The Statement of Faith Revision

We speak of "verbal" inspiration, meaning that the very selection of the words used were inspired by God. But when we look at the NT writers and how they quoted from the OT Scriptures, it appears that we don't find "verbal" inspiration being applied in the way that we are perceiving it.

The NT writers quote from the LXX, the text behind the LXX, the MT, and something in between. What does this practice (under inspiration)teach us about "verbal" inspiration?

Should we deal with the issue of preservation? As we know, some claim that the Scriptures are preserved in the MT/TR. Some to the extent that the KJV is the preserved Word of God in English.

How do we respond to the issue that the Word of God is inerrant and preserved?

In my adult class the term "verbal inspiration" was thought by many to refer to the spoken word not the written word. Which is not at all the point, but interesting to note how folks will take semi-technical terms.

I think the word "verbally" is a problematic one for the average believer. It is missing from the original statement of faith, and seems like a non-essential for the new SOF. It took me quite a while to get a sense for what it meant.

You guys have done a tremendous job!!

Here is a simplified revision of your 2nd draft to eliminate unnecessary words. I like stressing our belief in God's gospel and the overarching story, but I don't think you need to have an introductory statement for each article. I would concede an intro to the whole statement but not each article.

I'd simplify it to something like this:

We believe God�s Gospel that . . .

1. There is one eternal God, Creator of all things, holy, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in a loving unity of three equally divine Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This one God, all-knowing and all-powerful, 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. God has spoken through the Scriptures, both the Old and New Testaments. They are the inspired Word of God, without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation, and the ultimate authority that stands over every realm of human knowledge and endeavor. Therefore, the Bible is to be believed in all that it affirms, obeyed in all that it requires, and trusted in all that it promises.

3. God created Adam and Eve in His image, later they sinned through the temptation of Satan, corrupting that image. As a result, all humanity is alienated from God and under His wrath and can be rescued, reconciled, and restored (I'd lose the alliteration and just pick one word) only through God�s gracious work in Jesus Christ.

4. Jesus Christ, Israel's promised Messiah, is God incarnate, one Person in two natures, fully human and fully divine, having been conceived through the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary. He lived a sinless life, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, arose bodily from the dead, and ascended into heaven, where, at the right hand of God the Father, He is now our High Priest and Advocate.

5. Jesus Christ, as our representative and substitute, died on the cross as the perfect, all-sufficient sacrifice for our sins. His shed blood and resurrection are the only ground for salvation, and it is through faith alone in Christ that anyone is justified before God.

6. The Holy Spirit glorifies the Lord Jesus Christ by convicting the world, by regenerating sinners into union with Christ, and by indwelling, guiding, instructing, equipping, and empowering believers for Christ-like living and service.

7. The true church is composed of all those who have been saved by God's grace through faith and regeneration by the Holy Spirit and are thereby united together in the body of Christ of which He is the Head. This church is manifest in local churches, whose membership should be composed only of members of the true church.
The two biblically-mandated ordinances of the church, baptism and the Lord�s Supper, visibly and tangibly express this gospel, strengthening our faith. They are to be celebrated by the church in obedience to Christ, but are not a means of salvation.

8. God�s justifying grace must not be separated from its sanctifying power and purpose. God commands us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves, acting with compassion toward the poor and needy, seeking justice for the oppressed. In fellowship with one another, we are to combat the spiritual forces of evil, especially with the Word of God and prayer. In all that we do, we are to bear witness to the gospel in word and deed, making disciples among all people.

9. Jesus Christ will appear personally at his glorious coming with His holy angels. He will establish His kingdom fully and exercise His role as Judge of all. This coming of Christ will occur at a time known only to God and requires constant expectancy, motivating the believer to godly living, sacrificial service, and energetic mission. This is our blessed hope.

10. The final judgment of God will occur a bodily resurrection of the dead, the unbeliever will face judgment and eternal conscious punishment, while the believer will experience eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord, to the praise of His glorious grace. Amen.

Regarding #9, What is your sense of not including an explicit hermeneutics statement on it in our SOF?

On the key elements, a common understanding is critical. But, regarding eschatology, the 2nd draft has a significant strength over the 1950 SoF.

When the premillennialist piece was added in 1950, it had a pre-trib hermeneutical framework in mind and then in 1984 when historicial (post-trib)premillennialism was added(Doug Moo), this resulted in an introduction of an additional hermeneutical framework(which is shared by amillennialists as well as post-trib historic premillennialists) making the purpose of the amillennial-exclusion unclear.

The removal of point 11(premillennialism) in new SoF corrects this, as amillennialism and historic pre-millennialism share almost exactly the same O.T. hermeneutical framework as cited in the commentary in the Second Draft Revision (p. 23) . . .

