The Only Infallible Rule

I. The Bible

The Bible is the Word of God. It is free from all errors. It alone is infallibly authoritative, and it contains all that people need to know about God and his will in order to be saved and know what pleases him.

Medical science interprets God's revelation in creation so that God may give direction to people's lives as they listen to their doctors in such areas as proper diet, exercise and rest. But doctors are not infallible, only the Bible is. God speaks to his people through sermons, but sermons are not God's infallible Word. Believers may come to a greater understanding of who God is as they study the writings of a theologian or read the doctrinal standards of the Church. But these writings must be tested. The measuring rod, or canon, by which any word is to be tested is the Bible. The consistently Christian position is that the Bible is inerrant, and that of all the ways in which a person may receive direction from God only the Bible is infallible:

Do you believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, as originally given, to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice? (1)

There was at the time of the apostles a yard-stick by which everything could be tested. This canon, now closed, is called by various names, such as "the faith," "the deposit," "the apostolic tradition" and "the standard of sound words." These phrases all refer to the apostles' teaching, which for the Church today, is found solely in the pages of the Bible:

I praise you for remembering me in everything and for holding to the teachings, (2) just as I passed them on to you. (3)

But thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form (4) of teaching to which you were entrusted. (5)

What you heard from me, keep as the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love in Christ Jesus. Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you--guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us. (6)


II. The Inferiority of all Other Forms of Direction to the Bible

Throughout the history of God's dealings with humankind, there has been a Word from the Lord. This Word came in various ways: such as dreams, visions, the casting of the lot, and the spoken, prophetic word. Nowhere was anyone ever to question Scripture, but people were regularly instructed to question everything else that claimed to be a word from the Lord:

Two or three prophets should speak, and the others should weigh carefully what is said. (7)

Do not put out the Spirit's fire; do not treat prophecies with contempt. Test everything. Hold on to the good. (8)

Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world. (9)

Among these kinds of things are what are referred to as private spirits in the Westminster Confession. They are fallible and therefore must always be tested by Scripture:

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. (10)

The only yardstick for measuring truth is the Bible. This is so because the Bible is infallible, and it is the only thing which God has left to the Church which is infallible. As such, one may say that it "is the only rule" (11) which God has given to the Church by which to test whether something is of God or not.

III. The Importance of an Absolute Standard of Truth

Though God regularly revealed his will to people by various means, early on in Redemptive history he began the work of recording his will for his people in a permanent, written form.

For the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the Church against the corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world . . . it pleased the Lord to commit . . . that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary unto salvation . . . wholly unto writing: which maketh the Holy Scripture to be most necessary; those former ways of God's revealing his will unto His people being now ceased. (12)

The sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments are God's complete revelation of the Christian message. That is to say that any direction from God, now, after the closing of the New Testament canon, will be in the area of application of the principles of Scripture and not an additional doctrinal truth. (13) God has given an infallible standard of truth in finished form, so that there will be no further revelation of the Christian faith until Jesus comes again; no new doctrine is going to be revealed.

Dear friends, although I was very eager to write to you about the salvation we share, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. (14)

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, (15) and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. (16)

What Paul is saying is that the Church has everything it needs to know in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. The Westminster Assembly declared:

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. (17)

It is important to notice that the Westminster Assembly did not teach that there would not be new revelations of the Spirit. On the contrary, they certainly believed that men had continued to hand down their traditions. Therefore, they imply that there would be new revelations of the Spirit, as well. What they are affirming here is the doctrine of the closed canon of Scripture and the sufficiency of that completed canon for the needs of the universal Church.

