In approving the Confession of 1967, the United Presbyterian Church

in the United States of America adopted its first new confession of faith

in three centuries. The turbulent decade of the 1960s challenged churches

everywhere to restate their faith. While the Second Vatican Council was

reformulating Roman Catholic thought and practice, Presbyterians were

developing the Confession of 1967.

The 168th General Assembly (1956) of the United Presbyterian Church

in the United States of America (UPCUSA) received an overture asking

that the Westminster Shorter Catechism be revised. The 170th General Assembly

(1958) proposed instead that the church draw up a "brief contemporary

statement of faith." A committee labored at the task seven years.

The 177th General Assembly (1965) (UPCUSA) vigorously discussed

the committee’s proposal and sent an amended draft to the church for

study. Sessions, congregations, and presbyteries suggested changes and

additions. In response, a newly appointed Committee of Fifteen made revisions.

The 178th General Assembly (1966) (UPCUSA) debated this

draft, accepted it, and forwarded it to the presbyteries for final ratification.

After extensive debate, more than 90 percent of the presbyteries

voted approval. Final adoption came at the 179th General Assembly

(1967) (UPCUSA).

Modestly titled, the Confession of 1967 is built around a single passage

of Scripture: "In Christ God was reconciling the world to himself. . ."

(2 Cor. 5:19, NRSV). The first section, "God’s Work of Reconciliation,"

is divided into three parts: the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of

God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit. The second section, "The

Ministry of Reconciliation," has two parts: the mission of and the equipment

of the church. The last section, "The Fulfillment of Reconciliation,"

affirms the church’s hope in God’s ultimate triumph.

The Confession of 1967 addresses the church’s role in the modern

world. Responsive to developments in biblical scholarship, it asks the

church to "approach the Scriptures with literary and historical understanding"

(paragraph 9.29). It calls the church to obedient action, particularly

in response to social problems such as racial discrimination,

nationalistic arrogance, and family and class conflict. It sees the life,

death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ as the pattern

for the church’s mission today, and calls on all Christians to be reconciled

to God and to one another.

that placed creeds from the early Christian church (the Nicene

and the Apostles’ Creeds) and from the Reformation (the Scots Confession,

the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Second Helvetic Confession)

alongside the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, adding two documents

from the twentieth century (the Theological Declaration of Barmen

and the Confession of 1967).

The church confesses its faith when it bears a present witness to God’s

grace in Jesus Christ.

In every age, the church has expressed its witness in words and deeds

as the need of the time required. The earliest examples of confession are

found within the Scriptures. Confessional statements have taken such

varied forms as hymns, liturgical formulas, doctrinal definitions, catechisms,

theological systems in summary, and declarations of purpose

against threatening evil.

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.

This obedience is the ground of the church’s duty and freedom to

reform itself in life and doctrine as new occasions, in God’s providence,

may demand.

The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America acknowledges

itself aided in understanding the gospel by the testimony of

the church from earlier ages and from many lands. More especially it is

guided by the Nicene and Apostles’ Creeds from the time of the early

church; the Scots Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Second

Helvetic Confession from the era of the Reformation; the Westminster

Confession and Shorter Catechism from the seventeenth century; and the

Theological Declaration of Barmen from the twentieth century.

The purpose of the Confession of 1967 is to call the church to that unity

in confession and mission which is required of disciples today. This Confession

is not a "system of doctrine," nor does it include all the traditional

topics of theology. For example, the Trinity and the Person of Christ are

not redefined, but are recognized and reaffirmed as forming the basis and

determining the structure of the Christian faith.

God’s reconciling work in Jesus Christ and the mission of reconciliation

to which he has called his church are the heart of the gospel in any

age. Our generation stands in peculiar need of reconciliation in Christ.

Accordingly, this Confession of 1967 is built upon that theme.

In Jesus Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself. Jesus

Christ is God with man. He is the eternal Son of the Father, who became

man and lived among us to fulfill the work of reconciliation. He

is present in the church by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue and

complete his mission. This work of God, the Father, Son, and Holy

Spirit, is the foundation of all confessional statements about God, man,

and the world. Therefore, the church calls men to be reconciled to God

and to one another.