"in fact, many who hold this position interpret the Old Testament in almost exactly the same way as amillennialists, even with regard to the role of Israel. Since the posttribulational position is already held among us and consistent with the current doctrinal statement, the proposed change [allowing amillennialism] will not introduce any significant new hermeneutical issues in this regard."

So, in this new SoF, an inconsistent-in-practice hermeneutic distinction is removed.

-Pete Buchhop
(an amillennialist who cannot yet join the EFC)

Actually, an amillennialist could join the EFCA. The current statement of faith states that we believe in a "personal, premillennial, imminent coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." It does not state whether this is with regard to the first coming or second coming of Christ.

Therefore, an amillennialist could interpret the statement this way. Christ's first coming was personal, premillennial and imminent.

Now granted, this is not what the authors of the 1950 statement of faith had in mind, but then, neither did they understand "imminent" to mean "impending." For them, imminent meant the "pre-tribulation" rapture of the church.

In any event, I merely point out that the 1950 statement of faith does not specifically refer to the second coming and therefore, an amillennialist can affirm the statement if he understands the "coming" to refer to Christ's first coming! Certainly, Christ is our blessed hope at the consumation of the age.

And all amillennialists said, "Amen."

Don, this would not be possible. You are right that the framers in 1950 were intentional about using the term premillennial, and it was specifically not amillennial or postmillennial. Moreover, this statement, article 11, comes in a SOF which consists of 12 articles, so this one article must be interpreted in light of the whole. Article 3 clearly refers to Christ's first coming: "Jesus Christ is true God and true man, having been conceived of the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary."

I've really debated with myself whether or not to respond to your last post,Greg. The framers in 1950 were also intentional about using the term imminent to mean the rapture of the church and it was specifically not post-trib or mid-trib. So when you argue that what the framers intended caries the day with regard to the SOF and how article 11 must be understood yet today, I'm confused as to why that should be the case.

I wonder if part of the backlash to the revision doesn't have more to do with previous redefinitions of terms without church approval then it does with actual doctrinal issues.

I do have an issue with this proposed statement.

The statement of scriptural supremacy should remain as the first article of the SoF - as we see other denominations, both in the States and worldwide begin to ignore the Scriptures in developing their doctrine, the importance of Scripture to us must be clearly emphasized and placed in the position of importance within our Statement.

Why have we changed the order of articles one and two, between the Bible and God?

This has been done because for two reasons. First, we have followed a salvation-historical framework. We have followed a biblical theology framework in the statement, so it follows God�s story of His unfolding plan of redemption from beginning to end. This is the purpose of the headings. (Each article then states the truth in systematic theology categories.) It gives preeminence to God in all His Trinitarian fullness. God existed before the Bible. This God, however, is a talking God. This means that we have received His Word. Much like when we study Christ, we begin with His person and then address His work. Here we begin with the person of God, and then we address one of the things He has done, revealed Himself through words which is recorded in the Word.

Second, we begin with a statement about God because ultimately our convictions about the nature of the Bible are based on our faith in God. This addresses epistemology, i.e. the basis of how and what we know. The real foundation for our knowledge of God is not a rational judgment about an inerrant Bible, which it is, but a faith in the goodness of the God who speaks. We believe God; we believe He has spoken; and we believe He has spoken truly.

In sum, in this revision the doctrine of Scripture, as stated in article 2, has been strengthened, it has not been ignored or lessened in importance.

Does EFCA interpret the Bible according to its literal [grammatical-historical], or normal, sense?

If not, does the EFCA have a normative or prescribed method of interpreting Scripture and what is it?

Your Brother in Christ Jesus
George Husted
Elder at Glastonbury Community Church, CT

George,

Since no one else has responded yet to your question, I thought I'd take a stab at it.

I don't think the EFCA has a prescribed method of interpreting Scripture, if by that you mean an officially adopted one that could be found in some of kind of document somewhere.

I've read the Articles of Incorporation, and there isn't anything there. For the most part, what binds us together is our associational ties, shared ministries (such as our EFCA-IM and TIU) and our Statement of Faith.

Having said that, I think that the grammatical-historical approach to hermeneutics forms the basis for most/all of the interpretation that I've encountered in my time in the EFCA (15 years or so). Certainly not an allegorical or mystical approach!

I also think grammatical-historical interpretation is augmented by many in the EFCA by contextual/cannonical interpretation and even an eye on how passages have been interpreted by the church over the centuries and around the world.

The key thing that I've learned about hermeneutics in the EFCA is that it's all about authorial intent. What the author(s) (big A and little a) were trying to convey is what we're trying to uncover.

And everyone that I know in the EFCA believes that we can get at the author's intended meaning as we faithfully and prayerfully work at it. We have not given in to the despair of some postmodern hermeneutics.

