Christian beliefs compared
What Christians Believe About Scripture
Christians receive the Bible as the inspired word of God, trustworthy and authoritative for faith and life. What they differ on is which books belong in it, and how Scripture relates to the church's tradition and teaching authority.
What nearly all Christians hold
All the traditions hold the Scriptures to be God-breathed, given through human authors carried along by the Holy Spirit, and central to Christian faith, worship, and life.
Where the traditions differ
Scripture and sacred Tradition together form one deposit of God's word, faithfully interpreted by the Church's teaching office (the Magisterium). The Catholic Old Testament includes the deuterocanonical books (such as Tobit, Wisdom, and 1 and 2 Maccabees).
Scripture is received within Holy Tradition, read in and by the church and its worship, never apart from the community that hands it down. The Orthodox Old Testament follows the Greek Septuagint and is broader still than the Catholic canon.
Protestants hold sola scriptura: Scripture is the final and supreme authority, above all tradition and church teaching, which remain valuable but are judged by the Bible. Protestant Bibles contain 66 books, treating the Apocrypha as edifying but not canonical.
What remains genuinely disputed or open
The main differences are the extent of the canon (whether the deuterocanonical books are Scripture), whether Scripture stands alone as the final authority or works together with tradition and the church's teaching office, and, within Protestantism, debates over inerrancy and how the Bible should be interpreted.
The source ladder
How the answer is weighed: from the highest and most shared authority down to the most contested.
- Scripture: the Bible testifies to its own inspiration (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21), but does not hand down a table of contents, which is why the canon had to be discerned.
- Ecumenical creeds: they presuppose the Scriptures as authoritative without listing the books.
- Tradition: early canon lists, the councils of Carthage and Hippo, the Council of Trent, and the Reformation confessions shaped which books each tradition receives.
- Scholarship: textual criticism and the history of the canon study how the books were written, gathered, and recognized.
Beneath every difference, one Lord
Christians have argued long and hard over much of this, and the differences are real and worth understanding honestly. Yet on the thing that matters most they have always stood together: that God so loved the world he came among us in Jesus, died and rose for us, and calls everyone home. You do not have to settle every question to come to him. The Gospel of John is a gentle place to begin, and it costs you nothing but a little quiet and an honest look.
Read the Gospel of JohnWhat is the gospel?Ask for prayerJesus Christ is Lord.
Frequently asked questions
- Do Catholics and Protestants have different Bibles?
- Yes, in the Old Testament. Catholic Bibles include seven deuterocanonical books (and additions) that Protestant Bibles place in the Apocrypha or omit. Orthodox Bibles include still more. The New Testament of 27 books is shared by all.
- What does sola scriptura mean?
- It is the Protestant conviction that Scripture is the highest and final authority for faith, above church tradition and teaching. It does not reject tradition entirely, but subjects it to the judgment of the Bible.
- Do all Christians believe the Bible is inspired?
- Yes. Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions all confess the Bible as the inspired word of God. They differ on the canon and on how Scripture relates to the church's tradition and authority, not on its inspiration.