Scripture alone

Who has the last word?

The convictions of the Reformation are today often summed up in five Latin phrases: sola scriptura, sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria. This unit takes them in turn. Later theologians called the first the Reformation's ‘formal principle’. If the gospel of justification by faith was what the Reformers preached, Scripture alone answers the question underneath it: how is that gospel known, and by what is every teaching tested?

When voices in the church disagree, who has the last word? In Isaiah's day people consulted mediums and spiritists, and the prophet called them back:

To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.

Isaiah 8:20

Matthew Henry draws the lesson: "We must speak of the things of God in the words which the Holy Ghost teaches, and be ruled by them" Matthew Henry.

Jesus applied the same test. When Pharisees and scribes complained that his disciples broke the tradition of the elders, he pointed to a custom that let a son withhold support from his parents by declaring the money devoted to God, and said, "Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition" (Matthew 15:6). Augustine observes that Christ here shows the Jews "had their traditions foreign to the prophetical and canonical books" Augustine. What Jesus rejected was not tradition as such, but human rules that set themselves above God's word: "they teach as doctrine the precepts of men" (Matthew 15:9).

The apostles stood under the same rule. Paul writes, "even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a curse!" (Galatians 1:8). The gospel stands above every messenger, the apostle included. So the Bereans checked even Paul against the Scriptures (Acts 17:11), and Matthew Henry comments: "Those are truly noble, and likely to be more and more so, who make the Scriptures their rule, and consult them accordingly" Matthew Henry.

What the Reformed churches confess

The Westminster Confession (1646) opens with Scripture. The books of the Old and New Testaments "are given by inspiration of God to be the rule of faith and life". Then it adds: "The whole counsel of God, concerning all things necessary for His own glory, man's salvation, faith and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men" Westminster Confession 1.2, 1.6.

The phrase ‘good and necessary consequence’ matters. Sola scriptura does not mean believing only what a single verse states in so many words. The word ‘Trinity’ is not in the Bible, but whoever follows what the Bible teaches faithfully must arrive at that confession.

The chapter ends with its keystone: "The supreme judge by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits, are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture" Westminster Confession 1.10. The judge is not a book but the living Spirit; yet the Spirit speaks not apart from Scripture but in it. The Belgic Confession (1561) agrees: "We believe that those Holy Scriptures fully contain the will of God, and that whatsoever man ought to believe unto salvation is sufficiently taught therein." No human writings, however holy their authors, and no custom, majority, antiquity or council may be set beside Scripture, it adds, for the truth is above all Belgic Confession, art. 7.

Scripture alone has never meant Scripture with nothing else. The Reformed churches confess the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds, read the Fathers, and wrote confessions and catechisms of their own, but they place all of these under Scripture, to be tested by it. Calvin read the Fathers closely and quoted Augustine on page after page. He gladly received the early councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, the first council of Ephesus and Chalcedon as holy in what they taught of the faith, because they were faithful expositions of Scripture; a council's authority, he argued, comes from Scripture and must be weighed by it Calvin, Institutes 4.9. On the confessions themselves, see The Reformed confessions.

The Spirit's witness

How, then, do we come to be sure that Scripture is God's word? Not, says the Westminster Confession, because any person or church vouches for it, but because God, who is truth itself, is its author. The church's testimony and the Bible's own excellencies, such as the consent of all its parts and its aim of giving all glory to God, may move us to esteem it highly. "Yet notwithstanding, our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts" Westminster Confession 1.4–5.

Calvin called this the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit. Only God is a fit witness to his own word, he argued, so the word finds full credit in our hearts only when the Spirit seals it there. Against the idea that Scripture has only as much authority as the church grants it, he insisted that Scripture shows its own truth as plainly as white things show their colour or sweet things their taste Calvin, Institutes 1.7. Jesus said it more simply: "My sheep listen to My voice" (John 10:27). The psalmist sings of what it is to hear that voice:

The Law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is trustworthy, making wise the simple. … They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.

Psalm 19:7-10

‘Law’ here is torah (תּוֹרָה), ‘instruction’, a wider word than a legal code. Matthew Henry: "The word of God, received by faith, is more precious than gold; it is sweet to the soul, sweeter than honey" Matthew Henry. Not everything in Scripture is equally plain, but what we need for salvation is clear enough for the unlearned, using the ordinary means, to understand Westminster Confession 1.7, so the Reformation churches put the Bible into the people's own languages and hands.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians also receive Scripture as the word of God, and explain its relation to tradition differently. The Catholic Church teaches that Scripture and Sacred Tradition flow from the same divine wellspring and form one sacred deposit of the word, which the church's teaching office, the Magisterium, interprets with authority, not as standing above the word but as its servant Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum. Catholics read Paul's charge to "cling to the traditions we taught you, whether by speech or by letter" (2 Thessalonians 2:15) in that light. The Orthodox read Scripture within Holy Tradition, as its highest witness, together with the Fathers, the councils and the liturgy. The Reformed read the same verse and confess that what the apostles handed on by word and by letter now reaches us in the apostolic writings. These differences, and the debate over inerrancy, are surveyed in the Christian Doctrine course's lesson on the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

Lord of the conscience

Before it is an argument, Scripture alone is a freedom and a comfort. "God alone is Lord of the conscience," the Westminster Confession teaches, and he has left it free from human doctrines and commandments that are contrary to his word, or added to it in matters of faith and worship Westminster Confession 20.2. No human authority can bind your conscience where Scripture leaves it free, and no one can take from you what Scripture promises.

So the Reformed believer opens the Bible to hear the word that makes the man of God "complete, fully equipped for every good work" (2 Timothy 3:17). The next lesson turns to the heart of the gospel that word proclaims: grace alone and faith alone. For help in reading, see How should we read the Bible?

Practice