beliefs
The Cambridge
Declaration of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals
April 20, 1996
Evangelical churches today are increasingly
dominated by the spirit of this age rather than by the Spirit
of Christ. As evangelicals, we call ourselves to repent of
this sin and to recover the historic Christian faith.
In the course of history words change. In
our day this has happened to the word "evangelical."
In the past it served as a bond of unity between Christians
from a wide diversity of church traditions. Historic evangelicalism
was confessional. It embraced the essential truths of Christianity
as those were defined by the great ecumenical councils of
the church. In addition, evangelicals also shared a common
heritage in the "solas" of the sixteenth century
Protestant Reformation.
Today the light of the Reformation has
been significantly dimmed. The consequence is that the
word "evangelical" has become so inclusive as to
have lost its meaning. We face the peril of losing the unity
it has taken centuries to achieve. Because of this crisis
and because of our love of Christ, his gospel and his church,
we endeavor to assert anew our commitment to the central truths
of the Reformation and of historic evangelicalism. These truths
we affirm not because of their role in our traditions, but
because we believe that they are central to the Bible.
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Sola Scriptura
The Erosion Of Authority
Scripture alone is the inerrant rule of the
church's life, but the evangelical church today has separated
Scripture from its authoritative function. In practice, the
church is guided, far too often, by the culture. Therapeutic
technique, marketing strategies, and the beat of the entertainment
world often have far more to say about what the church wants,
how it functions and what it offers, than does the Word of
God. Pastors have neglected their rightful oversight of worship,
including the doctrinal content of the music. As biblical
authority has been abandoned in practice, as its truths have
faded from Christian consciousness, and as its doctrines have
lost their saliency, the church has been increasingly emptied
of its integrity, moral authority and direction.
Rather than adapting Christian faith to satisfy
the felt needs of consumers, we must proclaim the law as the
only measure of true righteousness and the gospel as the only
announcement of saving truth. Biblical truth is indispensable
to the church's understanding, nurture and discipline.
Scripture must take us beyond our perceived
needs to our real needs and liberate us from seeing ourselves
through the seductive images, cliche's, promises. and priorities
of mass culture. It is only in the light of God's truth that
we understand ourselves aright and see God's provision for
our need. The Bible, therefore, must be taught and preached
in the church. Sermons must be expositions of the Bible and
its teachings, not expressions of the preachers opinions or
the ideas of the age. We must settle for nothing less than
what God has given.
The work of the Holy Spirit in personal experience
cannot be disengaged from Scripture. The Spirit does not speak
in ways that are independent of Scripture. Apart from Scripture
we would never have known of God's grace in Christ. The biblical
Word, rather than spiritual experience, is the test of truth.
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.
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Solus Christus
The Erosion Of Christ-Centered Faith
As evangelical faith becomes secularized,
its interests have been blurred with those of the culture.
The result is a loss of absolute values, permissive individualism,
and a substitution of wholeness for holiness, recovery for
repentance, intuition for truth, feeling for belief, chance
for providence, and immediate gratification for enduring hope.
Christ and his cross have moved from the center of our vision.
Thesis Two: Solus Christus
We reaffirm that our salvation
is accomplished by the mediatorial work of the historical
Christ alone. His sinless life and substitutionary atonement
alone are sufficient for our justification and reconciliation
to the Father.
We deny that the gospel is
preached if Christ's substitutionary work is not declared
and faith in Christ and his work is not solicited.
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Sola Gratia
The Erosion Of The Gospel
Unwarranted confidence in human ability is
a product of fallen human nature. This false confidence now
fills the evangelical world; from the self-esteem gospel,
to the health and wealth gospel, from those who have transformed
the gospel into a product to be sold and sinners into consumers
who want to buy, to others who treat Christian faith as being
true simply because it works. This silences the doctrine of
justification regardless of the official commitments of our
churches.
God's grace in Christ is not merely necessary
but is the sole efficient cause of salvation. We confess that
human beings are born spiritually dead and are incapable even
of cooperating with regenerating grace.
Thesis Three: Sola Gratia
We reaffirm that in salvation
we are rescued from God's wrath by his grace alone. It is
the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit that brings us to
Christ by releasing us from our bondage to sin and raising
us from spiritual death to spiritual life.
We deny that salvation is
in any sense a human work. Human methods, techniques or strategies
by themselves cannot accomplish this transformation. Faith
is not produced by our unregenerated human nature.
