Shadowing Practice: Tradition and Scripture: Meeting the Identity Challenge - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Catholics often appeal to 2 Thessalonians 2.15 to support the belief that both Scripture and tradition communicate God's revelation to us.

There, Paul tells the Thessalonians to hold fast to the traditions they received, whether by word of mouth or by written letter.

But many Protestants push back.

They argue that Catholics wrongly assumed that by quote-unquote traditions, Paul meant things other than what would later get written down in Scripture.

So are Catholics reading too much into this?

Are we mistaken?

Stick around, and we'll work through it together.

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All right, let's dive in.

The Second Vatican Council and his Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, taught that the Church,

quote, does not derive her certainty about all revealed truths from the Holy Scriptures alone, close quote.

That comes from Section 9.

Consequently, the Council concludes, quote,

both Scripture and tradition must be accepted and honored with equal sentiments of devotion and reverence, close quote.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church reaffirms this in paragraph 82.

A key biblical text that Catholics cite in support of this teaching is 2 Thessalonians 2.15.

Right after speaking about the Thessalonians being saved through, quote, belief in the truth, close quote, to which they were called through the quote-unquote gospel,

Paul writes, stand firm and hold to the traditions, Greek their periodoses, which you were taught by us either by a word of mouth or by letter.

Notice that, word of mouth or letter.

For Paul, the truth of the gospel is found in sacred tradition, along with sacred scripture.

So, we shouldn't look to scripture alone to know God's revelation.

We must also look to the non-written apostolic tradition.

Both are binding.

So the argument goes.

Now, as I mentioned earlier,

some Protestants respond by saying Catholics wrongly assume that these quote-unquote traditions include truths not also contained in Scripture.

For example, Protestant apologist Ron Rhodes, in his book Reasoning from the Scriptures with Catholics, argues as follows, quote,

The apostles for a time communicated their teachings orally until those teachings could be permanently recorded in written form.

That comes from pages 79 to 80 of his book.

He then quotes 19th century Bible expositors, Jameson, Faucet, and Brown for support, who write this.

inspired tradition in paul's sense is not a supplementary oral tradition completing our written word

but it is identical with the written word now complete then

the latter written word not being complete the tradition was necessarily in part oral in part written

and continued so until the latter written word being complete before the death of St. John, the last apostle.

The former oral tradition was no longer needed.

That comes from their 1882, a commentary critical, experimental, and practical on the Old and New Testaments.

The late Norman Geisler and Ralph McKenzie make a similar argument, and their book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, Agreements and Differences.

Here's what they write, quote,

The traditions, teachings of the apostles that were revelations were written down.

There is no evidence

that all the revelation God gave the apostles to express was not inscripturated in the 27 books of the New Testament.

Close quote.

So in short, for these guys, oral tradition and written scripture are identical.

Or to be more precise, oral apostolic tradition and written scripture are identical.

There's nothing in the oral apostolic preaching, so the argument goes, that isn't also in scripture.

Okay, so here's my first response.

At least the way Rhodes, Geisler, and McKenzie present this argument, it's simply an assertion.

They assert that everything the apostles preached was written down in their inspired apostolic writings,

but they don't actually provide evidence from the New Testament to support that claim.

And here's why that matters.

If a Protestant oath is the sola scriptura, then he's going to have to justify his theological claims from Scripture alone.

So if he believes that everything the apostles preached was later inscripturated, and that belief cannot itself be demonstrated from Scripture,

well then he faces a dilemma.

Either he must reject that belief or admit that it's not binding as part of the Christian faith.

Either way, the assertion doesn't help the challenge.

Now, to be fair, some Protestants do attempt to argue for this identity claim from Scripture, and I'll deal with those arguments in a future episode.

But as it stands here, this version of the challenge doesn't succeed.

Okay, my second response.

If the oral apostolic traditions are identical to the inspired apostolic writings, Well, then Paul's command in 2 Thessalonians 2.15 becomes redundant.

