Theopedia

Sola Scriptura

“Now these Jews were more noble than those in Thessalonica; they received the word with all eagerness, examining the Scriptures daily to see if these things were so.”

— Acts 17:11 (ESV)

Definition

Sola Scriptura (Latin for “Scripture alone”) is the doctrine that Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and practice, the final authority every other claimant, church tradition, council decree, or private opinion must submit to and be tested by.1 It does not deny that Scripture contains everything ever revealed, only that it contains everything necessary for salvation, and that nothing may be added to it as binding doctrine, by new revelation or by human tradition.2 Nor does it deny the church a real teaching office; it denies that office any authority independent of, or equal to, Scripture’s own.

Confessional Witness

The doctrine did not originate as a Baptist distinctive; it is what the whole Reformation, across its confessional families, said against Rome’s Scripture-and-tradition position. Charles Hodge traced the same claim through the Lutheran Smalcald Articles and Form of Concord, the Second Helvetic Confession, the Gallican Confession, the Thirty-Nine Articles, and the Westminster Confession, all independently teaching that “the word of God, as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of faith and practice.”3 The Thirty-Nine Articles state it plainly: “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of faith.”3 The Westminster Confession adds that “nothing at any time is to be added” to Scripture’s “whole counsel of God,” “whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of men.”3

The Second London Baptist Confession states the same doctrine in nearly identical terms. Scripture is “the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith and Obedience,” a sufficiency to which “nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new Revelation of the Spirit, or traditions of men.”4 Because Scripture alone carries this authority, it alone is competent to settle disputes about itself: “the infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture it self,” and an obscure passage is to be searched out “by other places that speak more clearly,” not resolved by an outside interpreter.5 The confession names the supreme court accordingly: not “Decrees of Councels,” “opinions of antient Writers,” or “Doctrines of men,” but Scripture itself is “the supream judge by which all controversies of Religion are to be determined,” the authority “in whose sentence we are to rest” and “into which… our faith is finally resolved.”6

Biblical Basis

Christ and the apostles consistently point to the written Scriptures, never to any supplementary oral rule, as the standard of appeal: “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead” (Luke 16:29); “You search the Scriptures… it is they that bear witness about me” (John 5:39); Timothy is commended because “from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation” (2 Tim. 3:15).7 The Bereans are praised as “more noble” for “examining the Scriptures daily” to test even apostolic preaching against the written text (Acts 17:11), and Christ rebukes the Pharisees for elevating “the tradition of the elders” above “the commandment of God” (Matt. 15:3-9; Mark 7:5-8).7 Both testaments warn against adding to or subtracting from what God has spoken (Deut. 4:2; 12:32; Rev. 22:18-19).7

This authority is underived. Scripture does not become authoritative because some other body, church or council, certifies it; it is “trustworthy in and of itself” (autopistos), “unconditionally binding us to faith and obedience,” while a creed or confession, useful as it is, “always remains examinable and revisable by the standard of Scripture.”8 Reformed theology distilled the principle into a single formula: Deus dixit, God has said it; a theological dogma’s authority rests “solely” on that divine testimony, never on “the magisterium of the church.”9

Historical Development

Rome’s answer to the Reformers was formalized at the Council of Trent’s Fourth Session in 1546, which declared that the church “receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence” both the written Scriptures and the church’s “unwritten traditions,” treating the two as a single joint rule.10 Against this, Reformed theologians argued that Scripture is “in every way perfect” and that extra-scriptural traditions are, in Christ’s own words, “the doctrines of men,” expressly forbidden as binding additions to God’s revealed will (Matt. 15:9; Col. 2:22-23).11 A. A. Hodge pressed the historical case further: the traditions Rome claims as apostolic have no real evidentiary trail for the first three centuries after the apostles, Rome’s own practice does not consistently follow the traditions it says it received, and some traditions it does receive stand in direct tension with Scripture itself.12

Opposing Views

Roman Catholic theology continues to hold what Michael Kruger calls a “trifold authority structure” of Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium, the church’s teaching office, which alone has the right to interpret both Scripture and tradition and to define which writings belong to each.13 On this view, sola scriptura is self-defeating: without an infallible church to certify the canon, there is no infallible way to know which books count as Scripture in the first place. Karl Rahner put the point sharply, “Scripture exists because the church exists,” and Karl Keating similarly: “The Catholic believes in inspiration because the Church tells him so.”13

Objections and Responses

Sola scriptura is circular or self-defeating, since it needs an infallible church to identify the canon before Scripture alone can function as the rule. The Reformed answer distinguishes recognizing Scripture’s authority from constituting it: the church no more creates Scripture’s authority by acknowledging its books than a court creates a law’s authority by recognizing it as binding. Scripture’s authority rests on its own divine origin and is “trustworthy in and of itself,” not on any church’s certification, which is why the doctrine calls Scripture autopistos, self-authenticating, in the first place.8

Without a living, infallible interpreter, Scripture is too obscure to function as a sole rule, and endless private interpretations will result. Reformed theology’s answer is the clarity of Scripture: everything necessary to salvation is stated clearly enough, somewhere in Scripture, for both learned and unlearned believers to grasp it through ordinary means, even though not every passage is equally plain.3

Scripture itself commends oral apostolic tradition (2 Thess. 2:15; 3:6), so sola scriptura cannot be what the apostles themselves taught. The tradition Paul commends in those verses is his own instruction, delivered directly, orally or in writing, to that generation of believers, not an ongoing chain of transmission handed down across centuries independently of the biblical text. Where Paul’s oral teaching survives for later readers, it survives precisely because it was also committed to Scripture (1 Cor. 15:3), which is the pattern sola scriptura itself expects.12

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 5, “The Rule of Faith and Practice,” 82. ↩

  2. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 5, 84-85: “It is not meant that the Scriptures contain every revelation which God has ever made to man, but that their contents are the only supernatural revelation that God does now make to man, and that this revelation is abundantly sufficient for man’s guidance in all questions of faith, practice, and modes of worship, and excludes the necessity and the right of any human inventions.” ↩

  3. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume I (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), chap. VI, “The Protestant Rule of Faith,” 151-152. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 1, text as reproduced by CCEL, ccel.org/creeds/bcf/bcfc01.htm. ↩

  5. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 9, text as reproduced by CCEL, ccel.org/creeds/bcf/bcfc01.htm. ↩

  6. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 1, “Of the Holy Scriptures,” para. 10, text as reproduced by CCEL, ccel.org/creeds/bcf/bcfc01.htm. ↩

  7. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 5, 84. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 21, “The Church as a Spiritual Reality”: “Scripture alone is trustworthy in and of itself (αὐτόπιστος, autopistos), unconditionally binding us to faith and obedience, unchanging; a confession, on the other hand, always remains examinable and revisable by the standard of Scripture.” ↩ ↩2

  9. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 1, “Dogmatic Theology as a Science”: “religious or theological dogmas owe their authority solely to a divine testimony… among Protestant Christians, from Scripture or, among Roman Catholics, from the magisterium of the church. The Reformation tradition recognizes no truth other than that which is given on the authority of God in Holy Scripture.” ↩

  10. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 4, “Inspiration of the Bible,” quoting the Council of Trent’s Fourth Session as restated by the 1870 Vatican Council: the church “receives and venerates with an equal affection of piety and reverence, all the books both of the Old and of the New Testament… as also the said traditions.” ↩

  11. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 1, Prolegomena, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2018), chap. 2, “Holy Scripture,” 275-276. ↩

  12. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 5, 83-84. ↩ ↩2

  13. Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012), chap. 1, “The Church’s Book.” ↩ ↩2