Contents
We affirm that the Holy Spirit who inspired Scripture acts through it today to work faith in its message.
We affirm that the Holy Spirit bears witness to the Scriptures, assuring believers of the truthfulness of God's written word.
We affirm that the Holy Spirit enables believers to appropriate and apply Scripture to their lives.
We affirm that, although unbelievers can understand the literary sense of the Scriptural text, the saving discernment, acceptance, and application of God's word requires the Holy Spirit's work of enlightenment, regeneration, bestowal of faith, nurture, and sanctification.
We deny that this witness of the Holy Spirit operates in isolation from or against Scripture.
We deny that the Holy Spirit ever teaches people to believe or leads people to do anything which is contrary to the teaching of Scripture.
We deny that the natural human is able to discern spiritually the biblical message apart from the Holy Spirit.
We deny that a holy and righteous handling, summarizing, teaching, proclamation, and application of Scripture can be performed by unregenerate humans, even though there may be limited value in their discussions of the Scriptures.
We affirm that hermeneutics refers to all that is involved in the process of perceiving what biblical revelation means and how it bears on our lives.
We affirm that God's verbal revelation in Scripture is intended as a public communication and must be properly understood according to the same principles of interpretation which apply to any human, non-esoteric, literary work.
We affirm that the text of Scripture is to be interpreted by grammatical-historical exegesis, taking account of its literary forms and devices, and that Scripture is to interpret Scripture.
We affirm that Scripture is interpreted correctly only when interpreted according to its letter in the normal, grammatical, and historical sense, taking account of a text's literary genre (whether figurative or not, etc.) and the author's intent (as determined semantically, and by the local and broader literary contexts).
We deny the legitimacy of any treatment of the text or quest for sources lying behind it that leads to relativizing, dehistoricizing, or discounting its teaching, or rejecting its claims to authorship.
We deny that Scripture is properly handled by any "prooftexting" method which fails to consult a text's local context as well as the entire teaching of Scripture as it pertains to any particular text.
We deny that deeper, creative insights and artistic connections in Scripture should be maximized by lines of interpretation which follow no objective, definite, or consistent rule of interpretation which would make publicly predictable and correctable conclusions possible.
We deny that any theological or moral truth (including the larger theme or thrust of the Bible as a whole) can be established without adducing texts from Scripture which prove it or without showing that it follows by sound logical inference from such.
We affirm that the meaning expressed in each biblical text is single, definite, and fixed.
We affirm that the Bible's own interpretation of itself is always correct, never deviating from, but rather elucidating, the single meaning of the inspired text. The single meaning of a prophet's words includes, but is not restricted to, the understanding of those words by the prophet and necessarily involves the intention of God evidenced in the fulfillment of those words.
We affirm the necessity of interpreting the Bible according to its normal sense. The normal sense is the grammatical-historical sense, that is, the meaning which the writer expressed. Interpretation according to the normal sense will take account of all figures of speech and literary forms found in the text.
We deny that the true and full meaning of any biblical text is multiple, subjective, or varies from reader to reader.
We deny that the recognition of the single meaning in a biblical text eliminates the variety of its application.
We deny the legitimacy of any approach to Scripture that attributes to it meaning which the normal sense does not support.
We deny that Scripture, as some would allege about any literary work, is empty of fixed and objective meaning so that its language makes no unchanging disclosure, its authorial intent is inaccessible, and every reading of a text constitutes a misreading.
We deny that the message of Scripture derives from, or is dictated by, the interpreter's understanding.
We deny that the pre-understandings and personal horizon which the reader brings to the text of Scripture may properly function to edit its message or render its meaning not objectively uniform for all readers.
We deny that the "horizons" of the biblical writer and the interpreter may rightly "fuse" in such a way that what the text communicates to the interpreter is not ultimately controlled by the expressed meaning of the Scripture.
We deny that Scripture contains secret wisdom or hidden, subtle meanings which are ascertained by approaching the Bible on some supposed higher or Spiritual plane.
We deny that any aspect of the biblical message can be expressed only in irresolvably contradictory assertions or in a fashion which requires mystical apprehension.
We deny that, at the time the human authors of Scripture received revelation from the Holy Spirit, they always fully perceived the full implications of their own words or how they would come to pass in the light of redemptive history and further revelation.
We affirm that Scripture communicates God's truth to us verbally through a wide variety of literary forms.
We affirm that awareness of the literary categories, formal and stylistic, of the various parts of Scripture is essential for proper exegesis, and hence we value genre criticism as one of the many disciplines of biblical study.
We affirm that the biblical record of events, discourses, and sayings, though presented in a variety of appropriate literary forms, corresponds to historical fact.
We deny that any event, discourse, or saying reported in Scripture was invented by the biblical writers or by the traditions they incorporated.
We deny that literary evidence of stylized expression, order, or balance in a text of Scripture precludes its historicity or factuality.
We deny that the biblical authors invented illustrative stories or traditions and then narrated or presented them as though they were actual historical events.
We affirm that God used a variety of fallible human authors and editors with differences in background, personality, interest, setting, and linguistic idiom in producing the Scriptures, and yet the Holy Spirit was in each case the primary author of the Scriptures, thus requiring that the Bible be acknowledged as completely true in what it teaches and interpreted as one book (with unity, harmony, and consistency), not many.
We affirm the unity, harmony, and consistency of Scripture and declare that it is its own best interpreter.
