The First Two Articles

The Draft Revision precedes the current Statement of Faith's corresponding article. The Articles:

1. God’s gospel originates in and manifests the holy love of the eternal, triune God –
We believe in one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in a unity of love in three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This one God, who knows the end from the beginning and rules over all things, has, in love and grace, purposed from eternity to redeem a people for Himself and to restore His fallen creation for His own glory.

2. In one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect and eternally existing in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

2. God’s gospel is authoritatively announced in the Scriptures –
We believe that God has spoken through the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments. They are the verbally inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, sufficient for all that God requires us to believe and do, and the ultimate authority which stands over every realm of human knowledge. We confess that we cannot know God’s truth exhaustively, but we affirm that we can know it truly. Therefore, the Bible is to be believed, as God’s instruction, in all that it teaches; obeyed, as God’s command, in all that it requires; and trusted, as God’s pledge, in all that it promises.

1. The Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, to be the inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for the salvation of men and the Divine and final authority for Christian faith and life.


Personal commentary:

The choice to change the positioning of the first two articles is an interesting one. I suppose that given the right conglomeration of theologians we could go back and forth on it all day long. Fortunately we do not have the problems of the mainline denominations which Wright spells out accurately in The New Testament and the People of God: "within mainline 'New Testament theology'... it is axiomatic that the gospels do not give us direct access to Jesus, but only to the theology of the evangelists and their predecessors. If all authority belongs to the creator god, it is a matter of some delicacy to describe how such 'authority' comes to be vested in the New Testament, and what the limits of this might be."

The bottom line is: we believe in the God who has spoken and who has done so in a way that reflects his very nature "infinitely perfect and eternally existing". We believe this because Scripture itself testifies, "the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever" (Isa 40:8). The mainline has a real problem with inerrancy, but we have stood on it and continue to do so in an even stronger sense with the proposed draft revision, because it deals two hay-makers to those who undermine our knowledge of God: openness theologians and post-modernists. Whether you begin with the God who speaks or the words He has spoken to reveal Himself to us is not nearly as significant as what is actually affirmed in the articles. These two revised articles demonstrate a continuing desire to stand for what the EFCA has always stood for: the God who is known through His own special revelation.