AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING ESSENTIAL CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES, PART III
AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING THE OMNISCIENCE AND UNCHANGEABLENESS OF GOD AND CONCERNING HUMAN FREEDOM AND DIGNITY
I. We affirm that God knows all things and that His understanding is infinite.
We deny that God ever changes in His essence and that His infinite knowledge ever increases.
II. We affirm that God's knowledge comprehends all space and all time—past, present, and future.
We deny that the present non-existence of future things and events entails their being unknowable to God, who "calls the things that are not [Greek] as if they were."
III. We affirm that God's knowledge is perfect and that His knowledge of the future is as certain as His knowledge of the past.
We deny that God's knowledge admits of either mistake or correction.
IV. We affirm that God knows things present as present, things past as past, and things future as future.
We deny that God's knowledge of temporal relations compromises the certitude of His knowledge of the future.
V. We affirm that God's knowledge of the future specifically includes the future choices of all free agents including Himself.
We deny that the freedom of agents in choosing entails either the prior uncertainty or the prior unknowability of their choices.
VI. We affirm that the freedom of moral agents entails that their choices are their own, not forced on them by anything external to themselves.
We deny that the freedom of moral agents is founded on the complete liberty of the will from any restrictions inherent in the agents' own moral character or intellectual apprehension.
VII. We affirm that the moral character of free agents defines the moral content of their choices and that moral choices reveal moral character.
We deny that the will of moral agents either is free from determination by their moral character or defines their moral character.
VIII. We affirm that God's moral character is infinitely, eternally, and immutably holy, righteous, and good, ensuring that His choices will always be holy, righteous, and good.
We deny that God's moral character is defined by His continuing choices.
IX. We affirm that God created man in His own image, imparting to him, in man's original state, His communicable attributes of knowledge and righteousness.
(A DENIAL has not been drafted.)
X. We affirm that the sin of Adam brought moral guilt and corruption on the whole human race, so that all natural descendants of Adam are born both guilty before the judgment of God and with their wills enslaved to the sin in their own characters, so that all men freely but necessarily sin.
We deny that the effect of Adam's sin is limited to imparting the mere potential for sin and guilt to his descendants, to shaping an environment that occasions or tempts to sin .
XI. We affirm that just as every man inherits from Adam the image of God, the cultural mandate, and the dignity and rights inherent in being human, so also every man inherits from Adam the guilt and corruption of sin.
(A DENIAL has not been drafted.)
XII. We affirm that the faulty definition of free agency as the "power of contrary choice," as some define it, lies at the root of the contemporary movement among some professing Christians to deny the historic, orthodox doctrines of: (1) God's infinite, eternal, and unchangeable knowledge and moral perfection; (2) man's inherent guilt and corruption because of original sin; (3) the substitutionary, satisfactory atonement and redemption wrought in and by the death of Christ; (4) justification as the forensic imputation of the righteousness of Christ to guilty sinners on the grounds of faith; and (5) salvation as the work of God rather than of man.
We deny we believe: (1) that all who believe in the aforementioned faulty definition of free agency as the "power of contrary choice" recognize any or all of these logical implications of the theory; (2) that the fact many adherents to this faulty definition of free agency fail to recognize these implications either justifies a complacent attitude toward the theory or reduces the danger inherent in the theory; and (3) that this faulty definition of free agency is ultimately compatible with the central, orthodox doctrines cited in Affirmation XII above.
XIII. We affirm that the views of God, man, sin, the atonement, and salvation implied by the theory of free agency as the "power of contrary choice" are heretical, to the extreme of singly denying Christianity.
We deny that the god of this theory is the God of the Bible. It is instead an idol constructed in the image of fallen and rebellious man. We further deny that the humanity described in this theory is the humanity described in scripture, that the atonement portrayed in this theory is the atonement portrayed in the Bible, and that the gospel outlined in this theory is the true gospel of the Bible.
AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING THE PELAGIAN CONTROVERSY
I. We affirm that, in its original state, all of God's creation was intrinsically good and therefore without reproach.
We deny that any part of God's creation was made immutably and indestructibly good.
II. We affirm that man was created good, in the image of God, with a free will that was inclined to the good by virtue of his nature, but with the possibility of sinning (posse peccare).
We deny that the chief excellencies of fallen man are his reason and free will, and that the will is an absolute and indefectible freedom of choice which, from moment to moment, determines itself and is unimpaired by previous choices. We deny that sin is merely the choice of what is contrary to reason, and that fallen, unredeemed man can at any time avoid choosing sin. We further deny that man's will, though truly an endowment from God, is at any time independent from God.
III. We affirm that since man in his totality was originally good, his created emotions, impulses, and interests, in their original state, were also good.
We deny that the desires of the flesh, following the fall, are still without reproach and intrinsically good. We deny the proposition that desires toward evil are sinful only when they are excessive or implemented.
IV. We affirm that Adam sinned in total freedom and that his descendents continue to do likewise without any alien/intrusive external or internal compulsion or constraint. We affirm that in both cases, both physical death and spiritual death are consequences of sin. We further affirm that both physical death and spiritual death are acquired through original sin and mankind's solidaric relationship with it.
We deny that only physical death, and not spiritual death, is a consequence of sin. We further deny the proposition that spiritual death is acquired by each man through his own actual sins.
V. We affirm that every man at his conception is spiritually dead, that is, rebellious, guilty and polluted before God by virtue of his participation in and co-responsibility for Adam's sin and that the three components of man's spiritual death explain the need for regeneration, justification, and sanctification. We affirm that natural man continues to have a will of his own, but since it is determined by his rebellious, guilty, and polluted nature, it is now inclined to all evil and unable to do what is good (non posse non peccare). Because it is thus utterly unwilling and unable to choose what is good, man's will should be considered both freely surrendered to sin (and thus captive) and fully responsible for sin (and thus accountable).
