Scripture, the only rule
Question 2 answers that the Word of God in the Scriptures is the only rule to direct us how to glorify and enjoy God; Question 3, that the Scriptures principally teach what we are to believe concerning God and what duty he requires of us. Those two parts become the catechism's plan.
This week's questions
What rule hath God given to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him? The Word of God, which is contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy him.
Question 2
What do the Scriptures principally teach? The Scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of man.
Question 3
Question 1 named the end we were made for (last week); Question 2 names the rule that shows the way to it, and Question 3 what we learn on the way. Question 3's two parts give the whole catechism its plan, belief in Questions 4 to 38 and duty in Questions 39 to 107, as the library's introduction sets out.
The only rule
A rule is a straightedge, the measure of what is straight. How to glorify and enjoy God is not ours to invent; we learn it from what God has said. The first proof text of Question 2 says why Scripture can be that rule: "All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Timothy 3:16). The next is Paul's picture of the church:
built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus Himself as the cornerstone.
Ephesians 2:20
The apostles and prophets now reach us in what they wrote. John says why he wrote:
We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And this fellowship of ours is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. We write these things so that our joy may be complete.
1 John 1:3-4
The rule is less a fence than a road into fellowship with the Father and the Son, ending in complete joy: Question 1's enjoying again.
‘Only rule’ does not mean Scripture with nothing beside it. The Reformed churches value creeds, teachers and councils, but place them all under Scripture and test them by it. The Westminster Confession, from the same Assembly, teaches that all God's counsel concerning "his own glory, man's salvation, faith, and life" is either set down in Scripture or deduced from it "by good and necessary consequence" WCF 1.6, and that the supreme judge of every controversy "can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture" WCF 1.10. The Reformed Baptists' Second London Confession of 1689 opens by calling Scripture "the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving Knowledge, Faith and Obedience" 1.1. This is the sufficiency of Scripture, which Scripture alone, in the Reformed Faith course, treats at length.
Some twentieth-century theologians, stressing God's living address to us through the Bible, took ‘contained in’ to mean that God's Word is found within Scripture without every word of Scripture being God's Word. But the Larger Catechism, from the same Assembly, says plainly that "The holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the word of God" Larger Catechism, Q. 3, and the Reformed read the Shorter Catechism's phrase so: Scripture is God's Word. John Calvin likened Scripture to spectacles: it gathers our confused impressions of God and "shows us the true God clearly" Calvin, Institutes 1.6.1. Our certainty that it is God's Word, he adds, comes not from human reasons but from "the secret testimony of the Spirit" 1.7.4.
What to believe and what to do
The Bible holds history, poetry, genealogies and letters, but all of it in the end teaches belief and duty. Ecclesiastes concludes its long search with both: "When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man" (Ecclesiastes 12:13). The catechism's word for the second part is the verse's own: duty.
Belief and duty belong together. Paul tells Timothy, "Hold on to the pattern of sound teaching you have heard from me, with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 1:13). His word for pattern, , is an example to follow. A catechism is such a pattern in small: sound teaching, held with faith and love.
Catholic and Orthodox Christians also receive Scripture as God's word, but relate it to tradition differently. The Catholic Church receives Scripture and Sacred Tradition together as one revelation of God, and teaches that the church's teaching office, the Magisterium, interprets it in the service of God's word Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum. The Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky speaks of Scripture as given and read within the church, and of Holy Tradition not as a second source but as the church's living memory, reading Scripture rightly with the Fathers Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition. The canon differs too. Protestants receive sixty-six books and do not count the Apocrypha as Scripture WCF 1.3; Catholics receive books such as Tobit and Maccabees, which they call deuterocanonical, in the canon the Council of Trent defined in 1546 Council of Trent, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures; the Orthodox receive them and a few more.
The Christian Doctrine course sets these views side by side in The inspiration and authority of Scripture and The canon; see also What kind of book is the Bible?, Can the Bible be trusted? and How did we get the Bible?
To ponder this week
When you open the Bible this week, do you ask both what to believe and what to do, or do you look only for comfort, or only for rules? There is no shame in any of these; Question 3 says that Scripture teaches both together. After reading a chapter, write down one thing it teaches you to believe about God and one thing God asks of you. Then say Questions 1 to 3 from memory.
Practice
- Practice 1 of 6
According to Question 2, what is the only rule to direct us how we may glorify and enjoy God?
- Practice 2 of 6
When the Reformed churches call Scripture the ‘only rule’, what do they mean?
- Practice 3 of 6
How does Question 3 divide what the Scriptures principally teach?
- Practice 4 of 6
How does the Larger Catechism, from the same Assembly, answer the question "What is the word of God?"
- Practice 5 of 6
Where does Paul tell Timothy to hold on to the pattern of sound teaching, with faith and love?
- Practice 6 of 6
Which pairing of a tradition with its teaching on Scripture and tradition is accurate?
Reading to the end marks it read; tap to switch it.
Related topics
Source
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 1559 — The classic statement of Reformed theology: first a small book printed at Basel in 1536, revised and enlarged until the last edition of 1559. Book 1, chapters 7–8: Scripture is confirmed by the inner witness of the Spirit, and the proofs of its credibility (ch. 8) are secondary helps to our weakness. Read
- Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum 1965 — Catholic teaching that Scripture and Tradition together hand on the one revelation, which the Magisterium interprets (10); Scripture read with attention to the authors' intention, its literary forms and its unity (12).
- Georges Florovsky, Bible, Church, Tradition: An Eastern Orthodox View 1972 — 1972. An Orthodox view: Scripture is given in the church and read in the church; tradition is not a second source added to Scripture but the church's living memory, reading Scripture rightly with the Fathers.
- Council of Trent, Decree on the Canonical Scriptures 1546 — Fixed for the Catholic Church the list of Old and New Testament books, including the deuterocanonical books.
Lessons from the Bible, the church's creeds, the Westminster Shorter Catechism and the Reformed confessions, the Fathers and classic commentary. They teach the Catechism as the Reformed churches' own, a week at a time, and present both sides where the Reformed differ, and other traditions' views, fairly. Scripture quotations: BSB.