John 10:35

The context

John 10 places Jesus in the temple at the Feast of Dedication, the winter festival commemorating the rededication of the temple. He has just said that he and the Father are one, and the crowd has picked up stones: the charge is blasphemy.

His answer is neither a denial nor a retreat but an argument from a psalm. He cites the line in Psalm 82 where God addresses the judges of Israel as "gods," and reasons that if Scripture can call mere recipients of God's word by that name, the one whom the Father consecrated and sent cannot be accused of blasphemy for the same title. The clause about Scripture not being broken is a remark inside that argument, almost parenthetical, and it is the part the church has quoted ever since.

The words

Graphē, "writing," is the standard New Testament word for the sacred text, and in John it always refers to what is read in the synagogue — a fixed body of material that can be cited by name.

The verb is lythēnai, from lyō, "to loose, untie, break, annul." It is the ordinary verb for untying a knot, and in legal settings for invalidating a ruling. The point is that Scripture's word cannot be dissolved or set aside; what it says stands.

The argument's form matters. It is an a fortiori argument, the kind the rabbis called light and heavy: if the lesser case holds, the greater follows. Jesus argues from his opponents' own premises, which makes the passage a poor model for extracting doctrine apart from its setting.

What this passage establishes

Jesus treats Scripture as a word that cannot be annulled, and he uses it as an authority his opponents must accept. The verse establishes that the New Testament's central figure regarded the text as standing and as capable of settling an argument.

What it does not establish

It does not state the doctrine of inerrancy in its modern form. The technical formulation, with its definitions of error and its attention to autographs, was worked out in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The verse is one of its supports, not its statement.

It does not endorse every use of Scripture. The argument here is ad hoc, aimed at a specific charge before a specific audience. It does not follow that any citation of a psalm settles any dispute; Jesus' reasoning here has been criticized as strained.

It does not settle textual questions. The verse says Scripture cannot be broken; it does not say which manuscripts are right, or how to adjudicate between the Hebrew and the Greek.

How the church has read it

Augustine used the psalm's "you are gods" about grace: the judges were called gods by participation, not by nature. The "cannot be broken" clause became a standard citation in the doctrine of Scripture, quoted by Warfield and by the framers of the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy.

First pass, written October 2026. Corrections welcome.

Cited in these answers

• If "scripture" just is what has been accepted by the Church, then isn't the apocrypha scripture as well?
• I only trust the words of Jesus. Why should I accept Paul and the rest of the New Testament?
• If only the words of Jesus matter, why do we need Paul and the rest of the New Testament?
• You say the Bible was inspired by God. Back up that assertion with proof.

Part of Scripture, Opened — the exegetical layer behind every citation on this site. Scripture quotations are from the ESV.