The Bible is the sole rule for all Christian doctrinal and moral principles.

First of all, I am quite impressed with my opponent's objections to Sola Scriptura. It was very informative and well laid out. The amount of hard work, effort and intellectual rigor that went into that was quite impressive. So first of all, I just want to concede the amount of hard work, effort and intellectual rigor put forth by my opponent in this regard. Hats off to you for that!

I will first lay out the groundwork for why Sola Scriptura is essential, and I then I'll explain why it's quite problematic why it's not wise to deter to any other source as an infallible source of Truth.

1. Why Sola Scriptura is true. Of course, and not surprisingly , my opponent would highlight my usage of 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which once again says :

16 All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, 17 so that the servant of God[a] may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.

And my opponent also rightly pointed out that Scripture is infallible and without error. But then it was said by my opponent that 'sacred tradition' is also infallible. Of course the argument would be that sacred tradition would have to be in alignment with Scripture. but that is precisely an argument in my favor! 

Think about friends. For sacred tradition to also be considered infallible it would have to rely on Scripture to be infallible and thus becomes a self defeating proposition entirely . 

2. The obvious problem with having anything other than Sola Scriptura as/the source of ultimate authority to refer to is , of course, what if Scripture and that/those source(s) are in conflict with Scripture. If that happens, how would you determine which is true or false? Of course, it would be a given (I'd hope) just by those two verses in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 that Scripture would out-rule and be the deciding factor, should such a problem arise. And of course, that is precisely the problem with putting , in my opponent's case, tradition on equal footing with Scripture. What if tradition is in conflict with Scripture at some point(s)? And, again, if tradition must rely on Scripture to be considered infallible, then that is just a back-handed way of supporting my entire argument from the start, friends.

3. While my opponent, admittedly does have somewhat of a point in that Scripture was more or less, orally given and passed for about the first 300 hundred years of the Church's existence and then finally put together in one collective body of work and , then , finally canonized, there is of course, something overlooked here, too.

The early church still had the ENTIRE Old Testament to refer to point them to the work and person of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's that , and keep in mind that the Lord Jesus Christ Himself pointed to the Old Testament Himself after His resurrection on the road to Emmaus (see Luke 24:13-35 for this story) to prove all that was prophesied concerning all about Him, and that it ultimately pointed to all that would happen to Him. Secondly, we don't know how many copies of the the Pauline and other New Testament letters the early church had in its possession , but they were already in circulation before they, along with the rest of the Bible was canonized. So , in conclusion on this point, I find it rather disingenuous of my opponent to say that the early church survived mostly or only on oral tradition(s) for the first 300 years of its existence. 

4. As to the logical argument given by opponent it's also rather weak. Likely we've both come across atheists in our various discourses online, especially those from atheists, on Twitter. Now as to the texts on slavery, that's also a terribly weak argument. 2 Timothy 2:15 says: Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. Now, it's obvious the atheist who would throw such a ridiculous argument from a cursory glance is clearly not rightly dividing the Word of Truth with their argument of God being in favor of slavery. And , just for the sake of clarity, rightly dividing the Word of Truth means that the reader of the Bible is tasked to determine what is prescriptive and descriptive. And what that means is that which is prescriptive is that which applies to all people at all times, such as the 10 commandments , and that which applies to a certain time , place and people group, in the Bible. Now , I am not saying, whatsoever , that we can't learn from those things which are descriptive, or the text in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 would be Paul lying, which of course isn't true :) But, for the sake of argument, God providing manna in the desert while the Israelites escaped Egypt is a clear example of descriptive Scripture, whereas once again , the 10 Commandments, is prescriptive Scripture.

5. The Historical argument. My opponent once again appeals to logic in this argument as well. But , again I find it weak. the argument is that the Bible itself never explicitly argues for Scripture to the be sole authority for one's life, to paraphrase. But think consider this , friends. If that is the case, why does Scripture ONLY reference other Scripture in support of itself. For example, there is no explicit teaching or doctrine on the Trinity either, but one could (and I've done it, as well as countless others) that the doctrine for the Trinity is all over Scripture. Arguing for verbatim or explicit doctrine on Sola Scriptura is once, again, a rather weak argument in my opinion. 

