We believe that in the Bible God has made truth about himself understandable and that he intends it to be shared by all Christians; so that, we should confess the same faith and instruct and encourage one another with the same doctrine.
The common Christian faith is symbolized in the ecumenical confessions, such as the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. While we are careful to say that only the Bible is the perfect document of the Christian faith, these confessional statements defend what the Bible declares and teaches as it has been believed in common by the Christian churches.
In the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, the doctrines taught by all of our member churches are described in the documents called the Westminster Standards, to which all Presbyterian churches once held. These documents express what our church holds in common with all others who teach according to the same standard. And since the Westminster Standards substantially agree with other Reformed confessions, the OPC seeks to maintain fellowship with other Reformed churches. In this way, we demonstrate that besides the doctrines that we share with all other Christians, we enjoy especially close agreement with the Reformed churches. For that reason, we call ourselves a confessional Reformed church.