It would not be an overstatement to say that the Christian faith rises and falls with its view of the Holy Scriptures. At this point in human history, our knowledge of the living God rests almost entirely upon the Bible and its reliability. What we believe to be true about the Scriptures will dramatically impact what we believe to be true about God himself. For this reason, it is right to ask questions of the Bible and come to definitive answers. How do we know which books to include? Who authored the Bible? Is it trustworthy? Do we really need it? Can we hope to understand it? Are the Scriptures enough in themselves to know God? Should we obey the Bible? How can a really old book actually make a difference for us today? This paper intends to present a Protestant doctrine of Scripture in answer to these questions while considering modern alternatives and common objections. Ultimately, my desire is to present a strong case for Scripture’s necessity for us as we seek to live lives pleasing to our heavenly Father and to Jesus Christ, our Lord.
The Protestant Bible is made up of sixty-six books, the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. God’s people have had a canon, or rule book, since first receiving the Ten Commandments during the time of Moses around 1400 BC. This organic, growing commandment for God’s people was not fully completed until around 95AD when the Apostle John penned the book of Revelation. The first official canonical list appeared in 367 AD in a letter that Athanasius, a church father, wrote. The Protestant canon as known today was officially recognized and accepted at the councils of Hippo and Carthage in AD 393 and AD 397 respectively. Although official recognition did not take place until roughly two-hundred fifty years after the book of Revelation was completed, it would be wrong to believe that the church was in disagreement prior to that point. F.F. Bruce writes, “One thing must be emphatically stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely inspired, recognizing their innate worth and generally apostolic authority, direct or indirect.” Bruce’s argument can be seen in Scripture itself as both Old Testament and New Testament writers refer to their contemporaries’ writing as Scripture. It was the widely held view of the church that the books appearing in the Protestant canon were deemed Scripture very soon after being written. Protestant faith that the sixty-six books of Scripture are God’s entire revelation to his people is grounded upon this evidence.
While historical evidence was helpful for considering the canon, in asking who wrote the Bible and whether or not it can be trusted, we must begin exercising more faith in what Scripture teaches us about itself. At the outset of our assessment, John Frame offers a helpful warning in writing, “In dealing with problems, however, we must not revert to intellectual autonomy, assuming that human reason serves as the final criterion of truth.” Today, many presuppose the impossibility of the supernatural and form their opinion of the Bible upon this atheistic position. To these friends, I say that we all do well to consider what Scripture says about itself before making any concrete determinations in regards to its origin and reliability. It can be arrogant to take such a firm position on something so important, especially since the Scriptures themselves claim to be a revelation of the supernatural. Instead, entertaining the possibility of the supernatural, we will consider what Scripture has to say.
Scripture could not be more clear on this issue. God has authored it. Peter writes, “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:21 ESV). Men spoke from God, not from their own interpretations and ideas. The writer of Hebrews is even more explicit when he writes, “Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says…” (Hebrews 3:7) in reference to Psalm 95, which he goes on to say was written by the Holy Spirit “through David” (4:7). David penned Psalm 95, but God, the Holy Spirit, authored it. Just as the prophets were unashamed to say “thus says the Lord” so the New Testament writers were quick to give credit to God for the authorship of Scripture. Perhaps this is no clearer than in 2 Timothy 3:16, where Paul writes that all Scripture is “breathed out by God.” God used human agents to record his words. Men like Isaiah, Luke, James, Peter, and Paul wrote with their own style the very words breathed out by God himself. God inspired the Scriptures. He is the author.
It stands to reason that if God is the author of Scripture that Scripture is without error or inerrant. If God who cannot lie authored the Bible, then the Bible must be reliable and contain only truth. Generally, those who claim that Scripture is full of errors approach it with the expectation that they will find errors. Not surprisingly, many errors are found when Scripture is approached from this posture. However, nearly all of these “errors” have immediate explanations that do not undermine Scripture’s inerrancy. Those that are not easily defended still do not provide sufficient proof that Scripture contains errors and contradictions for the one that accepts by faith that Scripture is God-breathed. While ignoring apparent contradictions and errors is not the answer, at the end of the day, any difficult-to-reconcile words must not stop us from saying with the Apostle Paul, “Let God be true though every one were a liar” (Romans 3:4). Scripture is trustworthy and without error because its author is trustworthy and eternally perfect in his essence and character.
