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THE FOUNDATION DOCUMENTS |
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THE FOUNDATION DOCUMENTS |
THE MANIFESTO FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
On July 4, 1986, at a Solemn Assembly before the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and during a three-day Coalition on Revival Congress on the Christian Worldview, 60 of COR's national Steering Committee members and another 400 Christian leaders from a broad spectrum of theological viewpoints signed The Manifesto for the Christian Church. The focus of the first portion of the Manifesto is repentance by the Church for not being the "salt and light" it should have been and for allowing the forces of darkness, by default, to replace the Christian roots of our nation with secularized relativism and disintegration. The Manifesto states where the signers believe the Church must stand and what action it must take at this point in history to fulfill the Great Commission. The signers are convinced that no revival or reformation of the Church or society, of any depth or longevity, can happen until the leadership of the Body of Christ commits itself to living and teaching the kind of Biblical Christianity called for by this Manifesto. Their hope is that pastors and Christian leaders in every major metropolitan area will call their people to a local Solemn Assembly for repentance and rededication to the Christian task wherein the Manifesto can be read publicly and the local Body of Christ can begin mobilizing itself into a united team of courageous, world-changing, servants of Christ. May it be used by God as a trumpet call to help awaken, unify, and mobilize the Body of Christ to accomplish all Christ demands of us at this critical point in history.
42 ARTICLES ON HISTORIC DOCTRINE
In 1984, as 112 Christian leaders and theologians were coming together to form the Coalition on Revival, it became apparent that this broad-based, theologically diverse group of leaders would need a clearly defined statement of basic doctrine on which they could agree and which could also form the theological foundation for the 17 Worldview Sphere Documents they intended to write together. By consensus and input from many theologians, a group of COR theologians created a generic statement of faith which incorporated 2,000 years of the Church's orthodox, historically accepted theology and which would touch on all the theological and philosophical points necessary to outline the full, Biblical view of doctrine and reality. It also had to be broad enough to include all the major denominations and theological perspectives within the present Body of Christ on earth and yet leave untouched, unstated, and open to Christian freedom certain differences—those distinctives such as baptism and eschatology which now separate one denomination from another. No doctrinal statement of the past 200 years offers the greater Body of Christ on earth a more detailed, comprehensive, generic statement of the Biblical worldview.
ARTICLES ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
The first draft of the Articles of Affirmation and Denial on the Kingdom of God was completed in 1989 and finalized after two-years of theological debate and input from a wide range of theologians. The writers affirmed that the Kingdom of God, as it impacts society during this present age, is "a central teaching of the New Testament and cannot be neglected without loss to the Church and the Church's influence upon society." The articles define the Kingdom as both the universal rule of Christ over all things and His special rule over the redeemed, as well as the penetrating influence of the Word of God and the Holy Spirit in the world in areas such as law, government, economics, and ethics.
CHICAGO STATEMENT ON BIBLICAL INERRANCY
The International Council on Biblical Inerrancy's Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is a modern, historical statement on the view of the Bible held by the Christian Church for 2,000 years, as well as by Jesus and all the Biblical authors. In the 1970s, a need arose for a broad-based group of theologians to clarify what was the Biblical and historical view of the Bible because a liberal and neo-orthodox view of the Bible had greatly infiltrated most denominations, schools and churches within evangelicalism. In the 20th century, the major philosophical and theological debates have been over the question, "How do we know what it true?" The inerrancy of the written Word of God is the Christian's answer to that basic question. Most of the 19 articles on inerrancy in this statement deal with questions which must be answered before a thorough theological statement on Scripture can be made. In 1978, nearly 300 theologians, pastors and Christian leaders gathered to discuss the issues and create together the Chicago Statement. The statement made the inerrancy of the Bible once again the accepted view within evangelical circles.
THE MANIFESTO FOR THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
42 ARTICLES ON HISTORIC DOCTRINE
ARTICLES ON THE KINGDOM OF GOD
CHICAGO STATEMENT ON BIBLICAL INERRANCY
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