The Church Is Subject To The Bible

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

The Christian community is dependent on the Bible for its life and integrity.
Once Christians have accepted the Bible as embodying the word of God – the message that lies at the heart of our existence as Christians – from then onward the Bible has a certain authority over against the church.
The church must interpret the Bible so that the Bible will have a living voice in each age, but the church must not use the process of interpretation merely to justify what the church itself happens to be.
The church, as the living community of faith, will always go on changing and developing, but not every change and development will be good.
A church that breaks radically with its scriptural foundations will no longer be a community of Christian faith but something else.
The church is subject to the Bible, just as the Bible is dependent on the church.
Without the Bible, the church can only degenerate into something no thoughtful person would care to be associated with.