Real Tradition: Customs and Practices

Since I have brought up customs and practices in my last blog, I wanted to shift gears a little in part 21 of this Sola Scriptura series and give some examples of customs and practices that were confused with ‘traditions,’ one of which in the 2nd century nearly split the Church in two. You might be asking what on earth could have been so severe that it jeopardized the unity of the Church in the 2nd century? Well, we’ll get to that, as well as a couple of other examples of misunderstood ‘traditions’ better known as customs and practices. But the point of this blog is that calling some extra-biblical beliefs, ‘tradition,’ does not make them so, just because some modern day Catholic apologists see the word ‘tradition’ in the writings of some of the early church fathers. This does not mean they taught or believed in the current Catholic teaching of an unwritten body of oral teachings that were co-equal to Scripture. And likewise, just because some later Church fathers believed in this concept of ‘divine infallible oral tradition’ does not make that true. The Church fathers should be respected and we can learn a lot by reading what they wrote, but they were not infallible men. Just because they believed something does not mean we should likewise do the same; some of them had some horribly wrong beliefs.

So, as we begin this blog, let us remember what ‘tradition’ is supposed to mean, according to the Catholic Church. Their understanding of ‘tradition’ is an unwritten body of orally taught doctrinal beliefs which were handed down by the Apostles and have existed unaltered throughout that time, and that are, to this day, co-equal in authority with Scripture. As we discuss these examples or any others concerning ‘tradition,’ always ask yourself these questions: 1) Is this ‘tradition’ doctrinal? 2) Is it found in Scripture? 3) Should it be considered as co-equal in authority to the Bible? And finally, 4) how does this ‘tradition’ make our understanding of salvation or any other biblical doctrine found in Scripture ‘complete’? These questions are important to answer because Rome states in a number of places that the Scriptural understanding of salvation is incomplete without this ‘oral tradition’ that she provides.

And while I’m at defining some terms, let me make sure to dispel something that Catholics like to accuse people like me who believe in ‘Sola Scriptura.’ I am not talking about me and my Bible sitting under a tree somewhere (yeah, Catholics seem to like this as an example of what Sola Scriptura means). Throughout my series, I have quoted a number of Church fathers because I believe the history of the Church demands that we understand these men and some of the struggles they had to endure. The early Church fathers lived in an empire that did not care what they believed as long as they worshiped the ruling emperor, and some lived in a Jewish culture that hated them and wanted them dead, and all of them lived in a society that wanted to pervert their beliefs.

We take it for granted that we can go to the local Christian books store and buy a Bible or pick up a theology book, but these 1st and 2nd century fathers didn’t even have complete New Testaments and none of them had theology books. But even with these handicaps, their love for the Scriptures and what they taught compelled them to study harder and defend their beliefs with all the vigor they could muster, and some even paid with their lives. How many of us, if in their place, would have done the same?

Material Sufficiency

I have already shown that Irenaeus and Tertullian had extremely high views of Scripture, and their view of Scripture could easily be described as being ‘materially sufficient’ especially concerning salvation. So, let’s revisit ‘material sufficiency’ from a Catholic perspective,

Materially sufficient means that everything the Christian needs to believe is found in Scripture. (The Material Sufficiency of Scripture?)

But this does not mean in toto. As I said in my linked blog, this is overly generalized so that for the Catholic apologist this really means that the seeds of practically anything can always be found in Scripture. That generalized definition can then be easily used to ‘show’ that something like papal infallibility or the perpetual virginity of Mary has its seed root in Scripture, since Scripture is said to be ‘materially sufficient.’ It does not matter that Scripture is silent on something, the ‘seed’ is said to be there, therefore any doctrine can be ‘developed’ upon it.

But that is not the meaning that a Protestant assigns to that term. For the Protestant, ‘material sufficiency’ means,

… the content of divine revelation God intends His people to have is contained entirely in Scripture. That is, all the doctrines Christians are to believe are found in the Bible. The Bible alone is a sufficient source for the believer. (Material Sufficiency and Joseph Ratzinger)

You see the difference, right? The Protestant definition eliminates the ability to add something to Scripture that is not already there in its entirety. After what was presented in Irenaeus on Tradition and Tertullian on Tradition, one has to conclude that both Irenaeus and Tertullian would seem to endorse the Protestant definition since both rejected doctrinal beliefs that were not found in Scripture. Both demanded that those they wrote against must prove their doctrines were from Scripture.

