Explaining Away 2 Thessalonians 2:15
A Catholic Response to James White, James McCarthy, Frank Eberhardt, and Eric Svendsen
MARIO DERKSEN

Protestants have a hard time with 2 Thessalonians 2:15. It contradicts their doctrine of Sola Scriptura, Latin for "the Bible alone," concerning the rule of faith.

So then, brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter.

This definitely favors the Catholic position, which holds that our rule of faith is the truth of Jesus Christ, and this truth has been passed on to the Apostles, and then to their successors, and their successors, etc. The current successors are the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church (which can be historically proven), so our rule of faith is, today, the teaching Magisterium of the Catholic Church, which keeps bringing to us the truth of Christ passed on to all the bishops.

In 2 Thessalonians 2:15 we are told to follow the teachings of the Apostles, and not only what they wrote, which is what Protestants claim, but also what they transmitted orally.

Now, of course, several efforts have been made by Protestants to explain this passage away.
James White, director of the Reformed Baptist ministry "Alpha and Omega," has tried it this way: he says that these "traditions" we are to hold fast to are not any extra-biblical teachings, but simply "the Gospel." Well, it is indeed the Gospel, but the full Gospel, because we know that not all of the Gospel is written down in Scripture (see John 21:25). So that's how far James White's claim has gone.

Another Protestant who tried to ignore 2 Thessalonians 2:15 is James McCarthy, in his book The Gospel According to Rome. He writes, "[T]he traditions of which Paul was speaking refer to aspects of the Lord's second coming" [McCarthy, The Gospel According to Rome, p. 343]. Now, James McCarthy leaves his claim totally unsupported; there are not even any scriptural citations that back his point up. And why not? Because his claim is not really true. He is right in saying that the epistle contains prophecies about the Lord's Second Coming, but that is not the immediate context. Right one verse before verse 15, in 2 Thessalonians 2:14, we read [emphasis added]:

The context right here is the GOSPEL, so this is what St. Paul is talking about when he says, "So then, stand firm and hold to the traditions you were taught, either by word of mouth or by our epistle." He tells this to the Thessalonians because of Christ's Second Coming, that they may not be led astray (cf. verse 3), but hold fast to the True Gospel, which is to be found in Paul's teachings, whether transmitted orally or in written form.

Frank Eberhardt left the Catholic faith when he was studying to become a priest in the seminary. One may hope and
pray that he will some day return to the fullness of the Faith of our fathers. But in his present frame of mind, Mr. Eberhardt argues that 2 Thessalonians 2:15 does not prove the Catholic case for Tradition because it nowhere says that not all of these "oral teachings" are written down. He is of the opinion that all this oral tradition is found in the pages of Scripture.

Of course, one may throw the same question at him: Where does it say all of these "oral teachings" are written down? There is no reason why his position should win by default. In fact, if one is to argue from probability, it is extremely unlikely that all teachings have been written down, especially since this is nowhere mentioned. Besides, the very "teaching" as to what makes up the written Word of God would always be unwritten, or else we would have a case of circular reasoning, which is, of course, fallacious.

Scripture nowhere claims that it contains all teachings of the Apostles. Secondly, it doesn't make too much sense for St. Paul to tell the Thessalonians to hold fast to his teachings in EITHER form if he was of the opinion that everything that was preached orally was also written down. No, the epistles of Paul are all letters to a specific group of people and dealt with specific topics that needed to be addressed. Why should his 13 epistles be a comprehensive source of all of the Apostles' teachings? The fact that not many people could read back then, and the Canon of the Scriptures was not safely identified until the end of the fourth century AD anyway, reinforces the Catholic claim that it is highly unlikely that St. Paul taught that all oral teaching would eventually be written down.

