The Church of Eleven22 Statement of Faith

Scripture is fully and verbally inspired and, as originally given, free of error in all it teaches — the qualifier is the document's own and is the clause that distinguishes this from an unqualified inerrancy. It is the authoritative and normative rule for all Christian life, practice and doctrine, and sufficiency is stated with the rivals named: nothing may be added by later tradition, extra-biblical revelation, or worldly wisdom.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe section ends by turning the rule on documents of its own kind — every creed, confession and theology must be tested against the full counsel of God in Scripture. A confession that subordinates confessions, this one included.

The Scriptures are the authoritative and normative rule and guide of all Christian life, practice and doctrine. They are totally sufficient and must not be added to, superseded or changed by later tradition, extra-biblical revelation or worldly wisdom.Statement of Faith, The Scriptures

The Protestant canon, given by counting rather than by naming: thirty-nine Old Testament books and twenty-seven New. The Apocrypha is not mentioned, and no argument is offered for the boundary — the number is the whole of the claim.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe sentence says the Bible "including" those books, which is non-exclusive phrasing carrying the entire stance. Read strictly it names sixty-six without shutting the door on anything else, and nothing elsewhere in the document closes it. The count is treated here as the claim it is plainly meant to be, but the wording is looser than the stance is.

We accept the Bible, including the 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament, as the written Word of God.Statement of Faith, The Scriptures

No position located in this document. It has a full doctrine of creation — the Father made the world out of nothing by His word and for His glory, and daily sustains it — but says nothing about whether creation reveals God to those who look at it, which is what this locus asks. The distinction is between God making the world and the world telling anyone anything.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe nearest thing to a general-revelation claim is that God intends man to live in fellowship with Himself, which is about purpose rather than knowledge. Nothing here reaches the suppression argument of Romans 1 in either direction.

One God in three co-equal, co-eternal, co-existent Persons, each truly Deity. The statement closes both errors in a single sentence — the Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit rules out modalism, and co-equality rules out subordination — then calls the doctrine the foundation of Christian faith and life rather than an entry on a list.

WORTH CORRECTINGNeither homoousios nor consubstantial appears. The stance is assigned from what the section rules out, which it does explicitly, rather than from the fourth-century vocabulary, which it does not use.

In the unity of the godhead, there are three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, co-existent, co-equal, and co-eternal. The Father is not the Son and the Son is not the Holy Spirit, yet each is truly Deity.Statement of Faith, God is Triune

Both natures affirmed of one subject, and affirmed flatly: fully God and fully man. Around that sit the eternal Word made flesh, the virginal conception, the fullness of the Godhead dwelling bodily, a vicarious death, and a bodily resurrection stated as bodily rather than left to be assumed.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe Chalcedonian qualifiers — unconfusedly, immutably, indivisibly, inseparably — are absent, so this affirms the two natures without the guardrails the definition put around how they relate. Worth comparing with peters, where the same tradition produced a statement that never reaches a two-natures claim at all.

He is perfect in nature, teaching and obedience. He is fully God and is fully man.Statement of Faith, Jesus Christ

No position located in this document. Its treatment of God is entirely trinitarian, and its unseen realm is populated only by Satan and what it calls his hosts and the powers of darkness — tempting man, holding the unregenerate under dominion alongside sin, defeated at the resurrection, and finally cast out. Those are adversaries, not a council. The elohim of Psalm 82 and the plural language of the Old Testament are not raised in any form.

Total depravity with the faculties itemised. Fallen man is inwardly depraved and, apart from a special work of grace, utterly incapable of returning to God; the corruption is called radical and pervasive and is said to extend to mind, will and affections. Unregenerate man lives under the dominion of sin and Satan, at enmity with God.

Being estranged from his Maker, yet responsible to Him, he became subject to divine wrath, inwardly depraved and apart from a special work of grace, utterly incapable of returning to God. This depravity is radical and pervasive.Statement of Faith, Man

No position located in this document, and the silence is the notable thing about it. Neither election nor predestination appears anywhere in fifteen sections, and the basis on which God chooses is never stated. The doctrine of sin is as strong as any Reformed confession — man is utterly incapable of returning to God apart from a special work of grace — and salvation is by grace alone through faith alone, yet the confession never crosses from inability to election.

WORTH CORRECTINGIt comes closer than a bare silence, and the near-miss deserves naming rather than hiding: the section on the church has God calling sinful men out of the whole human race into the fellowship of Christ's body, and preserving that new redeemed humanity. That is effectual calling, and it does imply a subset. What it never supplies is the basis for the choosing, which is the question this locus asks — so the stance stays blank while the document leans further than the word-count suggests. The other two temptations are weaker and should be resisted outright: the surrounding soteriology, and the church's membership of the Acts 29 network. A network is a tradition in the sense the corpus rule forbids inferring from.

No position located in this document. It is precise about what faith does and silent about what faith is made of: the proper response to the gospel is faith in the person and work of Christ, naturally accompanied by repentance, evidenced by a changed life and by kingdom service. The notitia / assensus / fiducia analysis this locus turns on is nowhere in the text.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe section is careful that neither repentance nor works save while insisting both accompany faith — a claim about evidence, not about the internal structure of faith. The nearest approach to the analysis is in a different section, where the Spirit leads a person to trust in divine mercy; trust is the substance of fiducia, but one verb inside a sentence about the Spirit's work does not amount to an account of faith's parts.

Declarative and imputational. The sinner who turns from sin and looks to Christ's substitutionary death is declared righteous as a free gift, with Christ's righteousness imputed to him, and is fully accepted by God. The section then runs straight on into adoption and regeneration — reconciled to God as Father, made His child, and liberated from the law of sin and death — so justification is presented as one movement in a sequence rather than as a standalone verdict.

