I believe the sixty-six books of the Protestant canon are the inspired, inerrant, and authoritative Word of God. By inspired I mean verbal-plenary inspiration: the very words of Scripture, not merely the thoughts behind them, are God-breathed (2 Tim. 3:16). By inerrant I mean that Scripture, in its original autographs, is without error in all that it affirms, including historical and scientific matters, not only doctrinal ones.

I hold to the sufficiency of Scripture: God has given us everything necessary for life and godliness in His written Word (2 Pet. 1:3). This means that extra-biblical revelations of the same authority and kind as Scripture have ceased with the close of the apostolic age. I am a cessationist, not because I deny God’s freedom to act miraculously, but because the foundation of apostles and prophets has been laid (Eph. 2:20) and the canon is closed.

I believe Scripture is perspicuous, its central saving message is clear enough that an ordinary person, reading it with an ordinary mind, can understand the way of salvation. This does not mean every passage is equally clear, but it does mean we need no authoritative magisterium to interpret it for us. The Holy Spirit illumines the reader; the church is a community of interpretation, not an oracle.