[NavyCanDo]

Growing up in an Assembly of God I have never heard of The Westminster Confession of Faith. My wife growing up in a Covenant Church was not comfortable with the more lively Assembly of God services, which often included someone speaking in tongues, which bothered her terribly, so not long after we married we settled for middle ground and joined a nearby Evangelical Presbyterian Church. This is where I was first exposed to the Confession of Faith. I can tell you at first I was not comfortable with it for 2 reasons. The statement that Jesus descended into Hell for 3-days, (which I do not believe it was the literal Hell) and the line about the “Holy catholic church”, when we are not catholic, nor is the Presbyterian church. I'm still not comfortable with saying both lines of the confession. Other than that we love the church and the people.

Comments welcomed.........

[Dan Middleton]

That’s “catholic” with a small c.

From dictionary.com:

1. broad or wide-ranging in tastes, interests, or the like; having sympathies with all; broad-minded; liberal.
2. universal in extent; involving all; of interest to all.
3. pertaining to the whole Christian body or church.

[mtnjimmi]

when I first encountered the the Phrase “Holy catholic church’ in the Westminster confession I had the same trouble. Then I found the above definitions, it still took some time to digest the information.

[PAR35]

From your comments, it sounds like you are talking about the Apostle’s Creed, rather than the Westminster Confession of Faith:

“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,
the Maker of heaven and earth.

And in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord:

Who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;

He descended into hell.

The third day He arose again from the dead.

He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy *catholic church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and life everlasting.”

The ‘catholic’ (not ‘Catholic’) refers to all Christians, whatever their denomination. The WCF clarifies this by referring to it as ‘the catholic or universal church’ (See Chapter 25 when we get there.)

As to the ‘decended into hell’, we didn’t say that when I was growing up, and I find that I generally need to pause to get a fresh breath of air when we get to that phrase now. That’s an area where I need additional teaching.

As for the Evangelical Presbyterians, I disagree with them on a couple of points (ordination of women and tolerance for speaking in tongues, neither of which is universally practiced in the denomination), but they are generally a good bunch of folks.