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Sola Fide
The Erosion Of The Chief Article
Justification is by grace alone through faith
alone because of Christ alone. This is the article by which
the church stands or falls. Today this article is often ignored,
distorted or sometimes even denied by leaders, scholars and
pastors who claim to be evangelical. Although fallen human
nature has always recoiled from recognizing its need for Christ's
imputed righteousness, modernity greatly fuels the fires of
this discontent with the biblical Gospel. We have allowed
this discontent to dictate the nature of our ministry and
what it is we are preaching.
Many in the church growth movement believe
that sociological understanding of those in the pew is as
important to the success of the gospel as is the biblical
truth which is proclaimed. As a result, theological convictions
are frequently divorced from the work of the ministry. The
marketing orientation in many churches takes this even further,
erasing the distinction between the biblical Word and the
world, robbing Christ's cross of its offense, and reducing
Christian faith to the principles and methods which bring
success to secular corporations.
While the theology of the cross may be believed,
these movements are actually emptying it of its meaning. There
is no gospel except that of Christ's substitution in our place
whereby God imputed to him our sin and imputed to us his righteousness.
Because he bore our judgment, we now walk in his grace as
those who are forever pardoned, accepted and adopted as God's
children. There is no basis for our acceptance before God
except in Christ's saving work, not in our patriotism, churchly
devotion or moral decency. The gospel declares what God has
done for us in Christ. It is not about what we can do to reach
him.
Thesis Four: Sola Fide
We reaffirm that justification
is by grace alone through faith alone because of Christ alone.
In justification Christ's righteousness is imputed to us as
the only possible satisfaction of God's perfect justice.
We deny that justification
rests on any merit to be found in us, or upon the grounds
of an infusion of Christ's righteousness in us, or that an
institution claiming to be a church that denies or condemns
sola fide can be recognized as a legitimate church.
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Soli Deo Gloria
The Erosion Of God-Centered Worship
Wherever in the church biblical authority
has been lost, Christ has been displaced, the gospel has been
distorted, or faith has been perverted, it has always been
for one reason: our interests have displaced God's and we
are doing his work in our way. The loss of God's centrality
in the life of today's church is common and lamentable. It
is this loss that allows us to transform worship into entertainment,
gospel preaching into marketing, believing into technique,
being good into feeling good about ourselves, and faithfulness
into being successful. As a result, God, Christ and the Bible
have come to mean too little to us and rest too inconsequentially
upon us. God does not exist to satisfy human ambitions,
cravings, the appetite for consumption, or our own private
spiritual interests. We must focus on God in our worship,
rather than the satisfaction of our personal needs. God is
sovereign in worship; we are not. Our concern must be for
God's kingdom, not our own empires, popularity or success.
Thesis Five: Soli Deo Gloria
We reaffirm that because salvation
is of God and has been accomplished by God, it is for God's
glory and that we must glorify him always. We must live our
entire lives before the face of God, under the authority of
God and for his glory alone.
We deny that we can properly
glorify God if our worship is confused with entertainment,
if we neglect either Law or Gospel in our preaching, or if
self-improvement, self-esteem or self- fulfillment are allowed
to become alternatives to the gospel.
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Call To Repentance And Reformation
The faithfulness of the evangelical church
in the past contrasts sharply with its unfaithfulness in the
present. Earlier in this century, evangelical churches sustained
a remarkable missionary endeavor, and built many religious
institutions to serve the cause of biblical truth and Christ's
kingdom. That was a time when Christian behavior and expectations
were markedly different from those in the culture. Today they
often are not. The evangelical world today is losing its biblical
fidelity, moral compass and missionary zeal.
We repent of our worldliness. We have been
influenced by the "gospels" of our secular culture,
which are no gospels. We have weakened the church by our own
lack of serious repentance, our blindness to the sins in ourselves
which we see so clearly in others, and our inexcusable failure
adequately to tell others about God's saving work in Jesus
Christ.
We also earnestly call back erring professing
evangelicals who have deviated from God's Word in the matters
discussed in this Declaration. This includes those who declare
that there is hope of eternal life apart from explicit faith
in Jesus Christ, who claim that those who reject Christ in
this life will be annihilated rather than endure the just
judgment of God through eternal suffering, or who claim that
evangelicals and Roman Catholics are one in Jesus Christ even
where the biblical doctrine of justification is not believed.
The Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals asks
all Christians to give consideration to implementing this
Declaration in the church's worship, ministry, policies, life
and evangelism.
For Christ's sake.
Amen.
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