The Authority of Scripture
On several occasions, R. C. Sproul would tell the story of how he cringed every time he saw one of those bumper stickers that said, “God said it. I believe it. That settles it.” You can guess his response if you have not heard it. If God said it, then that settles the matter. Our assent to it adds nothing to the authority of Scripture.
We often hear the expression that so and so has a “high view of Scripture” and someone else has a “low view of Scripture.” However much someone may want to point to abuses of these phrases and uncharitable applications of them, the fact of the matter is that they are perfectly useful expressions. In fact, whether or not someone has a high or low view of Scripture will quickly tell us everything else we need to know about their doctrine and religion. Furthermore, we can tell whether one does have a high view or a low view. In order to see that, we have to make sure that we have a solid understanding of what the authority of Scripture means to begin with.
What is Authority?
The word authority comes from the Latin word auctor, which means the leader, master, or founder. Behind this is the root aug- which signified the principle of origination or the causing of something to come forth. Needless to say, we can see the shorter English word “author” in it without knowing any etymology. This is a legitimate clue as to the place of the creator of the story. His mind—and, instrumentally, his words—give shape to everything on the pages.
The word “authority” is used in an equivocal manner among many, but no less so among the Reformed. There is the kind of authority which renders judgments of insight. It is an authority of expertise. We sometimes say that so and so “wrote the book” on this or that subject. When we say this, we are saying that this person is something of a chief expert in that field. To give an example: The weather man is an authority. To believe him about the forecast today is not to disbelieve Scripture. As we will see when we come to sufficiency, there are matters of scope to observe in what Scripture “speaks to” and what it does not.
God is the only infallible authority of this first kind because no one could have greater authority of knowledge of what things are and how things work than God. He made them. Even of all things made by the secondary causes of human ingenuity, He ordained these as well. Even of things that are deliberately contrary to God’s good design, He knows every last malevolent detail perfectly whereas the wicked designer of those things knows comparatively little of what he has done.
There is also the kind of authority which gives commands for obedience. It is an authority of moral action, which includes submission to persons in certain offices and institutions. Biblical authority encompasses both because God is not only the Lord of moral action but the author of all particular truths. We might think of the end of the Great Commission in which disciples are to be taught to observe all that Christ commanded (Mat. 28:20).
In each of these dimensions of authority, God is to be credited as wholly trustworthy since He is truth itself (cf. Jn. 14:6). Being eternal, omnipresent, and (perhaps most relevant here) omniscient, God alone possesses this quality. He says,
“I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isa. 46:9-10).
In speaking about the authority of Scripture, our subject matter overlaps with its sufficiency. So the Reformed doctrine of sola Scriptura is a kind of hybrid of both subjects. The moment we properly situate this authority, we are saying so to the exclusion of other authorities. This authority is not the only authority—but it is unique among authorities. When it comes to the very precise manner of its authority, it is “alone” the authority. Hence, sola Scriptura is first answering the authority question. Let us offer a definition.
Biblical authority is that divine quality to which all Christians ought to assent, believing every word of it and obeying every command (relevant to one’s station) of God in it.
The qualifying words—relevant to one’s station—are designed to prevent the scope of “every command” from being read in a way that makes no proper distinctions within the law as to moral, ceremonial, and civil, and other such necessary distinctions. As a corollary to this definition, biblical authority is the highest proper reference point in settling all matters of controversy over the meaning of the Scripture, or the orthodoxy of Christian doctrine, or the orthopraxy of Christian life.
Two sections in the Westminster Confession take each of these dimensions of the issue. Chapter I, Section 4 states the following:
“The authority of the holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the Author thereof; and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God.”
Section 10 of that same first chapter of the Confession applies this authority to the question of resolving controversies within the church:
“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.”
I mentioned that biblical authority encompasses both the “insight” and the “imperative” dimensions of our concept of authority. Knowing this does not prevent equivocal uses of this term. Under the influence of various strands of fideism, Christians have often mistaken the study of extra-biblical disciplines as a danger to biblical authority. This becomes especially acute when persuasion from these extra-biblical disciplines touches upon matters that are more obviously related to theological truths or moral imperatives. In this confusion, the concept of “authority” can undergo equivocation. After the triumph of Van Tillianism over the majority of the Reformed thinking for two generations, the concepts of ultimate authority and logical antecedents were blurred together as one. Any basic tenet of Christianity that grounded upon this or that truth derived outside of the Bible became suspect as “autonomous reasoning.” In such cases, reason was said to be a law unto itself.
