Every Christian tradition holds that Scripture is God's word and carries authority. They differ on whether Scripture is the only final authority, and on what role the church's teaching office and its received tradition play alongside it.
This is arguably the disagreement underneath the others. Where two traditions differ about Mary, or , or the number of , they usually differ first about this.
2 Timothy 3:16-17, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, Acts 15
14But you remain in the things which you have learned and have been assured of, knowing from whom you have learned them. 15From infancy, you have known the holy Scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. 16Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, 17that each person who belongs to God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
All positions hold that Scripture is inspired and authoritative, that the church has a real teaching responsibility, that the ecumenical state the faith rightly, and that private interpretation untethered from the church's witness goes wrong. The disagreement is about the relationship between these, not about whether any of them matter.
Scripture alone
Scripture is the only infallible authority. Creeds, councils, and tradition are valuable and carry real weight, but they are subordinate and can err.
What it claims
Scripture is God-breathed and sufficient to make a person complete for every good work. Jesus and Paul both rebuke traditions that had come to override the commandment of God. Councils and popes have contradicted one another, so no human authority can be treated as infallible. This is not tradition-rejecting: the creeds are held precisely because they are faithful to Scripture.
Who holds it
Protestant churches generally: Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican in its Reformation formularies, Baptist, Methodist, and evangelical. Stated in the Reformation and often summarized as the norm that norms but is not normed.
The texts it stands on
2 Timothy 3:16-17 Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable, that each person may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.
Mark 7:8-13 You set aside the commandment of God, and hold tightly to the tradition of men.
Acts 17:11 The Bereans examined the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so, and were commended for it.
Strongest case
It places the final court of appeal in a fixed and public text that anyone can check, and it has a real answer to the problem of authorities that have contradicted each other over time.
Hardest question
The New Testament nowhere lists its own contents, so the itself came to the church through a historical process of recognition, which looks like tradition doing decisive work. Critics also point at the resulting fragmentation as evidence that a text without an authoritative interpreter yields division.
Holding the map
A distinction worth making, because it removes half the heat: nobody here is against tradition, and nobody here is against Scripture. Protestants recite the Nicene Creed, which is not in the Bible. Catholics and Orthodox read Scripture at every service. The argument is about ranking and final appeal.
The most useful question to ask of any of these is not whether it can be defended in principle but how it handles being wrong. Each tradition has a story about self-correction, and comparing those stories is more revealing than comparing the theories.
Questions that press on this one
None of these stands on its own. What you conclude here narrows what you can say there.
