By now you may be wondering how many parts this series on the sufficiency of Scripture will have. I plan to talk about it enough to exhaust the issue, but hopefully not so much as to exhaust you. Sufficiency is, in my thinking, one of the major Anabaptist issues at present. It is not well understood by those who claim it, and it is being questioned and rejected by many others. If sufficiency is indeed just a theological construct with no biblical moorings, then we are justified rejecting it as merely a man-made concept. But if, as I’ve tried to show, the Bible itself teaches that it is sufficient, then we are obligated to view it as such. And if so, then we ought to know why sufficiency is significant.
In this article and the ones that follow, we will clarify some points and make some tangible applications of the doctrine of Scripture’s sufficiency. Before we move on, let’s review one more time our working definition. The sufficiency of Scripture means that the Bible contains all the words of God that are necessary for us to be saved and for us to live obedient, victorious Christian lives.
Everything We Need, Not Everything We Want
One objection to Scripture’s sufficiency is that, since Scripture doesn’t speak on every subject, it cannot be sufficient. It’s true that Scripture is nowhere near exhaustive on matters of science, history, etc. A good definition of sufficiency accounts for this. The question is, what is Scripture sufficient for? We answer that it is sufficient for Christian life. It is sufficient for God-honoring life. Now, that expands to touch every part of human experience, including science and history, but we aren’t claiming that the Bible comprehensively covers every known topic. What we are claiming is that the Bible comprehensively covers the Christian faith.
But on that note, we observe that Scripture doesn’t necessarily answer all of our questions about Christianity. If so, can we still call it sufficient? We must acknowledge that God doesn’t answer all of our questions in Scripture. How will end-time events play out? He gives us an idea, but we’re still left with more questions than answers. How can God be sovereign while allowing us the freedom to live according to our own choices? Scripture gives some insight but doesn’t button everything up. If Scripture leaves our pressing questions unanswered, is it still sufficient?
We must understand that Scripture contains everything we need to know, not everything we want to know. Will all our questions be answered? Not necessarily. But has God clearly told us what we must know? Yes. Sufficiency doesn’t mean Scripture teaches us everything possible to know, or everything desirable, or even everything helpful, but it does teach everything essential. We could have only Scripture and still be fully equipped to know, love, and obey God.
Regulative Principle
Out of sufficiency comes something called the regulative principle. If we say that Scripture contains everything we must know for faithful Christian living, then we can also conclude that Scripture regulates what is and isn’t true. In a positive sense, anything in Scripture is absolutely true. In a negative sense, nothing not in Scripture can be considered absolutely true. Thus, all truth is conditioned—regulated—by Scripture. This principle, called the regulative principle, says that God does not require us to believe or do anything other that that which is clearly laid out in Scripture.
This sets Scripture above all other possible sources of truth. Even if we have experienced personal revelation from God, whatever we have received must be subjected to Scripture. Scripture is an absolute, and our experience, regardless how sublime, is tainted by the weakness of our human perception. Subjective personal revelation must be subservient to God’s revelation to all mankind in Scripture. The same is said of any other revelations we may receive or super-spiritual experiences we may have. Anything received outside of the word—even from an angel (cf. Galatians 1:8)—must be subjected to the Word of God. We must not interpret Scripture by our experiences; rather, we must interpret our experiences by Scripture.
This principle also governs how we understand other people’s ideas about truth. We are naturally drawn to sensationalism, to someone who brings a new idea from his or her own experience. Sometimes these ideas are directly contrary to Scriptural truth. More often, though, they aren’t. They can be given as the proverbial “silver bullet,” the one thing you’ve always been missing but never knew you needed, the one final answer to all of your problems as a Christian. Something is presented as essential for your Christian life, yet it isn’t found in the text of Scripture. How should we view these? Can something be considered true that isn’t within the pages of the Bible?
