Thoughts on Westminster Confession of Faith, article I.6, which you can find here.
The revelation of God in Scripture is complete. It doesn’t give specifics on everything, but the principles given apply to everything. There is no inspired technical manual on aircraft mechanics, but there is instruction on how to work in any calling or career (Colossians 3:17, 22-25).
Some things are not explicitly taught in Scripture, but can
be inferred from it. An example might be
that wives and citizens ought not submit to their husbands and magistrates when
asked to oppose God. We see this in
story form in Abigail going behind Nabal’s back, and the apostles telling the
temple leadership they must obey God rather than men. But the principles aren’t laid out in
instructive form. We often need to infer
from events in the Bible whether this is model behavior or not, using the
clearer parts of Scripture to do so.
We must be careful not to add to Scripture. Some cults do this literally, but many
Christians do it functionally by giving their favorite teachers more weight
than the Bible, or chasing the leading of the Spirit more than heeding
Scripture. Jesus corrected the Pharisees
for “teaching as doctrines the commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9). We need the Spirit’s illumination to read and
understand and profit from Scripture, but we do not need or expect new
revelation from the Spirit beyond Scripture. Illumination by the Spirit is not same as
inspiration.
Although the Bible addresses everything in principle, it
does leave us to the wisdom we find in creation when we get down to the details
on many things. There is no detailed
schematic for how big a church should be, what kind of building to have, how
long a worship service should last, how the leadership should be structured. This in no way threatens the idea of the sufficiency
of Scripture. The Bible gives us “all
things that pertain to life and godliness” (2 Peter 1:3).
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