Why command believers to hold fast to the oral apostolic traditions if everything in them is already in their writings?

He could have just said, stick to the written epistles.

The distinction itself strongly suggests there's content within the oral apostolic traditions that are not in their inspired apostolic writings.

Finally, the identity claim is just factually false.

The New Testament itself gives us examples of apostolic teachings,

divinely revealed truths, that are not contained in their inspired apostolic writings.

Let's look at a few of them.

In Mark 13, 14, Jesus speaks of the, quote, desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be, close quote.

And Mark inserts, let the reader understand

That implies the reader knows what Jesus is talking about

Yet nowhere in the New Testament do we get an explanation of what Jesus is talking about In 2 Thessalonians 2,

3-6, the very same chapter of the primary verse under consideration And the preceding verses,

Paul talks about the quote-unquote man of lawlessness and says to the Thessalonians, you know what is restraining him now.

But he never tells us what's restraining him.

It's not recorded in his written epistles.

He reminds them that he taught them that when he was with them, but he doesn't record it.

In 1 Corinthians 5.9, Paul mentions a previous letter to the Corinthians, one that we don't possess.

In Colossians 4.16, he refers to a letter to the Laodiceans.

Whether that's the epistle to the Ephesians or a lost letter, the point still stands.

There were apostolic writings we no longer have.

And if what Paul wrote was inspired, and most Christians agree it was,

well then, there were divinely revealed truths not contained in the New Testament canon.

In 1 Corinthians 15.29, Paul references, quote-unquote, baptisms for the dead.

But he doesn't explain what that means.

Nor does he say if what they were doing is good or bad.

Whatever Paul's full teaching on that practice was, it isn't fully preserved in scripture.

In 1 Corinthians 11, 34, after giving instructions about the Eucharist, Paul says, when I come, I'll give you further directions.

This comes right after Paul gave warnings in verses 27 through 30 about receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy manner

and without discerning the Lord's body.

Those further directions, therefore, would have concerned the Eucharist.

Surely a matter of divine revelation just as much as what he taught in the previous verses.

Yet, they're not recorded.

You see the pattern?

John does something similar.

In John 21-25, he says that Jesus did many other things that were not written.

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In 2 John 12 and 3 John 13-14, he says he has much more to write, but he prefers to speak to them face-to-face.

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Surely that face-to-face instruction included apostolic teaching, which entails divinely revealed truths.

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Finally, Protestants themselves believe certain truths about divine revelation that are not found in the New Testament.

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I'll just list three here for brevity's sake.

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I plan to do a full episode on this in a future episode, so stay tuned.

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So here are the three.

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One, Jesus will not appear again to appoint new apostles, like he did for Paul.

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Two, public revelations ceased with the death of the last apostle.

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And three, there will be no new inspired scriptures.

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These are theological truths held by Protestants to be binding for

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Christian belief yet they're not stated in the new testament and

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if someone appeals to jude 3 where jude says the faith

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has been once for all delivered to the saints that's not going to work

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because he would have to reject the epistle of jude itself

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or at least all the verses that come after verse 3

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since all christian doctrine would have already been delivered complete by the time they were written.

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But no Christian wants to do that.

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So the identity claim that the oral apostolic teachings are the same as the inspired apostolic writings simply doesn't hold up biblically.

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Now, some Protestants, like James White in his 2024 debate with Alex, who at the time had the channel Voice of Reason,

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respond by saying that these passages are futile as defeaters,

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Because sola scriptura doesn't require scripture to contain everything that God ever revealed.

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Instead, it only requires that scripture contain everything God intends future generations to believe.

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Here's how White puts it in his debate with Alex.

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The apostles did not address all topics, nor did they need to, nor did the Lord Jesus Christ have to address all topics in everything that he said.

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God is going to give us what he wants us to have.

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The New Testament does not give us an exhaustive account of every word Jesus ever said.