It is wise to speak of this work of the Holy Spirit as a facet of his work of illumination since nothing new is added to the Scriptures or the Christian faith. The Spirit's work of illumination, then, is limited to his enabling the Church to know the meaning of what is in the Bible. But this meaning includes not only the historical and objective understanding of passages of Scripture but the subjective significance of biblical truth on the lives of God's people in diverse cultures and times, as well. (18) Corroborating this understanding of the Confession is the affirmation of Samuel Rutherford, one of its principal authors, that the gift of prophecy, including foretelling the future, continues after the closing of the canon of Scripture, but he distinguishes between immediate inspiration, which produced the Bible, and this other guidance which was not infallible:

Of revelations extraordinary of men in our ages not immediately inspired and how they are charactered from Satanicall Revelations

There is a 3 revelation of some particular men, who have foretold things to come even since the ceasing of the Canon of the word, as Iohn Husse, Wickeliefe, Luther have foretold things to come, and they certainely fell out, and in our nation of Scotland, M. George Wishart foretold that Cardinall Beaton should not come out alive at the Gates of the Castle of St. Andrewes, but that he should dye a shamefull death, and he was hanged over the window that he did look out at, when he saw the man of God burnt, M. Knox prophecied of the hanging of the Lord of Grange, M. Ioh. Davidson uttered prophecies, knowne to many of the kingdome, diverse Holy and mortified preachers in England have done the like . . . .. These worthy reformers tye no man to beleeve their prophecies as Scriptures . . . they never gave themselves out as organs immediately inspired by the Holy Ghost . . . yea they never denounced Iudgement against those that beleeved not their predictions, of these particular events & facts . . . .. (sic. throughout) (19)

IV. Infallibility and the Binding of the Conscience

Because the Bible is the only revelation from God which he has declared to be infallible, only its teachings can be imposed on other people. Here, says Samuel Rutherford, is the difference between the Reformers and the Enthusiasts: both believed that God was directing them, but the Reformers never presented their prophecies to people as something which was infallible or binding on the consciences of believers. The Enthusiasts, on the other hand, claimed the same kind of immediate inspiration as that of the authors of Scripture and therefore demanded that their prophecies be received on a par with Scripture. (20) The Reformers maintained liberty of conscience in all matters where the Scripture is silent:

God alone is Lord of the conscience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, which are, in any thing, contrary to His word; or beside it, if in matters of faith, or worship. (21)

In this, they were standing on solid biblical ground:

Jesus replied, "And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men." (22)

V. Infallibility and the Office of the Apostle

It is important to understand that infallibility centers in Scripture itself and not in a particular office. One should consider, for example, the office of the apostle. The word apostle refers to a person who has been sent out with a commission from someone else, (23) and so it is the ideal word used for those people who knew the Lord Jesus in the days of his earthly life, were eyewitnesses of his resurrection, and who were commissioned directly by him to establish the Christian Church. (24) But the word is used in a broader sense than this, and sometimes apostle simply denotes a representative sent out under the authority of a local church. (25) In that broader sense the New Testament mentions one Junia, a person with a woman's name, who probably was an apostle of the Church of Rome. (26) In that sense, and in that sense only, there are apostles today; they can be commissioners to church courts, or foreign missionaries, or representatives from a church sent to encourage others in some way.

The point is that the New Testament did not exercise the same carefulness in the use of the word, apostle, as it did with the words used to denote Scripture. Perhaps one reason for this is that the Church always held to the idea that the Scripture is perfect, but that the apostles, even in the restricted, technical sense, remained sinners all their lives and sometimes made mistakes. Peter stands out as an example of this. Paul even had to rebuke him publicly in Antioch (27) because he was not "walking according to the truth of the gospel." (28)

It is also important to center infallible authority in Scripture alone rather than in office because significant sections of the New Testament were not written by apostles. Neither Luke nor Mark are mentioned either as apostles or prophets, and no one knows what office the author of the book of Hebrews held.

The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it ought to be believed, and obeyed, dependeth not upon the testimony of any man, or Church; but wholly upon God (who is truth itself) the author thereof: and therefore it is to be received, because it is the Word of God. (29)