Having considered the formation of the canon, Scripture’s author, and its inerrancy, we now move into the heart of the doctrine of Scripture. We will consider the four attributes of necessity, sufficiency, clarity, and authority. These attributes will serve to answer the following questions mentioned previously in the introduction: Do we really need it? Are the Scriptures enough in themselves to know God? Can we hope to understand it? And should we obey the Bible? In considering necessity, sufficiency, clarity, and authority, modern alternative viewpoints which do not hold to these attributes will be discussed as well.
If these four attributes are compared to a building, then the attribute of necessity can be compared to the foundation. Do we need the Bible? If so, what do we need it for? If the Bible was clear, sufficient, and authoritative, it would not matter nearly as much if it were not, in the first place, necessary.
To answer these questions, we must start with a right understanding of general revelation, or how God has revealed himself through what he has made. “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.” writes David in Psalm 19:1. The Bible teaches that God has revealed himself in all that he has made. We read in Romans 1:19 that God has made truths about himself plainly known to all mankind. However, even though God has made himself known in creation, what he has revealed of himself is not primarily to our benefit but to our condemnation. We have all “suppressed the truth” (Romans 1:18) and have freely rejected our Creator. Thus, being under the condemnation of God because of our sin, general revelation heaps judgment upon us rather than offering us grace and reconciliation.
However, this understanding of general revelation is not held by all. Karl Rahner, a Jesuit priest, “sees revelation as an undifferentiated unity of content ‘with two sides.’ On the one hand, revelation is subjective: a ‘supernaturally elevated transcendence’ that is ‘always and everywhere operative’ even when rejected. On the other hand, this revelation is also a historically mediated, ‘objective, explicit expression of the supernaturally transcendental experience.” Rather than separating God’s general revelation from his special revelation in Scripture, Rahner and others merge the two into one unit allowing for general revelation to be a revelation of grace and thus diminishing the necessity for Scripture. Scripture becomes a higher revelation of the same sort as nature rather than a different kind of revelation as the Protestant doctrine of Scripture maintains.
In his Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin provides invaluable insight into a proper understanding of revelation which leads to an affirmation of the necessity of Scripture. He argues that all men have the notion of deity written upon their hearts by God, and yet all have departed from following the true God. He writes that all of us “substitute monstrous fictions for the one living and true God.” Because of this, “God must bear witness to himself from heaven” with a different revelation. He concludes: “If true religion is to beam upon us, our principle must be, that it is necessary to begin with heavenly teaching, and that it is impossible for any man to obtain even the minutest portion of right and sound doctrine without being a disciple of Scripture.” We don’t start with our own inner understanding and work our way to God. “We need the revelation of God to know God, and the only sure, saving, final, perfect revelation of God is found in Scripture.” In fact, as Herman Bavinck concludes, “the necessity of Holy Scripture, in fact, is not a stable but an ever-increasing attribute.” The farther removed from the incarnation of Jesus, the more necessary the Bible becomes for us.
Ultimately, we need Scripture because it is the only place in which we find the solution to our sin problem. God has sent his Son to take on flesh and die in place of sinners so that sinners who put their faith in Jesus would be forgiven and reconciled to God by the blood of his Son. Only the Scriptures reveal the definite plan of God existing from eternity past to provide salvation for rebels. “General revelation is a legal revelation,” but Scripture is a revelation of grace and redemption through Jesus Christ. Scripture is necessary because salvation is necessary, and salvation has been revealed through Jesus and preserved in the Scriptures. We desperately need the Bible for life.
But is the Bible enough? The attribute of sufficiency, also referred to as Sola Scriptura, answers this question with an emphatic “yes!” John Frame defines sufficiency by writing “Scripture contains all the divine words needed for any aspect of human life.” Put another way, “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.” Scripture is sufficient for every aspect of our lives! And we can see Scripture speaking of itself in this way as well. Scripture speaks of its own sufficiency in terms of not adding anything to nor subtracting anything from the command of God.
Today, there are two main ways in which the attribute of sufficiency is diminished or thrown out entirely. In Roman Catholic teaching, tradition is placed on equal plane with the Scriptures. Michael Horton quotes Vatican Council II by Austin Flannery as saying, “Thus it comes about that the church does not draw her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone. Hence, both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal feelings of devotion and reverence. Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture make up a single deposit of the Word of God, which is entrusted to the church.” “Equal feelings of devotion and reverence” means that Scripture is not in itself sufficient. It seems in light of 1 Corinthians 4:6, “…that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written” that Scripture alone must be sufficient. The second alternate view can be summarized by saying that Scripture is an important revelation of God, but the Holy Spirit continues to provide new revelations to this day. This opinion is held by some of the charismatic churches within the Protestant classification. Neither opinion goes far enough in keeping with what Scripture teaches about itself.
