The Foundational Clause of the Birmingham Amended Statement of Faith (BASF), the subordinate standard of faith of most Christadelphians (“Central Fellowship”) reads as follows:
THE FOUNDATION.—That the book
currently known as the Bible, consisting of the Scriptures of Moses, the
prophets, and the apostles, is the only source of knowledge concerning God and
His purposes at present extant or available in the earth, and that the same
were wholly given by inspiration of God in the writers, and are consequently
without error in all parts of them, except such as may be due to errors of
transcription or translation.—2 Timothy 3:16; 1 Corinthians 2:13; Hebrews 1:1;
2 Peter 1:21; 1 Corinthians 14:37; Nehemiah 9:30; John 10:35.
Commenting on this clause, Alfred Nicholls wrote that:
Basic to Christadelphian faith and
teaching was the fact that the Scriptures were the authoritative Word of God,
although it was accepted that in translated versions the human factor might
have introduced some variation. When a theory was proclaimed that only those
parts of the Bible were inspired which could not have been produced in any
other way, the historical portions, for example, it became necessary to define
the principle of “The Bible wholly inspired and infallible” more clearly. The
result was the addition, in 1886, to the Birmingham Statement of what is now
known as the “Foundational Clause” (“Appendix 1: Documents of the Faith, Past
and Present,” in Studies in the Statement of Faith [Birmingham: The
Christadelphian, 1991], 130; this article originally appeared as Alfred
Nicholls, “The Ecclesia in the Last Days,” The Christadelphian, 1989,
pp. 204, 244, 284, 324)
So the BASF affirms the infallibility of both the Bible and the
canon thereof.
Do note the following qualification from Jonathan Burke, a leading
Christadelphian apologist, on "the doctrine of full inspiration and
inerrancy as spelled out in the foundational article of the Birmingham Amended Statement
of Faith"
I affirm it as far as it goes, but
I believe it is incomplete as worded; it omits completely any reference to the
natural creation, which Scripture tells us repeatedly is a source of knowledge
concerning God. (Psalm 8, 19, Acts 4:16-17, Romans 1:19-20) Not only do I
reject partial inspiration, I believe the Foundation Clause is actually too
weak a defense against partial inspiration (its clumsy naming of different
sections of the Bible omits all the historical books and the wisdom
literature), and would be strengthened with the inclusion of the witness of the
natural creation. (Jonathan Burke, "Satan & Demons: A reply to Thomas
Farrar," [February 2015]: 24, PDF copy in my possession)
Interestingly, Nicholls does admit there are missing writings
authored by the apostles, including
“the epistle from Laodicea” mentioned in Col 4:16, although he does try to
downplay the significance of this in light of the
Christadelphian acceptance of tota as well as sola scriputra:
We know that there were other documents
in circulation in the first century ecclesias besides those which make up the
New Testament writings. There were, for example, the letter to Paul from the
Corinthians to which 1 Corinthians 7 was the reply, and “the epistle from
Laodicea” which the Colossians were to read (Colossians 4:16). The latter
passage, incidentally, provides evidence that at least one piece of apostolic
writing received a wider circulation than in the ecclesia to which it was first
written. Not all of these documents were to be classified as “scriptures”
according to Peter’s definition in 2 Peter 3:16, but even so, the fact that
they were used or referred to in a piece of authoritative, apostolic writing
commends them to our attention (cf. Paul’s quotations from the Greek poets in
Acts 17 and Titus 1). (“Documents of the Faith,” 113-14; cf. my post Denying Tota Scriptura to Defend Sola Scriptura)
