The Old Testament prophets consistently and widely refer to their role as mouthpieces for God. “Thus says the Lord . . .” is repeated again and again throughout the prophetic books. What makes Christ’s own words in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5–7 so striking is the way in which he contrasts himself with the prophets of old. Christ speaks on his own authority. “You have heard that it was said, but I say to you” becomes the refrain punctuating the sermon. The prophets in comparison would never make such a claim. It’s not “Hear the word of Isaiah . . . or of Jeremiah . . . or of Malachi.” Rather, it is the word of the Lord spoken through the prophet. Scripture consistently and widely claims to be the very words of God.

Throughout church history, this belief in inspiration, the divine origin of Scripture, has been a central hallmark of Christian orthodoxy. In the early church the biblical authors were called theologians because they literally spoke (the Greek word logos in its verb form means “to speak”) for God (the Greek word for God is Theos). Moses was a theologian in the truest sense of that word.

The biblical prophets, David, the Gospel writers, Paul, Peter, and the other writers of the New Testament epistles were all theologians. The early church fathers also recognized that because the biblical authors spoke for God, their words carried the weight of authority with them. These early church fathers often wrote their own epistles to the churches under their care, and in these letters they would pass along their advice on all sorts of matters. When, however, they wanted to make a particular point to these churches, they stepped out of the way and quoted the Bible. They didn’t defend it; they didn’t offer arguments for the authenticity of the text. They just quoted it, revealing the level of authority ascribed to the biblical books in the early church.

The Reformers approached Scripture in the same way. The Reformation, from one angle, can be seen as a debate around Scripture’s authority. Either Scripture stands over and above us as individual persons and as the corporate people of God, or we, either as individuals or as the collective body of the church, stand over it. The Reformation plank of sola scriptura addresses this directly, proclaiming emphatically and explicitly that Scripture stands over us as individuals and over us as the collective body of Christ. The church’s teaching and practice must be derived from its pages or the church risks running afoul. The Reformation was in one sense a debate over authority.

Curiously enough, the Renaissance carried on the same debate over authority with the later medieval Roman Catholic Church. The figures in the Renaissance, like the Reformers, turned away from lodging authority in the ecclesiastical structure. Unlike the Reformation, however, the Renaissance promoted looking within at the human mind or looking without to nature. Eventually, born of those seeds, rationalism and science would flower as the bases for knowledge, as the authority. The Reformers, however, looked past themselves and past nature to the one who created both. They not only looked to the Creator, they also listened to the Creator. They listened to his revelation as the authority.