“There is only one God, brethren, and we learn about him only from sacred Scripture. It is therefore our duty to become acquainted with what Scripture proclaims and to investigate its teachings thoroughly. We should believe them in the sense that the Father wills, thinking of the Son in the way the Father wills, and accepting the teaching he wills to give us with regard to the Holy Spirit. Sacred Scripture is God’s gift to us and it should be understood in the way that he intends: we should not do violence to it by interpreting it according to our own preconceived ideas.”

Hippolytus. “A treatise against the heresy of Noetus.” Quoted in the Liturgy of the Hours, Office of Readings for December 23 (Vol. 1, p. 370-371) and cited there as: Cap. 9-12: PG 10, 815-819

Note: Saint Hippolytus, who lived in the decades either side of the year 200, writes that people learn about God only from sacred Scripture. Which sounds to me like a sola Scriptura thought. He also here makes clear that interpreters need to get from the Bible what God intends us to get, and not what our preconceived ideas tell us is there.

Holy Scripture is, in other words, the source and norm for all our talk about God. Or it should be.