PART I

GOD’S WORK OF RECONCILIATION

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 men. But his complete

obedience led him into conflict with his people. His life and teaching

judged their goodness, religious aspirations, and national hopes.

Many rejected him and demanded his death. 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 men.

God’s reconciling act in Jesus Christ is a mystery which the Scriptures

describe in various ways. It is called the sacrifice of a lamb, a

shepherd’s life given for his sheep, atonement by a priest; again it is

ransom of a slave, payment of debt, vicarious satisfaction of a legal

penalty, and victory over the powers of evil. These are expressions of

a truth which remains beyond the reach of all theory in the depths of

God’s love for man. They reveal the gravity, cost, and sure achievement

of God’s reconciling work.

The risen Christ is the Savior for all men. Those joined to him by

faith are set right with God and commissioned to serve as his reconciling

community. Christ is head of this community, the church, which began

with the apostles and continues through all generations.

The same Jesus Christ is the judge of all men. His judgment discloses

the ultimate seriousness of life and gives promise of God’s final victory

over the power of sin and death. To receive life from the risen Lord is

to have life eternal; to refuse life from him is to choose the death which

is separation from God. All who put their trust in Christ face divine

judgment without fear, for the judge is their redeemer.

The reconciling act of God in Jesus Christ exposes the evil in men as

sin in the sight of God. In sin, men claim mastery of their own lives, turn

against God and their fellow men, 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 men 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 men, good and bad alike, are in

the wrong before God and helpless without his forgiveness. Thus all men

fall under God’s judgment. No one is more subject to that judgment than

the man who assumes that he is guiltless before God or morally superior

to others.

God’s love never changes. Against all who oppose him, God expresses

his love in wrath. In the same love, God took on himself judgment and

shameful death in Jesus Christ, to bring men to repentance and new life.

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

Human thought ascribes to God superlatives of power, wisdom, and

goodness. But God reveals his love in Jesus Christ by showing power in

the form of a servant, wisdom in the folly of the cross, and goodness in

receiving sinful men. The power of God’s love in Christ to transform the

world discloses that the Redeemer is the Lord and Creator who made all

things to serve the purpose of his love.

God has created the world of space and time to be the sphere of his

dealings with men. In its beauty and vastness, sublimity and awfulness,

order and disorder, the world reflects to the eye of faith the majesty and

mystery of its Creator.

God has created man in a personal relation with himself that man may

respond to the love of the Creator. He has created male and female and

given them a life which proceeds from birth to death in a succession of

generations and in a wide complex of social relations. He has endowed

man with capacities to make the world serve his needs and to enjoy its

good things. Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and a task to be

pursued with courage. Man is free to seek his life within the purpose of

God: to develop and protect the resources of nature for the common welfare,

to work for justice and peace in society, and in other ways to use his

creative powers for the fulfillment of human life.

God expressed his love for all mankind through Israel, whom he chose

to be his covenant people to serve him in love and faithfulness. When Israel

was unfaithful, he disciplined the nation with his judgments and maintained

his cause through prophets, priests, teachers, and true believers.

These witnesses called all Israelites to a destiny in which they would serve

God faithfully and become a light to the nations. The same witnesses

proclaimed the coming of a new age, and a true servant of God in whom

God’s purpose for Israel and for mankind would be realized.

Out of Israel, God in due time raised up Jesus. His faith and obedience

were the response of the perfect child of God. He was the fulfillment

of God’s promise to Israel, the beginning of the new creation, and

the pioneer of the new humanity. He gave history its meaning and direction

and called the church to be his servant for the reconciliation of

the world.

God the Holy Spirit fulfills the work of reconciliation in man. The

Holy Spirit creates and renews the church as the community in which

men are reconciled to God and to one another. He enables them to receive

forgiveness as they forgive one another and to enjoy the peace of God as

they make peace among themselves. In spite of their sin, he gives them

power to become representatives of Jesus Christ and his gospel of reconciliation

to all men.

The reconciling work of Jesus was the supreme crisis in the life of

mankind. His cross and resurrection become personal crisis and present

hope for men when the gospel is proclaimed and believed. In this experience,

the Spirit brings God’s forgiveness to men, moves them to respond

in faith, repentance, and obedience, and initiates the new life in

Christ.

