“The Church!? Not the Bible? This alone sent my mind and essentially my whole life reeling...”
He sure panics easily! The Church is the “pillar and buttress of the truth”...but not truth itself. And what is truth? “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” - John 17
“Verses 16-17 were the texts I and others had always turned to buttress our belief in sola Scriptura, so to this I quickly turned my attention. Among many things, three important things became very clear, for the first time: (1) when Paul used the term “scripture” in this verse, he could only have meant when we call the Old Testament. The New Testament canon would not be established for another 300 years! (2) “All” scripture does not mean “only” scripture nor specifically what we have in our modern bibles. And (3), the emphasis in the context of this verse (vereses 14-15) is the trustworthiness of the oral tradition Timothy had received from his mother and others—not sola Scriptura!”
Why yes, Paul was specifically referring to the Old Testament, which he preached out of at every synagogue before he preached to Gentiles. Unless the writer believes the NT is NOT scripture, it applies to the NT as well. And Paul’s letters were also accepted as authoritative from the beginning. The oral teaching is what he also put in writing - even the Catholic Church doesn’t pretend there is a separate ‘sacred tradition’ passed down in whispers from Bishop to Bishop for 2000 years. That is NOT the meaning of ‘sacred tradition’! As Peter put it, “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, 14 since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me. 15And I will make every effort so that after my departure you may be able at any time to recall these things.”
And notice what Paul told the Ephesian elders: “ I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” The WHOLE counsel. He didn’t leave anything out - but Purgatory, Indulgences, Priests, Transubstantiation - not there!
And so it goes. I hate to break the news to this guy, but John Calvin wrote commentary on every one of these verses. They are NOT ones Protestants ignore, nor are the ones that Protestants come up with bizarre, unjustified interpretations of...we just don’t feel the need to synchronize our interpretations with 2000 years of developing ‘sacred tradition’, which makes our job much easier.
I am sure he did. For every hyper-Catholic verse in the scripture there is a Protestant commentary that explains it away. Still, these are verses the direct reading of which is Catholic. You have to strain to arrive at a non-Catholic meaning.
The author of this article is a former Presbyterian minister. He has a radio show that I listen often and he likes to repeat these "aha!" verses. Surely he does not mean that no Protestant ever saw these verses at all. The one from Matthew 16 is of course everyone has an opinion about. The 2 Timothy 3:14f is one of the Protestants favorite verses to justify Sola Scriptura, so it is impossible to claim that they are little known. Rather, what Marcus is saying that they are never read by the Protestant partizans at their face meaning, but at some presumed meaning.
There are many others like that. I have my own collection.