✦ Scripture

Overview

The Westminster Standards begin not with God but with Scripture (WCF I), and the order is deliberate. The Confession's opening chapter is the most fully developed Reformed treatment of Scripture in any confessional document of the seventeenth century: ten paragraphs covering the necessity of Scripture in the noetic condition of fallen humanity, the inscripturation of the prophetic and apostolic word, the canon of 66 books, the rejection of the Apocrypha as non-canonical, the church's testimony as historically valuable but not foundational, the internal witness of the Holy Spirit as the persuasive ground of saving conviction, the sufficiency of Scripture for the whole counsel of God 'either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence,' the perspicuity of Scripture in things necessary for salvation, the authority of the original Hebrew and Greek, the necessity of vernacular translation, and finally the supremacy of Scripture over all other authorities.

Philosophical significance

The Westminster doctrine of Scripture stakes a precise position in the early modern controversies over religious epistemology. Against Tridentine Catholicism it denies parity between Scripture and tradition; against the radical spiritualists it denies that the Spirit speaks apart from the Word; against Rationalism (already emergent in Herbert of Cherbury) it denies that natural religion suffices. The phrase 'good and necessary consequence' (I.6) is a carefully reasoned warrant for confessional system-building — the Standards' Trinitarianism, paedobaptism, and Sabbatarianism all rest on it. The internal-witness clause (I.5) is the Standards' answer to the Cartesian problem of certainty: the believer's assurance of Scripture's authority rests on the testimony of the Spirit *with and by* the Word, not on the church and not on bare reason.

Scriptural ground

The Confession proof-texts WCF I from 2 Timothy 3:15–17, 2 Peter 1:19–21, Hebrews 1:1–2, John 5:39, Isaiah 8:20, 1 Corinthians 2:9–14, and Galatians 1:8–9, with extensive supporting catenae. The Larger Catechism Q. 3–5 expounds the same doctrine catechetically, defining Scripture as 'the Word of God, the only rule of faith and obedience'; Shorter Catechism Q. 2 — 'The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments' — is the most compressed statement.

Key controversies

• Scripture vs Tradition (Trent) — Trent's fourth session (1546) had decreed that Scripture and unwritten apostolic traditions are received 'pari pietatis affectu' (with equal pious affection). WCF I.6 directly rejects this: 'The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture: unto which nothing at any time is to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit, or traditions of men.'
• Scripture and the Spirit (the radicals) — Familists, Seekers, Ranters, and early Quakers (Fox began preaching in 1647, the year the Catechisms were finished) all elevated immediate Spirit-illumination above the written Word. The Standards' careful pairing of Word and Spirit — the Spirit *with and by* the Word — was the Assembly's considered response, hammered out against both Catholic and radical alternatives.
• The Apocrypha — WCF I.3 explicitly excludes the Apocrypha from the canon: 'not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.' This was a sharper rejection than Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles, which permitted Apocryphal reading 'for example of life and instruction of manners' though not for doctrine.