Opening Statement Denying sola Scriptura:
An Affirmation of the Formal Insufficiency of Scripture

     Allow me to offer my sincerest thanks to Mr. Shandon Guthrie for taking the time to discuss this matter. Hopefully all who read this will see how Protestants and Catholics can truly interact in a peaceful civil manner.

     I'm a history buff, and also a big fan of the Constitution, as a matter of fact, I have right in front of me a printed version of it I pulled off the Internet. Why would I have the Constitution in front of me for a debate on sola scriptura you ask? There is no doubt the Constitution is the law of the land in the United States. Lets close our eyes an imagine something for a moment. I become a constitutional scholar, and start putting forth a view which says the Constitution in and of itself is the sole and ultimate authority for Americans today, and the Constitution itself is the Only interpreter, no judicial system or executive branch can interpret it. After all, the Constitution is one of the sources of rule we live by, and contains the effective rules for government.

     My theory works for some time, until say Mr. Guthrie has a different interpretation of the Constitution, and we both uphold the Constitution only. How do we solve our dispute? Of course, by opening the Constitution and trading passages of the Constitution back and forth. If that doesn't work, we split off into our own separate governments. The splits continue, until eventually, there are more interpretations of the Constitution than there are words in the Constitution itself. Of course, people would think this is a ridiculous way to interpret the Constitution, a fallible human document. So why do we do this with an infallible document such as Sacred Scripture? My opponent wanted to know reasons to deny formal sufficiency. The fact that it by necessity makes everyone the final binding interpreter of scripture and leads to over 30,000 denominations is just one reason.

     A second reason is that Scripture does not teach formal sufficiency. Private interpretation of the Bible is a completely modern invention in the scope of Christianity, started by Martin Luther. This is quite obvious from reading the first 3 chapters of Peter's Second Epistle, which privately interpret scripture. While my opponent might say this is not a private judgment debate, with no authority outside of Scripture to interpret scripture, it becomes the job of the individual to interpret scripture for themselves, hence private interpretation.
Starting in Chapter 1 Verse 20, Peter tells us this:

Peter is telling us that just as the words of God did not come about privately, thus it should not be interpreted privately. He then talks about false teachers bringing in destructive heresies. How did they bring these in? From context it is clear, interpreting scriptures by themselves, believing they were the ultimate final authority in interpreting scripture. Peter then goes on throughout chapter 2 further describing them, calling them accursed children(2:14), forsaking the right way(verse 15) and then goes onto tell their fate, which isn't very pretty I might add. In the third chapter, Peter says this:

Here Peter gives an outside authority for interpreting God's Word, the Apostles. He then says people will come in the last days following their own passions. We will see later in this chapter, their own passions could very well be private interpretation, as back in Chapter 1 Peter speaks against this.
We now pick up later in the Chapter in Verse 15:

Peter is telling his readers that while Paul surely speaks the truth, some of the things he says are quite hard to understand, and that the ignorant (those without the correct training) and the insane (the crazy) twist his words to their own destruction. He then warns them in advance, since they now know that people were interpreting Paul's scriptures different than the Apostles did, they were warned to hold to the Tradition the Apostles interpreted scripture in, so they would stay stable. These people twisted these verses to their own destruction by privately interpreting what they meant, hence, Paul's writings were scripture, yet not formally sufficient. This is just one of many passages I will use in this debate to deny formal sufficiency.

     My opponent mentioned 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Allow me to go back to my Constitution example. The Constitution contains the foundation of our government, does it not? Can we not learn of the 3 branches of our government from it? One cannot automatically know what the Constitution says just by picking it up and reading it, it must be correctly interpreted. The same principle applies to Scripture. Scripture sure is inspired, and can equip the man of God to every good work. The context clearly shows that Timothy already knew how to interpret scripture.

Whom did Timothy learn scripture from? We can see from the entire chapter he learned from his parents, and the Apostle Paul. He did not learn just by picking up a Bible, the Bible was not perspicuous (clear to understand, as clearly shown back in 2 Peter 3), Paul taught him the correct interpretation. This is further shown back in chapter 2, verse 2:

Paul has given the correct interpretation, and expects it to be passed on. Paul is handing the torch to Timothy in a sense in this epistle. He tells him numerous things that can equip him to live a life in service to God; scripture was merely one of them. And even then, he had to have the correct interpretation from Paul. My opponent will have to prove that God only communicated through writing for this verse to prove sola scriptura.

     My final verse in this opening statement is 2 Thessalonians 2:15:

Through a reading of the context, we see that these traditions they received from the Apostles will protect them from falling into Satan's lies. They came by both written and oral preaching. One thing scripture does not show is that once the Apostles died, Oral Revelation ceased, and everything went to writing. My opponent says the written is the earliest source, hence can be more reliable. To that, I ask about the Didache, which was written before the book of Revelation. Depending on the scholar you ask, Clement of Rome was also written before the final book of scripture, as was some of Ignatius' works. By his logic, since these epistles came before Revelation, they are more reliable.

     Given the light of 2 Thess 2:15, in order to prove formal sufficiency, one has to prove, from scripture alone of course, when oral revelation ceased. Not only is sola scriptura a blueprint for anarchy, it is not taught in Scripture. Those are 2 quite nice reasons to reject it. Thank you for your time.