faith

The Westminster Confession affirms God’s work from creation to the resurrection and last judgment.

• God is first, last, and sovereign in all things. God’s people are to understand and bring their lives into accord with God’s wondrous ways and magnificent will.
• Out of nothing, God created all that is, including humans, whom God upholds, directs, and governs.
• Humans, however, did not remain in harmony with God’s will. Sin, which God permitted but did not cause, resulted in corruption of the human condition and of humans’ relationship to God.
• Yet, God has made a covenant of grace with humans; through Christ, relationship to God is restored.
• The Christian life—nurtured by prayer, preaching, and the sacraments, and lived in grace and glory—prepares for God’s predetermined end of mercy (salvation of the elect) and of justice (damnation of the reprobate).

7.    The Larger Catechism

8.    The Shorter Catechism

The Larger Catechism was written primarily for the weekly preaching of church doctrines during worship.  The Shorter Catechism, primarily written for the education of children. Both deal with questions of God, Christ, the Christian life, the Ten Commandments, the sacraments, and the Lord’s Prayer.  Especially famous is the first question and answer of the Shorter Catechism. “What is the chief end of man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.”

9.    The Theological Declaration of Barmen

Date:           1930s

Place:         Germany

Issue:          Who is our Lord? 

The Theological Declaration of Barmen was written by a group of church leaders in Germany to help Christians withstand the challenges of the Nazi party and a popular movement that saw no conflict between Christianity and the ideals of Hitler’s National Socialism. 

When Adolph Hitler was named chancellor, e consolidated his power, abolishing all political rights and democratic processes and obtaining the support of church leaders allied with or sympathetic to the German Christians.  Most Germans took the union of Christianity, nationalism, and militarism for granted, and patriotic sentiments were equated with Christian truth. The German Christians exalted the racially pure nation and the rule of Hitler as God’s will for the German people.

Nonetheless, some in the churches resisted. Following a number of regional meetings, representatives of Lutheran, Reformed, and United churches assemble in Barmen in 1934. The chief item of business was discussion of a declaration to appeal to the Evangelical churches of Germany to stand firm against the German Christian accommodation to National Socialism. The Theological Declaration of Barmen contains six propositions, each quoting from Scripture, stating its implications for the present day, and rejecting the false doctrine of the German Christians. The declaration proclaims the church’s freedom in Jesus Christ who is Lord of every area of life. The church obeys him as God’s one and only Word who determines its order, ministry, and relation to the state. The Confessing Church which opposed the German Christians, rallied around it.

10.         The Confession of 1967

Date:           1967

Place:         United States

Issue:          God’s Work of Reconciliation

The Confession of 1967 is built around a single passage of Scripture: “In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. . .” (2 Cor. 5:19, NRSV).  The Confession of 1967 addresses the church’s role in the modern world. It asks the church to “approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding.” It calls the church to obedient action, particularly in response to social problems such as racial discrimination, nationalistic arrogance, and family and class conflict. It sees the life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ as the pattern for the church’s mission today, and calls on all Christians to be reconciled to God and to one another.

11.          A Brief Statement of Faith—Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

Date:           1985

Place:         United States

Issue:          Re-uniting Worship Resource

In 1983, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) was formed by the reunion of the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America and the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Integral to reunion was the preparation of a brief statement of faith. While recognizing realities of diversity and disagreement in both the church and the world, members of the drafting committee sought to articulate Presbyterians’ common identity.

The Brief Statement of Faith (statement) is distinctive in several respects:

•  The statement emphasizes the significance of Jesus’ ministry in Judea and Galilee.
•  It emphasizes gender-inclusiveness and the role of both men and women in God’s covenant, uses feminine as well as masculine imagery of God, and affirms ordination of both women and men.
• The statement also expresses concern for the integrity of God’s creation.