The apostles obviously wrote many other letters than the handful preserved in the New Testament. Paul wrote at least three letters to Corinth; First and Second Corinthians are probably Second and Fourth Corinthians. (30) He mentions a letter to the Church at Laodicea. (31) Can anyone believe that Peter wrote only two letters in the thirty-five years he served the Church as an apostle? Near the end of over sixty years of apostolic ministry, John wrote his gospel, the book of Revelation, and three letters. Did he suddenly start writing in his nineties, or were these writings the culmination of years of reflection and perhaps scores of letters? One cannot know why God determined that certain letters of Peter and Paul would be lost while preserving others to be regarded as the canon of the New Testament. In one letter Paul clearly separates a section of what he is saying from the directive of the Lord, (32) but one should not assume that these lost letters were merely the opinions of godly people. (33) They were the fully inspired, authoritative words of the Lord's holy apostles. Perhaps, unlike the rest of Scripture, they were not of relevance to the whole Church in all ages and places. Had they been, surely the Lord would have had them included among the writings of the New Testament. God himself superintended not only what was written in the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek Scriptures so that it is his very Word, but that he also sovereignly formed the canon of the Old and New Testaments, and "by His singular care and providence" preserved the Scriptures "pure in all ages." (34) How can a person know this? How can one come to have confidence that the book which he holds in his hands and reads every day is the actual Word of God?

Our full persuasion and assurance of the infallible truth and divine authority thereof, is from the inward work of the Holy Spirit bearing witness by and with the Word in our hearts. (35)

This persuasion is the work of the Holy Spirit who accomplishes it in God's own people in the same way he effectually calls them to faith in Jesus Christ. (36)

VI. Preaching as the Living Word of God

Scripture places more emphasis on the preaching of the Word than on its private study, because preaching is ordinarily the way in which the Holy Spirit effectually calls God's elect to Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit nourishes believers through it more than through any other means of grace. Preaching glorifies the power of God:

For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. (37)

It is not only the message of the gospel that is important, the medium through which that message is conveyed is also important. This is brought out so clearly in Romans 10:8-17. There one reads of the God-ordained sequence through which people come to receive the gift of salvation. A frail human being is ordained through the laying on of hands. (38) Through this sinful human being, God is pleased to reveal his Word. Without this human instrument, people cannot hear the gospel: "And how shall they hear without a preacher?" (39) Again, one notices the Bible's emphasis is not on the written Word of God but the proclaimed Word of God: "So then faith comes by hearing." And that very proclamation is called the Word of God: "And hearing by the word of God." (40)

One occasionally hears of people who put their trust in the Lord Jesus after reading the Scriptures or a gospel tract, but this is not the means God ordinarily uses to bring his people to himself. "And how shall they believe in Him Whom they have not heard?" (41) Paul does not speak here of a person's reading about Jesus, nor even of a person's hearing about Jesus. Rather, Paul instructs his readers to regard the words they hear preached by their own non-apostolic preachers as Jesus' own Word. As the late John Murray wrote:

The implication is that Christ speaks in the gospel proclamation . . . .. The dignity of the messengers . . . is derived from the fact that they are the Lord's spokesmen. In the last clause of verse fourteen the apostle is thinking of the institution which is the ordinary and most effectual means of propagation of the gospel, namely, the official preaching of the Word by those appointed to this task. (42)

Professor Murray is saying that it is Christ Jesus himself who is the real preacher one hears when he hears real preaching. His view is clear in the modern translations of Romans 10:14. The rules of Greek grammar establish this idea unequivocally.

The classical rule for . . . [the Greek word to hear] is: the person whose words are heard stands in the genitive [this is the case in Romans 10:14], the thing (or person) about which one hears in the accusative . . . .. (43)

This high view of preaching was not only taught by the Apostle Paul, Peter demanded it as well:

Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit . . . having been born again through the Word of God which lives and abides forever . . . .. Now this is the Word which by the gospel was preached to you. (44)

It is no wonder then that that most careful of students of Scripture, John Calvin, viewed preaching as the Word of God. In his Homilies on I Samuel, Calvin says that the pastors of the Christian church are "the very mouth of God." (45) And in The Geneva Confession Calvin states:

As we receive the true ministers of the Word of God as messengers and ambassadors of God, it is necessary to listen to them as to him himself, and we hold their ministry to be a commission from God necessary in the Church. (46)

Calvin's view of preaching was held to by the Puritan and Presbyterian theologians who met as the Westminster Assembly:

The Spirit of God maketh the reading, but especially the preaching of the word, an effectual means of [grace] . . . .. (47) It is required of those that hear the word preached, that they attend upon it with diligence, preparation, and prayer; examine what they hear by the scriptures; receive the truth with faith, love, meekness, and readiness of mind, as the word of God; meditate, and confer of it; hide it in their hearts, and bring forth the fruit of it in their lives. (48)