This is a confusion of categories that has had devastating consequences on the Reformed mind.
Appeals to Authority in Scripture
Jesus used the Scriptures to settle disputes. For example,
“He said to them, ‘Have you not read what David did when he was hungry, and those who were with him: how he entered the house of God and ate the bread of the Presence, which it was not lawful for him to eat nor for those who were with him, but only for the priests? Or have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?” (Mat. 12:3-5)
We can see the same in His refutation of the Sadducees, when He said, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God?” (Mk. 12:24) He also makes this His appeal in order to silence the devil:
“But he answered, ‘It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ … Again it is written, ‘You shall not put the Lord your God to the test’ … For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve’” (Matt. 4:4, 7, 10).
Jesus even appeals to Scripture as an authoritative confirmation of his own words:
“In your Law it is written that the testimony of two people is true. I am the one who bears witness about myself, and the Father who sent me bears witness about me” (Jn. 8:17-18).
And He does the same to confirm His works:
“And he charged him to tell no one, but ‘go and show yourself to the priest, and make an offering for your cleansing, as Moses commanded, for a proof to them” (Lk. 5:14).
Notice that in all of those texts—with the exception of the one with the devil—the argument that Jesus was having was with the church authorities, and that of the highest authorities of the church of His day. If someone says, “But these are unique cases, because this is Jesus,” that would miss the whole point. It is precisely because of the uniqueness of Jesus that these texts prove so much. If even Jesus saw fit to settle His disputes with the authority of Scripture, who are any of us—indeed who is any church authority—that would dare to outdo Jesus in that hierarchy! He says, “the testimony that I receive is from man” (Jn. 5:34).
At the Council in Jerusalem, we read that
“The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate … [then follows present confirmation with signs, however] James replied … And with this the words of the prophets agree, just as it is written, ‘After this I will return, and I will rebuild the tent of David that has fallen; I will rebuild its ruins, and I will restore it, that the remnant of mankind may seek the Lord, and all the Gentiles who are called by my name, says the Lord, who makes these things known from of old’” (Acts 15:6-7, 13, 15-18).
Note that the Jewish party was arguing against the Apostles, and yet we do not read that the Apostles appealed to their own office. On the contrary, after recounting the signs performed among the Gentiles, James makes it plain that these were only confirmation but that the matter was settled by the Scriptures. Moreover, those in the Reformed tradition have made the case from Acts 15 that extra-biblical decrees constitute such burdens.1 The difference between extra-biblical theological sources and reasoning versus extra-biblical commands should be carefully observed here.
Another key passage in Acts involves those noble Bereans. They were Jewish and so it was in the synagogue that Paul encountered these new believers who had a familiarity with the Scriptures. It says that,
“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” (17:11).
Now this is often misunderstood and used by those who would have no authority in the church aside from their own private reading of the Scriptures. I came across this so frequently that I had to give it a name. I called it “the Berean bluff.” It starts with the false notion that a “good Berean” is someone who reserves the right to be skeptical of what the human teacher says. It is an indefinite posture. In this they think themselves to have the highest view of Scripture. Yet if they knew their Scriptures, they would recall the description of those who are “always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). They would also be familiar with the precept to “Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls, as those who will have to give an account” (Heb. 13:17). But they are too busy flaunting their reverence for Scripture to truly have any. The correct appeal to this text is simply that the Bereans held Scripture as an authority above Paul. For that very reason, “they received the word with all eagerness” (Acts 17:10), even while his truthfulness hinged on conformity to the word of God.
Signs of Being Under Biblical Authority (and Not)
If anyone says that the language of “higher” and “lower” views of Scripture are entirely subjective, I answer that there are at least six basic criteria by which one can discern where someone else is on this spectrum.
1. Systematic, or how one relates the whole doctrine of Scripture within itself (its necessity, clarity, authority, inerrancy, sufficiency, etc.) and to other doctrines.
2. Liturgical, or the role one assigns to preaching in the church’s time of gathering.
3. Psychological, or how often one is ready and willing to set aside clear teachings or commands for one’s own sinful reasons, including pressures from the world.
4. Spiritual, or how quickly and plainly they humble themselves under its divine voice.
5. Practical, or how the Bible affects one’s life: being a doer and not merely hearer of the word.
6. Polemical, or the extent to which one appeals to the Scriptures to resolve controversies of any kind that the Bible does in fact address.
Each of these are straightforward, though admittedly some are more obvious than others. Moreover it can be argued that some are more important than others.
