…in a church [including this one]?’

‘You will probably find… persons who will disappoint you and sometimes infuriate you. No rosy or even peachy perfection here… You must remember that the church is a hospital for sinners. The church is precisely where we sinners need to be, but it can make life pretty trying at times.’ Ralph Davis, The House that Jesus Built

Are there some things a church has to believe to be a church?

You’d think so, but a dizzying variety of groups claim to be the church, all professing different beliefs.

Some are so broad that they aren’t sure about anything except that they’re not sure about anything and that anyone who is sure about anything is sure to be wrong.

Others insist they alone remain on the rock—a rock so narrow there’s only room for themselves, and even it’s shrinking fast.

As far as we’re concerned, the church’s convictions were settled long ago and restated when the church met in councils and assemblies. That’s how we got creeds and confessions—formal statements of what the church believes stretching right back to the early centuries of Christianity.

Our confession, The Westminster Confession of Faith, is catholic, Reformed, and biblical. It states the historic convictions of the church in Scotland and of Presbyterian churches worldwide.

CATHOLIC: When the men who wrote the Westminster Confession of Faith gathered in Westminster Abbey, they weren’t intent on coming up with anything new. Parliament had instructed them to revise The Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England.

The minutes of their meetings show that they were steeped in the writings of earlier theologians, from the first centuries right up to their own time. They wanted to hold to what had been handed down by faithful leaders since the time of the apostles. That’s what catholic means here: the universal understanding of the church across nations and generations.

REFORMED: There is no guarantee that particular churches will be faithful to catholic doctrine. A century before the Westminster Confession of Faith was written, the Reformation happened because the Western Church had drifted from catholic teaching, both by adding to it and subtracting from it.

The Reformed Church wasn’t a new church. It took its name from the Reformers’ aim of recovering Scriptural teaching historic Christian orthodoxy. Those who followed the Reformers, like the Westminster Divines, happily called themselves Reformed Catholics.

BIBLICAL: Plenty of churches claim to have a biblical ministry, but who decides what that means? Some evangelical Christians think it’s up to them as individuals. With Bible in hand, they stride across the centuries, tossing aside every creed and confession like a losing lottery ticket.

We believe that what is ‘biblical’ is settled corporately, by a representative assembly of the whole church, in submission to God’s Word and in dependence on the Holy Spirit. Assemblies, as the Westminster Confession of Faith says, can and do err, but its authors set out to write a confession that was biblical and that preserved the traditions of orthodox Christianity. We think they managed.