Sola Scriptura is Simply Wrong

Sola Scriptura is one of those traditions that just will not go away.  It is ironic because it is certainly the most unscriptural of all traditions and it aims to do what it actually inadvertently destroys namely the authority of Sacred Scripture itself.  Fundamentally Sola Scriptura means that Scripture is formally and material suffficient for all Christian doctrine.  The Catholic Church allows for, and arguably teaches, that Scripture is materially sufficient.

One must understand the difference between material and formal sufficiency and that is fairly easy to explain.  Imagine a pile of wood, bricks, bags of concrete, land, glass windows, tiles, etc... organized neatly in piles on a lot of land.  At that point you would have everything you needed for a house so you would have all that was materially sufficient for it.  However, to get from the pile of building materials, to an actual house a lot of other things are necessary in order to actually get to a house.  These would include of course the architect, builders, planners, money, and various other things.  Once all of the things were in place then all that was FORMALLY necessary for a house would be in place.

The Church denies that the Scripture itself is formally sufficient for doctrine.  For example Scripture itself does not contain a list of the Scriptures that it should contain.  The list of Scriptures is reliant on tradition and church teaching in order to exist.  At the very least it is necessary to have this list and therefore Sola Scriptura is on its face false.  In addition there are many other things in which the Scripture attest to the truth of doctrines but those doctrines are not fully clear in Scripture.  Almost all of the things that divide Protestants and Catholic fall into this category.

Protestants are correct that tradition can lead to error as Sola Scriptura is the greatest example of that principle, but Scripture itself is from out of Apostolic Tradition.  Scripture is a subset of what we are to believe not the whole of it.  We are to do as Saint Paul recommended and that is to hold to all that came from the Apostles by word of mouth or by epistle.