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That is not an argument against Sola Scriptura, because Sola Scriptura is not claiming that we have everything that Jesus said, or that we need everything that Jesus said.

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Now, I actually think White's counter here succeeds within the context of that debate.

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The examples I shared earlier don't automatically defeat White's version of Sola Scriptura.

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And unfortunately, some Catholic apologists have overplayed that hand, as Alex did in that debate.

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But my appeal to non-written apostolic teachings wasn't to say, here are non-written apostolic doctrines you must believe.

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It was simply to refute the identity claim.

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And the New Testament evidence that I shared indeed does that.

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Now, I do think those examples testified to in the New

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Testament of non-written apostolic teachings can help us out in another way.

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They show us the theological worldview of the apostles, and that's important.

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The apostles were not operating with a scripture-only paradigm.

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They lived and taught within what we might call a two-fold stream understanding of divine revelation.

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oral apostolic teaching, and inspired apostolic writings.

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Most Protestants admit this applied during the apostolic age.

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They argue Sola Scriptura became the paradigm only after the apostles died, or after unwritten traditions were lost.

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Here's my contention.

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If that's true, and the apostles were working off of a two-fold strain view of divine revelation,

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Well then, the New Testament passages normally used to support sola scriptura cannot possibly teach sola scriptura.

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Take for example, 2 Timothy 3, 16-17, a favorite for Sola Scriptura advocates.

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Paul says Scripture is inspired and profitable for making the man of God complete and equipped for every good work.

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Many Protestants see Sola Scriptura there.

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But Paul says nothing that would indicate he has in mind future Christians centuries later.

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He's speaking directly to Timothy, giving Timothy instructions how to fulfill his ministry as a quote-unquote man of God.

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This being the case, Paul can only have in mind the two-fold string paradigm of revelation, not the scripture-only paradigm.

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And the text itself shows that Paul did in fact have this paradigm in mind.

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In verse 15, Paul tells Timothy that the sacred writings he was acquainted with from his childhood, that would be the Old Testament,

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instructed him for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

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Now, how could the Old Testament have instructed Timothy for salvation through Jesus when the Old Testament never mentions Jesus,

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at least explicitly?

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Well, the answer is through the apostolic preaching.

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So Paul cannot be teaching sola scriptura in that passage because he doesn't have the future church in mind,

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and he's operating within a paradigm that includes both written scripture and unwritten inspired apostolic teaching.

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Again, he's operating off of the twofold stream view of divine revelation.

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Now, a Protestant might try and counter that although Paul isn't directly thinking of future generations,

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that doesn't mean we can't extract Sola Scriptura principles that would apply to Christians in the future.

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But that just misses the point of my argument.

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I'm not saying that Paul can't be teaching Sola Scriptura simply because he's not thinking of future generations.

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Rather, it's the lack of consideration for the future church along with his theological worldview of the twofold streams of divine revelation.

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Such a view of divine revelation excludes any possibility that Paul would be laying down sola scriptural principles in the first place.

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Moreover, if we allow for Paul's teaching to apply to future generations,

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well then it's going to be the two-fold string paradigm of divine revelation that would carry forward, not sola scriptura.

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So let's sum it up.

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First, it's just simply false that oral apostolic teachings are identical to the inspired apostolic writings.

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Second, it's true that the existence of non-written apostolic teachings testified to by the New Testament

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doesn't automatically defeat every version of sola scriptura.

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But third, and most importantly,

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those non-written apostolic teachings testified to by the New Testament revealed the theological framework the apostles operated within.

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And that framework was not sola scriptura.

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Which means the New Testament passages normally used to support sola scriptura, like 2 Timothy 3, 16-17,

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can't possibly be teaching sola scriptura.

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Well, my friends, that's it for today If you found this video helpful, make sure to like it, comment below, and share it with someone who might need to hear this

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And don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't done so already For more resources, check out Catholic Answers at catholic.com My personal website,

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corlobrusor.com If you want me to come and speak at your event, be sure to visit catholicanswerspeakers.com Lastly,

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You can sign up over at drcarlo.com with Dr. Spelled Out.

