Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Doctrines

Sola Scriptura

Also Known As Scripture alone · The formal principle of the ReformationOriginal Term sola scriptura
Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy

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Formulated by the Reformers against the medieval church's practice of weighing scripture alongside tradition and the teaching authority of pope and council, sola scriptura held that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, requiring no external magisterium to settle its meaning. Luther pressed the principle at the Diet of Worms in 1521, refusing to recant unless convinced by scripture or plain reason, and the Book of Concord later made it explicit doctrine: the Formula of Concord names scripture the only rule and norm by which all teachers and teachings are to be judged. Rome answered at the Council of Trent, which declared scripture and unwritten apostolic tradition to be received with equal reverence. The principle does not deny that creeds and confessions carry real authority; the Book of Concord itself is a tradition, but a subordinate one, binding because it is judged to teach what scripture teaches rather than because a teaching office declared it so.

Facts
Position Profile
Principal Proponent
The principle was a defining mark of the Protestant Reformation, articulated with particular force by Martin Luther against the claimed authority of the papacy and church councils. 5
Opposing PositionSourced to the subject's own account
The Council of Trent, which declared scripture and unwritten apostolic tradition to be received with equal reverence. 4
The Claim
The Claim
Sola Scriptura holds scripture to be the sole final authority for Christian doctrine and practice, standing above church tradition, councils or a teaching office as the norm by which all else is judged. 5
Origins
Held By
The Lutheran and Reformed confessional traditions and the Protestant bodies descended from them. 1
Defining Moment
Luther pressed the principle at the Diet of Worms in 1521, refusing to recant unless convinced by scripture or plain reason. 2
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Defined and binding within this tradition 3Tradition: Lutheranism
Status Within the TraditionSourced to the subject's own account
Rejected, or not held, within this tradition 4Tradition: Roman Catholicism
Doctrinal Category
Revelation, Covenant and Prophecy 1
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
That the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith, requiring no external teaching office to settle its meaning. The Formula of Concord names scripture the only rule and norm by which all teachers and teachings are to be judged. 3
Scholarship and Forensics
Scholarly Note
The principle does not deny that creeds and confessions carry real authority. The Book of Concord is itself a tradition, but a subordinate one, binding because it is judged to teach what scripture teaches rather than because a teaching office declared it so. 3
Learn More
The Formal Principle of the Reformation

Theologians distinguish two principles at the heart of the Reformation: a material principle, justification by faith, which answers what must be believed for salvation, and a formal principle, sola scriptura, which answers where that belief is authorized. The formal principle holds that scripture is the sole infallible source and final judge of Christian doctrine, sufficient in itself to establish what must be believed and practiced, standing above popes, councils and even the church's own confessions when the two conflict. It was not a claim that no other writing carries weight; Luther read the church fathers closely and never treated the Bible as the only book worth consulting. The claim was narrower and sharper: only scripture binds the conscience with final authority, because only scripture is the Word of God in the sense that guarantees it cannot err.

The principle emerged from conflict rather than abstract theory. Pressed at the 1519 Leipzig Debate to say whether a council could err, Luther eventually answered yes, breaking with an assumption nearly everyone in Western Christendom still held. Two years later at the Diet of Worms he refused to recant unless refuted by scripture or plain reason, since, he said, popes and councils had contradicted each other and even themselves. The Formula of Concord later made the principle a formal confessional statement, opening by naming scripture the only rule and norm by which all doctrines and teachers alike are to be judged, with the church's own creeds and confessions ranked as a subordinate testimony to what scripture already teaches, not a second source alongside it.

Scripture Against Two Rivals

Sola scriptura took aim at two different opponents at once, and Lutheranism has kept both fights distinct ever since. Against Rome, the issue was whether an unwritten apostolic tradition, interpreted authoritatively by pope and council, carried the same binding force as the written Bible. The Council of Trent answered in 1546 that scripture and tradition were to be received with equal reverence, a two source view the Reformers rejected as placing the church's word above God's. Lutheranism did not respond by discarding tradition altogether. The Book of Concord is itself a tradition, a set of confessions Lutherans bind themselves to teach and preach by, but its authority is explicitly derivative: it binds because it is judged, on scriptural grounds, to teach what scripture teaches, not because a teaching office declared it so.

Against the radical reformers, the argument ran the other way. Some Anabaptist and spiritualist writers pushed toward a looser reliance on individual reading that set the believer's own sense of scripture against every inherited creed and even against orderly public ministry, trusting immediate inner conviction as much as the text. Lutheran confessional writing resisted this too, insisting scripture is to be read within the church's teaching office and its historic creeds, not against them. The distinction is easy to blur from outside the tradition, since both positions can sound like plain biblicism, but confessional Lutheranism has consistently placed itself between the two, subordinating tradition to scripture without dissolving the church's teaching authority into private judgment.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

The Swiss Brethren argued from scripture alone against Rome and against the magisterial reformers alike, and it is the ground on which the Schleitheim articles refuse infant baptism, the oath and the sword.