But our goal in this blog is to understand what ‘tradition’ in the early church actually was. I spent time presenting Tertullian and Irenaeus and what they understood ‘apostolic tradition’ to be, because it is something quite different from what the Catholic Church teaches about ‘tradition’ in the early church. One of the reasons that this is so important is,

Roman Catholic apologists frequently use these patristic citations to support their teaching on tradition, but they consistently misapply and misrepresent the writings of the fathers. They appeal to patristic terms, such as ‘tradition,’ without any attempt to understand them in their historical context. They attempt to draw direct correlations between the Church of the patristic age and the Church of Rome today based solely on a common use of terms. Since the fathers of the patristic age used the word tradition, that somehow becomes an endorsement of present day Roman Catholic tradition with all of its attendant teachings. [1] [emphasis added]

And this is the point that I have been making in so many of my previous blogs as I continually remind you just what, according to Catholicism, ‘tradition’ actually means. As we saw with Tertullian and Irenaeus, we will continue to see as we move onto other early Church fathers.

Basil on Tradition

There have been many Catholic apologists that have pointed to Basil of Caesarea (330-379 AD) for their ‘proof’ of oral tradition, as he seemed to be a proponent. So it is important to look at what he wrote and why he is cited. But keep in mind, he is a full 150 yrs after both Tertullian and Irenaeus.

Basil had caused a bit of a controversy for himself as he felt that the doxology of the Church should be changed from: ‘Glory be to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit,’ to: ‘Glory be to the Father with the Son and with the Holy Spirit.’ His opponents appealed to church custom for their wording as did Basil, but Basil claimed his custom was more ancient. [2]

In William Webster’s book you will find the following quoted by a Catholic apologist,

The text of St Basil has played such an important role in the history of theology that it must be quoted here:

“Among the ‘doctrines’ and the ‘definitions’ preserved in the Church, we hold some on the basis of written teachings and others we have received, transmitted secretly, from apostolic tradition. All are of equal value for piety; no one will dispute this; no one, at least with the least experience of ecclesiastical customs; for, if we were to attempt to reject these unwritten customs as not carrying much weight, we should unwittingly be casting aspersions on the Gospel itself, in its essentials.” [3]

I do have a bit of a problem with this quote - I cannot seem to find that anyone besides Yves Congar has ever mentioned it or quoted it (other than Wiliam Webster quoting Congar’s as his source), at least not in what I can find online or my personal resources (i.e., I don’t have Congar’s book). I am not saying that I question its truthfulness, I just find it odd that no one else (at least from what I can determine) has ever quoted it and it’s not on CCEL. Regardless, let’s deal with it.

Webster pointed to a former Benedictine monk by the name of Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta who was a scholar that specialized in the works of Basil of Caesarea. He wrote the following,

The whole passage has frequently been misinterpreted by Roman Catholic theologians, who imagine that in it they have found something to prove the Tridentine dogma of Tradition, considered as an equal and distinct source of revelation … In reality, this passage of Basil, the beginning of which is a little vague and lacking in precision, cannot be considered as confirming the Tridentine dogma that doctrinal Tradition is a second fully distinct source of divine revelation. In order to be convinced of the falsity of such an assertion, one need only take the trouble to read the whole passage … In brief, in all his homiletic, doctrinal, ascetic and monastic works, Basil refers constantly, and almost every line, to the Bible, quoting, expounding or illustrating it, or drawing out in detail what it teaches without departing from the traditional doctrine of the Church. He leaves us no doubt that he regards the Bible, especially the New Testament, as the sovereign and all-sufficient moral and doctrinal standard for all Christians … [4] [emphasis added]

So as you can see, Mendieta, as an expert in Basil’s works, does not agree with how Congars views Basil’s quote. So, is this a case of ‘reading into a passage’ of Basil’s to produce the concept of ‘tradition’ you want to prove? I think Mendieta would have said, “yes.”

