“Three fountains of divine authority are not and cannot be contradictory, because they are three different media for the same divine Being to make His authority known to mankind. We may compare them with the three great functions of government: the legislative, the executive and the judicial, which in the best modern governments conspire to express the authority of the nation. The Bible is the legislative principle of divine authority, for it is the only infallible rule of faith and practice. The Church is the executive principle of divine authority. It makes no rules save those which are executive interpretations and applications of the rules contained in apostolic teaching. The Reason is the judicial principle of divine authority to the individual man. The Reason, when it judges, must be followed at all costs. There is liability to mistake, in individuals and in ecclesiastical bodies, in interpreting the decisions that come through these three media. Two may usually be used for verification of any one of them.”²⁷

Briggs grew to dislike what he called “the scholastic” element in Reformed theology. He wrote:

“The scholastic spirit seeks union and communion with God by means of well-ordered forms. It searches the Bible for well-defined systems of law and doctrine by which to rule the Church and control the world. It arises from an intellectual nature, and grows into a more or less acute logical sense, and a taste for systems of order. This spirit exists in all ages and in most religions, but it was especially dominant in the middle age of the Church and in Latin Christianity. It is distinguished by an intense legality and by too exclusive attention to the works of the law, and a disproportionate consideration of the sovereignty of God, the sinfulness of man, and the satisfaction to be rendered to God for sin. In biblical studies it is distinguished by the legal, analytic method of interpretation, carried on at times with such hair-splitting distinction and subtlety of reasoning that Holy Scripture becomes, as it were, a magician’s book. Through the device of the manifold sense the Bible is made as effectual to the purpose of the dogmatician for proof texts as are the sacraments to the priests in their magical operation. The doctrinal element prevails over the religious and ethical. Dogma and institution alike work ex opera operato.”²⁸

Briggs may have lost the battle with Warfield and Old Princeton, but in the space of a generation his theological distinctives gained ascendancy in the Presbyterian church when the Auburn Affirmation ratified his views in 1924, especially on the doctrine of inerrancy:

“There is no assertion in the Scriptures that their writers were kept “from error.” The Confession of Faith does not make this assertion; and it is significant that this assertion is not to be found in the Apostle’s Creed or the Nicene Creed or in any of the great Reformation confessions. The doctrine of inerrancy, intended to enhance the authority of the Scriptures, in fact impairs their supreme authority for faith and life, and weakens the testimony of the church to the power of God unto salvation through Jesus Christ. We hold that the General Assembly of 1923, in asserting that “the Holy Spirit did so inspire, guide and movie the writers of Holy Scripture as to keep them from error,” spoke without warrant of the Scriptures or of the Confession of Faith. We hold rather to the words of the Confession of Faith, that the Scriptures “are given by inspiration of God, to be the rule of faith and life.” (Conf. I, ii)