We affirm that the normative themes or conceptual perspectives by which the truths of Scripture should be organized and interpreted may be drawn from the Scripture itself.
We deny that the teaching of one biblical author may be set in conflict with the teaching of another biblical author, as though they contradict each other rather than complementing and enriching each other in their distinctive styles, themes, and assertions.
We deny that Scripture may be interpreted in such a way as to suggest that one passage corrects or militates against another.
We deny that any author of Scripture misunderstood, misinterpreted, or misapplied any previous portion of Scripture which he quotes or to which he alludes.
We deny that any biblical model or perspective leads to doctrinal or moral conclusions which are at odds with conclusions reached by means of other biblical models or perspectives.
We affirm that any preunderstandings which the interpreter brings to Scripture should be in harmony with scriptural teaching and subject to correction by it.
We affirm that legitimate critical techniques should be used in determining the canonical text and its meaning.
We affirm that extrabiblical studies in fields relevant to biblical interpretation (e.g., linguistics, archaeology, natural science, history) may be a great benefit in elucidating the meaning of the biblical text and deepening our understanding of it.
We affirm that when such studies appear to conflict with the biblical text, they may legitimately occasion the reexamination and possible correction of previous faulty interpretations given to the text.
We affirm that extrabiblical themes, perspectives, frameworks, or organizing principles which are brought to the text may be pedagogically convenient or effective in teaching the message of Scripture, but have no authority for determining the meaning of the text itself.
We deny that Scripture should be required to fit alien preunderstandings, inconsistent with itself, such as naturalism, scientism, secular humanism, and relativism.
We deny that any biblical text which has been given its proper linguistic sense (in semantic, literary, and theological context) may be challenged, corrected, or ignored on the basis of conclusions reached in fallible, extrabiblical fields of study.
We deny that continuing changes in the world's scholarship pertaining to nature or history or changes in the lifestyle of unbelievers justify in themselves amending our interpretation of Scripture or correcting what it teaches.
We deny that modern studies using sophisticated scholarly tools or computer technology may properly produce such novel interpretations of any Scriptural text that its original recipients, without the tools of modern scholarship, could not have gained that understanding for themselves from the text itself (even with the aid of progressive revelation).
We deny the legitimacy of allowing any method of biblical criticism to question the truth or integrity of the writer's expressed meaning, or of any other scriptural teaching.
We deny that any of the erroneous beliefs and historical limitations of an author's society or his own personal misperceptions were incorporated as truth in the text of Scripture, thereby calling for the correction of modern experts in science, history, sociology, etc.
We affirm that the person and work of Jesus Christ are the central focus of the entire Bible.
We affirm that all of God's post-fall covenantal administrations complemented (not contradicted) each other, being progessively revealed facets of the same underlying single promise of God which came to fulfillment in the person and saving work of Jesus Christ.
We affirm that the Old Covenant and the New Covenant are one in purpose and substance, constituting a unified Covenant of Grace established by God, with both Testaments testifying to the person and saving work of Christ as the central message of the whole Bible.
We affirm that under Old Covenant administrations, the redemptive precepts and marks of ritual purity or consecration were temporary foreshadows of the Savior, being a tutor which taught justification by faith and led to Christ, who was the aim or purpose to which the entire Old Covenant Scriptures pointed.
We deny that any method of interpretation which rejects or obscures the Christ-centeredness of Scripture is correct.
We deny that the New Covenant's displacement of Old Covenant regulations for redemption or ritual purity and consecration places the Old and New Covenants in opposition or antagonism to each other.
We deny that the Old Covenant foreshadows which are found in redemptive precepts or regulations for ritual purity or consecration are obligatory after the advent of the reality they anticipated, the establishment of the New Covenant in Christ.
We deny that the laying aside of the redemptive and ritual aspects of Old Covenant teaching legitimately implies the laying aside of the whole of Old Covenant instruction, as though only those things repeated in the New Testament have continuing authority and application.
We affirm that the moral character and behavior which God requires of people are a reflection of His own holy, righteous, and unchanging character, so that all people in all ages are under obligation to the moral instruction found throughout the Bible, both in the norms given generalized statement and in the moral principles which underly Scripture's culturally specific illustrations and applications.
We deny that God has a double standard of morality (one for His people and a different one for the cultures of the unbelieving world) or any notion of ethical relativism.
We deny that Christ's accomplishment of the salvation anticipated throughout the Old Testament has cancelled the moral instruction previously revealed by God.
We affirm that the Bible contains teachings and mandates which apply to all cultural and situational contexts and other mandates which the Bible itself shows apply only to particular situations.
We affirm that in the task of translating the Bible and teaching it in the context of each culture, only those functional equivalents that are faithful to the content of biblical teaching should be employed.
We deny that universal mandates may ever be treated as culturally or situationally relative.
We deny that the distinction between the universal and particular mandates of Scripture can be determined by cultural and situational factors.
We deny that the meaning of biblical texts is so tied to the culture out of which they came that understanding of the same meaning in other cultures is impossible.
We deny that the historical and cultural specifics used in biblical motifs or paradigms hinder a true understanding of the biblical text, deter readers from discerning its intended sense, or prevent cross-cultural translation, proclamation, and application of what the biblical authors meant.
We deny the legitimacy of methods which either are insensitive to the demands of cross-cultural communication or distort biblical meaning in the process.