Duh! I didn't choose this translation!
My intervention was a reply to post #12 written by ealgeone who posted these verses. He chose this translation. I simply cut and pasted what he wrote.
These scriptures alone, as the verses indicate when studied and understood can make the man of God NOT just adequate, but complete, perfect in being thoroughly furnished in the knowledge of God.
The word "alone" is not used. You wrote that.
This argument is not about the worth of Scripture. We agree on that. The argument is about whether Scripture alone, Scripture exclusively and absolutely nothing else can be used for instruction and teaching.
The verses you quote provide zero support for that proposal and no sane person would claim they did since at the time St. Paul was evangelizing, the New Testament was non-existent.
Paul received his biblical revelations directly from Jesus...The minute he received those, they became scripture...Even before they were written down...
Pure, unadulterated fantasy! That's a whopper!
So a private revelation from Jesus is now considered to be "scripture"? If Jesus appears to me and tells me certain things, it's already Scripture?
LOL....good one!
And they became the traditions which paul taught until he had gotten the opportunity to put them to parchment...To think it didn't become scripture until your religion sanctioned it is ludicrous...
Whoa....you used the "T" word......"Tradition"!!! Nooooo!! Get behind me Satan!! That's man-made stuff!! It must be in the Bible!!!
Here's the elephant in the room which you can't get around. The new Christian communities in Corinth and Ephesus (and other places) were instructed and directed by Paul, the evangelist, not by a book. They received his letters as spiritual guidance from an elder, an authority figure, a real, live human being; the evangelist who had brought them the Gospel.
This is the model which has come down through the centuries; bishops write letters of guidance to their flocks. The early Church flourished under the personal, spiritual guidance of the apostles and elders before any New Testament appeared. Your argument comes to dead end, right there, in the first century AD.
Some of these letters were more than just "guidance". They were well thought out theology that Paul was moved to write in particular Romans and Galatians.
This is the model which has come down through the centuries; bishops write letters of guidance to their flocks. The early Church flourished under the personal, spiritual guidance of the apostles and elders before any New Testament appeared. Your argument comes to dead end, right there, in the first century AD.
Was there oral instruction? Yes. No one denies that.
What we don't have though are what those lessons were.
We can speculate a lot about them, but we do have Paul's letters which give us a pretty good idea of how the Holy Spirit was guiding him.
We do know that Paul's letters were considered Scripture from an early point in the life of the church ~66 AD based on 2 Peter 3:15-16.
We know his letters were being circulated among the churches 1 Thes 5:27, Galatians 1:2, Colossians 4:16, the letter to the church in Rome.
In Galatians and Colossians he was clear these were to be read to the other churches.
We also know from history these letters were being circulated among the early churches.
We have John's Revelation to the seven churches in Asia.
Of all the myriad of writings from the first century and beyond, only 27 were deemed by the church to be Scripture.
When the RCC had the opportunity at Trent to expand the canon and include many of the writings from th ECFs they cling to they did not. That they didn't is telling.
The Roman Catholic notion of progressive revelation comes to an end right there in the 1st century.
Who were the CATHOLICS that 'instructed and directed' those 7 CATHOLIC churches mentioned in Revelation chapters 2&3??
I love the smell of elephant dung in the morning.