While both alternate opinions must be rejected in light of what Scripture says about itself, we who hold to the sufficiency of Scripture must continually ask ourselves whether sola scriptura is actually a functioning part of our doctrine of Scripture. It does no good to hold to the sufficiency of Scripture in theory and fail to devote ourselves to the Bible’s sufficiency in practice. Since the Bible is sufficient, we must even-increasingly become men and women devoted to searching the Scriptures in order to know God and live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Jesus Christ. May God give us faith to live rightly in light of the sufficiency of his Word.
So Scripture is needed and it is sufficient, but is it understandable? Can a normal person be expected to comprehend its message? Don’t we need extraordinary intelligence before we can hope to unravel the mystery of Scripture? Scripture’s clarity or perspicuity addresses these questions.
The Westminster Confession of Faith provides a helpful definition of clarity stating, “All things in Scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all: yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation, are so clearly propounded, and opened in some place of Scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” From this definition, we see that clarity does not maintain that every verse of every book is easy to understand, but rather that the essential things for salvation are plain enough for anyone of any age or education level to comprehend. It’s also important to remember that “due use of the ordinary means” forbids one from isolated interpretation of the Scriptures but requires one to duly rely on the nearly two millennia of disciples of Jesus who have continued to preserve the clear teaching of Scripture as faithfully as possible. Church history ought to give us great confidence in the clarity of Scripture since throughout the generations a consensus has been maintained.
Scripture’s speaks of its clarity in verses like Psalm 119:105: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Scripture lights our way, guiding us into truth. It makes wise the simple as Psalm 19:7 tells us. And it’s clear message is that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23) and Christ died has died for our sins (1 Corinthians 15:3). His divine power has granted to us all things pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). We live in the in-between waiting for the return of Jesus to gather his people and inaugurate the fullness of the kingdom of God. Timothy Ward is right to say “we are right to trust that God in Scripture has spoken and continues to speak sufficiently clearly for us to base our saving knowledge of him and of ourselves, and our beliefs and our actions, on the content of Scripture alone, without ultimately validating our understanding of these things or our confidence in them by appeal to any individual or institution.”
However, today not everyone accepts the clarity of Scripture. Individual Bible study has been discouraged by some denominations in favor of allowing the leadership to determine what the rest of us should believe about the Bible. In a related issue, many seem to accept a posture of intellectual laziness by turning to dynamic preachers, popular Christian books, and other secondary sources as their primary means of understanding the Scriptures rather than taking the Bereans example in Acts 17:11, who searched the Scriptures daily to discern whether the Apostles’ teaching was accurate. Finally, in response to the claim that the number of denominations prove that Scripture is not clear, I say that within the numerous Protestant denominations, the essential orthodoxy has remained agreed upon, while secondary or tertiary issues have been the grounds for splits.
Since Scripture is clear, we have a moral obligation to obey its teachings. John Frame writes, “clarity means that we have no excuse for failing to meet [Scripture’s] obligations.” He goes on to say that the attribute of clarity is “a doctrine that ought to motivate greater obedience.” This moral obligation leads us into the fourth and final primary attribute of Scripture.
The authority of Scripture teaches us that Scripture gets the final word and has no equal to its authority. The Westminster Confession of Faith writes of Scripture’s authority in this way: “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.” The supreme judge and authority is rooted in the Scriptures, but notice that this attribute does not speak primarily of the Scriptures but of the author of them. Ward helps clarify this by writing, “To speak about the authority of Scripture is really to say more about God, and about the ways he chooses to act and speak in the world, than it is to say something directly about Scripture itself. The authority of Scripture is dependent entirely on the authority of God…” So to have a high view of Scripture’s authority is to have a high view of God’s authority, which he communicates to us in and through the Scriptures. Scripture is our authority for understanding both God as Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, and Redeemer, and ourselves as creatures, lawbreakers, guilty offenders, and redeemed saints through Christ.
In our current day, we see within Christian circles two opinions competing with the authority of Scripture. First, the Roman Catholic position states that “Sacred Tradition is part of the ‘deposit of faith’, which also includes Sacred Scripture. It is comprised of the Church’s date, given to her by her Lord.” According to Kreeft, Tradition is of equal authority to Scripture. Second, the opinion of liberal Christianity is represented in this quote by Gary Dorrien, a liberal Protestant. He writes, “The essential idea of liberal theology is that all claims to truth, in theology as in other disciplines, must be made on the basis of reason and experience, not by appeal to external authority.” In both, an appeal is made to human authority, which, given that the human heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), can never be done in wisdom and confidence, regardless of how right it may be to have a high view of the Church.
