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DID YOU KNOW? What Presbyterians Believe
from the Book of Confessions
"the Book of Confessions and Ordination"
1. Freedom and Variety in the Church
The same freedom and variety that is characteristic of the Reformed tradition in general is expressed in the questions asked of candidates for ordination in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.):
a. Ordained persons are asked to acknowledge the Book of Confessions as “authentic and reliable expositions of what Scripture leads us to believe and do.” These words limit the authority of the book by making its authority subordinate to the higher authority of Scripture—which in turn (according to the first two questions) derives its authority from its witness to the triune God revealed in Jesus Christ who alone has the right to claim absolute and unqualified loyalty and obedience.
b. Ordained persons are required to be “instructed and led” and “continually guided” by the church’s confessions. These words demand study of the confessions. They also provide freedom from a demand for unqualified assent to everything the confessions ask us to think, say, and do and freedom from a legalistic interpretation of the confessions.
c. Since 1983 ordained persons are asked to receive and adopt the “essential tenets” of the Reformed faith as expressed in the confessions. Although some other wording may better express the intent, the phrase “essential tenets” is intended to protect freedom with the limits of general commitment to the confessions.
That this is indeed the purpose of the phrase is made clear by the fact that both the former United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. and Presbyterian Church in the U.S. repeatedly answered in the negative overtures requesting that the church make a precise list of a few fundamental doctrines (once called “essential and necessary articles of faith”) that must be accepted by ordained officers.
Moreover, while Chapter II of the Form of Government lists a number of general theological affirmations to summarize the broad general character of Presbyterian faith and life, it too prescribes no specific understanding of any of these affirmations to test the acceptability of people for ordained office in the church. The ordination question that asks for commitment to the “essential tenets” of the confessions brings freedom in the church at several levels.
Ordained persons are free to be “instructed,” “led,” and “continually guided” by the confessions without being forced to subscribe to any precisely worded articles of faith drawn up either by the General Assembly or by a presbytery. (Presbyteries, too, are bound to the constitutional language that excludes demand for adherence to any specifically worded interpretations of a few selected doctrines. In a presbytery the decision for ordination is always determined by the concrete encounter between the presbytery and the candidate.) Presbyteries (in the case of ministers) and church sessions (in the case of elders and deacons) are free to decide for themselves what acceptable loyalty to the confessions means in their particular situation without being bound to any “check list” prescribed by higher governing bodies of the church.
https://pcusa.org/sites/default/files/boc2016.pdf xx-xxi
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