The Cambridge Declaration Of Faith
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.
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,
cliches, 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 preacher's 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
A Call To Repentance & 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 to adequately 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.
Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals Executive Council (1996)
Dr. John Armstrong
The Rev. Alistair Begg
Dr. James M. Boice
Dr. W. Robert Godfrey
Dr. John D. Hannah
Dr. Michael S. Horton
Mrs. Rosemary Jensen
Dr. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Dr. Robert M. Norris
Dr. R.C. Sproul
Dr. Gene Edward Veith
Dr. David Wells
Dr. Luder Whitlock
Dr. J.A.O. Preus, III
Note:
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