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Jesus quoted from Scripture as authoritative, not other traditions, like the oral traditions that were claimed to be passed down from Moses. Jesus certainly met people where they were at, but with the authority of Scripture. Again, Jesus held the religious leaders accountable to the Scriptures, which means they had to have some idea of what they were, even without an infallible council.

This argument self-destructs under basic historical context. First, Jesus did affirm at least one oral tradition explicitly—when He refers to the “chair of Moses” in Matthew 23:2, a phrase found nowhere in the Old Testament but well-attested in Jewish oral tradition. Second, Jesus rebuked corrupt traditions, not oral tradition as a category. He upheld true tradition (see Matt. 5:21–48) and taught authoritatively outside of written Scripture—something no mere “sola Scriptura” teacher would do.

Also, the idea that Jesus holding leaders accountable to Scripture proves Scripture alone is circular. He’s appealing to Scripture because they claim to follow it, just like a Catholic might quote the Bible to challenge a Protestant. And ironically, the very canon those leaders used wasn’t fixed—there was no universally agreed list of Old Testament books in Jesus’ day, yet He never handed them a table of contents. So if anything, Jesus’ approach assumes some living authority behind the text, not sola Scriptura.

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The Septuagint was a compilation of books, including some that even the RCC rejects as Scripture. You can't say that they had the same books as Rome and the Orthodox do when factually, the Septuagint included books that are rejected by Rome.

I never said it used every single writing that appears across the various manuscript traditions of the various LXX copies. I simply said we use the Septuagint, which is true.

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Sola scriptura doesn't teach there aren't other authorities for the Christian. It teaches that the Scriptures are the only infallible authority, and the highest authority for the Christian. Jesus held everyone accountable to the word of God, not to traditions of men.

This is a clever rebrand, but still flawed. Saying Scripture is the only infallible authority while allowing fallible ones still guts the biblical model. Nowhere does Scripture teach “Scripture alone” as the final infallible rule. In fact, 2 Thessalonians 2:15 commands believers to hold fast to both written and oral traditions, it doesn’t rank one over the other.

And as mentioned above, Jesus didn’t reject all tradition, only corrupt ones. He affirmed legitimate tradition (Matt. 23:2–3) and even operated within it. Ironically, the very New Testament that sola scriptura appeals to came from the Church’s tradition and wasn’t canonized by Scripture alone. So appealing to Jesus holding people accountable to God’s word doesn’t support sola scriptura.

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I find it amazing when Catholics like yourself act as if the Church had no idea what was and wasn't Scripture until a few hundred years later when there was some credence given to what was and wasn't in a more formal way. That's simply not true. Letters were written to churches and then copied and sent on. They were delivered by those who were known to the Apostles initially, and known to the churches. The core of the New Testament writings were not much in dispute early on. The churches were in close communication and collaboration through messengers, which Paul attests to in his letters. They weren't little islands. And to my point about John the Baptist testifying to Christ: the Church doesn't have to be infallible to testify to God's word. God's word is what it is. It's not the Church's job to create it, but to recognize it.

You’re confusing ontology with epistemology. Saying “God’s word is what it is” answers what Scripture is but not how we know what counts as Scripture. You’re begging the question. You’re using an ontological claim to dodge an epistemological problem.

Yes, letters were circulated, but the early Church disagreed for centuries on which books belonged. Hebrews, Revelation, James, and even 1 and 2 Peter, and some of the Johns were hotly debated.

Some churches accepted books later rejected. others rejected books we now call canon. If the Church isn’t infallible, then fallible people are making fallible judgments about what is supposedly an infallible book.

And ironically, you trust a canon you didn’t compile, preserved by a Church you claim can’t be trusted, to support a doctrine the canon doesn’t teach, and that nobody had heard of until the late medieval period.

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The name "Presbyterian" comes from the Greek word presbuteros, which simply means "elder". It's the word Peter uses in 1 Peter 5, for instance, when he calls himself a fellow elder, or that Luke uses in Acts 15 of those whom met along with the Apostles in the Jerusalem Council. I believe the evidence shows both in the Scriptures and early in church history that the Church was presbyterian in polity and ecclesiology, and slowly moved toward an episcopate model with the bishop of Rome taking full authority over the Church after a few hundred years of development. I'm Presbyterian because I believe that was the original model on display in the Scriptures.

This fantasy that the early Church was Presbyterian gets incinerated by actual history. Take Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthians to settle a dispute in their church while the Apostle John was still alive and practically down the road in Ephesus. Yet it’s Clement, bishop of Rome, thousands of miles away, who writes to the Corinthians to settle their internal dispute, not John.

And he doesn’t suggest or advise, he commands them to reinstate their leaders, appealing to apostolic authority and succession. That’s not elder-rule. That’s early Roman primacy.

Combine that with Ignatius of Antioch (107 AD), who insists over and over: obey the bishop as you would Christ. He explicitly teaches the three-tier hierarchy of bishop, presbyters, deacons, as something fully assumed across the churches he writes his 7 letters to, which are already very spread out across the Roman Empire within living memory of the apostles. That’s not a slow spread. It’s the church as the apostles left it.

you’re not following the original model. you’re projecting a 16th-century invention onto a 1st-century Church that would’ve excommunicated you for rejecting its authority.

This post was edited on 6/15/25 at 6:53 am