Protestants are known for their zeal for Scripture. And those of the Apostolic Faith must commend Protestants for this. Evangelical Scholars have provided solid evidence in terms of Textual Criticism and the Manuscript Evidence of the Bible helping Christians from every part of the spectrum to grow in confidence in the Divinely Inspired Scripture.
However, one thing that is missing within the Protestant Epistemology is the idea of Oral Tradition. All throughout Scripture there is an idea of an authoritative Oral Tradition that is passed down through the ages. For some reason, this Biblical fact has been ignored. Most Protestants believe that the Oral Tradition within the New Testament especially is exactly equal to Written Tradition. This is an assumption that has yet to be proven. Verses such as 1 Thessalonians 2:13, 2 Thessalonians 2:15; 3:6, 2 Timothy 2:2, 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Timothy 3:14-16 all solidify the idea that within the mind of the Apostles, there is an authoritative body of Tradition distinct from the Written Tradition (i.e. for example 2 Thessalonians 2:15 makes a distinction between word and epistle).
Another issue with assuming a Protestant understanding of Oral Tradition is that literacy rates according to Literacy in the Roman World,” by William V. Harris were around 10-15%. This meaning that most of the Converts to Christianity from the first century onwards were illiterate. Thus a majority of Christians would not be able operate on Sola Scriptura.
Another issue for Protestants is criteria for Canonicity. As John Peckham points out in his book Canonical Theology, Protestants rely on facts such as Apostolic Authorship in order to verify what is Canon (which in itself is a Tradition!). How is it consistent in the Protestant worldview to presuppose that the Church is fallible, yet rely on the same church for the criterion to arrive at an infallible proposition (Scripture)? Because of this dilemma, many Protestants will forfeit intelligibility of the Biblical Text and affirm that the current Canon is incomplete/errored.
• To be sure, the question of the final form of the canonical text includes a great deal of complexity, requiring considerable care.;As a working approach it seems reasonable to approach the canonical text in the extant form(s) that we have,&;admitting the lack of access to a complete, original, final form.;This final-form approach thus utilizes&;the most attested findings of textual criticism;wherever such bear on the canonical meaning of the text. However, canonical theology does not divert attention to non-manuscript-based reconstruction of the text based on form, source, or tradition criticism because of the unavoidably conjectural nature of such undertakings.;Rather, attention is focused on the received corpus of canonical texts and the study thereof, focusing on textual and in-tertextual hermeneutics regarding the final form of the sixty-six-book canon without neglecting textual issues that pertain to extant texts from this canon.&;(Canonical Theology John Peckham, p.200)
This quote admits that Protestants, submitting to Textual Criticism are venerable to the idea that the Biblical Canon is wrong due to a “textual evidence” (i.e which doesn’t even make sense since the category of canon is different from the category of Textual Criticism). Another shocking conclusion from this quote is that Peckham slaps the face of the very Church Fathers that preserved the Holy Bible. Calling their tradition susceptible to a “conjectural [i.e. suspicious/speculative] nature”. It’s these very Protestants that uphold the veracity of Scripture yet are also the same ones to put doubt in the hearts of believers about that very same set of Scriptures.
In conclusion, Protestants struggle with the fact that Oral Tradition is Biblical, Sola Scriptura is irrational in terms of its application within the Early Church/ times of Revelation, being reliant on Church Tradition in order to know what is Canonical, and the logical implications of Textual Criticism.
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