The new life takes shape in a community in which men know that God

loves and accepts them in spite of what they are. They therefore accept

themselves and love others, knowing that no man has any ground on

which to stand, except God’s grace.

The new life does not release a man from conflict with unbelief, pride,

lust, fear. He still has to struggle with disheartening difficulties and problems.

Nevertheless, as he matures in love and faithfulness in his life with

Christ, he lives in freedom and good cheer, bearing witness on good days

and evil days, confident that the new life is pleasing to God and helpful

to others.

The new life finds its direction in the life of Jesus, his deeds and words,

his struggles against temptation, his compassion, his anger, and his willingness

to suffer death. The teaching of apostles and prophets guides men

in living this life, and the Christian community nurtures and equips them

for their ministries.

The members of the church are emissaries of peace and seek the good

of man in cooperation with powers and authorities in politics, culture,

and economics. But they have to fight against pretensions and injustices

when these same powers endanger human welfare. Their strength is in

their confidence that God’s purpose rather than man’s schemes will finally

prevail.

Life in Christ is life eternal. The resurrection of Jesus is God’s sign that

he will consummate his work of creation and reconciliation beyond death

and bring to fulfillment the new life begun in Christ.

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 church has received the books of the Old

and New Testaments as prophetic and apostolic testimony in which it

hears the word of God and by which its faith and obedience are nourished

and regulated.

The New Testament is the recorded testimony of apostles to the coming

of the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, and the sending of the Holy Spirit

to the Church. The Old Testament bears witness to God’s faithfulness in

his covenant with Israel and points the way to the fulfillment of his purpose

in Christ. The Old Testament is indispensable to understanding the

New, and is not itself fully understood without the New.

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 men, 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.

God’s word is spoken to his church today where the Scriptures are

faithfully preached and attentively read in dependence on the illumination

of the Holy Spirit and with readiness to receive their truth and

direction.

PART II

THE MINISTRY OF RECONCILIATION

To be reconciled to God is to be sent into the world as his reconciling

community. This community, the church universal, is entrusted with

God’s message of reconciliation and shares his labor of healing the enmities

which separate men from God and from each other. Christ has

called the church to this mission and given it the gift of the Holy Spirit.

The church maintains continuity with the apostles and with Israel by

faithful obedience to his call.

The life, death, resurrection, and promised coming of Jesus Christ has

set the pattern for the church’s mission. His life as man involves the

church in the common life of men. His service to men commits the church

to work for every form of human well-being. His suffering makes the

church sensitive to all the sufferings of mankind so that it sees the face

of Christ in the faces of men in every kind of need. His crucifixion discloses

to the church God’s judgment on man’s inhumanity to man and the

awful consequences of its own complicity in injustice. In the power of

the risen Christ and the hope of his coming, the church sees the promise

of God’s renewal of man’s life in society and of God’s victory over all

wrong.

The church follows this pattern in the form of its life and in the method

of its action. So to live and serve is to confess Christ as Lord.

The institutions of the people of God change and vary as their mission requires

in different times and places. The unity of the church is compatible

with a wide variety of forms, but it is hidden and distorted when variant

forms are allowed to harden into sectarian divisions, exclusive denominations,

and rival factions.

Wherever the church exists, its members are both gathered in corporate

life and dispersed in society for the sake of mission in the world.

The church gathers to praise God, to hear his word for mankind, to baptize

and to join in the Lord’s Supper, to pray for and present the world to

him in worship, to enjoy fellowship, to receive instruction, strength, and

comfort, to order and organize its own corporate life, to be tested, renewed,

and reformed, and to speak and act in the world’s affairs as may

be appropriate to the needs of the time.

The church disperses to serve God wherever its members are, at work

or play, in private or in the life of society. Their prayer and Bible study

are part of the church’s worship and theological reflection. Their witness

is the church’s evangelism. Their daily action in the world is the church

in mission to the world. The quality of their relation with other persons

is the measure of the church’s fidelity.

Each member is the church in the world, endowed by the Spirit with

some gift of ministry and is responsible for the integrity of his witness in

his own particular situation. He is entitled to the guidance and support of

the Christian community and is subject to its advice and correction. He

in turn, in his own competence, helps to guide the church.