Why this is disputed. Anglicanisms own Thirty Nine Articles affirm that scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, but Richard Hookers classical formulation of Anglican method reads that affirmation alongside reason and tradition as complementary sources of authority, rather than treating scripture as standing alone in the stricter sense the continental Reformers intended at Worms and in the Book of Concord. Historians of Anglican theology continue to debate whether this amounts to the same sola scriptura principle in a qualified form or to a genuinely different method sharing the same name.

Source The Study of AnglicanismStephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.)

Article VI holds that holy scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that nothing may be required of any man as an article of the faith unless it may be read there or proved by it.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account
Baptist, Denominations

Scripture is held as the sole authority for faith and practice, and the autonomy of the local congregation rests on the claim that no other authority stands between the believer and the text.

Chapter I of the Westminster Confession holds the whole counsel of God to be either expressly set down in scripture or deducible from it, with nothing to be added by new revelation or by the traditions of men.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

Seeded as a defining Lutheran doctrine within Christianity, per the Book of Concord.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

Article VI holds that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation, so that nothing not read in it nor provable by it may be required as an article of faith. Article XX still allows the church authority in controversies of faith, bounded by that scripture, so the sufficiency claimed is for salvation rather than a rejection of received order.

Source The Thirty-Nine Articles of ReligionChurch of Englandthe holders' own account

The Belgic Confession gives its early articles to scripture, holding the canonical books sufficient for the whole doctrine of salvation and setting them above councils, custom and antiquity, so that no writing of men however holy may be compared to them.

Source The Belgic ConfessionGuido de Bres

The Formula of Concord opens by naming the prophetic and apostolic writings of the Old and New Testaments as the only rule and norm by which all teachers and teachings are to be judged, and places the creeds and the confessions under that rule as witnesses rather than as judges.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others

Sola scriptura, scripture as the sole rule and norm of doctrine, is confessional Lutheran doctrine per the Formula of Concord's preface, which names scripture the only judge of all teachers and teachings.

Source The Formula of ConcordJakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others
Source The New Hampshire Confession of FaithNew Hampshire Baptist Convention

Scripture is held as the sufficient rule of faith. The continuing gifts affirmed alongside it are read as confirming what is already written rather than adding to it.

Chapter I of the Westminster Confession makes scripture the only sufficient and infallible rule of faith and practice, above councils and above the church.

Source The Westminster Confession of FaithWestminster Assemblythe holders' own account

The appeal to scripture as the sole final authority against the authority of Rome is the ground on which the Reformation argued everything else, and it is held across the Protestant family rather than by any one branch of it.

Source Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700Diarmaid MacCulloch

Held Differently

Seventh-day Adventism, Denominations

Scripture is held as the sole standard by which all teaching is tried, including the writings this body treats as a lesser light and subject to that test.

Rejected Here

The eighth Article of Faith receives the Bible as the word of God as far as it is translated correctly, and the ninth expects further revelation. Scripture alone is not the rule.

Source The Pearl of Great PriceJoseph Smith

Barclay makes the scriptures a secondary rule, subordinate to the Spirit from which they came. Scripture alone is not the primary rule of faith here, and that is the point on which Friends divided from the rest of the Reformation.

Roman Catholicism, Denominations

The Council of Trent answered the principle in its fourth session in 1546, receiving the unwritten apostolic traditions with equal reverence alongside the canonical scriptures and reserving the interpretation of scripture to the church.

Source Canons and Decrees of the Council of TrentCouncil of Trentthe holders' own account
Sources
1. The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised edition
F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2005View the Source
2. Reformation: Europe's House Divided 1490-1700
Diarmaid MacCulloch, Allen Lane, 2003on the appeal to scripture alone as the ground of the Reformation caseView the Source
3. The Formula of Concord
Jakob Andreae, Martin Chemnitz, Nikolaus Selnecker and others, 1577Preface, Formula of Concord, 1577View the Source
4. Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent
Council of Trent, 1563Session IV, the decree on the canonical scriptures and on tradition, 1546the holders' own accountView the Source
5. The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine
Jaroslav Pelikan, University of Chicago Press, 1971View the Source
The Augsburg Confession
Philipp Melanchthon, 1530The Augsburg Confession, 1530View the Source
The Westminster Confession of Faith
Westminster Assembly, 1646The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter I, Of the Holy Scripturethe holders' own accountView the Source
The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion
Church of England, 1571The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, Article VI, Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scripturesthe holders' own accountView the Source
An Apology for the True Christian Divinity
Robert Barclay, Harvey and Darton, 1676An Apology for the True Christian Divinity, Proposition IIIView the Source
The Pearl of Great Price
Joseph Smith, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1851The Pearl of Great Price, Articles of Faith 8 and 9View the Source
The Belgic Confession
Guido de Bres, 1561View the Source
The New Hampshire Confession of Faith
New Hampshire Baptist Convention, 1833View the Source
The Study of Anglicanism
Stephen Sykes, John Booty and Jonathan Knight (eds.), SPCK / Fortress Press, 1998
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