Anytime I read “spiritual” material, I want to know the foundation of the writer. What does he or she believe? That will be no different for you reading my material. So, here is a brief statement about my foundation.
- I believe the Bible is the inerrant word of God as written in the original autographs. It is trustworthy because he is trustworthy. There may be minor translation difficulties in some translations of the Scriptures. These, however, do not change the teaching of the Scriptures when taken as a whole. The best commentary on Scripture is Scripture.
- I prefer to use the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible because it follows a methodology that attempts to translate on a word for word basis and is, therefore, a little more precise than other translations that use some form of a paraphrase. I acknowledge that sometimes a paraphrase approach like the New International Version (NIV) gets it better than does the ESV and vice versa. All quotes on this site will be from the ESV unless indicated otherwise.
- In my opinion, the best single statement of the teaching of Scripture is the Westminster Confession along with the Larger and Shorter Catechisms. No confession, no matter how well crafted, replaces Scripture and is always subject to correction by Scripture. If you study the history of the crafting of the Westminster standards, you will find that they are themselves a compromise that was required to bring together the various factions of the Reformation in Great Britain, the Anglicans, Presbyterians, and Congregationalists. Full disclosure requires that I acknowledge that I do hold a few exceptions to the Westminster Standards. No human summary of the teaching of God’s inerrant word gets it completely right since we who are finite are attempting to synthesize the truth of the infinite.