One can’t have the sufficiency of Scripture without the inerrancy of Scripture. One shouldn’t hold the inerrancy of Scripture without holding the sufficiency of Scripture. Both are essential for faithful Christian ministry.
What we mean by the sufficiency of Scripture, in short, is that Scripture contains all we need for life and godliness and that through the Scriptures we can be “adequate, equipped for every good work.”
The sufficiency of Scripture is simplifying, emboldening, and reassuring.
A Candid Memoir, A Cautionary Tale
As I’ve reflected on biblical inerrancy and sufficiency in recent days, my mind has gone back to a memoir I read many years ago. A candid memoir that’s a cautionary tale about the minister’s relation to the Word of God. It’s a little book that made a big splash in Southern Baptist life in the 1980s.
In his book, Called to Preach, Condemned to Survive, Clayton Sullivan recounted his migration from evangelical orthodoxy to doubt and disbelief. Ironically, Sullivan’s book proved a boon to theological conservatives because it detailed how acidic higher critical interpretive methodologies had proven to be. And this acid wasn’t confined to European Universities and Ivy League Divinity Schools, it was corroding erstwhile conservative institutions and evangelical ministers.
In his memoir, Sullivan traced his departure from orthodox Christianity and how it happened. As a young man in 1950s Mississippi, he felt called to preach and he set out doing just that. He started as a young firebrand, preaching the gospel and pounding away from the Scriptures arguing for the fundamentals of the faith. Feeling the need to be trained, he moved to Louisville, Kentucky, to attend Southern Seminary, which then was marked by theological liberalism.
Movingly, Sullivan recounts the final, moving conversation he had with his father before driving to seminary. He writes, "I remember the last words my father said to me. That morning, we were standing by the driveway waving goodbye as I was pulling away from the house into the morning light. He said, ‘Son, whatever happens, don’t let them change you.'"
This parting word of warning would prove ominous for Sullivan. In short order, he would be changed, and not for the better. Sullivan recounted the crumbling of his faith in this memoir. He writes, “As a seminarian still in my mid-twenties I found myself baffled. I was more certain of what I did not believe than I was of what I did believe. Southern Seminary had destroyed my biblical fundamentalism but had not given me anything viable to take its place. That is the weakness of the historical-critical method,” he reflected.
Most pointedly, Sullivan concluded, “Its power to destroy exceeds its power to construct.” Incisively, Sullivan diagnosed the real problem of denying biblical inerrancy—it takes something out of you that nothing else can replace.
Linking Inerrancy and Sufficiency
If denying inerrancy takes something out of the minister, denying sufficiency fails to put something into him. Denying inerrancy removes one’s confidence in the Bible. Denying, or even de-emphasizing, sufficiency fails to put something in you: a fuller, more robust, more perennial confidence in and commitment to the Bible.
This may well be where Satan does the most harm to gospel ministers and the churches they serve. Within conservative evangelicalism, biblical inerrancy is so commonly held as to be almost undebated. Among this tribe (my tribe) denying Scripture isn’t a likely choice, but to neglect its sufficiency will bring similarly tragic consequences. A subtle questioning of the sufficiency of Scripture undermines its relevance, adequacy, and power.
Writing more than two decades ago, James Montgomery Boice detected these very concerns, writing, “Inerrancy is not the most critical issue facing the church today. The most serious issue, I believe, is the Bible’s sufficiency.” For the evangelical church, Boice has proven prophetic.
Defining Sufficiency
Since the sufficiency of Scripture is this crucial, we must define it with care. By sufficiency, I mean that God’s word isn’t just perfect in its accuracy, but perfect in its completion. Scripture contains all that God intended for us to have by way of special revelation, and it contains all we need for life and ministry.
John Piper explains, “The sufficiency of Scripture means that we don’t need any more special revelation. We don’t need any more inspired, inerrant words. In the Bible God has given us, we have the perfect standard for judging all other knowledge. All other knowledge stands under the judgment of the Bible even when it serves the Bible.”
Sufficiency doesn’t mean that Scripture teaches all that we can or need to know about everything. Of course not. Within Scripture you don’t find modern medicine, instructions on how to fix your car’s transmission, sync your iPhone, or prepare a gluten-free meal.
But Scripture does contain all truths necessary for Christian living and ministry. Sufficiency doesn’t negate General Revelation, but it does right size it. Nor does sufficiency deny non-biblical knowledge, but it does put it in its place.
Sufficiency safeguards Scripture’s role in the life of the church. As Mark Dever has argued, “An understanding of the sufficiency of Scripture is the context in which we assert, maintain and practice the centrality of Scripture in the life of the church.”