For our Church Anniversary Celebration on Sunday, 10/30/11

The Cambridge Declaration:

Thesis One: Sola Scriptura
We reaffirm the inerrant Scripture to be the sole source of written divine revelation,which alone can bind the conscience. The Bible alone teaches all that is necessary for our salvation from sin and is the standard by which all Christian behavior must be measured.

We deny that any creed, council or individual may bind a Christian's conscience, that the Holy Spirit speaks independently of or contrary to what is set forth in the Bible, or that personal spiritual experience can ever be a vehicle of revelation.

London Baptist Confession (1689) 1.4

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.
( 2 Peter 1:19-21; 2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 John 5:9 )

John Frame:

“Divine authorship is the ultimate reason why Scripture is authoritative. Its authority is absolute because God’s authority is absolute, and Scripture is his personal word to us.”

“Since Scripture is God’s personal word, all of it is authoritative, for as Paul says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God” (2 Tim. 3:16), not just those parts that we find attractive, cogent, relevant, or culturally respectable.” (John Frame, Doctine and the Word of God, 165).

“[Scripture] claims, rather, (1) that God is the author of the whole biblical canon, (2) that we live by all of it (Matt. 4:4), (3) that God has the right to speak to us about anything at all, (4) that the purpose of Scripture is redemptive in a broad sense, not a narrow sense, and (5) that the redemptive purpose of Scripture is so broad that no area of human life is excluded from its concern” (ibid., 166).

T4G Affirmations and Denials:

Article I

We affirm that the sole authority for the Church is the Bible, verbally inspired, inerrant, infallible, and totally sufficient and trustworthy.

We deny that the Bible is a mere witness to the divine revelation, or that any portion of Scripture is marked by error or the effects of human sinfulness.

---

Article II

We affirm that the authority and sufficiency of Scripture extends to the entire Bible, and therefore that the Bible is our final authority for all doctrine and practice.

We deny that any portion of the Bible is to be used in an effort to deny the truthfulness or trustworthiness of any other portion. We further deny any effort to identify a canon within the canon or, for example, to set the words of Jesus against the writings of Paul.