The CCC statement of faith begins:
The sole basis of our beliefs is the Bible, God’s infallible written Word, the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. We believe that it was uniquely, verbally and fully inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it was written without error (inerrant) in the original manuscripts. It is the supreme and final authority in all matters on which it speaks.
We accept those areas of doctrinal teaching on which, historically, there has been general agreement among all true Christians. Because of the specialized calling on our movement, we desire to allow for freedom of conviction on other doctrinal matters, provided that any interpretation is based upon the Bible alone, and that no such interpretation shall become an issue which hinders the ministry to which God has called us.
These two paragraphs provide a solid groundwork for understanding the why and the what that we believe and live out.
Let’s start with the second paragraph. “We accept those areas of doctrinal teaching on which, historically, there has been general agreement among all true Christians.” What this means is that we fall into the category of orthodox (small O, as in more general than the Eastern Orthodox churches), we are committed to the doctrines that are central to what it means to be a faithful follower of Christ and to what God has called us to as a ministry.
There are some controversial issues that the statement of faith will not cover – predistination, the sign gifts, what version of the Bible is the best, church government, modes of baptism, or the age of the earth and specifics on the methods of creation. The reasons that Campus Crusade for Christ does not take stands on these is because they do not affect at a basic level the ability to be a part of the mission of reaching the world for Christ. Also, there has not been a consensus over the course of history on these issues and God has not called us to take stands on these issues – He is using others to speak to those issues.
Also, it does take on issues that may not be in a church’s statement of faith because it also sets down some guidelines that are important and are central to the mission of Campus Crusade for Christ, you’ll see these toward the end of the list particularly dealing with our belief in the unversal call for all believers to “do the work of evangelism” regardless of their vocational call.
On the Bible
We do agree with the historically Protestant view on the the canon of the Bible, the Apocraphal books and sectionsof books that some Christan traditions view as scripture are seen as at best good history and insight into beliefs that some of the Jewish people had at certain times. For example the books of Maccabes are a good historical account of the Jewish rebellion agains the Greeks, also the canonical New Testament book of James quotes the book of Enoch which is not viewed itself as canonical but that James chose to quote something that is eternally true. I actually would encourage all Christians who have the free time to talk to one of your Catholic friends or a library and borrow a Bible that has the 6 or 7 apocraphal books and read them with very large grains of salt. Just as you would with any “Christian” literature or books you need to remember that only the 66 books of the Bible can be trusted 100% – everything else very probably contains errors.
The next half of the first paragraph contains some densely-packed statements. To clarify my statement of what can be trusted, only the original manuscripts can be trusted 100%. The hard part of that is that we do not have any of the original manuscripts that were physically written by the apostles or prophets. What we do have is a huge number copies of them so that we are able to be sure about every important passage. We’re able to compare them all and know where someone had merely made a mistake because the overwhelming evidence
“Uniquely, verbally and fully inspired”
These three words are very, very important in understanding what we we believe. The Bible is the only (uniquely) book that’s content can be considered to be God’s Word (fully) and God’s words (verbally). There is no other book, magazine, preacher, newsletter or any thing else that we read that can successfully contradict the Bible, if it does it is not God’s word and it is not to be fully trusted (without the aformentioned large or small “grains of salt”). This also means that we believe that no other religious text is inspired by God or to be trusted as vital for our spiritual growth. Also, all of the Bible is God’s word (it must be read in the right literary and historical context) and each individual word in the original manuscript is the word (in Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic) that God chose for it. All of this together indicates that, while other books may be good for our growth in our walk with Christ, only and all of the Bible is vital to our growth.