Audio only:
In this episode, Karlo Broussard answer sthe Protestant claim that the oral traditions in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 were later fully preserved in Scripture, arguing instead that the New Testament itself shows the apostles communicated divinely revealed truths beyond their written texts and that the “identity claim” lacks biblical support. I conclude that while the existence of unwritten apostolic teaching does not by itself refute every version of sola scriptura, it reveals the apostles operated within a twofold model of divine revelation—Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition—making it impossible to read sola scriptura back into the New Testament’s key proof texts.
TRANSCRIPT:
Catholics often appeal to 2 Thessalonians 2:15 to support the belief that both Scripture and Tradition communicate God’s revelation to us. There Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they received—whether by word of mouth or by written letter.
But many Protestants push back. They argue that Catholics wrongly assume that by “traditions,” Paul meant things other than what later got written down in Scripture.
So… are Catholics reading too much into this?
Are we mistaken?
Stick around—and we’ll work through it together.
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Alright—let’s dive in.
The Second Vatican Council, in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, taught that the Church “does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the holy scriptures alone” (sec. 9). Consequently, the council concludes, “Both Scripture and Tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms this in paragraph 82.
A key biblical text Catholics cite in support of this teaching is 2 Thessalonians 2:15. Right after speaking about the Thessalonians being saved through “belief in the truth,” to which they were called through the “gospel,” Paul writes:
“Stand firm and hold to the traditions (Greek: paradoseis) which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.”
Notice that—word of mouth or letter.
For Paul, the truth of the Gospel is found in Sacred Tradition along with Sacred Scripture. So we shouldn’t look to Scripture alone to know God’s revelation. We must also look to the non-written apostolic Tradition. Both are binding.
Now, as I mentioned earlier, some Protestants respond by saying Catholics wrongly assume that these “traditions” include truths not also contained in Scripture.
For example, Protestant apologist Ron Rhodes, in Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, argues,
“The apostles for a time communicated their teachings orally until those teachings could be permanently recorded in written form” (pg. 79-80).
He then quotes nineteenth-century Bible expositors Jamieson, Fausset, and Brown for support:
Inspired tradition, in Paul’s sense, is not a supplementary oral tradition completing our written word, but it is identical with the written word now complete; then the latter [written word] not being complete, the tradition was necessarily in part oral, in part written, and continued so until, the latter [written word] being complete before the death of St. John, the last apostle, the former [oral tradition] was no longer needed
That comes from their 1882 A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments.
Norman Geisler and Ralph MacKenzie make a similar argument in Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. They write,
“The traditions (teachings) of the apostles that were revelations were written down. . . . There is no evidence that all the revelation God gave [the apostles] to express was not inscripturated in the twenty-seven books of the New Testament” (pg. 188).
So in short: for these guys oral tradition and written Scripture are identical. There’s nothing in the oral preaching that isn’t also in Scripture.
Okay.
Here’s my first response.
At least the way Rhodes, Geisler, and MacKenzie present this argument—it’s simply an assertion. They assert that everything the apostles preached was written down. But they don’t actually provide evidence from the New Testament to support that claim.
And here’s why that matters.
If a Protestant holds to Sola Scriptura, then he must justify his theological claims from Scripture alone. So if he believes that everything the apostles preached was later inscripturated—and that belief cannot itself be demonstrated from Scripture—then he faces a dilemma. Either he must reject that belief, or admit that it’s not binding as part of the Christian faith.
Either way, the assertion doesn’t help the challenge.
Now to be fair, some Protestants do attempt to argue for this identity claim from Scripture. I’ll deal with those arguments in a future episode. But as it stands here, this version of the challenge doesn’t succeed.
My second response: If the oral traditions are identical to the written word, then Paul’s command in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 becomes redundant. Why command believers to hold fast to oral traditions if everything in them is already in their writings? He could have just said, “Stick to the written epistles.” The distinction itself strongly suggests there’s content within the oral traditions that aren’t in their writings.
Finally, the identity claim is factually false. The New Testament itself gives us examples of apostolic teachings—divinely revealed truths—that are not contained in the inspired apostolic writings.
Let’s look at a few.
In Mark 13:14, Jesus speaks of the “desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be” and Mark inserts, “Let the reader understand.” That implies the reader knows what Jesus is talking about. Yet nowhere in the New Testament do we get an explanation of what Jesus is talking about.
In 2 Thessalonians 2:3–6, Paul talks about the “man of lawlessness” and says, “You know what is restraining him now.” But he never tells us what the restrainer is. He reminds them that he taught them this when he was with them—but he doesn’t record it.
In 1 Corinthians 5:9, Paul mentions a previous letter to the Corinthians—one we don’t possess. In Colossians 4:16, he refers to a letter to the Laodiceans. Whether that’s Ephesians or a lost letter, the point stands: there were apostolic writings we no longer have.
If what Paul wrote was inspired—and most Christians agree it was—then there were divinely revealed truths not contained in the New Testament canon.
In 1 Corinthians 15:29, Paul references “baptisms for the dead.” He doesn’t explain what that means. Nor does he say if what they’re doing is good or bad. Whatever his full teaching on that practice was, it isn’t fully preserved in Scripture.
