Yes. It is the only sufficient, certain and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith and obedience.

Four claims, and each one excludes something. Only: there is no second rule standing alongside it. Sufficient: nothing has to be fetched from anywhere else to complete it. Certain and infallible: it does not mislead the person who trusts it. Rule of knowledge, faith and obedience: it governs not only what you are to believe but what you are to do.

Since you were a kid, you've known the sacred writings that can give you the wisdom to be saved through faith in Christ Jesus.

Every part of Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for showing what's wrong, for correcting mistakes, and for training people to live right.

That way, anyone who belongs to God is fully prepared and equipped for every good thing they're meant to do.

2 Timothy 3:15-17

Confession 1.1

Yes - enough of his goodness, wisdom and power to leave people without excuse, but not enough to save anyone.

The confession is careful here and it is worth matching its care. Creation genuinely tells you something, and what it tells you is genuinely true. What it cannot do is tell you what God has done about sin, because that is news rather than inference, and news has to be announced.

What can be known about God is clear to them - God himself has made it obvious.

Ever since the world began, God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen in what he made. So people have no excuse.

Romans 1:19-20

Confession 1.1

To preserve and spread the truth, and to establish and comfort the church against the corruption of the flesh and the malice of Satan and the world.

The reason given is practical rather than abstract. Spoken revelation depends on memory and on the person passing it on. A text can be checked, and it does not change when the people holding it do.

Confession 1.1

No. Those earlier ways of making his will known have ceased. What remains is the written word.

God revealed himself at many times and in many ways before there was a Bible, and none of that is disputed. What is added is that the revealing is finished. Anything claiming to be a fresh word from God now is measured against the text rather than added to it.

Confession 1.1

Sixty-six - the thirty-nine of the Old Testament and the twenty-seven of the New. All of them are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.

No criterion is offered and no argument is made. The books are named one by one as the ones the churches already had, which tells you nobody signing it was expected to dispute them. What is excluded is dealt with separately.

Every part of Scripture is inspired by God and useful for teaching, for showing what's wrong, for correcting mistakes, and for training people to live right.

2 Timothy 3:16

Confession 1.2

That it is not divinely inspired, is no part of the canon, has no authority in the church, and is to be used no differently from any other human writing.

The judgement is specific: not condemned, not forbidden, simply not Scripture. Because the sixty-six accepted books have already been named one by one, there is no ambiguity about what is being left out.

Confession 1.3

From God, who is its author. A church can recognise Scripture; it cannot confer authority on it, because the authority was there before anyone recognised it.

The point being contested is the order of the two. A church's testimony may well move a person to take Scripture seriously, and that is allowed. What is denied is that the church is what makes it authoritative, because then the book would rest on the institution rather than the other way round.

And now we have something even more certain - the message from the prophets. You'd do well to pay attention to it, like a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

Above all, you need to understand that no prophecy in Scripture comes from someone's own ideas.

Prophecy never came from human will. Instead, people spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

2 Peter 1:19-21

Confession 1.4

The heavenliness of what it says, the effect its teaching has, the majesty of its style, the agreement of all its parts, the fact that the whole of it aims at giving God the glory, the full disclosure it makes of the only way of salvation, and its many other incomparable qualities and entire perfection.

A church's testimony may move a person to hold Scripture in high and reverent esteem, and everything above counts as real argument and evidence. None of it is called the thing that finally settles the matter, which is why the account does not stop there.

Confession 1.5

The inward work of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness by and with the word in the heart.

Real arguments exist - the seriousness of the content, the effect it has, the way the whole thing holds together - and the confession says they are genuine. It also says they are not what produces full assurance. Evidence can bring you to the door; it does not open it.

Confession 1.5

It must be either expressly set down, or arrived at by good and necessary consequence from what is.

The second half is doing serious work. It licenses reasoning from the text - the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere stated in a single sentence and is held to follow necessarily from many. It also draws a line: a conclusion has to actually follow, not merely sound compatible.

Confession 1.6

Nothing at all, at any time.

Both routes are closed at once, and both were live options in 1689 - a claimed new word from the Spirit on one side, accumulated church practice on the other. What is still required is the Spirit's inward work, not to add anything, but so that a person can understand what is already there.

Confession 1.6

By the light of nature and Christian prudence, kept within the general rules of the word.

Two things are being separated. What is done in worship and how a church is governed are settled from Scripture; the circumstances common to any human gathering - the hour, the building, how long anyone speaks - are not, and the confession says so rather than pretending every detail is legislated.

Just make sure everything is done in a respectful and orderly way.

1 Corinthians 14:40

Confession 1.6

No. But the things a person must know to be saved are set out so plainly, somewhere in it, that an ordinary reader using ordinary means can understand them.

The confession concedes the difficulty rather than talking round it. Some passages are hard and honest readers will differ over them. The claim is narrower and more useful: you do not need a scholar's training to find out how to be saved.

Confession 1.7

The Hebrew of the Old Testament and the Greek of the New, which it says were immediately inspired by God and kept pure through every age by his particular care and providence - so those are the authentic text, and the church appeals finally to them.

That is a claim about preservation as well as about inspiration, and the two are separate. God gave the text, and God has also kept it. It is what allows the next clause to insist on translation into every ordinary language: a translation is answerable to something, and the something is still there to be checked against.

There's a lot of value in every way. First of all, the Jewish people were trusted with God's own words.

Romans 3:2

Confession 1.8

Because the Hebrew and Greek are not known to all the people, who have a right to the Scriptures and are commanded to read them.

The reasoning runs from the command backwards. If people are told to read it and search it, then the text has to reach them in a language they think in - and translation is not a concession to the lazy but a requirement of the instruction.

Confession 1.8

Scripture interprets Scripture. Where the sense of a passage is in question, it is to be searched out from other places that speak more clearly.

The rule assumes the text is one thing rather than an anthology, and it has a practical edge: an interpretation of an obscure verse that contradicts a clear one is wrong, whatever else can be said for it.

Confession 1.9

The Holy Spirit speaking in Scripture. Not councils, not church fathers, not any teacher living or dead.

The wording is precise and often misread. It is not Scripture on its own, sitting inert, and it is not the Spirit apart from the text. It is the Spirit speaking in the text, which rules out both a book without an author and an impression without a check.

Jesus answered, 'You're wrong because you don't know the Scriptures or God's power.'

Matthew 22:29

Confession 1.10