Theological Term of the Week

 

authority of scripture

This is the principle that the individual believer and the church are subject to the rule of scripture because the words of Scripture come from God, so obedience to Scripture is obedience to God himself.

• From scripture:

  …from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:15-17 ESV)

• From The London Baptist Confession 1689,  chapter 1, section 4:

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; therefore it is to be received because it is the Word of God.

•  From Herman Ridderbos in The Inspiration and Authority of Holy Scripture:

  The authority of the Scriptures is the great presupposition of the whole of the biblical preaching and doctrine. This appears most clearly in the way the New Testament speaks about the Old Testament. That which appears in the Old Testament is cited in the New Testament with formulas like “God says,” “the Holy Spirit says,” and so on (cf., for instance, Acts 3:24, 25; 2 Cor. 6:16; Acts 1:16). What “the Scripture says” and what “God says” is the same thing….And this naturally implies authority. “It is written” (Greek, gegraptai) in the New Testament puts an end to all contradiction.

Learn more

1. Paul Cook: The Authority of Scripture
2. B. B. Warfield: “It Says:” “Scripture Says:” “God Says”
3. J. I. Packer: Hermeneutics and Biblical Authority
4. William Webster: The Authority of Scripture
5. Wayne Grudem: The Authority of Scripture, Part 1, Part 2 (mp3) 
6. Phil Johnson: The Authority of Scripture (mp3 download)
7. Mark Dever: The Authority of Scripture (mp3 download)

Related terms:

• canon of scripture
• inerrancy of scripture
• infallibility of scripture
• inspiration of scripture 
• sola scriptura
• sufficiency of scripture

Filed under Scripture.

Have you come across a theological term that you don’t understand and you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Theological Term of the Week

analogy of faith (or analogy of scripture)

The principle of Biblical interpretation that presumes that God is the ultimate source of all scripture, so we can view scripture as a unified whole, and thus no passage of Scripture can rightly be interpreted in a way that contradicts the rest of scripture, and clearer passages can be used in interpreting more obscure ones.

• From the London Baptist Confession 1689, chapter 1, section 9:

  The infallible rule of interpretation of Scripture is the Scripture itself; and therefore when there is a question about the true and full sense of any Scripture (which is not manifold, but one), it must be searched by other places that speak more clearly.

• From The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, III C:
  

  Inasmuch as all Scripture is the product of a single divine mind, interpretation must stay within the bounds of the analogy of Scripture and eschew hypotheses that would correct one Biblical passage by another, whether in the name of progressive revelation or of the imperfect enlightenment of the inspired writer’s mind.

Learn more:

1. Monergism.com: What does the term “analogy of faith” mean?
2. Theopedia: Analogy of Faith
3. Bob Burridge: The Interpretation of Scripture
4. J. I. Packer: The Interpretation of Scripture
5. Thomas A Howe: The Analogy of Faith

Related terms:

• inerrancy of scripture
• inspiration of scripture
• perspicuity of scripture

Filed under Scripture.

This week’s theological term was suggested by Kim of Hiraeth. Do you have a suggestion for a theological term of the week? Email me your idea and I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.

Theological Term of the Week

This is  a new feature I’m introducing. Once a week I hope to give a very brief explanation of a theological term, include a few quotes on it, and link to some resources that may explain the term and the issues around it more fully.

perspicuity of scripture

The teaching that the ordinary reader can understand from scripture what God requires as long as they are willing to seek God’s help to understand and obey it. It does not mean that the scripture contains no passages that may be difficult to understand or that all passages are equally clear. This is the older term for what is now most often called the clarity of scripture.¹

• From scripture:
  

The unfolding of your words gives light;
it imparts understanding to the simple. (Psalm 119:130)

• From The Westminster Confession of Faith,  chapter 1, section 7:

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 Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will:
  

But, if many things still remain abstruse to many, this does not arise from obscurity in the Scriptures, but from [our] own blindness or want [i.e. lack] of understanding, who do not go the way to see the all-perfect clearness of the truth… Let, therefore, wretched men cease to impute, with blasphemous perverseness, the darkness and obscurity of their own heart to the all-clear scriptures of God… If you speak of the internal clearness, no man sees one iota in the Scriptures, but he that hath the Spirit of God… If you speak of the external clearness, nothing whatever is left obscure or ambiguous; but all things that are in the Scriptures, are by the Word brought forth into the clearest light, and proclaimed to the whole world.

Learn more:

1. Theopedia: The Clarity of Scripture  (This is the source of the Martin Luther quote above.)
2. Blue Letter Bible: What Is The Clarity of Scripture? (Perpescuity)
3. Wayne Grudem: The Perspicuity of Scripture
4. Gerald Bray: The Clarity of Scripture
5. Francis Turretin: The Perspicuity of Scripture
6. Wayne Grudem: The Clarity of Scripture (mp3)
7. Timothy George: The Perspicuity of Scripture (video)

Related terms:

• analogy of faith
• authority of scripture
• illumination
• inspiration of scripture
• sola scriptura
• sufficiency of scripture

Filed under Scripture.

¹One thing is clear about perspicuity: It is commonly misspelled. In an older handbook to Christian doctrine that I have (and that I shall not identify by name) it is spelled perpiscuity. A Google search for that same misspelling yields many articles on the perpiscuity of scripture. In the article at Blue Letter Bible….well, see for yourself. And they are not alone, either. Yet another reason to embrace clarity, right?

Update on Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 9:35AM by rebecca

Do you have a suggestion for a theological term of the week? Email me your idea and I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion and linking back to your blog when I do.