In 1 Corinthians 11:34, after giving instructions about the Eucharist, Paul says, “When I come I will give further directions.” This comes right after Paul gave warnings in verses 27-30 about receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy manner and without discerning the Lord’s body.
Those further directions, therefore, would have concerned the Eucharist—surely a matter of divine revelation just as much as what he taught in the previous verses. Yet they’re not recorded.
See the pattern?
John does something similar. In John 21:25, he says that Jesus did many other things that were not written. In 2 John 12 and 3 John 13–14, he says he has much more to write but prefers to speak face to face. Surely that face-to-face instruction included apostolic teaching.
Finally, Protestants themselves believe certain truths about divine revelation that aren’t found in the New Testament. I’ll just list three here for brevity’s sake. I plan to do a full episode on this in a future episode. So the three are:
- Jesus will not appear again to appoint new apostles.
- Public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle.
- There will be no new inspired Scriptures.
These are theological truths held by Protestants to be binding for Christian belief yet they’re not stated in the New Testament.
And if someone appeals to Jude 3, where he says, “the Faith [has been] once for all delivered to the saints,” that’s not gonna work. Because he would have to reject the epistle of Jude itself, or at least all the verses that come after verse 3, since all Christian doctrine would have already been delivered complete by the time they were written. But no Christian wants to do that.
So the identity claim—that oral apostolic teachings are the same as written Scripture—simply doesn’t hold up biblically.
Now, some Protestants—like James White in his 2024 debate with Alex Jurado—respond by saying that these passages are futile as defeaters because Sola Scriptura doesn’t require Scripture to contain everything God ever revealed. It only requires that Scripture contain everything God intends future generations to believe.
Here’s how White put it in his debate with Alex:
[VIDEO]
[T]he apostles do 46:07 not address all topics nor did they need to nor did the Lord Jesus Christ have to address all topics in everything that he 46:14 said God is going to give us what he wants us to have the New Testament does not give us an exhaustive account of 46:20 every word Jesus ever said that is not an argument against solo scriptura because sola scriptura is not claiming 46:25 that we have everything that that Jesus said or that we need everything that Jesus said.
I actually think White’s counter here succeeds. The examples I shared earlier don’t automatically defeat White’s version of Sola Scriptura. Unfortunately, some Catholic apologists have overplayed that hand.
But my appeal to non-written apostolic teachings wasn’t to say, “Here are non-written apostolic doctrines you must believe.” It was simply to refute the identity claim. And the New Testament evidence indeed does that.
Now, I do think those examples of non-written apostolic teachings can help us out in another way.
They show us the theological worldview of the apostles. And that’s important.
The apostles were not operating with a “Scripture-only” paradigm. They lived and taught within what we might call a “two-fold stream” understanding of divine revelation—oral apostolic teaching and their inspired writings.
Most Protestants admit this applied during the apostolic age. They argue Sola Scriptura became the paradigm only after the apostles died or after unwritten traditions were lost.
Here’s my contention.
If that’s true, and the apostles were working off of a “two-fold” stream view of divine revelation, then the New Testament passages normally used to support Sola Scriptura can’t possibly teach Sola Scriptura.
Take, for example, 2 Timothy 3:16–17. Paul says Scripture is inspired and profitable for making the man of God complete and equipped for every good work. Many Protestants see Sola Scriptura there.
But Paul says nothing that would indicate he has in mind future Christians centuries later. He’s speaking directly to Timothy, giving him instructions how to fulfill his ministry as a “man of God.” This being the case, Paul can only have in mind the “two-fold stream” paradigm of revelation, not the Scripture only paradigm.
And the text itself shows that Paul did in fact had this paradigm in mind. In verse 15, Paul tells Timothy that the Sacred Writings he was acquainted with from his childhood—the Old Testament—instructed him for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. How could the Old Testament have instructed Timothy for salvation through Jesus when the Old Testament never mentions Jesus explicitly? Through the apostolic preaching.
So Paul cannot be teaching Sola Scriptura in that passage, because he doesn’t have the future Church in mind and he’s operating within a paradigm that includes both written and unwritten apostolic teaching.
Now, a Protestant might try and counter that although Paul isn’t directly thinking of future generations that doesn’t mean we can’t extract Sola Scriptura principles that would apply to Christians in the future. But that misses the point of my argument.
I’m not saying that Paul can’t be teaching Sola Scriptura simply because he’s not thinking of future generations. Rather, it’s the lack of consideration for the future Church along with his theological worldview of the two-fold streams of divine revelation. Such a view of divine revelation excludes any possibility that Paul would be laying down Sola Scriptura principles in the first place.
Moreover, if we allow for Paul’s teaching to apply to future generations, then it’s the “two-fold stream” paradigm that would carry forward—not Sola Scriptura.
Let’s sum it up.
First, it’s false that oral apostolic teachings are identical to the apostolic writings.
Second, it’s true that the existence of non-written teachings doesn’t automatically defeat every version of Sola Scriptura.
But third—and most importantly—those non-written teachings reveal the theological framework the apostles operated within. And that framework was not Sola Scriptura, which means the New Testament passages normally used to support Sola Scriptura can’t possibly teach Sola Scriptura.
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