So, in conclusion, the reasons for Sola Scriptura:

1)It's most logical given the problems that arise if you veer away from it

2)if you have Scripture that conflicts with other supposed infallible sources, how would you determine which to go with?

3)oral tradition is a weak and somewhat disingenuous argument

4)a good thing to keep in mind when considering whether Scripture is the sole authority is that it only ever references Scripture.

5)If Scripture is infallible , as both me and my opponent both agree on, then its sufficiency , I'd argue, is just that - sufficient.

1. Oral Tradition - biblical Truth

First of all of all, I find my opponent's response to this not only weak, but that large parts were missing altogether. Secondly, I challenge my opponent to show where I EVER said, implied and/or suggested the Old Testament is infallible . I argued for just the exact opposite of that very idea! I argued that the early church had the entirety of the Old Testament, that Jesus demonstrated to two disciples on the Road to Emmaus (again , see Luke 22:23-35 for the story, if interested) that the Old Testament prophesied that the Messiah would come, what kind of Person He'd be and things He'd have to go through, up to and including an unbelievable agonizing death.

Secondly , they did have copies of the New Testament to some degree. 

Now, I want to make it clear , I'm by no way dismissing the importance and value of oral tradition. It's important , there's no question about it. And the gospel most concerns itself with the message of the person, work and ministry of Jesus Christ, up to and including His death, resurrection and ascension. Oral traditions are important and exist in all cultures as long as cultures have existed. but again, are oral traditions infallible? I think you'd be hard pressed to logically and demonstrably say yes to oral traditions, as lovely and important as they, to be considered infallible.

2.Traditions - Conflicts

First of all, I need to point out that my opponent admitted my question was 'interesting' and then claimed it was a faulty question , but just danced around it. My opponent never gave a satisfactory answer to this question. And I want you , our audience to keep that in mind. My opponent used nuanced and intellectual lingo to dance around this question. in short, my opponent more of less avoided it and merely deflected it , claiming it was a faulty question without really give an answer as to to why it. They did give an answer, but the answer itself, was faulty and , indirectly , a deflection. Again, for tradition to be infallible it has to be in sync with Scripture , which again, is just a back handed support for my position. But my opponent fails to recognize the self defeating proposition they are arguing from.

3. Bible only - It IS logical

my opponent doesn't seem to realize that I can easily go with non-biblical sources , and they are incredible amount of non-biblical sources that have helped me greatly in my walk with Christ. But once again, these sources are by no way , shape of form, infallible, and the Scripture itself is the source by which I measure any and all of these sources to be true or false, or somewhere in the middle. I hope you can see the obvious logical holes in my opponent's arguments, as I do. Peace.

First of I'd like to point out my opponent's obvious and unnecessary anger, which was quite obvious in the most recent argument laid out. Secondly, I would like to clarify that I at not point insulted my opponent's intelligence. That was just how my opponent, unfortunately, chose to interpret it. in fact, in my opening argumentations, I began my stating that I was (to paraphrase) rather impressed with my opponent's intellect. And it is slightly ironic that we are getting into matters of interpretation on what I said regarding my opponent's prior arguments. Now that aside, and then as is to completely destroy my opponent's own complaint about my supposed insult to intelligence, a comment was maid about the brevity of comments in my previous post. It was a passive aggressive insult. Now, I'm not one to take offense to petty remarks that like that; I'm only mentioning it to highlight the obvious hypocrisy of my opponent complaining about my supposed shot to their intellect, then , in a back-handed way, does the same thing to me. Finally, I by no stretch of the imagination have ever or will ever take shots at my opponent's intellect, only the holes in the argument(s) presented. And I'll leave it at that. 

