Page 19 - Outline of Our Christian Faith

Church is not so much where an insight comes from—the important question is the norm by which
to test it. Our faithful discernment of what is true depends on God's Word as conveyed to us in the
Holy Scriptures. There is no other normative and authoritative source of the knowledge of God and
of his ways and purposes for human beings. However, in its light other relative truths may be
confirmed. (Titus 1:9)

7.13 Doesn't modern critical scholarship undermine the Christian belief that the Holy
Scriptures are a form of God's Word?
No. The methods of modern biblical scholarship are a good servant but a bad master. They are
neither to be accepted nor rejected uncritically. Properly used, they help us rightly and richly
interpret the Bible. Improperly used, they can usurp the place of faith or establish an alternative
faith. Though these methods provide a useful tool, the Holy Scriptures remain, for the Church,
reliable and irreplaceable in all essential matters of faith and practice. Such methods are to be used
to help us clearly hear and properly understand the written word of God as it bears witness to the
living Word of God. Methods and approaches that obscure, contradict or relativize the normative
and authoritative witness of the Holy Scriptures are to be dismissed. No valid method will place the
Word of God under its judgment. (Prov. 1:5-6; 10:14; 1 Cor. 1:20, 25)

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