2 Tim 3:16-17

2 Tim 3:16-17 is being used by Fundamentalists to prove the completeness and sufficiency of the Bible.

Not so, Catholics would say, citing passages where the Bible itself says it’s not complete (Jn 20:30, Jn 21:25) and even pointing to the Church as the final authority on matters of faith, morals, and discipline (Mt 18:15-18), not the Bible, as Fundamentalists believe.

So the question is: “How valid is this Fundamentalist claim?”

Karl Keating observes that “to say that all inspired writings ‘has its uses’ is one thing , to say that such a remark means that only inspired writing need be followed is something else. Besides, there is a telling argument against the Fundamentalists’ claim. It is the contradiction that arises out of their own interpretation of this verse.

John Henry Newman explains it this way:

‘It is quite evident that this passage furnishes us no argument whatever that the Sacred Scripture, without Tradition, is the sole rule of faith, for, although Sacred Scripture is profitable for these four ends, sill it is not said to be sufficient.

'The Apostle requires the aid of Tradiion (2 Thess 2:15). Moreover, the Apostle here refers to the Scriptures which Timothy was taught in his infancy. Now a good part of the New Testament was not written in his boyhood : some of the Catholic epistles were not written even when St. Paul wrote this, and none of the books of the New Testament were then placed on the canon of the Scripture books.

'He refers then, to the Scripture of the Old Testament, and if the argument from this passage proved anything, it would prove too much, viz, that the Scriptures of the New Testament were not necessary for a rule of faith.’”