I’ll bold some other parts:
“We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us”
From the Apostles. He learned direct from the Apostles, who had the authority to preach the Faith to the believers. If they did not have this authority then they could not preach the Gospel as Iraneus said that they did.
So it is clear that there is an unbroken authority from the Apostles. You cannot claim that the Scripture in the Vulgate has been corrupted by Constantine, or that the Words are not the same Words, or whatever, that they did not pass down from the Apostles.
“Roman Catholic dogma teaches that the doctrine of sola scriptura (that Scripture alone is sufficient and the ultimate authority in all matters of faith and morals) is unscriptural.”
The key word here is alone. What Catholicism teaches is that Scripture AND Tradition are authoritative. In light of this:
“The word sufficient is not found in the Word of God in an explicit sense to describe the Scriptures. But neither is the word trinity found in Scripture, yet the doctrine is taught plainly throughout its pages.”
Clearly, as the Trinity was defined in the Athanasian Creed, this argument is specious. Arguing that the Creed is read plainly in Scripture is not the case, and there were considerable disputes over the nature of the Trinity.
If it is true that sufficiency is not within the words of the bible, then how can one infer that sufficiency is what the bible teaches if one uses the bible alone? Clearly one has been influenced by tradition in inferring that sufficiency is present, much as Trinitarians do when exposed to the Athanasian Creed in reading scripture.
This is not to say that Scripture is superior to tradition or that tradition is superior, but they work together.
“Clearly Scripture was the ultimate authority for Jesus’ personal life and ministry.”
Hmm? That’s a puzzling statement. Christ claimed that he was God himself, which is why he was the ultimate authority. This is why for example, in the temple, that he claims to have seen Abraham. He claimed to be God.
“His reference is always to recorded Scripture.”
What, did he pull out a Septuagint and quote from it? Or did he simply cite it word for word, when his audience would be familiar with it?
Christ does not always use recorded scripture. Not all of those who flocked to see him knew of it. He healed the sick, fed the five thousand, performed miracles. Why would he do all of these things if it were sufficient for him to simply open up a Septuagint?
Even the Septuagint acknowledges that there were prophecies to be fulfilled, and that Christ fulfilled the ones in anticipation of the Messiah. Is it Scripture that says he would come out of Bnjamin Epriath, or Tradition, in that the blessing came from the sole tribe sold into slavery?
“the witness of the prophets concerning each matter”
Eh, doesn’t sound like a book, does it? Sounds an awful lot like Tradition. Which is what Scripture is, a written record of what the prophets and Christ spoke concerning His life and the workings of God with man.
“Cyril of Jerusalem was a bishop of one of the most important sees of the church and responsible for instructing catechumens in the faith.”
At the time? Not really. Why isn’t he a patriarch then? ;)
Other sees that were more important, include Rome, Alexandria, Antioch, and even Constantinople.
J.N.D. Kelly affirms this observation:
The clearest token of the prestige enjoyed by [Scripture] is the fact that almost the entire theological effort of the Fathers, whether their aims were polemical or constructive, was expended upon what amounted to the exposition of the Bible. Further, it was everywhere taken for granted that, for any doctrine to win acceptance, it had first to establish its Scriptural basis.
Therefore, the Protestant teaching of sola scriptura is not a heresy or a novel doctrine, but in reality it is a reaffirmation of the faith of the early church. It is both biblical and historical, yet the Roman Catholic Church continues to teach that oral tradition is a second source of divine revelation, equally as authoritative as Scripture and that this was the view held by the church Fathers. Such a claim, however, contradicts both Scripture and history. When the Fathers speak of a tradition handed down from the apostles independent of Scripture, they are referring to ecclesiastical customs and practices, never to doctrine. Tradition was always subordinate to Scripture as an authority, and the Word of God itself never teaches that tradition is inspired. The Scriptures give numerous warnings against tradition, ('See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ' (Col. 2:8); 'Thus you nullify the word of God for the sake of your tradition....They worship me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.' (Matt. 15:6, 9; cf. Mark 7:3-13; Gal. 1:14; Col. 2:22; 1 Peter 1:18) and the Fathers rejected the teaching of an apostolic oral tradition independent of Scripture as a gnostic heresy. For the church Fathers apostolic tradition or teaching was embodied and preserved in Scripture. The teaching of the Fathers is this: What the apostles initially proclaimed and taught orally, they later committed to writing in the New Testament. Irenaeus succinctly states it in these words:
We have learned from none others the plan of our salvation, than from those through whom the gospel has come down to us, which they did at one time proclaim in public, and, at a later period, by the will of God, handed down to us in the Scriptures, to be the ground and pillar of our faith. (Irenaeus, Against Heresies III.1.1, in Alexander Roberts and W. H. Rambaugh, trans., in The Writings of Irenaeus (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1874)
How is one to know what the apostles taught orally? It has been handed down to us in the Scriptures, and they in turn are the ground and pillar of our faith. The historical circumstances that prompted Irenaeus's words are important to understand. He was writing against the Gnostics who claimed to have access to an oral tradition handed down from the apostles, which was independent of the written Word of God. Irenaeus, as well as Tertullian, explicitly repudiates such a concept. The bishops of the church were in the direct line of succession from the apostles, and they were faithful to the apostolic teaching they proclaimed orally, but that doctrine could at every point be validated by Scripture.
Ellen Flesseman-Van Leer affirms this:
For Irenaeus, the church doctrine is never purely traditional; on the contrary, the thought that there could be some truth transmitted exclusively viva voce (orally) is a Gnostic line of thought.[ Ellen Flesseman-Van Leer, Tradition and Scripture in the Early Church (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1953), 133.]
In fact, the apostle Paul himself states that the gospel he initially preached orally could be verified by the written Scriptures.[ 'Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures' (1 Cor. 15:1-4).]The church as a whole, up to the thirteenth century, never viewed tradition to be a source of revelation.
The Apostles AND the Disciples had the authority to preach the Gospel...Even this Disciple...