Issues raised in resolutions

The declaration asks the Presbytery of Santa Barbara to approve a number of resolutions "Toward Peace, Unity and Purity," including proposals embracing these points:

1. Compliance with the "fidelity/chastity" requirement in the Constitution is essential.
   
2. No candidate from another presbytery will be considered for membership if the candidate had been granted an exception to the ordination requirement.
   
3. Contrary to the recommendations of the attorneys working with the General Assembly's stated clerk, the presbytery would work pastorally with any pastor, sessions or congregation that seeks dismissal from the PCUSA. The presbytery "shall not preemptively take any coercive action against any pastor, session or congregation who merely considers faithfully following the Great Ends of the Church in another Reformed denomination; and shall not treat property as a basis for unity or as an opportunity for division. The presbytery interprets 'use and benefit of the Presbyterian Church (USA)' in G-8.0201 to mean … solely whatever furthers the Great Ends of the Church."
   
4. The presbytery would honor the protest of every congregation that withholds per-capita funds from the General Assembly."
   
5. Request the stated clerk of the General Assembly to "publicly repudiate the coercive and unconstitutional practices advocated by his legal counsel regarding actions to be taken in secular or church courts against pastors, sessions and congregations who might contemplate or seek dismissal from the Presbyterian Church (USA).
   Calling on the Presbyterian Church (USA) to "turn from the naturalistic theology, romanticism, folly and idolatry that have characterized our church and return to its first love, Jesus Christ," the session of a California congregation has crafted a 19-page theological declaration and resolutions to present to the Presbytery of Santa Barbara.

• "Jesus is unique, unrivaled and singular in nature, being and work, the center of God's saving work and the singular goal of creation." The declaration rejects "the errors of progressive and revisionist theology that deny the singular saving work of Christ by proclaiming that Jesus is but one way of salvation among others of equal validity … We believe that any holding or teaching such errors have departed from the Reformed faith, are deceived, and have become promoters of heresy."
  
• "We believe that Jesus Christ is the One Word of God to whom we turn, whom alone we obey and trust in life and in death … We reject the false claims of modern Gnosticism and neo-mysticism that boasts of secret, personal, innate or inner knowledge that openly contradicts God's self revelation."
  
• "We hold that the Scriptures by God's inspiration and the interpretative work of the Holy Spirit do manifest themselves to be the Word of God written, and thus wholly sufficient to lead the church into true wisdom, godliness, reform, obedience and worship of God … We reject the false doctrine that would raise alongside or over the Scriptures other authorities, opinions, and voices intended to transcend, correct, repeal or annul the Word of God. … "We hold, with the guidance of Calvin, that opinions formed without the leading of the Word of God are of no account and are voices without authority or relevance to the Christian life."
  
• "[T]hat our righteousness before the Triune God is itself a gift of God through Christ, wholly imparted and thus entirely an act of grace. … We hold that Christ Jesus is our righteousness, our justification, our sanctification and this righteousness, extrinsic to us by nature, is made ours only through the sacrifice of Christ and the inner work of the Holy Spirit and true faith which is its fruit and effect. … We reject as false any doctrine or teaching that holds that persons by their nature bear or possess an intrinsic, natural, or innate righteousness before God based on human works, nature, spirituality, or by the fact of their being created in God's image. We reject as heresy any doctrine that would hold the human race as essentially righteous, holy, and pleasing before God apart from the work of salvation in Christ Jesus …"
  
• "Our knowledge of God is neither noetic nor a postulate of human reason or discovery but the result of God being among us, drawing us to himself as his people and redeeming us to be a nation of priests before him … We reject the populist doctrine that one can know God without true relationship – making God a postulate of human knowledge – or that one can have a relationship with God without knowledge of his revealed will and work – making God little more than the fabrication of subjective romanticism or Gnostic mysticism."

The essentials section concludes with a theological assault on the "unity in diversity" emphasis that has been the springboard for the denomination's often confusing statements about the saving work of Christ, the Trinity and the compatibility of Christianity and non-Christian religions.

In a section on "Faith and Full Participation in Christ Jesus," the declaration holds that "faith in Christ and purity of life are the two, necessary, sides of the one act of Christian discipleship. One cannot have one without the other." Under that rubric, it strongly affirms the constitutional ordination requirement of "fidelity to marital vows between a man and a woman, chastity in singleness."