the earliest Church Fathers placed a strong emphasis on the authority of Scripture over verbal tradition.
Case in point. Sure they did, -- they were, after all, Catholic. But that only reinforces the fact that the Church Fathers were the men who, guided by the Holy Ghost, produced the Christian Scripture and explained the Jewish Scripture as we know it in the first place. If we do not study their collective mind, we do not properly understand the scripture, --exactly what the Catechism teaches.
Catholic apologists have attacked sola Scriptura with a vengeance. If they can topple this one doctrine, all the Reformers' other points fall with it.
Why, other Protestant doctrines fall independently, for example, the sola fide doctrine is refuted by the Holy Scripture, even in its truncated Protestant version, alone, -- it is plain controverted in Romans 2 and James 2. But it is correct that the Sola Scriptura superstition is how most Protestant arguments against Catholicism are constructed, often self-defeatingly.
it is possible to debunk sola Scriptura by using Scripture alone!
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Nor does sola Scriptura claim that everything Jesus or the apostles ever taught is preserved in Scripture. It only means that everything necessary, everything binding on our consciences, and everything God requires of us is given to us in Scripture.
Exactly, and this is why Sola Scriptura is unscriptural: the knowledge that "everything God requires of us is given to us in Scripture" is surely necessary to avoid the alleged error of Catholic reliance on the patristic Holy Tradition and magisterial teaching. Yet, that assertion is not in the scripture: to the contrary, both scripture and tradition are praised at least in some measure in the scripture. This is another case where the rebuttal article does not address a point already made in the main article.
Scripture clearly claims for itself this sufficiency—and nowhere more clearly that 2 Timothy 3:15-17. A brief summary of that passage is perhaps appropriate here as well. In short, verse 15 affirms that Scripture is sufficient for salvation: "The sacred writings . . . are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus." Verse 16 affirms the absolute authority of Scripture, which is "God-breathed" (Gk. theopneustos) and profitable for our instruction. And verse 17 states that Scripture is able to equip the man of God "for every good work." So the assertion that the Bible itself does not teach sola Scriptura is simply wrong.
The reader will notice how the single thought contained in "profitable ... that man of God may be perfect" is mangled into two seemingly unrelated segments by the author's paraphrase. If St. Paul wanted 2 Timothy 3:15-17 to say that the scripture is sufficient, I am sure he did not lack the eloquence to say so. Instead, he said that the scripture known to Timothy since infancy (in other words, the Septuagint) is profitable for his priestly formation, and also is inspired by God. The author of the rebuttal article is apparently unaware of the fact that the Septuagint in its entirety is the Catholic Old Testament Canon and is taught in seminaries, exactly as 2 Timothy 3:15-17 teaches.
Case in point. Sure they did, -- they were, after all, Catholic.
In this you are wrong. There were five main patriarchs, only one of whom was the Bishop of Rome.