But if we get back to the doxology change that Basil felt needed to be made, we find that he said this as well,

But we do not rest only on the fact that such is the tradition of the Fathers; for they too followed the sense of Scripture, and started from the evidence which, a few sentences back, I deduced from Scripture and laid before you. (Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol VIII, Basil: On the Holy Spirit, 7, 16)

It is an interesting side note that William Goode (1801-1868) said that the above quote was not the proper translation of Basil’s original work. Goode said that the word, ‘only’ is not in the text, and that the Greek word that is there should be translated, ‘is not sufficient’ or ‘does not suffice.’ So a better rendering, in his opinion, of the above passage would be,

But it is not sufficient for us, that it is the tradition of the Fathers. For they also followed the mind of Scripture; having taken their first principles from the testimonies which, a short time since, we placed before you, from the Scripture.

Basil was saying that “... tradition apart from Scripture is not sufficient for the establishing of doctrinal truth. The authority of the teaching of the fathers was directly contingent on their conformity to the teaching of Scripture.” [5] So, for Basil, it was not tradition that was in authority, it was Scripture.

For those that have studied Basil’s works, one of the problems with Catholic apologists is that their statements concerning tradition are rarely given in context, something that I showed in my previous two blogs.

The importance of so doing is that Basil defined what he meant by apostolic unwritten tradition. The first point of interest is that Basil’s teaching primarily had to do with customs and practices such as triple immersion in baptism and turning to the East in prayer, practices of secondary importance. In the first instance this does not involve doctrine. To be sure, there are doctrinal issues involved because he is defending the doctrine of the Holy Spirit by an appeal to an ecclesiastical practice that is not explicitly found in Scripture… So, for the most part, his list of unwritten apostolic traditions had to do with practices and customs, or nonessential issues, and not with major doctrines necessarily for salvation. [6] [emphasis added]

It’s an interesting fact that Rome wants to define Basil’s use of the word ‘tradition’ as it pleases even though it refers to practices that Catholicism doesn’t even use. J. N. D. Kelly wrote,

Indeed, all the instances of unwritten tradition lacking Scriptural support which the early theologians mention will be found, on examination, to refer to matters of observance and practice (e.g. triple immersion in baptism; turning East for prayer) rather than of doctrine as such, although sometimes they are matters (e.g. infant baptism; prayers for the dead) in which doctrine is involved. [7]

And Webster makes another point that needs to be understood. None of the claims for the apostolic origins of these supposed oral traditions can be proven, and worse, some of these traditions were contradictory,

A second point needs to be made regarding Basil’s claims, and is true for all references by Church fathers to oral tradition with respect to customs and practices. These claims cannot be proven. The fathers only assumed that these practices were apostolic in origin, but there is no way to validate this. The importance of this is underscored by the fact that the early Church witnessed many contradictory claims of apostolic tradition with various segments of the Church. The mere assertion of a claim does not make it true. [8] [emphasis added]

It's bad enough when a claim of ‘tradition’ turns out to be a mere practice or custom, but it is made worse when there are competing and contradictory claims of apostolic tradition. And that is what we will turn to next.

Easter: East and West

There are times you run across things in history that make you want to throw up your hands in disgust. A controversy developed In the 2nd century over when one was to celebrate Easter. So, let’s set the stage for this ‘controversy.’ The eastern church celebrated Easter on one date while the western church celebrated it on another. Polycarp (69-155 AD), the bishop of Smyrna in Asia minor, traveled to Rome to meet with bishop Anicetus (92-157 AD) to resolve the differences, but since they could not, they departed as friends, agreeing to disagree. [9] That in and of itself says quite a lot about these two, does it not? Unfortunately, agreeing to disagree wasn’t something that a later Bishop of Rome was willing to allow. Sometime between 190 and 194 AD the Roman bishop, Victor, decided that he was going to force the western tradition upon the eastern church.