Edward Reynolds, probably the most influential member of the Assembly, put it this way:

Therefore, whensoever we come unto the Word read or preached, we should come with an expectation to hear Christ himself speaking from Heaven unto us, and bring such affections of submission and obedience as becometh his presence. (49)

This high view of preaching is not only held by Presbyterians, it is the position of Reformed Christians as well:

A preacher is not a person who merely speaks concerning Christ, but one through whom it pleases Christ Himself to speak and to cause His own voice to be heard by His people. The thing that matters in any sermon is whether we hear the voice of Jesus say: "Come unto me and rest;" whether we hear Him say, "Repent and believe;" whether His voice resounds in our deepest soul, "Your sins are forgiven, and I give unto you eternal life." . . . Preaching as to its contents is strictly limited to the Word of Christ in the Bible. The preacher has nothing of his own to deliver, strictly nothing. When he delivers a message of his own, apart from the Word of Christ, he ceases to be a preacher. A preacher, therefore, must proclaim the whole counsel of God unto salvation as contained in Holy Writ. (50)

The French scholar, Pierre Marcel, a person of impeccable credentials as a thoroughly Reformed theologian teaches us to regard preaching as the Word of God:

Here, the word of God is to be understood as the word as it reaches men, not as scripture in the specific sense of the term, but as the word drawn from scripture, assimilated by the conscience of the Church under the direction of the Holy Spirit, and spread abroad to the motleyest of men in the form of preaching, exhortations, addresses, messages, training, instruction, books, pamphlets, and tracts. In each of these cases, the word of God accomplishes a particular work. Whatever its form, God always stands behind his word. It is he who causes it to touch men and calls them in this way to conversion and life. (51)

The Bible is the fixed, solid standard, but without the anointing of the Holy Spirit it does not impart life. Those of us who hold to the same high view of the inspiration of the Scriptures as did the Pharisees, must not make their mistake about the source of life and power:

You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that by them you possess eternal life. These are the Scriptures that testify about me, yet you refuse to come to me to have life. (52)

VII. Preaching and Infallibility

Fundamentally, it is by proclamation that the risen Christ and his gospel are revealed, (53) yet even apostolic preaching was tested by its conformity to the Scripture. It is not for nothing that Luke commends the attitude of the Berean Jews:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica because they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily to see whether these things (what the Apostle Paul was preaching) were so. (54)

Even our Lord himself spoke within the banks of the stream of biblical revelation and said, "The Scripture cannot be broken." (55)

One has only to notice how many times the Old Testament is authoritatively quoted in a letter such as Romans, to realize the importance the apostles themselves placed on the infallibility of the Scriptures. Yet as the Faith was being deposited in the Church through the Scriptures, the apostles came to regard one another's writings as Scripture, equally authoritative with the Old Testament. (56)


1. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America (Decatur, Georgia, 1984), 21-5-1.

2. paradosis, or traditions. Cf. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, F. Wilber Gingrich, and Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, second edition (Chicago, 1979), p. 614.

3. 1 Corinthians 11:2. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (Grand Rapids, 1978).

4. tupos, i.e., "archetype, pattern, or model." Cf. Bauer, op. cit., p. 830. One should notice the picture which Paul uses in Romans 6:17: Scripture is the pattern, or, to change the metaphor, the yardstick by which truth is to be measured.

5. Romans 6:17. The Greek word is a verbal form of paradosis, tradition.

6. 2 Timothy 1:13, 14.

7. 1 Corinthians 14:29.

8. 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21.

9. 1 John 4:1-3.

10. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, The Confession of Faith of the Presbyterian Church in America (Decatur, Georgia, 1984), I, x. (emphasis mine) (hereafter, Confession)

11. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, The Shorter Catechism (Decatur, Georgia, 1984), # 2. (emphasis mine)

12. Confession, I, i. The order of the phrases separated by ellipses has been rearranged to demonstrate more clearly the cessation that it is in view. The statement, "those former ways of God's revealing his will unto his people being now ceased," must be understood in its context: "his will" refers back to "that knowledge of God, and of his will, which is necessary for salvation." As such, it is stating that the canon is closed and that the Bible is sufficient. It is not denying God's use of certain methods of guidance, only that he is not using them to impart further propositions to the Christian faith.