Note the phrase "sound words that you have heard" -- St. Paul does NOT say, "Take as your norm what I have written to you" or anything like that. If Paul had wanted to teach Sola Scriptura, this would have been the perfect time to say so. Indeed, in 2 John 12, we read [emphasis added]:

Finally, I wish to respond to the rather erudite attempt of Eric Svendsen to deprive 2 Thessalonians 2:15 of its obvious meaning. Mr. Svendsen asserts that while Paul's message was passed on partly in written form and partly in oral form, "it was . . . the same message" (Evangelical Answers, p.110; emphasis Svendsen's). Does he cite any evidence for this claim? No. We would hope that, in essence, Paul's message was always the same, namely the Gospel. But to claim that because of this, everything he passed on orally was also written down later on is quite another thing, and -- in my opinion -- unjustified. To refresh our memories on what the Church teaches on Scripture and Tradition, consider that:

We must keep this in mind as we analyze the Protestant criticism of the Catholic position.
In any case, Svendsen goes on:

It is interesting to note here that Svendsen insists we interpret 2 Thess 2:15 in the light of (his interpretation of) Acts 17:11. Why not the other way around? After all, Acts was composed in 63 AD, whereas 2 Thessalonians had been written as early 52 AD (cf. Laux, Introduction to the Bible, p.314). But even aside from this, his interpretation of Acts 17:11 is highly doubtful anyway.

Svendsen's essential criticism of the Catholic interpretation of 2 Thess 2:15 is as follows:

Yet the rules of semantics suggest otherwise. The conjunction "or" can have an inclusive or an exclusive meaning. That is, the phrase "by word of mouth or by letter" is ambiguous -- it could mean by word of mouth and by letter, or either one by itself. That this ambiguity exists with the conjunction "or" is very well known to anyone who has been introduced to logic. Let me illustrate a bit more:

Therefore, Svendsen is wrong in asserting that Paul would have to have used "and" if he had meant both Scripture and Tradition to be binding as seperate sources of revelation. Paul's "or" is just fine the way it is -- it does not refute the Catholic position.

This is how we can dismiss this final attack on the Catholic interpretation of 2 Thessalonians 2:15.

Of course, this whole controversy is related to the Protestant error of Sola Scriptura, so well refuted in the mammoth Not By Scripture Alone (629 pp.) by Bob Sungenis (editor). One ought to compare Sola Scriptura to a state that issues a constitution. Would the state give each citizen a copy of the Constitution so each can interpret it individually and according to their own needs, saying, "May the Spirit of Washington go with you?" NO! Any state needs a legislative branch in the government to interpret the meaning of the constitution. After all, it's the government's book. We would have chaos and anarchy if each person in the US could interpret the Constitution by themselves. We would have no rules. The same applies to Sola Scriptura. Where there is the Bible ONLY, there are lots of different opinions on what it means. See, we currently have nearly 30,000 denominations, all claiming to go by the Bible alone. These are the fruits of private interpretation. We have spiritual anarchy in Protestantism, because they have rejected the authority, the Church, to explain the Bible to them.
The Bible is the book of the Catholic Church, and Sacred Tradition consists mainly of the interpretation of that book. The Church says to us, "You have read my book. Now let me explain it to you."

Another good analogy would be this:
Let's say there is a math class, and the teacher gives his students a big textbook. When the students go through the book, they may not understand this or that concept. What do they do? Do they flip through the whole book to find their answer? Well, they might check what else the book says about the topic, but if that doesn't help, what do they do? OK, they might ask some of their classmates that might understand it better. And classmate X will say, "On page 31, it says you need to do it this way," while classmate Y might say, "No, X is wrong, this doesn't refer to that," and in the end they'll be totally confused about what is actually right. They are in a dead end. What do they do? They ask the TEACHER!

And that's also true for Christians, the Bible, and the Church. If there's something we don't understand in the Scriptures, ultimately, we will ask our Teacher, the Magisterium of the Church, consisting of the Bishops and the Pope, who are infallible collectively when officially defining a doctrine (cf. Matthew 16:18, 18:15-18, 28:19-20, 1 Timothy 3:15).

Now, some might say, "The true teacher is the Holy Spirit." Correct. And the Church is guided by Him. "My sheep hear my voice" - indeed, but this obviously can't hold true for every individual Christian, since the existence of some 30,000 denominations proves that Christian unity doesn't flow from the Sola Scriptura theory in practice. Since God knew that there would be disunity among believers, we ought to see if Jesus has made provisions for the unity and integrity of the true faith. And He did! Christ established a teaching Church (cf. Matthew 28:20) with the guarantee that it would not teach falsehood (Matthew 16:18, 18:18, John 17:17, 1 Timothy 3:15, etc.). Without it, there can never be "one faith" (Ephesians 4:5).

You can read an essay exposing the fruits of private interpretation by clicking here.

Where there is no Bible, the Church is not without the Gospel.
The Protestant doctrine of Sola Scriptura is false.