Chicago Statement

Christ died for our articles about Christianity

Schismatics

Western (Latin) Catholicism Eastern (Greek) Orthodoxy Protestantism Restorationism

Devil's in the details

Chance or Purpose? Creation, Evolution and a Rational Faith Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution Tacitus Got Questions Fátima Santiago de Compostela Glynn Harrison Presidential Prayer Team v - t - e

The Chicago Statements on Biblical Inerrancy and Hermeneutics are two position papers made in 1978 and 1982, respectively, and signed by over 200 leading evangelicals and fundamentalists of the time.

They assert that the Bible is inerrant, literally true, and historically accurate from Genesis to Revelation, and all but state that those who do not believe this are off to hell.

The Statements

The statements take particular care to bash evolution as well as non-Protestant positions on Biblical authority. They are:

1. God, who is Himself Truth and speaks truth only, has inspired Holy Scripture in order thereby to reveal Himself to lost mankind through Jesus Christ as Creator and Lord, Redeemer and Judge. Holy Scripture is God's witness to Himself.
2. Holy Scripture, being God's own Word, written by men prepared and superintended by His Spirit, is of infallible divine authority in all matters upon which it touches: it is to be believed, as God's instruction, in all that it affirms: obeyed, as God's command, in all that it requires; embraced, as God's pledge, in all that it promises.
3. The Holy Spirit, Scripture's divine Author, both authenticates it to us by His inward witness and opens our minds to understand its meaning.
4. Being wholly and verbally God-given, Scripture is without error or fault in all its teaching, no less in what it states about God's acts in creation, about the events of world history, and about its own literary origins under God, than in its witness to God's saving grace in individual lives.
5. The authority of Scripture is inescapably impaired if this total divine inerrancy is in any way limited or disregarded, or made relative to a view of truth contrary to the Bible's own; and such lapses bring serious loss to both the individual and the Church.

External links

• Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy
• Chicago Statement on Biblical Hermeneutics, with commentary by Norman L. Geisler