Oops! I used the word tradition, didn’t I? Now, why did I do that? Because our modern understanding of this word is what each side in this controversy was calling ‘apostolic tradition.’ But actually it was a custom or a practice that had been done for a long period of time in both regions, but like ‘traditions’ today some of their ‘traditional’ practices had likely been modified over time. Is it done because the Apostles handed down the date we are supposed to celebrate Easter? If so, then why were there two customs? Is this a doctrinal matter that affects our salvation? I don’t think so, do you? In the grand scheme of things, does it really matter which date Easter is celebrated? But I digress.

Victor decided that this was so serious of a difference that he was going to cut off communion with the Eastern churches. And what was so serious that it demanded such action? The difference was about what day to end the passover fast. The West called their practice ‘apostolic tradition,’ but not to be out done, the Eastern church called theirs the same! There were synods and assemblies of bishops on this and it nearly caused a schism in the church as each called their custom ‘apostolic tradition.’

Fortunately, Irenaeus stepped in to prevent the schism from occurring, telling the bishop of Rome to basically ‘knock it off!’ Per the early church historian, Socrates (c. 380 AD), the bottom line was,

Socrates pointed out that the claims for apostolic authority for the divergent traditions were, in effect, no more than claims because neither party could produce any written testimony for the apostles to validate them. In other words, nothing could be confirmed in the written Scriptures. In effect, he was saying that one can only know what is truly apostolic if it is confirmed from their writings, the written Scriptures. Consequently, he concluded that the claims for apostolic origin were spurious and that each segment of the Church was free to embrace what it deemed best as far as customs and practices were concerned. [10]

Now, what does this show us? For one thing, it shows us that the Roman bishop really wasn’t all that special, nor was he infallible or all that wise. The appearance is that he wanted to exercise his will over others. There’s Godly character for you! Next, there are customs, or ‘traditions,’ that can vary or differ from church to church, or region to region, which sort of invalidates them as ‘traditions.’

But I want to make sure you caught something from the quote above. What was the standard for ‘apostolic tradition’? That it needed to be written in the Scriptures. The only way you can know if something is truly apostolic is if, and only if, it is in Scripture. Wow! And the historian Socrates wrote that at the end of the 4th century about a manufactured controversy in the 2nd century that nearly split the Church.

Re-Baptism: Cyprian and Stephen

And then we have the controversy between Cyprian and the bishop of Rome, Stephen, that sprung up in the middle of the 3rd century. There is far too much to dissect concerning the beliefs of both Cyprian and Stephen, so that is not going to happen in this blog. I certainly do not accept Stephen’s desire to promote himself as the highest bishop in the church of his day, i.e., he thought himself to be ‘pope’. Nor do I agree with Cyprian’s view of ‘mortal sins.’ And I’m not taking a position on Novatian’s puritan view of the church or his position of being an antipope opposing Stephen. But I certainly agree with his view that it is God that absolves sin, not the bishops, since that is what we see in Scripture. How one reacted to persecution was a huge issue in the early church, as this situation in the 3rd century proves. So that is the narrow subject of this example.

Novatian had been determined to be a heretic, and with the little knowledge I have of him and the situation, I find this claim a bit dubious since it does not really seem to be his theology that was questioned, only his ascension to ‘pope’ in opposition to Cornelius of Rome (I cannot call him a pope either) and his desire to exclude those that had committed the sin of idolatry to avoid persecution. There were a considerable number of bishops that lined up on both sides of this issue. So, without running down 4 or 5 rabbit holes and confusing the issue I’m attempting to address, let’s just stick with the point on tradition, which is the topic of this blog. For those that had been baptized into a heresy, Cyprian believed the correct approach was to require those that had been involved in heresy to be rebaptized before coming into the church, which according to him was the ‘apostolic tradition’ he was following. Stephen, on the other hand, thought that as long as these Christians had been baptized in the Trinity, they did not need to be rebaptized. That was his ‘apostolic tradition’ and because he was the bishop of Rome, the so-called ‘bishop of bishops,’ he sought to force Cyprian to concede because of his position.

