Our Creeds & Confessions

Many people are confused by talk of "confessing," "confessions," and "confessional" churches. Both inside and outside the church confession is ordinarily associated with admission of wrongdoing and guilt: criminals "confess" that they have committed a crime; famous people write "true confessions" about their scandalous lives; persons visit a "confessional" to tell of their sin. In Christian tradition, however, confession has an earlier, positive sense. To confess means openly to affirm, declare, acknowledge or take a stand for what one believes to be true. The truth that is confessed may include the admission of sin and guilt but is more than that. When Christians make a confession, they say, "This is what we most assuredly believe, regardless of what others may believe and regardless of the opposition, rejection, or persecution that may come to us for taking this stand."

A confession is a public declaration of what a church believes. Individual Christians may and should confess their own personal faith, but a confession of faith is more than a personal affirmation of faith. It is an officially adopted statement of what a community of Christians believe. This communal character of confessions of faith is made explicitly clear in confessions such as the Scots and Second Helvetic Confessions and the Barmen Declaration, which speak of what "we" believe. But it is also implicit in such confessions as the Apostles' Creed and Heidelberg Catechism, which speak of what "I" believe, and in other confessions such as Westminster and the Confession of 1967, which speak more objectively. Whatever their form, confessions of faith express what a body of Christians believe in common.

Confessions are also sometimes called creeds. The name creed is usually used for shorter affirmations of faith. Creeds are typically intended for use in worship services. A catechism is a creed in "Question and Answer" form. Catechisms are designed for use in instructional situations, such as Sunday Schools.

It is important to understand that confessions have only a relative authority (and are therefore subject to revision and correction) because they are subordinate to the higher authority of Scripture, which is the norm for discerning the will and work of God in every time and place. A frequently repeated theme in Reformed confessions is their subjection of their own theological and ethical thought - including their interpretation of scripture itself - to this higher authority, or to the authority of the Holy Spirit who speaks through it:

We protest that if any man will note in this confession of ours any article or sentence repugnant to God's holy word, that it would please him of his gentleness and for Christian charity's sake to admonish us of the same in writing; and we upon our honor and fidelity, by God's grace do promise unto him satisfaction from the mouth of God, that is, from his holy scriptures, or else reformation of that which he shall prove to be amiss. (Preface to the Scots Confession.)

The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scriptures. (Westminster Confession, 6.010.)

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. No one type of confession is exclusively valid, no one statement is irreformable. Obedience to Jesus Christ alone identifies the one universal church and supplies the continuity of its tradition. (Preface to the Confession of 1967, 9.03.)

The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has adopted eleven officially church-sanctioned confessions, creeds and catechisms and they are all contained in Part I of our Constitution, the Book of Confessions. These documents represent a cross-section of ecumenical and Reformed confessions with wide geographical and historical representation.

(If you want to peruse the Book of Confessions, we recommend that you follow the link given above and follow the instructions there to download the file to your local hard drive for easier viewing. We have one of the confessions directly linked here on this site - the Brief Statement of Faith.)

The Nicene and Apostles' Creeds from the ancient church come as close as any other confessional statements to expressing the faith of all Christians, of all traditions, throughout church history. Their inclusion points to the ecumenical character of our church.

The Scots Confession (1560) was written mostly by John Knox, student of Calvin and father of English-speaking Reformed Christianity.

The German Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the Swiss Second Helvetic Confession (1566) are, as we have noted, probably the two most widely accepted confessional statements among Reformed Christians throughout the world.

The originally British Westminster Confession and Catechisms (1647) have been the primary standard for the Presbyterian branch of the Reformed family not only in our country but wherever Presbyterian Churches have sent missionaries.

The The Theological Declaration of Barmen (1933), written by Lutheran and Reformed Christians working together (and thus another ecumenical document), confesses the lordship of Christ especially in relation to political issues that are critical for all Christians in the modern world.

The Confession of 1967, the only specifically American confession in the book, addresses critical issues of Christian faithfulness in our time and place.

A Brief Statement of Faith was drafted in 1983, when 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. Both bodies recognized the realities of diversity and disagreement in both the church and the world, but members of the drafting committee sought to articulate Presbyterians' common identity with this statement of faith. The Brief Statement of Faith is available on-line here.

The Book of Confessions as a whole enriches our understanding of what it means to be Reformed Christians, helps us escape the provincialism to which we have been prone, and expresses our intention to join the worldwide family of Reformed churches that is far bigger and more inclusive than our particular denomination.