In recognition of special gifts of the Spirit and for the ordering of its life

as a community, the church calls, trains, and authorizes certain members

for leadership and oversight. The persons qualified for these duties in accordance

with the polity of the church are set apart by ordination or other

appropriate act and thus made responsible for their special ministries.

The church thus orders its life as an institution with a constitution,

government, officers, finances, and administrative rules. These are

nstruments of mission, not ends in themselves. Different orders have

served the gospel, and none can claim exclusive validity. A presbyterian

polity recognizes the responsibility of all members for ministry and maintains

the organic relation of all congregations in the church. It seeks to

protect the church from exploitation by ecclesiastical or secular power

and ambition. Every church order must be open to such reformation as

may be required to make it a more effective instrument of the mission of

reconciliation.

The church in its mission encounters the religions of men and in that

encounter becomes conscious of its own human character as a religion.

God’s revelation to Israel, expressed within Semitic culture, gave rise to

the religion of the Hebrew people. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ called

forth the response of Jews and Greeks and came to expression within Judaism

and Hellenism as the Christian religion. The Christian religion, as

distinct from God’s revelation of himself, has been shaped throughout its

history by the cultural forms of its environment.

The Christian finds parallels between other religions and his own and

must approach all religions with openness and respect. Repeatedly God

has used the insight of non-Christians to challenge the church to renewal.

But the reconciling word of the gospel is God’s judgment upon all forms

of religion, including the Christian. The gift of God in Christ is for all

men. The church, therefore, is commissioned to carry the gospel to all

men whatever their religion may be and even when they profess none.

In each time and place, there are particular problems and crises through

which God calls the church to act. The church, guided by the Spirit, humbled

by its own complicity and instructed by all attainable knowledge,

seeks to discern the will of God and learn how to obey in these concrete

situations. The following are particularly urgent at the present time.

a. God has created the peoples of the earth to be one universal family.

In his reconciling love, he overcomes the barriers between brothers

and breaks down every form of discrimination based on racial or ethnic

difference, real or imaginary. The church is called to bring all men to receive

and uphold one another as persons in all relationships of life: in employment,

housing, education, leisure, marriage, family, church, and the

exercise of political rights. Therefore, the church labors for the abolition

of all racial discrimination and ministers to those injured by it. Congregations,

individuals, or groups of Christians who exclude, dominate, or

patronize their fellowmen, however subtly, resist the Spirit of God and

bring contempt on the faith which they profess.

b. God’s reconciliation in Jesus Christ is the ground of the peace,

justice, and freedom among nations which all powers of government

are called to serve and defend. The church, in its own life, is called to

practice the forgiveness of enemies and to commend to the nations as

practical politics the search for cooperation and peace. This search requires

that the nations pursue fresh and responsible relations across

every line of conflict, even at risk to national security, to reduce areas

of strife and to broaden international understanding. Reconciliation

among nations becomes peculiarly urgent as countries develop nuclear,

chemical, and biological weapons, diverting their manpower and resources

from constructive uses and risking the annihilation of mankind.

Although nations may serve God’s purposes in history, the church

which identifies the sovereignty of any one nation or any one way of

life with the cause of God denies the Lordship of Christ and betrays its

calling.

c. The reconciliation of man through Jesus Christ makes it plain

that enslaving poverty in a world of abundance is an intolerable violation

of God’s good creation. Because Jesus identified himself with the

needy and exploited, the cause of the world’s poor is the cause of his

disciples. The church cannot condone poverty, whether it is the product

of unjust social structures, exploitation of the defenseless, lack of

national resources, absence of technological understanding, or rapid

expansion of populations. The church calls every man to use his abilities,

his possessions, and the fruits of technology as gifts entrusted to

him by God for the maintenance of his family and the advancement of

the common welfare. It encourages those forces in human society that

raise men’s hopes for better conditions and provide them with opportunity

for a decent living. A church that is indifferent to poverty, or

evades responsibility in economic affairs, or is open to one social class

only, or expects gratitude for its beneficence makes a mockery of reconciliation

and offers no acceptable worship to God.