We deny that every man at his conception is morally "sound," that is, in the same condition as Adam was before he sinned, endowed inalienably by divine grace with natural holiness consisting of reason and free will, and that these are sufficient to enable man to lead a sinless life. We equally deny that every man at his conception is merely morally "sick," involuntarily polluted by Adam's guilt, and there with a lowered responsibility for sin.
VI. We affirm that the notions of participation in and co-responsibility for original sin are neither unthinkable nor blasphemous. We affirm that the idea of all men sinning in Adam makes perfect sense whether all men were actually "in" Adam at the time of his sin or Adam was the federal representative of all men when he sinned. We further affirm that original sin and guilt are transmitted through natural generation.
We deny that the idea of man's solidaric relationship with Adam's sin is unthinkable and blasphemous. We deny that the universal presence of rebellion, guilt, and pollution at conception is inconsistent with the idea of sin as an exercise of free will and implies that God's creation was radically evil. We deny that God either unjustly regards men before they committed actual sins as sinners or that God is responsible for creating evil natures. We further deny that the difference between Adam and his descendants is merely a matter of environment; namely that sin in the latter may be explained solely in the fact they are born into a society where evil customs and bad habits prevail.
VII. We affirm that Divine Grace is an inner transforming and enabling power that regenerates the nature of man and transforms him from man-centered and corrupt to God-centered and holiness-centered. We affirm that the redeemed human will reflects this transformation and therefore desires not only forgiveness but also obedience and, encouraged by justifying grace and strengthened by sanctifying grace, is now able not to sin (posse non peccare). Yet we deny the perfectibility of man in this world due to the continuing presence of indwelling sin until the moment of death.
We deny that the term Divine Grace refers to man's natural constitution by virtue of which even some heathen have been perfect men, or that Divine Grace refers only to the law of God by which, to aid man's reason darkened by sin, He reveals what man ought to do, or that the grace of Christ is essentially enlightenment and teaching working through Christ's example through the assurance of forgiveness and the doctrines of the church. We deny that grace is not an inward power that exerts an enabling influence upon the will, nor a principle that inspires righteousness. We further deny that grace is limited to being an external facility that the will may hold to if it chooses to do so and that grace is merely a "potential" for leading men into the Kingdom of God and sinless perfection.
VIII. We affirm that in the state of glory, both human nature and the human will attain perfection, meaning that sin is forever out of bounds and that man will not and cannot sin (non posse peccare).
We deny that before the state of glory either human nature, human will, or human action can attain a state of perfection. We thus, again, deny the perfectibility of man in this world.
AFFIRMATIONS AND DENIALS CONCERNING THE JUDICIAL AND SUBSTITUTIONARY NATURE OF SALVATION
I. We affirm that the Christian gospel is indispensably a message about the saving work of the historical individual, Jesus Christ, who was fully God and fully man, whose substitutionary death upon the cross secured justification for believers against the judicial condemnation of God which rests upon sin and sinners.
We deny that Christianity is merely a metaphysical abstraction, ethical program, or social movement.
II. We affirm that the Bible presents salvation as salvation from sin's guilt and power and that the measuring rod for sin is God's holy and unchanging character as disclosed through the created order and man's heart, but verbally revealed in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
We deny that sin is defined by divinely fluctuating feeling, simply a failure in cultural standards, or a failure in man's attitudes or projects, such as self-esteem, positive perspective, affirmation of others, etc.
III. We affirm that as an affront to God's righteousness, sin fully deserves the wrath of God, who imposes the just recompense and inescapable condemnation of death either upon sinners or upon an innocent Substitute who satisfies the justice of God in their place.
We deny that the divine, wrathful, and just sentence of death upon sinners can be mitigated or set aside at the discretion of a holy and righteous God without the infliction of His announced penal sanction.
IV. We affirm that Jesus Christ, by His death, offered a substitutionary atonement, rescuing His people from the judicial condemnation of God upon their sin by fully bearing the penalty of their sin upon the cross, the righteous dying as a sacrifice for the unrighteous and being cursed in their behalf.
We deny that the death of Christ was merely a utilitarian public example of sin's ugliness and suffering, intended by God to deter others from immoral living, rather than being retributive in character.
V. We affirm that the reconciling work of Christ removes God's enmity and alienation against sinners who believe in Christ by paying the prescribed penalty which rests upon their objective, legal guilt before God.
We deny that Christ's saving work was merely an act of mediation or a compelling gesture of good will intended to restore communication between God and men as parties who do not trust each other.
VI. We affirm that justification is a forensic transaction in which God not only acquits or pardons the sinner in consideration of Christ's self-sacrifice for sins, but also imputes the positive righteousness of Christ to the legal account of the sinner, this righteousness being both alien and yet constitutive, thus serving as the basis in truth of God's declared verdict of a righteous status for the believer.
We deny that the atonement was merely a pathos-evoking example of God's love, intended to have a subjective moral influence in the heart of believers and leading them to live self-sacrificially by imitation. We further deny that in the teaching of the Bible God's justification of the wicked has a causative quality, that it replaces, elevates, or infuses the Adamic nature of the believer with the actual righteousness of Christ as sanctifying grace, and that it is in any way a divine assessment based upon the inward character of the believer.
VII. We affirm that the judicial concerns of substitutionary atonement and forensic justification are indispensable to the rich and comprehensive work of God's gracious salvation, which extends beyond the guilt of sin to it power, pollution, and consequences as well.
