Presbyterians, along with all other Christians, affirm Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. This is the central doctrine of the church, and the only belief necessary for membership in the Presbyterian Church. The following four questions are asked of persons making a public profession of faith or a reaffirmation of faith:
All persons, without exception, who can honestly and sincerely affirm “Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior,” and “I intend to be his faithful disciple, to obey his word, and show his love,” are welcome to become members of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church.
To believe involves a person’s thoughts, feelings and actions. To believe is not to have a wish or a hunch. Believing implies a commitment, not just intellectually agreeing to a statement or theory. When the Christian community says “we believe Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,” we are confessing, or admitting, our trust and dependence on Christ.
When Christians acknowledge Christ as our Lord, we are giving him the right to suggest how we should live. We are giving him the freedom to move into our experience and reshape our lives in a way that would be consistent with his words and example. As Lord of our personal experience, Christ guides us in difficult decisions, assisting us when we are discouraged and providing hope and strength in our weakness. As Lord of our interpersonal life, Christ enables us to forgive as we are forgiven. He shows us the meaning of absolute acceptance of others. He is Lord of all of life: our family life, our work life, and the whole social order. He is the judge of human wrongdoing and the evil in human structures, and is the hope of the suffering and downtrodden. He stands alongside the helpless as one of them and one with them.
Jesus Christ is Lord, not because we believe him to be, but because God raised him from the dead and made him the center of hope and love for the world.
For the Christian, Jesus Christ is the Savior for all humanity. In the New Testament there are 150 references to the words ”save” and “salvation.” Approximately one-third of those refer to some form of salvation to be completed later; in the life to come. The rest all refer to some kind of saving event, or events, that will take place within the framework of our living experience. The question is: From what are we saved? The New Testament identifies a number of things from which we are saved. Some of those include: We are saved from sin or sins. From alienation. From guilt. From slavery. From fear. From darkness. From selfishness. From pride. From hopelessness about life. From self-destruction and from death. We might conclude that we are saved from anything that might distort life. For that is what sin is. Sin is anything that I do to another, or to myself, that is in any way destructive.
Jesus is said to be “Our savior,” because by allowing him to come into our lives, we are saved from destructive acts toward ourselves, because we come to value ourselves more; toward others, because we come to value them as Christ did. Christ sets us free so we can love and forgive other people. In Christ’s death and resurrection, we believe, God opened for us the way to new and eternal life.
The Bible is the unique and authoritative source of Presbyterian beliefs. To help us interpret the Bible, Presbyterians have ascribed to a number of statements of belief – often called confessions – including the Apostle’s Creed and Nicene Creed from early Christendom, the Westminster Confession of Faith from 1647, and a number of others. These confessions elucidate such deeply held beliefs as:
Our most recent confession, adopted in 1988, is “A Brief Statement of Faith.”
| Date | Name | Occasion | Key Issues |
|---|---|---|---|
| 325 | Nicene Creed | The Emperor Constantine, having made Christianity the official religion of the Empire, wanted doctrinal agreement to strengthen the power of the church as a cohesive element for the Empire. | This short creed is concerned with the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. |
| 5th century | Apostles' Creed | This creed is based on a baptismal creed used in Rome at the end of the second century and reflects doctrines current at least by the end of the first century. It was affirmed by those seeking membership in the church through baptism and later was used more widely by the church. | A brief general statement of Christian belief based on a Trinitarian outline. |
| 1560 | Scots Confession | This creed was written in the crucial and confusing time when Presbyterians asserted their faith and held their first General Assembly in Scotland. Mary, Queen of Scots, a Roman Catholic, ruled the land while Elizabeth I of England
gave support to the Scottish Protestants. John Knox had just returned from his exile in Geneva and was a major contributor to the confession. |
The Presbyterian Church in Scotland held to the Apostles’ Creed but devised this fuller explanation of the church’s belief. It sought to clarify points that it felt the Roman Catholic church had obscured or confused. |
| 1563 | Heidelberg Catechism | The area around Heidelberg, Germany, had both Lutheran and Reformed influences as well as a considerable Roman Catholic population. Elector Frederick III of the Palatinate ordered the writing of this catechism in order to have a definitive doctrinal statement to settle the unrest in his kingdom. The two men whom he asked to write this statement, Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olivianus, had been influenced by the Swiss Reformation, and they produced a strong Reformed catechism. | The catechism is divided into three sections: “Of Man’s Misery,” “Of Man’s Redemption” and “Thankfulness.’ |
| 1566 | Second Helvetic Confession (of the Reformed Churches in Switzerland & the Palatinate) | The Heidelberg Catechism, with its strong Reformed emphasis, increased theological tension, so that Frederick III found it necessary to justify that Statement. He asked J. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s successor, to provide him with an exposition of the faith. Bullinger sent him this statement, which had been written five years earlier as his personal confession. It was ratified by all Reformed churches in Switzerland. | This rather long statement is moderate in tone and emphasizes Christian experience. Like The Scots Confession, it gives considerable emphasis to the church. |
| 1646 | Westminster Confession of Faith | The writing of this confession was commissioned by the Long Parliament in England as a means of articulating its Protestant viewpoint against the Roman Catholic King Charles I. The assembly, chosen by Parliament, included members of the House of Lords, the House of Commons, and clergy. | The Westminster Assembly of Divines chose not to use a historical framework for its doctrinal statement, but rather to set down its confession in abstract terms in order to be more precise. The confession opens with a chapter on the Holy Scripture, and indication of its importance. The sovereignty of God and his Covenant with people are major themes. Two-thirds of the confession deals with the Christian life, indicating the importance of a life obedient to God’s will. |
| 1647 | Larger and Shorter Catechisms | ||
| 1934 | Theological Declaration of Barmen | This statement was made by the German Confessional churches (Lutheran, Reformed and United) in the face of the rising power of Hitler and his attempts to make the church subservient to the state. |
Jesus Christ is Lord. The declaration sets six statements from scripture against six false doctrines current in the Germany of that day. |
| 1967 | Confession of 1967 | This confession is a response of The United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. to the conviction that the church must bear “a present witness to God’s grace in Jesus Christ.” It declares that “confessions and declarations are subordinate standards in the church, subject to the authority of Jesus Christ, the Word of God, as the Scriptures bear witness to him.” | “Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ. Accordingly, this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme.” |
| 1988 | Brief Statement of Reformed Faith | The writing of this confession was commissioned as the two largest Presbyterian churches in the United States reunited in 1983. | Includes the major themes of the Reformed tradition in a trinitarian structure emphasizing the grace of Jesus Christ, God’s sovereign love, and our life together in the Holy Spirit. It lights up concerns that call most urgently for the church’s attention in our time. |
This page last updated 09/17/08.