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Friends, thanks for hanging out with me today.

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I'll see you next time.

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God bless.

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22 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Tradition and Scripture: Meeting the Identity Challenge”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: apostolic, written, scripture, Paul, sola. This video has 186 sentences and 2489 words to shadow. The speech runs for 18:11. The speaker talks at a steady 137 words per minute, a comfortable pace for shadowing. Only 77% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
apostolic adjective	/ˌæp.əˈstɑːl.ɪk/	Pertaining to apostles or their practice or teaching; pertaining to the apostles (of early Christianity) or their teachings.
scripture noun	/ˈskɹɪpt͡ʃɚ/	A sacred writing or holy book.
solum noun	/ˈsəʊləm/	Within a soil profile, a set of related soil horizons that share the same cycle of pedogenic processes; the upper layers of a soil profile that are affected by…
testament noun	/ˈtɛs.tə.mənt/	A solemn, authentic instrument in writing, by which a person declares his or her will as to disposal of his or her inheritance (estate and effects) after his…
revelation noun	/ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/	The act of revealing or disclosing.
apostle noun	/əˈpɑsl̩/	A missionary, or leader of a religious mission, especially one in the early Christian Church (but see Apostle).
inspire verb	/ɪnˈspaɪə(ɹ)/	To infuse into the mind; to communicate to the spirit; to convey, as by a divine or supernatural influence; to disclose preternaturally; to produce in, as by…
paradigm noun	/ˈpæɹ.ə.daɪm/	A pattern, a way of doing something; especially a pattern of thought, a system of beliefs, a conceptual framework.
unquote		Used in speech to indicate the end of a quotation.
theological adjective	/θi.əˈlɑd͡ʒɪkl/	Of or relating to theology.
epistle noun	/ɪˈpɪs.əl/	A literary composition in the form of a letter or series of letters, especially one in verse.
preach verb	/pɹit͡ʃ/	To give a sermon.
fold verb	/ˈfəʊld/	To bend (any thin material, such as paper) over so that it comes in contact with itself.
divinely adverb		In a divine manner.
bind verb	/ˈbaɪ̯nd/	To tie; to confine by any ligature.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
spell out verb		To form (a word) from letters; say the letters in a word.
carry forward verb		To transfer to a new page, column, ledger, or similar entity.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
hold up verb		To wait or delay.
lay down verb		To give up, surrender, or yield (e.g. a weapon), usually by placing it on the ground.
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
stick around verb		To stay; to linger; to remain.
work through verb		To get past a difficult or stressful situation by thinking or talking about it.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

Stick around, and we'll work through it together.
I'm so glad to have you here with me.
All right, let's dive in.
Let's look at a few of them.
You see the pattern?

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	must be accepted · being saved · were taught
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	haven't done · has been · have overplayed

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 39 contractions and reduced forms, such as doesn't, can't, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: theological /θi.əˈlɑd͡ʒɪkl/, unworthy /ʌnˈwɝði/, oath /ˈoʊθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, assertion /əˈsɜɹʃən/, salvation /sælˈveɪ.ʃn̩/, devotion /dɪˈvoʊʃən/, contention /kənˈtɛnʃən/
Long words — get the stress right: apostolic /ˌæp.əˈstɑːl.ɪk/, revelation /ˌɹɛv.əˈleɪ.ʃən/, theological /θi.əˈlɑd͡ʒɪkl/, apologist /əˈpɒl.ə.d͡ʒɪst/, inscripturated /ɪnˈskɹɪp.t͡ʃəˌɹeɪt.ɪd/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Shadow it sentence by sentence at normal speed, repeating each one until your rhythm matches the speaker.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like apostolic, scripture, solum.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Tradition and Scripture: Meeting the Identity Challenge - Learn English Speaking with Video

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