Pastor Bill Kynes has written a paper on the hermeneutics of the RSOF (available from the Pastoral Care Ministries office, I can't find it online anywhere that I can point you to). He makes the case that there are hermeneutical principles present in the proposed RSOF that give boundaries to what is acceptable within the EFCA.

I think that a case could be made that the same thing is true of our current SOF. Any hermeneutical process that ends up producing doctrine that is out of step with the 1950 SOF is judged out of bounds--implicitly.

I don't know if that answers your question or not, but it's my $.02.

By the way, the word "literal" is a hard one to nail down so that we all know what we're talking about. I believe in literal interpretation of things that were meant to be taken literally. But Jesus isn't wooden and doesn't have a handle even though He is the Gate (John 10:9).

-Matt Mitchell
Pastor, Lanse EFC, Lanse PA

Matt Mitchell,

Thank you very much for your response. I think question #9 above is a crucial one.

All Supreme Court Justices may agree that the Constitution is the highest law of the land and that it is true. However, the method they use to interpret the Constitution can vary from the strict constructionist point of view to the "living document" point of view. As a result of the latter, new law, not actually found in the Constitution has been written from the bench by judicial fiat.

The same principle applies to Scripture. Things not actually found in the Scriptures can be advocated if the wrong method of interpretation is used. In our existing statement of faith, pre-millennialism was understood to be a term intrinsic to a dispensationalist framework for understanding Scripture. Dr. Olsen specifically stated that our SoF expressed a dispensational view of Scripture and he based that statement on the use of the word �pre-millennial�. Dispensationalism, in turn, is arrived at by using the historical-grammatical method of interpretation. Therefore, it is my opinion that the inclusion of pre-millennialism in our current SoF is an intrinsic expression that the historical-grammatical method of interpretation is the method used by the EFCA to interpret Scripture.

Any attempt to abandon the use of the word �pre-millennial� [without offering alternative wording to safeguard against it] is therefore a blow against both dispensationalism and the historical-grammatical method of interpretation as being the normative way of reading Scripture in the EFCA.

Just as activist judges now interpret the Constitution to say things never intended by the Founding Fathers, the law of unintended consequences may be about to open the Church to the prospect of departing from the will of our Heavenly Father because we appear to be close to inadvertently abandoning the historical-grammatical method of interpretation.

Your Brother in Christ Jesus
George Husted
Elder at Glastonbury Community Church, CT

George,

Thanks for interacting with me on this!

I agree with you about the importance of grammatical/historical hermeneutics, and I'm sure that the Spiritual Heritage Committee would also agree. I don't think that anyone in the EFCA is advocating leaving gram/hist hermeneutics as the bedrock of the interpretative process (though again, I wouldn't say that gram/hist is all there is to understanding a text).

But I'm not sure that I agree that gram/hist hermeneutics always inevitably lead to dispensationalism.

And I am sure that dispensationalism is not the prescribed hermeneutic of today's EFCA even though the EFCA is the happy home of many dispensationalists (including progressive dispensationalists like myself).

There are many who have signed our 1950 EFCA Statement of Faith who are not dispensationalists. They are historic or classic premillennialists like Dr. Douglas Moo who presented his take on the whole thing at this year's Midwinter Ministerial. I recommend getting a hold of the recordings from that to get a sense of the different acceptable views within the EFCA right now (each of them taking original authorial intent very seriously, by the way).

In other words, I don't think that "premillennial" ensures "grammatical/historical" and it hasn't ensured "dispensational." If there is a sense that "grammatical/historical" is under attack (which I actually don't sense) and we want to protect "grammatical/historical," I think we'll have to do it some other way.

Blessings on you brother,

-Matt Mitchell

Pastor, Lanse EFC, Lanse PA

Matt Mitchell,

Thanks again. Your excellent comments have given me much to ponder.

I remain concerned that the EFCA, lacking a definitive hermeneutic will be vulnerable in our post-modern landscape. If we fail to have a unified way of interpreting Scripture, will we be communicating or will we be speaking past each other using the same words but having different meanings assigned to those words?

Moses taught the followers of God to mark the words of the prophets and observe whether they came to pass or not.

"When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously..." Deut 18:21-22

That seems like a pretty literal method of determining meaning and veracity. If we apply this same method of interpretation to the book of the Revelation, we can expect that there will be a literal thousand-year reign of Christ Jesus inaugurated upon His return.

In my readings, it sure appears to me that the Dispensational theological system arises out of a specific hermeneutic rather than from a theology imposed on Scripture. Furthermore, that hermeneutic is most definitely the literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic. In fact, one of the chief characteristics of Dispensationalism is its insistence upon a "literal" reading of the Bible.

Historically, according to Dr. Olsen, the EFCA has been Dispensational and he based that assertion on the use of the word "premillenial" in the SoF. He was quite clear about this in the book, This We Believe. He was also quite clear that while there was room for differences in many areas of the Church, there was no room for differences on "premillenial".

