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What do we believe?

What do we believe?

Faith Presbyterian Church is a member of the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA). Our beliefs can be summarized by the Five "Solas" of the Reformation: Christ Alone, Scripture Alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, For the Glory of God Alone.

 

Christ Alone

Christ alone is the hope for humanity. Jesus is not a sectarian Lord, but the One Mediator between God and all humanity. 

"What I am pleading for is simple, but not, I hope, simplistic. It is simply for a recovery of confidence in the gospel, the truth, sufficiency, finality and universality of that which God has done for the whole human race in Jesus Christ. We cannot accept for him a place merely as one of the world's religious teachers. We are but learners and have to listen not only to our fellow Christians of other cultures, but also to our neighbors of other faiths, who may teach us much that we have not understood. But the crucial question is: Which is the real story? To that question our whole life is our answer. There is no neutrality. The answer has to be given not only in the words of the Church,  but in a life which follows the way Christ went, and so - in Paul's words - bearing about in the body the dying of Jesus, manifests to the world his risen life, the life which is life indeed."                 Lesslie Newbigin, Missionary to India 

Scripture Alone

Scripture alone is our only perfect rule for faith and practice. Most churches affirm this but never explain what they believe the scriptures teach. Our church recognizes the great value of creeds and confessions for summarizing the teaching of scripture.

“A creed or confessional formula is a public and binding indication of the gospel set before us in the scriptural witness, through which the church affirms its allegiance to God, repudiates the falsehood by which the church is threatened, and assembles around the judgment and consolation of the gospel.”                                                                  John Webster, Oxford Theologian

We affirm that the historic creeds, like the Apostles' Creed, faithfully represent the essential beliefs in scripture. We also affirm that the Westminster Confession of Faith is a reliable testimony of the Bible's teachings.

Grace Alone

God's forgiveness and offer of new life come out of his own good pleasure. It is a gift that cannot be earned. 

"At the center of all [other] religions is the idea of Karma. You know, what you put out comes back to you: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics—in physical laws—every action is met by an equal or an opposite one. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that...Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions, which in my case is very good news indeed, because I've done a lot of stupid stuff...The point of the death of Christ is that Christ took on the sins of the world, so that what we put out did not come back to us, and that our sinful nature does not reap the obvious death"                                                                                                        Bono, U2 Lead Singer 

Faith Alone

Faith is accepting, receiving, and resting on the promises of Christ. It looks outward to what Christ has done, not inward to the ebbs and flows of our feelings.

A faith without some doubts is like a human body without any antibodies in it. People who blithely go through life too busy or indifferent to ask hard questions about why they believe as they do will find themselves defenseless against either the experience of tragedy or the probing questions of a smart skeptic. A person's faith can collapse almost overnight if she has failed over the years to listen to her own doubts, which should only be discarded after long reflection. Believers should acknowledge and wrestle with doubts – not only their own, but their friends' and neighbors'.                                               Tim Keller, Pastor

For the Glory of God Alone

God alone is worthy of glory. Having received new life from Christ by grace, we no longer live to justify ourselves. Our central motivation in life, our desire to improve, our compassion toward others is ultimately done to glorify God. 

"There is no saint without a past, and no sinner without a future." St. Augustine, 4th Century Bishop