I listened to a debate between Robert Bowman (Protestant; co-author of Putting Jesus in His Place) and Laurent Cleenewerck (Eastern Orthodox; author of His Broken Body) on the topic of sola scriptura. Bowman, to his credit, presented a more defensible position of this practice/doctrine, one that holds to a higher view of the local Church, creeds, and other rules of faith (albeit, subordinated to the Bible [for him, the 66 books of the Protestant canon—EO hold to a larger canon than Evangelicals]). Bowman, in his opening, tried to relegate the on-going importance of texts that speak highly of “[oral] traditions” in the New Testament during the time the NT was being revealed/inscripturated, arguing that such was not passed down in post-apostolic times, and in his rebuttal said that "[there is no] basis for thinking that something other than Scripture provides to us today an infallible rule of faith and practice . . . . [no evidence] that such a thing exists outside of Scripture."
Answering this “objection,” one Catholic apologist wrote:
[W]e must challenge the statement that there is no "suggestion that in training these men Timothy would be passing on to them infallible tradition with authority equal to the Word of God." Since in 1 Thess. 2:13 Paul considers his oral teaching an authority equal to Scripture, and then in 2 Thess. 2:15 commands the Thessalonians to preserve this oral teaching, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that the oral teachings given to Timothy, and later entrusted to other reliable men, possessed an authority equal to that of Scripture. To deny such a conclusion there must be substantial proof that the Catholic interpretation has no possibility of being correct. Moreover, nothing suggests that the oral teaching to the Thessalonians possessed more authority than the oral teaching to Timothy and his men . . . probably the most devastating [argument against the Protestant approach to] 2 Thess. 2:15 and similar verses is that neither Paul nor any other writers, gives any statement which commands that the Church retire oral revelation, either during the writing of Scripture or once Scripture was completed. Since the Protestant is required to form his doctrine only from mandates found in Scripture, the burden of proof rests on his shoulders to show that Scripture teaches that the propagation of apostolic oral revelation must cease with the completion of Scripture . . . in reality, the debate should stop here until the Protestant can furnish the Scriptural proof for his position. If he believes in sola scriptura, then he is required to give answers from sola scriptura, not answers based on what he thinks is correct and logical. (Robert A. Sungenis, “Point/Counterpoint: Protestant Objections and Catholic Answers," in Not by Scripture Alone: A Catholic Critique of the Protestant Doctrine of Sola Scriptura, ed. Robert A. Sungenis [2d ed.: Catholic Apologetics International Publishing, 2013], 193-294, here, pp. 225-26, 236-37).
This is another instance where defenders of sola scriptura are caught like a fly in a venus flytrap, exegetially-speaking. It is a doctrine/practice to be rejected by those who truly accept what the Bible says.
That the post-New Testament Church did not hold to sola scriptura, see the following:
The audio of the debate is available on youtube here.
