Article 06

The sufficiency of holy Scripture for salvation

“Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation. Consequently whatever is not read in Scripture nor can be proved from Scripture cannot be demanded from any person to believe it as an article of the faith. Nor is any such thing to be thought necessary or required for salvation. By holy Scripture is meant those canonical books of the Old and New Testaments whose authority has never been doubted within the church. The books of the Apocrypha, as Jerome says, are read by the church for examples of life and instruction in behavior, but the church does not use them to establish any doctrine.”

* * * * *

I was given a book on astronomy for my birthday a few years ago. I was intrigued to learn more about the stars and planets. Who is not awed by the beauty and vastness of the heavens?

What is startling is how much information is packed into “The Beginner’s Guide to Astronomy” – many more details than one can easily absorb. And if this is the Beginner’s guide, how much more is there to learn about this subject! Even the most dedicated academics and scientists admit they have only scratched the surface of all that could be discovered about the universe.

This is also true of many other fields of study: the natural world, the brain or physics. There is so much information out there, more than we could ever hope to learn. This is both exciting and daunting. What a relief it is, then, that on the most important subject of all – salvation – the necessary information is not infinite: it is all found in just one book!

What must a person do to be rescued from death and live eternally with God? The Thirty-nine Articles state clearly where the answer is found: “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary for salvation. Consequently, whatever is not read in Scripture nor can be proved from Scripture cannot be demanded from any person to believe it as an article of the faith. Nor is any such thing to be thought necessary or required for salvation.”

This is great news! All we need to know about how to be saved is found in the Bible; anything which is not in the Bible is not essential to know to be saved. Of course, our study of the Bible will hopefully last a lifetime – it is a mine of great riches, and there is always more we can learn about God. However, there are not an infinite number of things we must know to be saved. As the Bible tells us, we simply need to put our trust in the Lord Jesus who died in our place on the cross.