What We Believe

What is Faith?

Faith in Christ is so much more than just agreeing to a set of doctrines or committing time to an institution. Faith in Christ means finding our own story in the story of Christ, finding resurrection in places of loss, finding meaning in a chaotic world. Faithful Christians have always interpreted scripture by using the gift of reason, in conversation with experience and tradition, to understand faith, to make sense of Christ’s call in our context. In doing this, we organize ourselves around our shared interpretations.

Our Tradition

St James is a member of the Presbyterian Church (USA), and part of the Presbytery of San Fernando. The PC(USA) is a historic mainline denomination that comes out of the Protestant Reformation and the Reformed Tradition.

Our leaders, scholars, and theologians have worked through the centuries to craft thoughtful statements of faith—clearly stated beliefs interpreted from the Bible—which are compiled as the Book of Confessions, and serve as part of our PC(USA) Constitution. The following statements of belief are excerpted from the Book of Confessions. These are all very brief and worthy of expansion and discussion. As Presbyterians, we hold the motto “Reformed and Always Reforming,” meaning that the door to change, growth, and repentance is always open. In all things though, we affirm that God alone is Lord of the conscience, and that all people have the right of private judgment.

God

We believe in the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who gathers, protects and cares for the church through Word and Spirit. This, God has done since the beginning of the world and will do to the end.

(Confession of Belhar, 10.1)

We trust in God, whom Jesus called Abba, Father. In sovereign love God created the world good and makes everyone equally in God’s image, male and female, of every race and people, to live as one community…Like a mother who will not forsake her nursing child, like a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home, God is faithful still.

 (A Brief Statement of Faith, 11.3)

 God’s sovereign love is a mystery beyond the reach of humankind’s mind.

(Confession of 1967, 9.15)

Jesus

Jesus proclaimed the reign of God: preaching good news to the poor and release to the captives, teaching by word and deed and blessing the children, healing the sick and binding up the brokenhearted, eating with outcasts, forgiving sinners, and calling all to repent and believe the gospel.

(A Brief Statement of Faith, 11.2)

 

In Jesus of Nazareth true humanity was realized once for all. Jesus, a Palestinian Jew, lived among his own people and shared their needs, temptations, joys, and sorrows. He expressed the love of God in word and deed and became a brother to all kinds of sinful people. But his complete obedience led him into conflict with his people…In giving himself freely for them he took upon himself the judgment under which all men stand convicted. God raised him from the dead, vindicating him as Messiah and Lord. The victim of sin became victor, and won the victory over sin and death for all people.

(Confession of 1967, 9.08)

Holy Spirit

We trust in God the Holy Spirit everywhere the giver and renewer of life. The Spirit justifies us by grace through faith, sets us free to accept ourselves and to love God and neighbor, and binds us together with all believers in the one body of Christ, the Church…the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.

(A Brief Statement of Faith, 11.4)

The Bible

The one sufficient revelation of God is Jesus Christ, the Word of God incarnate, to whom the Holy Spirit bears unique and authoritative witness through the Holy Scriptures, which are received and obeyed as the word of God written. The Scriptures are not a witness among others, but the witness without parallel…The Bible is to be interpreted in the light of its witness to God’s work of reconciliation in Christ. The Scriptures, given under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are nevertheless the words of humans, conditioned by the language, thought forms, and literary fashions of the places and times at which they were written. They reflect views of life, history, and the cosmos which were then current. The church, therefore, has an obligation to approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding. As God has spoken his word in diverse cultural situations, the church is confident that he will continue to speak through the Scriptures in a changing world and in every form of human culture.

(Confession of 1967, 9.27-29)

Sin

The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in humankind as sin in the sight of God. In sin, people claim mastery of their own lives, turn against God and their fellow people, and become exploiters and despoilers of the world. They lose their humanity in futile striving and are left in rebellion, despair, and isolation. Wise and virtuous people through the ages have sought the highest good in devotion to freedom, justice, peace, truth, and beauty. Yet all human virtue, when seen in the light of God’s love in Jesus Christ, is found to be infected by self-interest and hostility. All people, good and bad alike, are in the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all people fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than the person who assumes that he is guiltless before God or morally superior to others.

(Confession of 1967, 9.12-13)

The Kingdom of God and Salvation

God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of humankind’s life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological, individual and corporate. It includes humankind’s natural environment as exploited and despoiled by sin. It is the will of God that his purpose for human life shall be fulfilled under the rule of Christ and all evil be banished from his creation. Biblical visions and images of the rule of Christ, such as a heavenly city, a father’s house, a new heaven and earth, a marriage feast, and an unending day culminate in the image of the kingdom. The kingdom represents the triumph of God over all that resists his will and disrupts his creation. Already God’s reign is present as a ferment in the world, stirring hope in people and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment and redemption.

(Confession of 1967, 9.53-54)

The Church

We believe God has entrusted the church with the message of reconciliation in and through Jesus Christ; that the church is called to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, that the church is called blessed because it is a peace-maker, that the church is witness both by word and by deed to the new heaven and the new earth in which righteousness dwells;

(Belhar Confession, 10.5)

Justice

We believe that the church must stand by people in any form of suffering and need, which implies, among other things, that the church must witness against and strive against any form of injustice, so that justice may roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream; that the church as the possession of God must stand where the Lord stands, namely against injustice and with the wronged; that in following Christ the church must witness against all the powerful and privileged who selfishly seek their own interests and thus control and harm others.

(Belhar Confession, 10.7)