Anyone turning from sin in repentance and looking to Christ and His substitutionary death receives the gift of eternal life and is declared righteous by God as a free gift. The righteousness of Christ is imputed to him.Statement of Faith, Mans Inheritance Through the Gospel

No position located in this document. The nature of the atonement is stated at length and with precision — substitutionary, propitiatory, satisfying the demands of God's holy justice and appeasing His holy wrath — and its extent is never addressed.

WORTH CORRECTINGTwo phrases invite the inference and neither carries it. Christ is called the only Savior for the sins of the world, and the Father is said to have given His Son for mankind's redemption; both are common ground between the listed stances rather than evidence for any of them. The call to preach the gospel sincerely to all men in all nations is about the offer, not about the extent of what was purchased.

The saved will certainly persevere, and the certainty is located in God rather than in the believer. Believers are exhorted to persevere and told they will give an account for every thought, word and deed, with the spiritual disciplines named as a means of grace to that end — but the paragraph turns on its last sentence, which grounds confidence in God's promise to preserve His people.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe exhortation and the guarantee are held together on purpose, and reading either half alone misdescribes the document. It is not the view that perseverance is a separate gift withheld from some of the regenerate; God's preserving of His people is called most certain.

Nevertheless, the believer's ultimate confidence to persevere is based in the sure promise of God to preserve His people until the end, which is most certain.Statement of Faith, Sanctification

No position located in this document, though it comes within one sentence of one. The Spirit is said to unite believers to Christ in faith, bring about the new birth, and dwell within the regenerate — naming faith and regeneration in the same breath without ordering them. This locus asks which comes first, and that is the one thing the sentence does not say.

WORTH CORRECTINGAssigning indwelling-at-regeneration would import the claim that regeneration precedes and causes faith, which this text never makes. The separate section on being empowered by the Spirit is about a continuing filling for witness and service, not about when He first comes to dwell.

Believers only, and by immersion. Baptism is called a visual and symbolic demonstration of union with Christ in the likeness of His death and resurrection, signifying that the former way of life has been put to death and depicting release from the mastery of sin. It is commanded, and it is a testimony to God, the church, oneself and the world.

Water baptism is only intended for the individual who has received the saving benefits of Christ's atoning work and His disciple. Therefore, in obedience to Christ's command and as a testimony to God, the church, oneself and the world, a believer should be immersed in water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.Statement of Faith, Ordinances of the Church

Read in full and deliberately unassigned. The section is substantial — the Supper is for genuine followers of Christ, symbolizes the body broken and the blood shed, is a sign of continued participation in the atoning benefits of Christ's death, and is the occasion on which the church remembers and proclaims that death, receives spiritual nourishment, and signifies its unity. What it never does is say anything about the elements themselves, which is the question this locus asks.

WORTH CORRECTINGEvery listed stance carries a claim this text does not make. Memorial is defined by there being no presence in the elements, and the document never denies presence — it simply predicates nothing of the bread and wine. Spiritual requires a real presence received by faith, which it never affirms; the spiritual nourishment it does promise is compatible with either view and settles neither. The two bodily stances are further off still. This is a blank of a different kind from the other seven here: not a gap in what was read, but a document that addresses the topic at length without answering the question.

Continuationist without hedging. Every gift at work in the first-century church is held to be available now, to be earnestly desired, to be practised in an orderly manner, and to be essential — not merely permitted — to the church's mission. The same section frames the Spirit's empowering for witness and service as a standing expectation, with the promise of the Father freely available to all who believe and a continual filling with power to witness.

WORTH CORRECTINGWorth reading against peters, though the contrast has to be stated carefully. Peters is not a blanket cessationist: he ceases the miraculous or apostolic gifts — tongues, interpretation, revelation, healing — while keeping prophecy, teaching, service and the rest, prophecy by redefining it as forth-telling. This document makes a wider claim than his negative one, holding that all the first-century gifts continue. The sharper contrast is in the reasoning: Peters argues cessation from the sufficiency of Scripture, a sufficiency this confession asserts just as strongly two sections earlier without drawing the same conclusion.

All the gifts of the Holy Spirit at work in the church of the first century are available today and are to be earnestly desired and practiced in an orderly manner. The gifts are essential in the mission of the Church in the world today.Statement of Faith, Empowered by the Spirit

Eternal punishment, with the lost finally separated from the benevolent presence of God, set against the righteous who live and reign with Christ in glorious bodies for ever. The two destinies are stated in one sentence and given the same duration, so the finality applies to both.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe word conscious is not used. The stance rests on enduring eternal punishment — a punishment endured rather than an existence ended, which is what separates this from annihilation — and not on any explicit statement about awareness.

In the consummation, Satan with his hosts and all those outside Christ are finally separated from the benevolent presence of God, enduring eternal punishment, but the righteous, in glorious bodies, shall live and reign with Him forever, serving Him and giving Him unending praise and glory.Statement of Faith, The Consummation

No position located in this document, by way of a conspicuous omission rather than a general silence. The final section walks the whole sequence — Christ's physical, visible, personal return, the resurrection of the dead, the translation of those alive in Christ, the judgment of the just and the unjust, and the kingdom fulfilled in a new heaven and new earth — and never mentions a thousand years or Revelation 20.

WORTH CORRECTINGA confession that enumerates the last things and steps over the millennium has almost certainly done so on purpose, and among large multi-campus churches that breadth is routine. But the document does not say the question is open, and there is a real difference between declining to require a view and simply not addressing one. Recorded as not addressed, which is what can actually be read off the page.