Lesson 1: Sola Scriptura
Authoritative, Sufficient, and Clear
The Reformers ascribed three biblical characteristics to Scripture: it is authoritative, sufficient, and clear.¹
Authoritative
Because God is the sovereign, unchangeable, all-knowing Creator,² and Scripture is his inspired³ and inerrant⁴ Word, it reigns as our ultimate authority for what to believe and how to live.
Jesus said that the Old Testament was perfect and would be fulfilled down to the smallest prediction (Matt 5:18). Paul claimed that authority for his own writings (1 Thess 4:2, 8), and Peter claimed it for Paul’s writings, and by extension for the rest of the New Testament (2 Pet 3:15–16). John even promised eternal destruction to any who altered the words of Revelation! (Rev 22:19)
God’s Word is authoritative. It is the highest possible authority for our lives and beliefs.
Remember, the Catholic Church claimed (and still claims) that authority resides in the Church’s interpretation of Scripture. But the Reformers said, “No, our final authority is Scripture alone.”
[T]he only rule and norm, according to which all dogmas and all doctors ought to be esteemed and judged, is no other whatever than the prophetic and apostolic writings both of the Old and of the New Testament.
—The Lutheran Formula of Concord, a doctrinal statement first published in 1580, emphasis mine.
[W]e desire to follow Scripture alone as rule of faith and religion, without mixing with it any other thing which might be devised by the opinion of men apart from the Word of God.
—The Genevan Confession, written by John Calvin in 1536, emphasis mine.
[A]ll our wisdom is contained in the Scriptures, and neither ought we to learn, nor teachers to draw their instructions, from any other source.
—Comment on 2 Timothy 4:1, John Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistles to Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, trans.
William Pringle, emphasis mine.
Sufficient
If we want to know God savingly, Scripture is sufficient. Paul told Timothy that “the sacred writings...are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim 3:15). John tells us that he wrote his Gospel “so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Thus John’s Gospel, and by extension the testimony of the rest of Scripture, is alone sufficient to give the knowledge of eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.
And if we want to grow in our delight in God, or learn how to live a godly life and so please our Savior, Scripture is sufficient. Paul didn’t only say that the Scripture taught salvation (see above); he also emphasized its power for sanctification: “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Tim 3:16). Scripture’s perfection and profitability makes “the man of God ... complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim 3:17).
God’s Word is sufficient. We can rightly understand the truths of the gospel through its pages alone.
The Reformers embraced this truth.
If we turn aside from the Word [in seeking to know God]..., though we may strive with strenuous haste, yet, since we have got off the track, we shall never reach the goal.
—John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1.6.3, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles.
The pith and substance in general of every thing necessary unto our souls’ health, both of what we ought to believe, and what we ought to do, was written [in God’s Word], so that whatsoever we ought to believe or do, that same is written expressly, or drawn out of that which is written.
—William Tyndale, quoted in David Teems, Tyndale: The Man Who Gave God an English Voice, Kindle ed., 183,
emphasis mine.
Clear
Thirdly, sola Scriptura teaches that the Bible is clear. Moses assumed that Israel was able to understand and obey God’s Law. He told them, “This commandment that I command you today is not too hard for you, neither is it far off. It is not in heaven, that you should say, ‘Who will ascend to heaven for us and bring it to us, that we may hear it and do it?’” (Deut 30:11–12). Even those who are unlearned can understand what God’s Word teaches, for Psalm 19:7 says that “the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple.”
Of course, this doesn’t discount the role of the Holy Spirit in interpretation. One chapter before the passage in Deuteronomy I just quoted, Moses told Israel, “to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear” (Deut 29:4). Their minds were hardened and veiled under the Old Covenant (2 Cor 3:12–18), but we have the mind of Christ through the Spirit (1 Cor 2:14–16).
Thus Jesus rebuked people who wrongly interpreted Scripture, asking them, “Have you not read?” (see Matt 12:3, 5). And while Peter acknowledged that there are “some things … that are hard to understand” in inspired writings, it is those who are “ignorant and unstable” who “twist [them] to their own destruction” (2 Pet 3:16). This implies that those who are godly will rightly interpret even difficult truths of Scripture.
God’s Word is clear. Everything necessary for salvation is revealed plainly for all with ears to hear.
The 17th-century Westminster Confession eloquently explains this:
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.
We need no other book or resource than the Bible to arrive at a full understanding of the gospel, as well as other fundamental truths contained in the gospel like God’s triune nature and the deity of Jesus Christ.
It was the Reformers’ belief in this attribute of Scripture that drove them to translate the Bible into the language of the common man. If God inspired the Bible to be understood by even “the simple” (Psalm 19:7), then the simple should have a Bible they can read to become wise!
Erasmus, the man more responsible than any other for getting the Greek Scriptures back into circulation during the early Reformation, wrote,
I totally dissent from those who are unwilling that the Sacred Scriptures, translated into the vulgar tongue, should be read by private individuals, as if Christ had taught such subtle doctrines that they can with difficulty be understood by a very few theologians, or as if the strength of the Christian religion lay in man’s ignorance of it.
—Quoted in Teems, Tyndale, 21, emphasis mine.
William Tyndale, the 16th-century Bible translator, was eating lunch with some friends in their home. Joining them were various clergymen eyeing Tyndale warily, disliking his protests against the abuses of the Catholic church. Their conversation on this evening grew fiery as Tyndale, “[t]aking little notice of their number or their office, reputations, or pedigrees,” argued “his case for Scripture, and for the authority of Scripture, the right for a vernacular Scripture, and so on.”⁵ One clergyman, having had it up to here with Tyndale’s “rant about the authority of the Scripture and of God’s law,” spat out to Tyndale, “We were better to be without God’s law than the Pope’s.” Tyndale energetically snapped back, in “one of the greatest comebacks of all time,”
I defy the Pope and all his laws, and if God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the scripture than thou dost.
—William Tyndale
Tyndale’s belief in the clarity of Scripture played a large part in his dedication to this work of translation, and we who have a wealth of English Bibles today owe him a great debt.
So God’s Word is authoritative, being the highest possible authority for our lives and beliefs; sufficient, so that we can rightly understand the truths of the gospel through its pages alone; and clear, explaining the gospel with intelligibility and clarity to those who have ears to hear.
This threefold teaching elevates God’s Word to the highest level of importance, in accordance with what Scripture says about itself.