d. The relationship between man and woman exemplifies in a basic

way God’s ordering of the interpersonal life for which he created

mankind. Anarchy in sexual relationships is a symptom of man’s

alienation from God, his neighbor, and himself. Man’s perennial confusion

about the meaning of sex has been aggravated in our day by the

availability of new means for birth control and the treatment of infection,

by the pressures of urbanization, by the exploitation of sexual

symbols in mass communication, and by world overpopulation. The

church, as the household of God, is called to lead men out of this

alienation into the responsible freedom of the new life in Christ. Reconciled

to God, each person has joy in and respect for his own humanity

and that of other persons; a man and woman are enabled to

marry, to commit themselves to a mutually shared life, and to respond

to each other in sensitive and lifelong concern; parents receive the

grace to care for children in love and to nurture their individuality. The

church comes under the judgment of God and invites rejection by man

when it fails to lead men and women into the full meaning of life together,

or withholds the compassion of Christ from those caught in the

moral confusion of our time.

Jesus Christ has given the church preaching and teaching, praise and

prayer, and Baptism and the Lord’s Supper as means of fulfilling its service

of God among men. These gifts remain, but the church is obliged to

change the forms of its service in ways appropriate to different generations

and cultures.

God instructs his church and equips it for mission through preaching

and teaching. By these, when they are carried on in fidelity to the Scriptures

and dependence upon the Holy Spirit, the people hear the word of

God and accept and follow Christ. The message is addressed to men in

particular situations. Therefore, effective preaching, teaching, and personal

witness require disciplined study of both the Bible and the contemporary

world. All acts of public worship should be conducive to

men’s hearing of the gospel in a particular time and place and responding

with fitting obedience.

The church responds to the message of reconciliation in praise and

prayer. In that response, it commits itself afresh to its mission, experiences

a deepening of faith and obedience, and bears open testimony to the gospel.

Adoration of God is acknowledgement of the Creator by the creation. Confession

of sin is admission of all men’s guilt before God and of their need

for his forgiveness. Thanksgiving is rejoicing in God’s goodness to all men

and in giving for the needs of others. Petitions and intercessions are addressed

to God for the continuation of his goodness, the healing of men’s

ills, and their deliverance from every form of oppression. The arts, especially

music and architecture, contribute to the praise and prayer of a Christian

congregation when they help men to look beyond themselves to God

and to the world which is the object of his love.

By humble submission to John’s baptism, Christ joined himself to men

in their need and entered upon his ministry of reconciliation in the power

of the Spirit. Christian baptism marks the receiving of the same Spirit by

all his people. Baptism with water represents not only cleansing from sin,

but a dying with Christ and a joyful rising with him to new life. It commits

all Christians to die each day to sin and to live for righteousness. In

baptism, the church celebrates the renewal of the covenant with which

God has bound his people to himself. By baptism, individuals are publicly

received into the church to share in its life and ministry, and the

church becomes responsible for their training and support in Christian

discipleship. When those baptized are infants, the congregation, as well

as the parents, has a special obligation to nurture them in the Christian

life, leading them to make, by a public profession, a personal response to

the love of God shown forth in their baptism.

The Lord’s Supper is a celebration of the reconciliation of men with

God and with one another, in which they joyfully eat and drink together

at the table of their Savior. Jesus Christ gave his church this remembrance

of his dying for sinful men so that by participation in it they have communion

with him and with all who shall be gathered to him. Partaking in

him as they eat the bread and drink the wine in accordance with Christ’s

appointment, they receive from the risen and living Lord the benefits of

his death and resurrection. They rejoice in the foretaste of the kingdom

which he will bring to consummation at his promised coming, and go out

from the Lord’s Table with courage and hope for the service to which he

has called them.

PART III

THE FULFILLMENT OF RECONCILIATION

God’s redeeming work in Jesus Christ embraces the whole of man’s

life: social and cultural, economic and political, scientific and technological,

individual and corporate. It includes man’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 men and preparing the world to receive its ultimate judgment

and redemption.

With an urgency born of this hope, the church applies itself to present

tasks and strives for a better world. It does not identify limited progress

with the kingdom of God on earth, nor does it despair in the face of disappointment

and defeat. In steadfast hope, the church looks beyond all

partial achievement to the final triumph of God.

"Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more

abundantly than all we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in