In my lengthy critique of Sola Scriptura, Not by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura, I discussed how Protestant apologists admit that the oral traditions (παραδοσις) in the New Testament (e.g., 2 Thess 2:15) were as “inspired” (or “God-breathed” to borrow from the language of 2 Tim 3:16) as inscripturated revelation, as well as the implications for such. This was the position, too, of Jacob Arminius. Note the following (taken from The Works of James Arminius [2d ed.; Lamp Post Inc., 2015]):
God communicates this external word to man, either orally, or by writing. For, neither with respect to the whole of religion, nor with respect to its parts, is God confined to either of these modes of communication; but he sometimes uses one and sometimes another, and at other times both of them, according to his own choice and pleasure. He first employed oral enunciation in its delivery, and afterwards, writing, as a more certain means against corruption and oblivion. (Disputation V: On the Rule of Religion, the Word of God, and the Scriptures in Particular [2:15])
When we treat on the force and efficacy of the word of God, whether spoken or written, we always append to it the principal and concurrent efficacy of the Holy Spirit. (Disputation X: On the Efficacy of the Scriptures [2:21])
V. The delivery or tradition of doctrines according to the words, is when the church declares or publishes the very words which she has received, (after they have been delivered to her by God, either in writing or orally,) without any addition, diminution, change or transposition, whether from the repositories in which she has concealed the divine writings, or from his own memory, in which she had carefully and faithfully preserved those things which had been orally delivered. At the same time, she solemnly testifies that those very things which she has received from above are [when transmitted through her] pure and unadulterated, (and is prepared even by death itself to confirm this her testimony,) as far as the variations of copies in the original languages permit a translator into other languages [thus to testify]; yet they do not concern the foundation so much as to be able to produce doubts concerning it on account of these variations. VI. The delivery or tradition according to the meaning is the more ample explanation and application of the doctrines propounded and comprehended in the divine words, in which explanation, the church ought to contain herself within the terms of the very word which has been delivered, publishing no particular interpretation of a doctrine or of a passage, which does not rest on the entire foundation, and which cannot be fully proved from other passages. (Disputation LV: On the Power of the Church in Delivering Doctrines [2:96])