Firmilian (230-268 AD), the bishop of Caesarea, joined in on this by supporting Cyprian, and both he and Cyprian repudiated Stephen since those in Rome did not seem to follow all of the customs and practices handed down to them from the beginning of the Church. As Webster summarized the passage he quoted,

Firmilian and Cyprian rejected Stephen’s appeal since his custom, first of all, did not parallel their own which could claim ancient practice. Secondly, it contradicted Scripture, which in their view was the ultimate judge of any practice that claimed to be apostolic. If a practice did not conform to Scriptures it was not apostolic and was to be rejected. [11]

So, what you see here are two competing views for the same ‘tradition.’ The best case scenario is that only one is correct, but the real problem is that both are wrong, in the sense that neither are ‘tradition’ as the modern Catholic Church intends the word to mean, which is unwritten oral teachings passed down from the apostles. They were practices; nothing more.

Age of Jesus According to Irenaeus

I know that I’ve previously mentioned this in another blog, but I wanted to cover it again here in more detail. The following passage is from Irenaeus concerning the supposed apostolic tradition that Jesus lived to almost 50 yrs old. Irenaeus wrote the following in Against Heresies, Vol II,

Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extends onwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; …

But, besides this, those very Jews who then disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ have most clearly indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see My day; and he saw it, and was glad,” they answered Him, “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast Thou seen Abraham?” [John 8:56-57] Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having as yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. But to one who is only thirty years old it would unquestionably be said, “Thou art not yet forty years old.” For those who wished to convict Him of falsehood would certainly not extend the number of His years far beyond the age which they saw He had attained; but they mentioned a period near His real age, whether they had truly ascertained this out of the entry in the public register, or simply made a conjecture from what they observed that He was above forty years old, and that He certainly was not one of only thirty years of age. For it is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove Him younger than the times of Abraham. For what they saw, that they also expressed; and He whom they beheld was not a mere phantasm, but an actual being of flesh and blood. He did not then want much of being fifty years old … (Against Heresies, II, 22.5 & 6) [emphasis added]

Now, no one seriously believes that Jesus lived close to the age of 50, and I have never heard of or read a single scholar, Catholic or Protestant, that has ever believed or promoted this (but that does not mean they don’t exist). And personally, the way Irenaeus shared this comes off as an attempted logical deduction rather than a recounting of a tradition handed down by the apostles. As a logical deduction based on what he sees as the evidence of Scripture, Irenaeus seems to make an interesting ‘speculative’ point, but one that is easily debunked. Far more scholars, ancient and modern, see this speculation as against the much clearer evidence within Scripture that Jesus was much more likely in his early 30’s (How old was Jesus when He died?). This is also why it makes absolutely no sense to consider this as ‘apostolic tradition.’ The fact of the matter is, the ages of the apostles are never recorded and neither was the age of Jesus at His death. And why? Because it has no bearing on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This particular example shows that the Church fathers were fallible men even if they thought what they believed and wrote about was true. As William Webster put it,

Irenaeus assured his readers that this information was based upon apostolic testimony and was to be accepted as such. He was, however, quite mistaken and his claims reveal that the fathers were neither inspired nor infallible and oral tradition is not inherently authoritative. It demonstrates that the fathers’ claims of apostolic authority for oral traditions was just that, a mere claim. [12]

And this is an extremely important point as we attempt to unravel just what ‘tradition’ in the early church meant. What is the ‘rule of faith’ in judging what the fathers said in their writings? Do we just believe everything because they wrote it? No! There can only be one answer – Scripture is our rule of faith. Men make mistakes, just as Irenaeus did in this case, and just as you and I do in our lives and in some of our beliefs. And having the title of Pope does not protect you from both big and little errors, as the history of popes through the centuries can easily demonstrate. (Remember Pope Sixtus?)

Another problem with calling this an ‘apostolic tradition’ is that this is not a doctrinal belief. How would this have changed the Gospel message? How would this have affected our salvation? The answer, again, is easy – it would not have affected either. Even if this had actually been ‘real’ apostolic tradition, it would have been a factoid but that is really all it would ever have been. Because this was not true clearly means it was neither apostolic nor tradition in any way.

