Our Beliefs

"Belief" and "faith" are peculiar words in our culture. In popular usage, they are often thought to be in opposition to things like science, reason, and fact. So if we define "faith" as belief in God or the supernatural, then obviously not everyone is a person of faith. But if we broaden our definition of faith to include unprovable assumptions about "the way things really are," then it's clear that everyone has faith of some kind. Why?

Everyone has a worldview: a story or narrative of "the ways things are." Worldviews provide us with answers to the major questions of our existence. What kind of universe is this? Who are we as human beings? What is our purpose? What's wrong with the world (if anything)? How can it be put right? We can't even begin to answer these questions without some kind of faith assumptions. For instance, our commitment to human rights cannot make sense without a faith assumption that humans are more than the cosmic accidents a purely naturalistic account of the universe would say they are.

We mention this because the word "belief" (as commonly used) is too thin to describe what we mean when we say "we believe." What we are really talking about is our deepest commitments, convictions, and loves; not just how we think the world is, but how we imagine it to be. And (we would suggest) everyone imagines the world as a place that is animated by things best described as transcendent: love, justice, goodness, beauty, and truth, things that have no meaning without faith of some kind.

Our beliefs

As a congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Central West End Church embraces historic, orthodox, Biblical Christianity as expressed in the Old and New Testament, and as set forth in the Nicene and Apostle's Creeds. The ultimate authority for our lives is the Bible, which we hold to be the inspired word of God, without error in the original manuscripts and when understood according to God's authorial intent. We believe God wants us to understand the difference between poetry, historical narrative, and the various other genres that appear in the Bible, and to do the hard work of incorporating those distinctions into our interpretation. The following is what the Bible teaches about the big questions of life.

WHAT KIND OF WORLD IS THIS?


The Bible tells us that God created all things from nothing (Genesis 1:1ff), and that he created them "very good" (Genesis 1:31). From the very beginning, He created the world to be a place of beauty, harmony, flourishing, and wholeness, which is what the Hebrew word shalom means. Unlike other creation narratives (e.g. the Enuma Elish), only the Bible teaches that the cosmos is the creative and harmonious act of a loving, personal, omnipotent, and triune God. And unlike other views of the world (e.g. secular, Eastern), only the Bible teaches us that the whole of creation is both real and supremely valuable. To put it as simply as we can, God made everything, and he also really, really likes it.

WHAT KIND OF BEINGS ARE HUMAN BEINGS?


The Bible's account of humanity is utterly unique among worldviews. First, every human being is created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27, 9:6). That means that every person without exception has inviolable worth, dignity, and value (James 3:9), along with the capacity for acts of beauty, sacrifice, love, and service. But the Bible also teaches that the first human beings rebelled against God out of a desire for self-determination and autonomy (Genesis 3), and as a result of their betrayal, every human being is alienated from God, hopelessly centered on self, and therefore under God's just condemnation. This understanding of humanity explains both the staggering love and beauty humans can display, as well as the heart-wrenching evil and cruelty they commit. Humans cannot remedy this situation by themselves (as history only too clearly teaches us). Our only hope is the loving and gracious intervention of God (Jeremiah 30:12, Ephesians 2:1).

WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE WORLD?


One of the Bible's main contentions is that you cannot address the social distortions of the world without addressing the spiritual distortions of our lives. The two are intertwined (e.g. Isaiah 1). When sin entered the world (Genesis 3), the whole fabric of creation was ripped apart and now suffers under curse (Genesis 3:17), decay (Romans 8:21), and death (Genesis 2:17). Our yearnings for a better world and the horror we experience in the face of evil and suffering only make sense when we realize that the world was originally created for perfection and that the possibility of renewal yet exists. Because fallen humans still bear the image of God, there exist within each one of us "echoes of Eden," pointers to the goodness and shalom that was lost.

HOW CAN IT BE PUT RIGHT?


Our cultural sensibilities assure us that we are all basically "good people" who just need a little help. But the Bible's contention is that we are actually lost people who desperately need a radical intervention. That intervention took place in history through the incarnation, life, death, and physical resurrection of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the unique, divine Son of God (Mark 1:1), the second person of the Trinity (Revelation 22:13), the author of creation (Colossians 1:16), who came to earth as a man, fully God (John 1:1) yet fully human (John 1:14), in order to offer his perfect life as a sacrifice on the cross in order to redeem us from our sin and restore our relationship with God the Father (Mark 10:45, Galatians 3:13, Colossians 2:13-14).

One of the most stunning results of our redemption is the redemption of creation. This was God's plan from the very beginning. God desires not simply spiritually redeemed souls, but a materially renewed creation (Isaiah 25:6-8, Revelation 21:1-5). Amazingly, renewed humanity is the spark that ignites the renewal of all creation (Romans 8:19). Christ's death and resurrection doesn't just save our souls, it literally saves the whole cosmos (Colossians 1:20).

HOW OUGHT WE TO LIVE IN LIGHT OF THIS?