If anyone were to lead us into a right view of where authority ultimately lies, it would be Jesus himself. As we turn to the four gospels, we are given a clear picture of how Jesus himself viewed the Scriptures. He spoke of Old Testament events as if they actually happened (Matthew 12:38-42), even Jonah being swallowed by a fish! He spoke of Genesis being written by God (Matthew 19:4-5). He promised that no dot or iota, the smallest Hebrew marking and Greek letter, would pass from God’s law until all was accomplished (Matthew 5:17-19). And in a sidebar comment to Jews ready to stone him for blasphemy, Jesus replies that Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35). DeYoung writes, “For Jesus, anything from Scripture, down to the individual words and the least-heralded passages, possessed unquestioned authority.” Jesus unashamedly gave the Scriptures authority, and he himself obeyed them perfectly.
Since Jesus entrusted himself to the authority of Scripture, as his followers, so ought we to do so. J. I. Packer writes, “True Christians are people who acknowledge and live under the word of God.” In a time and culture in which the masses are appealing to self as ultimate authority, Christians must continue subjecting ourselves and each other to the authority of the Bible. It is not narrow-minded or arrogant to obey God’s Word and follow the example set by our Lord, Jesus Christ, who himself studied, cherished, and obeyed the Scriptures.
We have considered the four attributes of necessity, sufficiency, clarity, and authority at some length. By no means have all of the questions been answered completely, but a ground work has been laid for further study and consideration. Having looked at what Scripture itself teaches while considering the Protestant tradition’s affirmation over the centuries, the evidence supports the necessity, sufficiency, clarity, and authority of the Protestant Bible as divine Scriptures. We ought to give a hearty “Yes” and “Amen” to the doctrine of Scripture presented above and respond in faith and obedience.
Only one question remains: How can a really old book make a difference for us today? Isn’t the Bible outdated? Isn’t it a great document of antiquity that was relevant back when it was written but has nothing to say about our evolved culture and current problems? How can it possibly be useful today?
The doctrine of efficacy, or Scripture’s effectiveness, assures us that Scripture is as relevant and profitable for us today as it was from the moment it was written down. This is perhaps no more evident than in the book of Hebrews. In chapters 3 and 4, the writer makes great use of the word “today” to describe the on-going, present message of Scripture first preserved in the 95th Psalm by King David. Chapter 3:13 calls his readers, including us today, to exhort one another as long as it is called “today.” His argument reaches a climax in the familiar verse: “For the Word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (4:12). God’s word is relevant to us today because it is a living, present word. It still speaks because God still purposes to speak through it into our context, into every situation we may face, into every decision we must make. God’s word transcends culture and time because it is spoken by a transcendent God who knows all things. We can count on it being effective today, piercing our hearts to convict us of sin, encouraging us in Christ, calling us to greater measures of obedience, helping us fellowship with God, and giving us hope for the return of our King. God can only be known where he has chosen to make himself known. And he has made himself known through the Scriptures, which speak of the incarnate Christ, the exact imprint of God’s nature (Hebrews 1:3). Scripture is alive. It is effective. It accomplishes all that God purposes it to accomplish (Isaiah 55:8-10).
Sadly, “Modernity enshrined the self as the sovereign arbiter over Scripture and the church, whether in the form of reason, duty, experience, pragmatic usefulness, or felt needs.” But we are people of the Book. We acknowledge our need for the God-breathed revelation of Jesus in the Holy Scriptures, its sufficiency to care for all of our needs as Christians, its crystal clear proclamation of salvation and life, its authority over our lives, and its usefulness and effectiveness for us today. This is our Bible. Our faith rises and falls with our opinion of it. May we ever strive to gain a deeper love for the Scriptures and walk by faith in the trustworthiness of God’s Word for “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Calvin, John. Institutes of the Christian Religion. Translated by Henry Beveridge. 1845.
Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2008.
DeYoung, Kevin. Taking God At His Word. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2014.
Driscoll, Mark and Gary Breshears. Doctrine: What Christians Should Believe. Wheaton, IL:
Crossway, 2010.
Frame, John. Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Christian Belief. Phillipsburg, NJ:
P&R Publishing, 2013.
Horton, Michael. The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims On the Way.
Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011.
Lutzer, Erwin. Seven Reasons Why You Can Trust the Bible. Chicago: Moody,
2008.
Packer, J. I. Knowing God. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity, 1973.
Ward, Timothy. Words of Life: Scripture as the Living and Active Word of God.
Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2009.
Westminster Confession of Faith. http://www.reformed.org/documents/wcf_with_proofs/
(accessed May 10, 2014).
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