Conclusion

We started off this blog revisiting ‘material sufficiency’ as ground work, so to speak, to look at Basil’s understanding of ‘tradition.’ And even though he is cited as someone that promoted ‘apostolic tradition’ by Catholic apologists, an expert on Basil’s writings believed that their citations misrepresented Basil’s writings. This is supported by J.N.D. Kelly’s work as well. We then looked at the Easter controversy that nearly split the church in the 2nd century. What we saw there was two competing so-called ‘apostolic traditions,’ which were nothing more than a common practice in their respective parts of the world. We also saw a wannabe ‘pope’ trying to exercise power over other regions. That was followed up with the example of Cyprian and Stephen disagreeing about how to handle Christians returning to the Church after being involved with an heretical group. And once again, what we saw was not ‘apostolic tradition,’ but competing customs and practices, and another example of a wannabe ‘pope’ trying to exercise power over other regions. And lastly, we looked in more detail at the supposed ‘apostolic tradition’ of Jesus living to around 50 years old. This wasn’t even a real custom or practice, just a completely wrong belief based on what appears to be a invalid deduction based on something interpreted from Scripture, while ignoring all of the other evidence on how to determine a rough estimate of Jesus’ age.

Being right in any of these cases of ‘apostolic traditions’ would not have had any bearing on any doctrinal beliefs as clearly stated in the pages of Scripture. None of these examples would have shown themselves as ‘orally transmitted doctrines’ co-equal with Scripture. And being wrong only reinforces the fallacy of attempting to make a case for ‘apostolic tradition’ where one never existed. And if neither of those were bad enough, not being right or wrong ends up touching upon the prideful act of attempting to claim an elevated position (pope) to force an opinion without the slightest bit of proof. It shows the fallacy, once again, that something can be orally passed down in such a way as to be successfully transmitted to all intended parties that need the information. It also shows the fallacy that such ‘traditions’ can be shown to be binding upon anyone without the force being applied.

We keep coming back to the same question, “By what standard?” In each example, the Church of their day could not guarantee the oral transmission of non-doctrinal and so-called ‘apostolic traditions,’ so how on earth can we seriously expect orally transmitted doctrinal truths to be transmitted over a 2000 yr period? None of these cases demonstrate the Church’s ability to guarantee successful transmission, and five minutes of playing the ‘telephone’ game would easily prove that point. That is why God gave us His words in Scripture. Scripture — is our standard.

I do not consider it fair that the custom which obtains among them should be regarded as a law and rule of orthodoxy. If custom is to be taken in proof of what is right, then it is certainly competent for me to put forward on my side the custom which obtains here. If they reject this, we are clearly not bound to follow them. Therefore let God-inspired Scripture decide between us; and on whichever side be found doctrines in harmony with the word of God, in favour of that side will be cast the vote of truth.

Basil of Caesarea (329-379 AD)

Footnotes

1. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), pp. 140-141.
2. Ibid, pp. 143-144.
3. Yves Congar, Tradition and Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1967), pp. 47-48, as quoted by William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), pp. 142-143.
4. Emmanuel Amand de Mendieta, Rome and Canterbury: A Biblical and Free Catholicism, trans. Coslett Quin (London: Herbert Jenkins, 1962), pp. 140, 141, 134, as quoted by William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 143.
5. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 146. See also, footnote 322 for the information about William Goode’s translation.
6. Ibid, p. 144.
7. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, Fifth, Revised. (London; New Delhi; New York; Sydney: Bloomsbury, 1977), 47.
8. William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith Vol II, (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001), p. 145.
9. Ibid, p. 148.
10. Ibid, p. 151.
11. Ibid, pp. 153-154. See: Anti-Nicene Fathers Vol 5: Epistles of Cyprian, 72.6 & 72.19, for the quoted text in Webster’s book.
12. Ibid, p. 154-155.

All Scriptures quotes are from the New American Standard Bible, 1995 Revision, unless otherwise noted. Verse links from Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/

For the best treatment of Sola Scriptura in book form, please consider investing in the 3 volume set of: David T. King and William Webster, Holy Scripture, Ground and Pillar of Our Faith, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3 (Battle Creek, WA: Christian Resource, Inc, 2001). It's the guide I'm using to integrate some of my own study on this important subject. This book set is inexpensive and worth every penny.