13. For example, Scripture reveals a missionary mandate; the Holy Spirit may move John Smith to go to Honduras.

14. Jude 1:3. (emphasis mine)

15. Literally, it is "God- breathed;" it is the actual, spoken word of God.

16. 2 Timothy 3:16, 17; cf. Deuteronomy 29:29.

17. Confession, I, vi. (emphasis mine)

18. In addition to the sense of being called to go to a particular foreign country, another example of the Spirit's work of illumination is the "inward call to preach the Gospel." (Cf., The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, The Book of Church Order of the Presbyterian Church in America (Decatur, Georgia, 1984), 19-2-A.)

19. Samuel Rutherford, A Survey of the Spirituall Antichrist Opening the Secrets of Familisme and Antinomianisme in the Antichristian Doctrine of Iohn Saltmarsh, and Will. Del, the Present Preachers of the Army Now in England, and of Robert Town, Tob. Crisp, H. Denne, Eaton, and Others. In Which Is Revealed the Rise and Spring of Antinomians, Familists, Libertines, Swenck-feldians, Enthysiasts, & c. The Minde of Luther a Most Professed Opposer of Antinomians, is cleared, and Diverse Considerable Points of the Law and the Gospel, of the Spirit and Letter, of the Two Covenants, of the Nature of Free Grace, Exercise Under Temptations, Mortification, Justification, Sanctification, are Discovered, (London, 1648), p. 42

20. Ibid., p. 43

21. Confession, XX, ii.

22. Matthew 15:3, 9; cf. Colossians 2:18-23.

23. Bauer, op. cit., p. 99.

24. Acts 1:21, 22; 1 Corinthians 9:1; 15:7-9; 2 Corinthians 12:12.

25. 2 Corinthians 8:23 and Philippians 2:25.

26. Romans 16:7.

27. Galatians 2:11.

28. Galatians 2:14.

29. Confession, I, iv.

30. 1 Corinthians 5:9; and probably 2 Corinthians 2:3, 4; 7:8; 10:9-11.

31. Colossians 4:16.

32. 1 Corinthians 7:25-40.

33. 1 Corinthians 7:40.

34. Confession, I, viii.

35. Confession, I, v.

36. For example, there is both an inward and an outward call in gospel preaching. The inward call is made only to the elect and always accomplishes God's purpose; the outward call (what can be tape recorded) is made to all persons who are present, and it has varying results. (John 5:25; 6:37; Romans 9:16-19; 10:21)

37. 1 Corinthians 1:21. (emphasis mine)

38. Romans 10:15; cf. 1 Timothy 4:14.

39. Romans 10:14.

40. Romans 10:17. (emphasis mine)

41. Romans 10:14. (emphasis mine)

42. John Murray, The Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, 1968), Vol. II, pp. 58, 59 (.emphasis mine)

43. F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and R. Funk, A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (Chicago, 1960), p. 95.

44. 1 Peter 1:22-25.

45. John Calvin, Homilies on I Samuel xlii, in Corpus Reformatorum: Johannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia. XXXIX. 705 in Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia, 1960), IV, i, 4, n. 11.

46. John Calvin, The Geneva Confession, XX, in Arthur C. Cochrane, Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century, (Philadelphia, 1966), p. 126.

47. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America, The Larger Catechism (Decatur, Georgia, 1984), # 155. (emphasis mine)

48. Ibid., # 160. (emphasis mine)

49. Edward Reynolds, "Psalm 110" in Jack Bartlett Rogers, Scripture in the Westminster Confession, A Problem of Historical Interpretation for American Presbyterianism (Grand Rapids, 1967), p. 290. (emphasis mine)

50. Herman Hoeksema, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, 1966), pp. 638, 639.

51. Pierre Ch. Marcel, The Relevance of Preaching, (Grand Rapids, 1963), p. 18. (italicized words: emphasis the author's. boldfaced words: emphasis mine.)

52. John 5:39, 40. (emphasis mine)

53. Ephesians 3:7-10.

54. Acts 17:11. (emphasis mine)

55. John 10:35.

56. 2 Peter 3:15, 16.