The Scriptures are filled with descriptions of those who possessed that spiritually high view of Scripture precisely by being brought low; as the Lord said through Isaiah, “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (66:2). We might also think of the example of Josiah, who, once the implications hit him about the lost Scripture and how that caused the people to live in disobedience,
“he tore his clothes … For great is the wrath of the LORD that is kindled against us, because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us” (2 Kings 23:11).
There is no shortage of deviations from the authority of Scripture in our day. But what these verses especially show us is that what is missing in all of the signs of someone with a low view of Scripture is the fear of the Lord.
Answering Objections to Biblical Authority
The most persistent objection to the Reformed doctrine of biblical authority comes from Rome. In particular, the concept of private judgment is wholly misunderstood or else deliberately misrepresented. It is framed by its critics as a matter of “[making] oneself one’s own ultimate interpretive authority.”2 Two Roman Catholic critics, Cross and Judisch, in reviewing Keith Mathison’s book The Shape of Sola Scriptura wrote:
‘We can summarize Mathison’s explanation of the distinction between solo scriptura and sola scriptura as follows. Whereas solo scriptura rejects the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, sola scriptura affirms the interpretive authority of the Church and the derivative authority of the creeds, except when they teach something contrary to one’s conscience, as informed by one’s own interpretation of Scripture.’”3
Roman Catholics (oddly enough, like Presuppositionalists) approach these questions in terms of circularity. In so doing, both groups tend to conflate epistemological criteria with obedience to proper authority. First, each side one-ups the other with a further, “But how do we know X?” leading to another criteria behind each criteria. Rome stops the bleeding with the guy in the balcony with a fancy hat. Presuppositionalists stop the bleeding with Scripture. Certainly Scripture is our final answer wherever it does answer a question. But what is the question?
In the classical view, the whole point is to stop conflating subjective perspectives with objective truth to begin with. Sooner or later, the question has to be asked: “How do you know that truth is true?” and by that mean, “How did you see that truth to be the case?” If all we have is subjective perspectives, well, then there really is no good reason not to keep the spiral going of, “But why do you believe that?” The classicalist says: Either we can know what Scripture says, or else not. And if we are doing apologetics (including establishing the canon), we can make a cumulative case for that. But if what we are talking about is interpretation, Roman Catholics are simply conflating the domain of private interpretation with epistemological authority. No serious Protestant theologian has ever claimed that any man’s private interpretation is some “tie-breaker” with respect to the truth of what the text says. The point of private interpretation regards conscience, as it relates to resultant moral action, when no such tie-breaker exists for him. He must live unto God in light of Scripture. But no one is saying that he gets to make it mean “whatever he wants it to” for conscience’s sake.
A finer objection in this same direction—again, principally from Rome—is that the Protestant doctrine is both circular and hypocritical. It is circular because while Scripture must be viewed through the Confession, the Confession turns around paying lip service to Scripture being higher. The idea is that there is a problem of circularity for any credal tradition.4 But it is also charged with hypocrisy. In other words, “Don’t the Reformed elevate their confessional documents to the level of Rome’s magisterium?”
How do we answer this challenge?
With respect to both parts of the objection, the answer is No. When the Westminster Confession said, “It belongeth to synods and councils, ministerially, to determine controversies of faith, and cases of conscience” (XXXI.2), the key word is “ministerially.” The ministerial ruling (as distinguished from magisterial ruling) of the confessional documents is more like that Rule of Faith in the language of the early church fathers. It is a summation and not an alternative.
Finally, Rome will even appeal to Scripture without shame, specifically to 1 Timothy 3:15 which calls the Church “the pillar and ground of the truth.” To this Turretin replies,
“The church is called ‘the pillar and ground of the truth’ … not because she supports and gives authority to the truth (since the truth is rather the foundation upon which the church is built, Eph. 2:20), but because it stands before the church as a pillar and makes itself conspicuous to all … So the church is the pillar of the truth both by reason of promulgating and making it known.”5
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1. cf. Michael Allen and Scott Swain reference Luther’s argument that subsequent councils and canon law are guilty in exactly this way: Reformed Catholicity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015), 80.
2. Keith Mathison, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and Apostolic Succession,” 34.
3. Mathison, “Solo Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, and Apostolic Succession,” 34; italics added.
4. cf. Kevin Vanhoozer, “Holy Scripture,” in Allen and Swain, Christian Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2016), 35.
5. Francis Turretin, Institutes, I.2.6.25.