Moving on

I hope I'm not (and I doubt I am) the only one who sees the numerous problems with these statements. First of all, my opponent has created false premises by which the conclusions are equally fallacious. Allow to me to demonstrate. "So , if there is a conflict between Scripture and Tradition, then this leaves two options; either both Scripture and Tradition are non-infallible, or either one or the other owes to a faulty transmission and must be disregarded at worst, downplayed at best." First of all, my opponent has created a false duality by claiming that if A + B = C, then A and B can't be trusted, to put it succinctly . But that is , a ridiculously absurd premise. My opponent is arguing the conclusion from the premise, which is logically fallacious, and still doesn't address the obviousness of Tradition must be aligned with Scripture in order to be considered infallible in the first place, which means it isn't and is , again, just a back-handed argument for my position. 

Judging my opponent's opening paragraph it's clear my opponent either doesn't know what an ad hominem attack is and/or have misapplied. To those who don't know, an ad hominem attack is attacking a person's character or reputation instead of the argument itself. If we had more space , I'd ask my opponent to demonstrate where I've done this, and I assure, my opponent couldn't do this. The only thing I did, to be succinct, was point out my opponent's hypocrisy in the post my opponent's  third post of this debate. And I'll just leave it at that.

'Well, that brings me back to my question, what Scriptural premise dictates the use of a prescriptive/descriptive categorization for Scriptural texts? Since you never bothered to answer, I will: there isn't. It's an extra-biblical method, which all comes from the mind of the one who is interpreting the text: by which, according to your logic, would be at worst unreliable, at best an opinion. Ditto for miscellaneous dogmatic things that are not clearly expounded in Scripture, like my favourite, the relationship between predestination and free will or in my opponent's case, why "This is My Body/Blood" does not have a literal meaning to it. Which leads me to the next question: why do we need Tradition?'

To deal with this question, how does one decide between descriptive/prescriptive narrative it's really not that tough , folks. The only question you need to ask yourself is this 'do what I'm reading apply to me right now?' If yes, do it . if not, move on. And , again, I'm NOT saying WHATSOEVER that descriptive narratives , such as the exodus from Egypt , for example , don't have lessons witch which we can glean or learn from , but that they have no bearing on us right now. This just assumes people who read the Bible have enough sense to figure this out. And when we read things, like the 10 Commandments, we know that yes, that applies for all people at all times. again, this assumes the average Bible reader has enough sense to make such deductions. And I think that is a fair assessment.

Without demonstrating proof of this, this is just another empty assertion. May I remind you that you have also not demonstrated an answer to my question #2 - to prove that profitable for teaching necessarily implies sole sufficiency. It would be like concluding "My parents are reliable sources of life advice, therefore it must mean they are the only ones I can trust" (which I believe constitutes a proper paraphrase of 2 Timothy 3:16-17). Is that logically valid? Big nope, I hope you'd answer. Furthermore, you can cite ANY verse in Scripture that talks highly of Scripture, such as Proverbs 30:5-6, St. John 10:35, or Acts 17:8-10, but that's all it means: Scripture holds a high place for Christian life, but not the only thing. Under your system, Acts 8:26-40 would make no sense. Instead of responding "And how can I, unless some man shew me?" before inviting St. Philip to show him the way, the Ethiopian would have better said: "Buzz off, monkey. I'm a scholar, I know what I'm reading about and I don't need no so-called 'Apostle of Jesus' to tell me what to think."

this paragraph is both insulting and intellectually dishonest. Of course my opponent knows I would never advocate to learn the Scriptures in isolation, but that both learning the Scriptures with others and studying by yourself are of equal importance, I'd argue. I am aware that 2 Timothy 3:16-17, doesn't argue itself for the sole authority/supremacy of Scripture. But I would like to point out as I conclude and bring this debate to its finality, that my opponent has not once ever argued for why we now need an authority outside of Scripture. Scripture is more than enough for all we need for life in Christ.

I appreciate the time and effort put forth my opponent as well.

Peace & Grace