The Cambridge Declaration

of 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

preachers’ 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.

Call To Repentance and 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 adequately to 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.

ACE Council Members:

Dr. John Armstrong

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. G. Edward Veith

Dr. David Wells

Dr. Luder Whitlock

Dr. J. A. O. Preus, III