All of this has tremendous implications for our lives. When we trust in Christ for salvation by putting our faith in him (Ephesians 2:8), he gives us his Holy Spirit (John 14:16-17), who empowers us to die to sin and live to Christ (Galatians 5:16-24), and for acts of love, mercy, and service (1 Corinthians 12:4-6), all as an act of worship and gratitude (Romans 12:1), and as members of the universal church of God. The Biblical storyline gives Christians, of all people, far more incentive, motivation, and power to care for the environment, advocate for the oppressed, fight against injustice, and work for the common good. Because we are simply following Jesus in a work that he is doing, and that ultimately only he can accomplish (and will accomplish perfectly when he returns to earth), we can be realistic and honest about the state of the world (yet without despair or cynicism), but also hopeful and certain of ultimate renewal (yet without triumphalism or naïveté).

What does Central West End Church believe about...

  • The church is not a worldly political entity (Matt 22:21), but a counter-polis in the midst of the earthly polis: a sign, instrument, and foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The gospel will always have profound implications in every area of life, including politics (e.g. “Jesus is Lord” was a political as well as theological statement in the ancient world). We speak to socio-political issues as the gospel informs and calls us, and seek to form disciples who are capable of thinking Biblically about how Christians engage politics. We also recognize the diversity of political convictions, and seek to be a church that practices liberty and charity in those conversations, ever mindful that no one political party is capable of embracing the fullness of God’s vision for humanity. Our unity is in Christ, not party or ideology.


  • God created the world as an ordered place that is real and good. Modern science is an historically Christian endeavor, as it seeks to explore the world God has made. We see no inherent conflict between the Bible and science, but rather harmony (e.g. Genesis 1 is not necessarily talking about six literal 24-hour days).

  • We believe the Bible gives us abundant theological resources for seeing women occupying every level of ministry that a man can occupy (including ordination, preaching, teaching, and leading).


  • We are committed to a Christ-focused, Biblically-faithful perspective on race, justice, equality, and cultural diversity. We seek to promote a Biblical vision of God’s justice in the world, so we are not shy about addressing these matters (e.g. the historic nature of racism in the United States, the presence of both individual and systemic factors in society, the enduring effects of white supremacy as a cultural order, etc.).

  • Following the way of Jesus has always been counter-cultural, including sex. The “first sexual revolution” occurred when the early church called all its members (especially men) to a sexual ethic that reserves sexual intimacy for a whole-life marriage covenant between one man and one woman (Matt 19:4-5). This ethic reflects the Biblical vision of sex and marriage as a cosmic sign of God’s intimate, spousal union with human persons, in particular the church (the Bride of Christ; Mark 2:19-20, Eph 5:31-32). This vision is increasingly incomprehensible to modern Western culture’s vision of human sexuality, which is based solely on an ethic of consent and personal fulfillment. Ironically, the ethic of consent is the direct result of Christianity’s impact in the world! But whereas consent was originally part of a larger “bundle” that also included ideals of covenant-commitment, chastity, and the cosmic nature of sex, in the modern West, consent has been isolated from these ideals and elevated as a stand-alone ideal to the exclusion of any others. Christian sexual formation, therefore, faces the challenge of helping Christians inhabit the larger vision from which consent received its original force, as well as addressing the abuses and distortions in our world.

    Therefore, while we continue to uphold the Biblical vision, the way we hold this vision needs to be 1) mindful of the church’s role in society (to care for the needy and advocate for the oppressed, not to enforce Christian sexual morality on the world), 2) repentant of the harm the church has perpetrated toward various communities (e.g. women, the LGBTQ community), and 3) characterized by a spirit of compassion, humility, generosity, support, and grace for the complex, intimate, and often deeply painful issues that are bound up in human sexuality and sexual experience.


  • We affirm the body/soul unity of human beings, and the reality of gender (the psychological, social, and cultural aspects of one’s biological sex) as determined by the goodness of being created “male and female” (Gen. 1:27). We also affirm that we live in a fallen world, and every aspect of our lives and world are touched by the fall, including (but not limited to) biological, emotional, psychological, spiritual, and genetic factors, along with cultural dynamics and narratives. We believe that gender incongruity/dysphoria is real, and a non-normative, non-moral reality deserving of compassion. Therefore we seek to approach the conversation around emerging gender identities with the same ideals cited above under sexuality.

  • We acknowledge this is a complex and emotionally fraught question, with a wide spectrum of beliefs and convictions, even within the church community. We affirm the full personhood of every human being as an image bearer of God, regardless of age or stage of development, with an inviolable right to life. We also affirm the reality that women have experienced an ongoing deprivation of personal agency in a male-dominated society, and that there is a woeful lack of resources and support for many women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant. We lament that our current political discourse frames this issue in such a way as to compel a choice between the rights of women and the rights of unborn children. We believe that a fully-orbed Biblical approach would have us affirm and support both women and children (including the unborn). While we believe that advocacy and protection should generally favor the weakest and most vulnerable members of society, in this case the unborn, we also recognize the vast complexities involved in many pregnancies, and seek to embody the ideals cited above under sexuality and gender identity.