At best, these new ideas are distractions from the truth. But they tend to be distortions of the truth or distractions that keep us from understand what Scripture means. When considering some extra-biblical teaching, we ought not ask “does Scripture discount this?” and should rather ask “where does Scripture teach this?” If a proposed truth is not clearly found within Scripture, it must not be embraced as essential Christian truth. Scripture alone contains everything we need.
The regulative principle also affects how we understand the writings of the ante-Nicene church fathers, a subject of much confusion among Anabaptists. Since they lived and wrote during the church’s formative years, much can be learned from studying their writings. But many of them wrote before the New Testament was compiled (some of them, like Augustine, were involved in identifying which writings should be included in our New Testament), and they often disagree with each other and with Scripture itself. These disagreements were largely a result of their lack of access to the apostle’s writings.
While their writings are in a sense more pure than later Christian writings due to their close proximity to the apostles and to Christ Himself, they lack the doctrinal purification that came as Christians continued to study Scripture and sharpen each other’s faith. Their writings are less refined, less developed than those which came later. Their faith is a pure faith, but it is an infant faith, lacking the maturity developed over the centuries as the church grew.
But the real problem comes when the church fathers touch issues the Bible doesn’t address, or when their writings disagree with Scripture. The regulative principle (which follows our understanding of Scripture’s sufficiency) requires that what Scripture says, or doesn’t say, overrules all other opinions of man—no matter how sincere or pure. Though the early church writings can be beneficial, they are not Scripture and must be subjected to the clear Word of God.
Another, perhaps more personal, application of Scripture’s sufficiency and the regulative principle is to how we know God’s will for us. Any believer, desiring to serve God, will want to know what God wants from his life. How can we know what God wants for us individually? How do we know where we should live, what we should do, or who we should marry?
While I want to be careful not to minimize God’s personal involvement in our lives, I want to be even more careful to emphasize that God requires nothing more of His children than simple obedience to His Word. What God wants each and every one of us to do can be clearly and fully discerned through His Word. No additional revelation, experience, or feeling is necessary. Many, if not most, Christians may never experience a calling to a specific work. God’s expectation is that we study Scripture and diligently obey what we find therein. To press believers, especially young believers, to pursue God’s will for their life (as something to be discovered outside Scripture) simultaneously undermines Scripture and burdens them with a great responsibility to find God’s will for them before they can be obedient Christians. What we communicate is that, until they feel God’s clear leading to a certain place, a certain ministry, or certain person, they cannot be all they ought to be as Christians.
That approach is opposed to what God has said about His own Word. He says that Scripture is able to make us complete. What God expects is a simple obedience to His Word. That is the will of God for all of us. The child of God should not be immobilized by a lack of personal call. While I would not disparage asking God to show you His will for your life, I would argue that doing so is not essential. Perhaps the strongest argument is the silence of Scripture itself on this. We are not commanded to passionately pray until God reveals His will to us in some new way. We are commanded to obey what He has plainly revealed in the words of Scripture. That’s much less glamorous, but it is faithful and true nonetheless.
Another note. The regulative principle has sometimes been used as an excuse for independence. An individual may refuse to follow the recommendations of a Christian brother or the guidelines of a church because there’s no clear passage commanding a certain application for all believers. While Scripture’s authority to regulate what we must believe and do does require that all our church applications have biblical backing, it doesn’t nullify the church’s authority to make specific applications of general biblical principles. It does, however, negate the church’s authority to make an arbitrary application with no biblical basis. Sufficiency does not mean we are not to be accountable to a local church. Rather, we are ultimately accountable to Scripture, and we must surround ourselves with others who will help us understand and obey Scripture.
Finally, the regulative principle also does not mean we cannot learn from other people. Sermons, commentaries, systematic theologies, faithful Christian books, even writings like this very article, can be of great help in our Christian journeys. But they can never stand on par with Scripture. Nothing is essential other than Scripture. Nothing teaches absolute truth like Scripture does. Could we be deprived of every experience, every teacher, and every other book and still have everything we need? Absolutely. Scripture is God’s complete provision for us. He has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness, and we need only study and obey it.