Affirmation

We affirm that:

• The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and are the only infallible rule of faith and practice.

• The Scriptures were originally written in the language of the common people. They were written with the expectation that the recipients could and would understand the meaning clearly.

• Every person needs to have the Scriptures in the language he or she knows best.

• Every language has its own set of grammatical and lexical forms and structures that can be used to convey meaning. But every language has forms and structures that are different from every other language—just like every language has a set of sounds used in it that are different from those of every other language. So we should never expect that the forms used in one language—be it Biblical Hebrew or Greek or any other language—will be suitable to convey a certain message, in whole and in part, in another language.