In the New Testament, it is the written word of God and that alone to which the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles refer as the final authority. They quoted scripture, not traditions, to prove their point.
That's fine. Now all you have to do is prove this me by means of Scripture. Where does the
Bible say that the Bible
alone is all you need? And do not quote 2 Tim 3:16; that passage says that
all Scripture is inspired; it does NOT say that
only Scripture is inspired. We believe that Tradition is inspired as well.
When Jesus was in the desert fasting, and Satan tempted him, Jesus three times resisted Satan, saying, "It is written" as for example, in Matthew 4:4, "he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God."
Quite right. And how did Jesus deliver these Scriptures to Satan? Did he silently give Satan a Bible to read and sit down while Satan read it? Hardly. Jesus
spoke the Scripture to Satan; "he
said"; "out of
the mouth of God". The spoken, oral Word of God is just as efficacious as the written Word of God.
Christ rebuked the Pharises for making their traditions on a par with the word of God. He declared to them in Mark 7:13 "You are making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such things do ye."
Notice, however: Jesus did not condemn
all tradition. He condemned
corrupt tradition. Specifically, He condemned corrupt
Jewish tradition. He certainly did not condemn
Christian Tradition, since it didn't exist yet.
And in any event, if Tradition is condemned in the Bible, how do you account for Scriptures like 1 Cor 11:2, or 2 Thess 2:15, or 2 Thess 3:6, or John 21:31?
Catholic Tradition is not man-made. It is the spoken Word of God, delivered orally by the Apostles to the first Christians. Somne of this oral teaching got written down and became the New Testament; some of it did not and reamins Tradition. Tradition stopped being created with the death of the last Apostle, just as written Scripture did. It has not changed, nor has it evolved since then. The only thing that
has changed is the practice of the Christian faith since the Reformers threw Tradition away and began to evolve their own ideas of Christianity into the 20,000+ Protestant denominations we have today.
But oddly enough, it's always the Protestants who accuse the Catholics of "making things up".
Blessings,
---Wols.