What We Believe

We at Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church subscribe first to the Bible as the infallible inspired Word of God and secondly to the orthodox [orthodox means right, true or straight] Biblical confessions of the church beginning with the first confession produced by the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15. The true Church of the living God is the divinely appointed institution as the pillar and ground of truth (1 Timothy 3:15) to confess the true interpretation of God's revelation to man.

The Bible is above all creeds and confessions and is infallible. The creeds and confessions give us the fallible but authoritative interpretation and application of the Bible. By divine command of God the church has been assembled at different times throughout history to define and make known to the world the true understanding of God's Word and condemn the heretical ideas of men. The true creeds build upon one another in time as later council's refine and expand upon earlier confessions.  Thus the creeds and confessions here are authoritative statements of God's truth over and above the interpretations of the Bible by private individuals. These creeds are above our own interpretations of God's word. They are above our own local pastor and elders and their interpretation of God's word. They are above and authoritative over all false creeds and those who've written them as these men have departed from the one faith handed down through the centuries and have, instead, led people astray from the truth of the Gospel.   

One can immediately see this when one compares for example the Canons of the Council of Orange in 529 A.D. with the Canons of Dordt confessed by the Protestant reformers over a millennium later in 1619. The great battle between the superiority of man's will over God's will was fought by Pelagius and Augustine in the 4th through 6th centuries.   Pelagian heresies were condemned by the Council of Carthage in 418 and again at the Council of Orange. The church confessed the truth of Romans 9 with Augustine and taught the salvation of sinners is absolutely the work of God from beginning to end as God chooses who will be His sheep and man is unable because of his dead will to choose Christ. The protestant reformers like their forefather Augustine opposed Pelagianism and affirmed again what the early church confessed as they condemned the Arminian heresy of salvation by man's will at the Synod of Dordt in 1618-19. After one reads the Canons of the Council of Orange one can immediately see the striking contrast between their understanding of the Biblical truth of the total depravity of man and the bondage of the will, and the Confession of Dositheus written in 1672 affirming the Pelagian heresy of man's free-will and his ability to choose good, (Dositheus was the Patriarch of Jerusalem of the Eastern Orthodox Church). Canon 1 of the Canons of the Council of Orange (529) declares:

          "CANON 1. If anyone denies that it is the whole man, that is, both body and soul, that was "changed for the worse" through the offense of Adam's sin, but believes that the freedom of the soul remains unimpaired and that only the body is subject to corruption, he is deceived by the error of Pelagius and contradicts the scripture which says, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ezek. 18:20); and, "Do you not know that if you yield yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are the slaves of the one whom you obey?" (Rom. 6:16); and, "For whatever overcomes a man, to that he is enslaved" (2 Pet. 2:19).

In contrast, Article 14 of the Eastern Orthodox Confession of Dositheus written over a millennium later declares:

          "So [man after the fall has] the same nature in which he was created, and the same power of his nature, that is free-will, living and operating, so that he is by nature able to choose and do what is good, and to avoid and hate what is evil. ...A man, therefore, before he is regenerated, is able by nature to incline to what is good, and to choose and work moral good. "

One can readily see the departure from the early church's confessions and thus the departure from the truth of the gospel on the part of the Eastern Orthodox in 1672.

Compare now the Canons of the Synod of Dordt. Under the heading "The Third and Fourth Main Points of Doctrine: Human Corruption, Conversion to God, and the Way It Occurs" the church declared:

          "Article 1: The Effect of the Fall on Human Nature

Man was originally created in the image of God and was furnished in his mind with a true and salutary knowledge of his Creator and things spiritual, in his will and heart with righteousness, and in all his emotions with purity; indeed, the whole man was holy. However, rebelling against God at the devil's instigation and by his own free will, he deprived himself of these outstanding gifts. Rather, in their place he brought upon himself blindness, terrible darkness, futility, and distortion of judgment in his mind; perversity, defiance, and hardness in his heart and will; and finally impurity in all his emotions.

          Article 3: Total Inability

Therefore, all people are conceived in sin and are born children of wrath, unfit for any saving good, inclined to evil, dead in their sins, and slaves to sin; without the grace of the regenerating Holy Spirit they are neither willing nor able to return to God, to reform their distorted nature, or even to dispose themselves to such reform. "

Thus the protestant reformers continued in unity with early church in the Canons of the Council of Orange declaring the deadness of man's will after the fall and his inability to choose God. They confessed the true gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith and that faith itself is a gift of God. As Ephesians 2: 8-9 declares "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

Thus we see the protestant reformers continuing in the true faith while the Eastern Orthodox left it in the 17th century and the true church thus continues today and is seen in those who hold fast to the true faith of the church in history.   

In times past when God's people understood and submitted themselves to the authority of the creeds, the church was unified in the truth and made the truth known sending it out to all tribes and nations of the world. Today as men have preferred their own unique interpretations of God's word, the church has been fractured into thousands of denominations rending it irrelevant and impotent. Many today believe in ideas which are heretical. Some understand this but many are ignorant of this as they are ignorant of the truth of the church taught in the creeds for two millennium.

We've provided these links so that you can read for yourself the true understanding of the Bible to unify Christ's church and to equip them to think, pray and act according to God's will. Reading and submitting to the creeds of the church will protect you from wolves peddling heretical foolishness. You will readily see that the true creeds of the living God are really one unified confession as they build upon earlier creeds sometimes correcting our understanding of them and sometimes expanding the subjects of the Bible that are covered. It is immediately apparent therefore that we at Holy Trinity Presbyterian Church are unified with the true church in the past 2000 years as we confess the true faith of our fathers.   

We invite you to worship God with us in Spirit and in Truth as we endeavor to reform our lives and our worship to the Bible as interpreted by the following creeds.

English Version
Jerusalem Council (Acts 15)
Apostle's Creed (180-390 A.D.)
Nicene Creed (325, 381 A.D.)
Athanasian Creed
Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.)
Canons of the Council of Orange (529 A.D.)
Heidelberg Catechism (1563 A.D.)
Canons of Dordt (1618 A.D.)
Belgic Confession (1618 A.D.)
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 A.D.)
Westminster Shorter Catechism (1646 A.D.)
Westminster Larger Catechism (1646 A.D.)

Russian Version
Jerusalem Council (Acts 15)
Apostle's Creed (180-390 A.D.)
Nicene Creed (325, 381 A.D.)
Athanasian Creed
Council of Chalcedon (451 A.D.)
Canons of the Council of Orange (529 A.D.)
Heidelberg Catechism (1563 A.D.)
Canons of Dordt (1618 A.D.)
Belgic Confession (1618 A.D.)
Westminster Confession of Faith (1646 A.D.)
Westminster Larger Catechism (1646 A.D.)
Westminster Shorter Catechism (1646 A.D.)