Why was that? What was so essential about having premillenialism in our SoF? I remain convinced that having premillenialism in the SoF was essential because it is inherently a Dispensational view point, which is intrinsically derived from a literal, grammatical, historical hermeneutic.

When I read the prophets, I look for what they said to "come to pass". If the words have not come to pass, or will not happened, then "the prophet hath spoken it presumptuously..." and it's all a bunch of rot and nonsense. God's word is either true or it is not. With God's grace, I will go to my grave before I deny the literal truth of His word.

I have read the third draft of the SoF. There have been improvements and there is much that I find appealing. I can see that a tremendous amount of work has gone into it. The interaction between myself and brothers such as yourself continues to educate and illuminate my understanding. Thank you for your patience with me. I am concerned that there appears to be a wide gulf between what the EFCA says it believes in it's current SoF and the praxis of the Church. When I joined my local Church about 5 years ago, I did so after having read and agreed with the current SoF. It is very troubling to hear, "There are many who have signed our 1950 EFCA Statement of Faith who are not dispensationalists." I can only hope that your assessment is incorrect.

I would like to conclude by once again quoting Dr. Olsen:

THIS WE BELIEVE
Exposition of the Doctrinal Statement of
The Evangelical Free Church of America,
Dr. Arnold T. Olson [President Emeritus, EFCA]
Free Church Publications, Minneapolis, MN, 1963.
Page 66

2. THE COMING OF CHRIST IS TO BE PRE-MILLENNIAL

"(3) The pre-millennial view accepts the literal interpretation of the Scriptures and holds that Christ will come at the close of a period of great tribulation in the earth to judge the nations, bind Satan, and set up an earthly kingdom for a period of a thousand years, after which there will be a new heaven and a new earth. While there is great flexibility in certain areas of the doctrinal statement, there is no room for differences on this point. The church holds to the pre-millennial view."

From the same page:

"Some readers may wonder upon what the statement that the Free Church holds to a modified dispensational view is based, since the word 'dispensational' does not appear in Article XI. It is based first on the generally accepted tradition as declared often in various writings, but further upon the word 'pre-millennial,' which is part of the dispensational interpretation."

The Church I joined held to a "pre-millennial view" because it accepted "the literal interpretation of the Scriptures" and that view was Dispensational because the word 'pre-millennial,' "is part of the dispensational interpretation." I begin to question whether I am actually in the Church that I joined.

George Husted
Elder at Glastonbury Community Church, CT

The Church I joined held to a "pre-millennial view" because it accepted "the literal interpretation of the Scriptures" and that view was Dispensational because the word 'pre-millennial,' "is part of the dispensational interpretation." I begin to question whether I am actually in the Church that I joined.

I want to clarify that the "Church" I am referring to in my statement is EFCA, not Glastonbury Community Church, my local Church.

I think that I should also state that my primary concern isn't Dispensationalism, or even Premillennialism. I am primarily concerned with hermeneutics.

I strongly believe that the literal "grammatical/historical" method is biblically correct, based on Deut 18:21-22. I believe that Scripture is the basis for interpreting Scripture, based on Acts 17:11. I believe that Scripture is completely sufficient for that task, based on 2 Timothy 3:16-17.

With that, I think I am done discussing the SoF.

Your Brother in Christ Jesus
George Husted
Elder, Glastonbury Community Church

The original inclusion of item #11 appears to have been a framed as a dispensational-premillennial model; which held largely, a single hermenuetic. With the change in 1983 to include historical premillennialism, this is no longer the case (as illustrated in the 2nd draft itself, as well as in the recent issue of 'EFCA' and mentioned in my prior post above).

If it is decided to keep the 'pre-millennial' item in the new SoF, it should be made clear what the purpose of this inclusion would be as the hermeneutical one no longer applies.

Personally, I have attended an EFCA church for many years. I share fully the same hermeneutic as post-trib, historical premillennialist members, believe fully in a verbal inspiration/literal interpretation of Scripture(i.e. 6-day creation, flood, jonah/whale, physical resurrection, etc), but disagree on a single segment of text in Revelation 20 and for this reason, I cannot join.

The difference between historical premillennialism and conservative amillennialism is actually, in practice, much less significant theologically than the Armenian/Calvinist divide which seems to be a non-issue in the EFCA.

Again, if it is decided to keep the 'pre-millennial' item in the new SoF, it should be made clear what the purpose of this inclusion would be as the hermeneutical one no longer applies.

That said, the EFCA should be commended as they are clearly having a serious dialog on this volatile topic and God bless them for that. Most denominations would not have the courage and fortitude to take it on and I applaud them.

Thanks,
-Pete Buchhop