Material and Formal sufficiency of Scripture

Difference between material and formal sufficiency of Scripture

 Catholic apologist Mark Shea writes:

The Catholic Faith can agree that Scripture is sufficient, But … it also warns that there is a distinction between material and formal sufficiency … Simply put, it is the difference between having a big enough pile of bricks to build a house and having a house made of bricks. Material sufficiency means that all the bricks necessary to build doctrine is there in Scripture. However, it also teaches that since the meaning of Scripture is not always clear and that sometimes a doctrine is implied rather than explicit, other things besides Scripture have been handed to us from the apostles: things like Sacred Tradition (which is the mortar that holds the bricks together in the right order and position) and the Magisterium or teaching authority of the Church (which is the trowel in the hand of the Master Builder). Taken together, these three things - Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium - are formally sufficient for knowing the revealed truth of God.http://socrates58.blogspot.com/2006/10/dialogue-on-clearness-and-formal.html

In contrast, those who hold to Bible-only revelation hold the notion that Scripture Alone is formally sufficient and therefore does not need Sacred Tradition or the Magisterium to elucidate its true meaning.

{in Not by Scripture Alone, edited by Robert A. Sungenis, Santa Barbara, CA: Queenship Publishing Co., 1997, pp. 181-182}

comment 86 http://greenbaggins.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/whose-lens-are-you-using/

 I only ask you that don’t bother providing quotes from these Fathers, or others, regarding the material sufficiency of scripture because we all know that this is not the same as sola scriptura.

Yves Congar states, “We can admit sola scriptura in the sense of a material sufficiency of canonical Scripture. This means that Scripture contains, in one way or another, all truths necessary for salvation. This position can claim the support of many Fathers and early theologians. It has been, and still is, held by many modern theologians.” . . . At Trent it was widely . . . admitted that all the truths necessary to salvation are at least outlined in Scripture. . . . We find fully verified the formula of men like Newman and Kuhn: Totum in Scriptura, totum in Traditione, `All is in Scripture, all is in Tradition.’ .. `Written’ and `unwritten’ indicate not so much two material domains as two modes or states of knowledge” (Tradition and Traditions,New York: Macmillian, 1967,, 410-414).

This is important for a discussion of sola scriptura because earlier you attempted to prove their doctrine by asserting the material sufficiency of Scripture. That is a move which does no good because a Catholic can agree with material sufficiency. In order to prove sola scriptura in the fathers you must prove the different and much stronger claim that Scripture is so clear that no outside information or authority is needed in order to interpret it.

So, unless you are going to show that the fathers like Augustine and Aquinas did not hold that councils were infallible and that the church did not have the chrism to interpret the scriptures than I would ask that you don’t waste my time.