Contents
We affirm that God continually reveals Himself as Creator, Sustainer, Governor and Judge to all people through the external world's order and splendor, as well as through each person's internal consciousness as a rational and moral being.
We affirm that this general revelation so clearly, effectively, and inescapably displays the deity, personal attributes, glory, and moral will of God that all people are left without excuse for sin and unbelief, standing under His wrath and condemnation.
We affirm that, apart from God's saving grace, fallen humans naturally respond to God's general revelation by seeking in a variety of unrighteous ways (ranging from open repudiation to false religiosity) to suppress and distort the truth about God, resulting in vain reasoning and darkened understanding.
We affirm that the Scripture communicates not only all of the theological and moral truths of general revelation, but goes beyond what is available to humans in general revelation by especially revealing God's gracious plan of salvation and its accomplishment in history, focusing upon the work of Jesus as the Christ.
We deny that God's general revelation communicates His saving grace or plan, and that it can relieve people's spiritual, intellectual or moral plight.
We affirm that the Bible is sufficient to make us wise for salvation and to equip us in all areas of life, speaking truth when it touches on matters pertaining to nature, history, or anything else.
We affirm that since God is the author of all truth, all truths, biblical and extrabiblical, are consistent and cohere.
We affirm the harmony of special with general revelation and therefore of biblical teaching with the facts of nature.
We deny that there were or are continuing additions to special revelation beyond the historical completion of the canon of Scripture.
We deny that the veracity of God's verbal revelation may be confined to matters of eternal salvation, or restricted to an absence of willful deception by the writer, or reduced to Scripture infallibly accomplishing God's personal purposes in its hearer or reader.
We deny that the theological truths and moral demands communicated by general revelation disagree with the theological and moral content of Scriptural revelation, either in substance or specific application.
We deny that any genuine scientific facts are inconsistent with the true meaning of any passage of Scripture.
We affirm that the Scriptures are the supreme written norm by which God binds the conscience, and that the authority of the church is subordinate to that of Scripture.
We deny that church creeds, councils or declarations have authority greater than or equal to the authority of the Bible.
We deny that it is proper to evaluate Scripture according to standards of truth and error that are alien to its usage or purpose.
We deny that human speculation, imagination, tradition (even that of the church), or reasoning (even that labeled "science") has the aptitude or right to repudiate, replace, correct, or supplement what God has revealed about Himself, His works, or His will.
We deny that any human judgment or assertion which purports to interpret and give expression to God's non-verbal general revelation may take precedence in theology or ethics over God's own verbally-expressed revelation.
We affirm that God alone has the competence and authority to define His own character, work, and will, so that people's knowledge of the same depends upon divine self-revelation.
We affirm that God who made humankind in His image has used language as a means of revelation.
We affirm that the written word in its entirety is revelation given by God.
We affirm that as Christ is God and Man in one Person, so Scripture is, indivisibly, God's word in human language.
We deny that the Bible is merely a witness to revelation, or only becomes revelation in encounter, or depends on the responses of human beings for its validity.
We deny that human language is so limited by our creatureliness that it is rendered inadequate as a vehicle for divine revelation.
We deny that any of the limits of human language render Scripture inadequate to convey God's message.
We deny that Jesus' teaching about Scripture may be dismissed by appeals to accommodation or to any natural limitation of His humanity.
We affirm that the Holy Scriptures are to be received as the authoritative word of God.
We affirm that the normative authority of Holy Scripture is the authority of God Himself, and is attested by Jesus Christ, the Lord of the Church.
We affirm that the only unchallengeable authority for doctrine or life, either for the individual believer or the corporate church, is the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture.
We affirm that the standard by which our unchanging God manifests His holy requirements and guides the lifestyle of His people is set down specifically and definitively in the text of His written word.
We affirm that in all of its linguistic functions, whether praises, promises, commands, threatenings, questions, assurances, exhortations, confessions, narratives, or propositional teaching, etc. the Scripture is authoritative as God's word.
We affirm that the teaching and norm of the written text remains fully and supremely the authority for God's people whether they are historically closer to humanity's fall from original purity, or to the accomplishment of redemption at Christ's first advent, or to redemption's consummation at Christ's final coming.
We deny that the Scriptures receive their authority from the church, tradition or any other human source.
We deny that the authority of God may be separated from or set in opposition to the authority of Scripture, in part or in whole, on any matter which Scripture addresses, including details of nature or history.
We deny the legitimacy of separating the authority of Christ from the authority of Scripture, or of opposing the one to the other.
We deny that God intends His people to live by their maturing ethical consciousness or by some gradually evolving moral standard which goes beyond, or even against, the Scriptural text, the divinely intended control factor for theology and ethics.
We affirm that the whole of Scripture and all its parts, down to the very words of the original, were given by divine inspiration.
We affirm that inspiration was the work in which God by His Spirit, through human writers, gave us His word. The origin of Scripture is divine. The mode of divine inspiration remains largely a mystery to us.
We affirm that God in His work of inspiration utilized the distinctive personalities and literary styles of the writers whom He had chosen and prepared.
We affirm that inspiration, though not conferring omniscience, guaranteed true and trustworthy utterance on all matters of which the biblical authors were moved to speak and write.
