_This theory has no sufficient sanction by the Church._
The Catholic or OEcumenical Creeds make no affirmation whatever concerning
the Bible. This theory is found alone, in formal official statement, in
the creeds of minor authority, the utterances of councils of particular
churches; as, for example, in the Tridentine Decrees and the Protestant
Confessions of Faith. There is no unanimity of statement among these
several Confessions. Some of the Protestant Confessions of the Reformation
era state this theory moderately. Some of them hold it implicitly, without
exact definition. One at least is wholly silent upon the subject. The
later creeds of Protestantism vary even more than the Reformation symbols.
Such important Churches as the Church of England, our own Protestant
Episcopal Church, and the Methodist Church have nothing whatever of this
theory in their official utterances. These three Churches unite in this
simple, practical, undogmatic statement (the sixth of the thirty-nine
articles):
"Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that
whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be
required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the
faith or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."