Arguably one of the easiest doctrines for Protestants from the Reformation to accept is the idea of sola scriptura, or that the Bible alone is the sole authority for the teaching and witness of the church. Since the believers who affirm this doctrine understand God to be all knowing and infallible, and they know that sinful people are generally prone to error and deception, to say that a book of divine origin is authoritative compared to the wisdom of fallible human authors is – as they say – a no-brainer.

The doctrine of sola scriptura finds wide support among the various branches of the Reformation. For instance, the Lutherans confess:

First, then, we receive and embrace with our whole heart the Prophetic and Apostolic Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments as the pure, clear fountain of Israel, which is the only true standard by which all teachers and doctrines are to be judged. (Art. 1, Formula of Concord 1580)

In the Belgic Confession, Reformed Protestants affirmed:

We know him by two means: First, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book in which all creatures, great and small, are as letters to make us ponder the invisible things of God: his eternal power and his divinity, as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20. All these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse. Second, he makes himself known to us more openly by his holy and divine Word, as much as we need in this life, for his glory and for the salvation of his own. (Art. 2)

We confess that this Word of God was not sent nor delivered by the will of men, but that holy men of God spoke, being moved by the Holy Spirit, as Peter says. Afterwards our God– because of the special care he has for us and our salvation commanded his servants, the prophets and apostles, to commit this revealed Word to writing. He himself wrote with his own finger the two tables of the law. Therefore we call such writings holy and divine Scriptures. (Art. 3)

We find a similar understanding of the primacy of Scripture in the Church of England’s 39 Articles:

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 the Faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation. In the name of the Holy Scripture we do understand those canonical Books of the Old and New Testament, of whose authority was never any doubt in the Church. (Art. 6)

This is the easy part of the Reformation. The hard part is understanding precisely or accurately what God’s authoritative word reveals. For this reason, the Reformers were not shy about writing creeds (such as those excerpted above) to explain what the word of God taught about the way of salvation, the ministry and authority of the church, and the nature of godliness. In other words, a high view of Scripture as the sole standard to which believers should appeal on matters of faith and worship, did not involve a repudiation of confessions, sometimes referred to as “man-made” creeds.

To be sure, the Reformers rejected appeals to the wisdom and authority of men when Roman Catholic authorities claimed the authority of the church’s teaching, or the unwritten teaching of the apostles handed down to the church by word of mouth. In this case, the word of God was a rival and higher authority than Rome’s appeal to tradition.

Still, the exaltation of God’s word over man’s did not come with the modern evangelical mistake of disparaging human reflection upon God’s word by his appointed officers for the sake of articulating the church’s faith. The Bible was not an authority opposed to creeds, but the basis for the church’s corporate confession.

In the late nineteenth century, when Presbyterians in the United States were considering revising the Westminster Confession, William G. T. Shedd, a professor of theology at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, wrote a series of articles against the proposed revisions (as did Princeton Seminary’s Benjamin Warfield). To the charge that the Westminster Confession was only a man-made creed compared to the divinely inspired Bible, Shedd replied:

Of course Scripture is the only infallible rule of faith. But this particular way of appealing to Scripture is specious and fallacious. In the first place, it assumes that Calvinism is not Scriptural, an assumption which the Presbyterian Church has never granted. . . . Secondly, this kind of appeal to Scripture is only an appeal to Scripture as the reviser understands it. “Scripture” properly means the interpretation of Scripture; that is, the contents of Scripture as reached by human investigation and exegesis. Creeds, like commentaries, are Scripture studied and explained, and not the mere abstract and unexplained book as it lies on the counter of the Bible House. The infallible Word of God is expounded by the fallible mind of man, and hence the variety of expositions embodied in the denominational creeds. But every interpreter claims to have understood the Scriptures correctly, and, consequently, claims that his creed is Scriptural, and if so, that it is the infallible truth of God. The Arminian appeals to the Articles of Wesley as the rule of faith, because he believes them to be the true explanation of the inspired Bible. . . .

The Calvinist appeals to the creeds of Heidelberg, Dort, and Westminster as the rule of faith, because he regards them as the accurate exegesis of the revealed Word of God. By the “Bible” these parties, as well as all others who appeal to the Bible, mean their understanding of the Bible. There is no such thing as that abstract Scripture to which the revisionist of whom we are speaking appeals; that is, Scripture apart from any and all interpretation of it. When, therefore, the advocate of revision demands that the Westminster Confession be “conformed” to “Scripture,” he means conformation to Scripture as he and those like him read and explain it. It is impossible to make abstract Scripture the rule of faith for either an individual or a denomination. No Christian body has ever subscribed to the Bible merely as a printed book. A person who should write his name on the blank leaf of the Bible and say that his doctrinal belief was between the covers, would convey no definite information as to his creed.

The point of sola scriptura, then, was not to renounce all human efforts to understand the Bible, but to assert, as the Westminster Confession does, that “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” (1.10). That is not an argument against creeds but a case for basing all the teaching, ministry, and counsel of the church upon the infallible word of God.