We deny that the inspiration of Scripture can rightly be affirmed of the whole without the parts, or of some parts but not the whole.
We deny that inspiration can be reduced to human insight, or to heightened states of consciousness of any kind.
We deny that the corruption of human culture and language through sin has thwarted God's work of inspiration.
We deny that God, in causing these writers to use the very words that He chose, overrode their personalities.
We deny that the finitude or fallenness of these writers, by necessity or otherwise, introduced distortion or falsehood into God's word.
We affirm that Scripture, having been given by divine inspiration, is infallible, so that, far from misleading us, it is true and reliable in all the matters it addresses.
We affirm that the doctrine of inerrancy is grounded in the teaching of the Bible about inspiration.
We affirm that inerrancy refers to the complete truthfulness of Scripture.
We affirm that Scripture in its entirety is inerrant, being free from all falsehood, fraud, or deceit.
We affirm the unity and internal consistency of Scripture.
We affirm that the Bible expresses revealed truth from God, implying that biblical truth is both objective and absolute.
We deny that it is possible for the Bible to be at the same time infallible and errant in its assertions. Infallibility and inerrancy may be distinguished, but not separated.
We deny that biblical infallibility and inerrancy are limited to spiritual, religious, or redemptive themes, exclusive of assertions in the fields of history and science.
We deny any dichotomy between an inerrant "kernel" and an alleged errant "husk" of the Scriptural message.
We deny the inference that, because the Bible does not present itself as a "textbook" in a certain field of study, what the Bible teaches in that field may be dismissed as erroneous.
We deny that inerrancy is negated by biblical phenomena such as a lack of modern technical precision, irregularities of grammar or spelling, observational descriptions of nature, the reporting of falsehoods, the use of hyperbole and round numbers, the topical arrangement of material, variant selections of material in parallel accounts, or the use of free citations.
We deny that alleged errors and discrepancies that have not yet been resolved vitiate the truth claims of the Bible.
We deny that the humble, human form of Scripture entails errancy any more than the humanity of Christ, even in His humiliation, entails sin.
We deny that God's use of human instrumentality in proclaiming or writing His word entails the fallibility or errancy of that word as a final product.
We deny that Scripture's perfection is incompatible with its genuine human authorship.
We deny that, while Scripture is able to make us wise unto salvation, biblical truth should be defined in terms of this function.
We deny that inerrancy is a doctrine invented by Scholastic Protestantism, or is a reactionary position postulated in response to negative higher criticism.
We affirm that inspiration and inerrancy, strictly speaking, apply only to the autographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy.
We affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original.
We affirm that the process of transmitting God's word through the ages has not diminished the infallibility and authority of the original message.
We affirm that translations of the text of Scripture can communicate knowledge of God across all temporal and cultural boundaries.
We deny that any essential element of the Christian faith is affected by the absence of the autographs.
We deny that this absence renders the assertion of biblical inerrancy invalid or irrelevant.
We deny that the inerrancy of the original text of Scripture automatically extends to the process of transmission and translation.
We affirm that God's revelation in the Holy Scriptures was progressive.
We affirm that, both before and after the fall, God has specially revealed Himself, His works, and His will in a variety of ways: by addressing individuals, by typological events and ritual institutions, by inspired proclamation through prophets and apostles, and supremely by the personal manifestation of His own Son, Jesus Christ.
We affirm that many of these various divine revelations were verbally recorded for all subsequent ages in the canonical Scripture of the Old and New Testaments, which is also itself the very revelation of God to humans as a word of both information and power.
We deny that later revelation, which may fulfill earlier revelation, ever corrects or contradicts it.
We deny that any normative revelation has been given since the completion of the New Testament writings.
We deny that since the closing of the Scriptural canon, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and forever, now guides His church as it approaches the consummation of history to tolerate or commend practices which were previously forbidden by Him in the inspired text of the New Testament or the Old Testament (as interpreted and modified by the New).
We affirm that God is omnipotent and sovereign, so that nothing has prevented Him from clearly and infallibly revealing to humans His person and attributes, His works, and His will.
We affirm the clarity of Scripture and specifically of its message about salvation from sin.
We affirm that God's central message and demand in Scripture is so clear that any hearer or reader using the common and ordinary means of literary interpretation may understand it.
We affirm that even the deepest divine mysteries which are revealed in Scripture are communicated clearly enough that with diligence they may be cogently understood and taught.
We affirm that a person is not dependent for understanding of Scripture on the expertise of biblical scholars.
We deny that anything about the human mind and its functioning, any feature about human language, or the temporal and cultural particularity of all communication thwarts God from delivering to humans a clear and universally applicable revelation of Himself, His works, and His will.
We deny that all passages of Scripture are equally clear or have equal bearing on the message of redemption.
We deny that all parts of Scripture are equally plain to all readers or as readily understood in themselves as other parts of Scripture.
We deny that a person should ignore the fruits of the technical study of Scripture by biblical scholars.
We deny that there is a need for a pope, an infallible church or council, or modern scientific experts to interpret the true meaning of Scripture and explain to all people what is and is not incumbent upon them to believe and obey.