Bible Alone?

From time to time I like to check out Protestant web-sites in order to get the most up to date challenges against the Church. Never surprises me the things they will come up with. Anyways one thing that stood out to me was all their statements of faith had this as their number one doctrine:

The Bible is the inspired and only infallible and authoritative Word of God (2 Timothy 3:16).

Most of these websites did not mention any Scripture to back this man made tradition up, however some did and the ones that did all quoted 2 Timothy 3:16. Have Protestants even looked at what this verse actually says? Well lets look:

2 Timothy 3:16

• All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness (NIV)
• All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness (NASB)
• All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (KJV)
• All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (NKJV)

Here are four examples from four different very popular Protestant translations..... Notice what is missing, the word, "alone". These Christian websites indicate that the Bible is the ONLY authority however their scripture verse used to back this up does not show that. The Bible says, and I agree with the Bible, is that it is USEFUL or PROFITABLE depending on your version of the Bible.

It is rather ironic that it is the Catholic Church that gets criticized because Protestants think that we have beliefs that contradict scripture, yet the fundamental belief, the doctrine of "the Bible alone" is not scriptural. They can offer no scriptural proof for this doctrine, only verses that allude to that the Bible is God breathed, inerrant, and valuable for teaching, reproof and instruction in righteousness, all things Catholics believe.

Further puzzling is all this quote says is that "scripture" is useful and profitable. How do we know what scripture is profitable? The Bible does not tell us what books should and should not be in the Bible, therefore how is one to tell what the author here is trying to indicate?

Now lets take this verse into context and see what the author is trying to say. One verse directly behind this states:

And that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus (2 Timothy 3:15)

Scripture that you have known from childhood? What scripture has Timothy known since Childhood? Certainly not the NT, seeing as it wasn't canonized until the 4th century, the scripture that is being refered to here was the OT, so if this verse is saying anything at all it is saying to much for these Protestants. If we are to read how these Protestants are reading it, we would be commanded to take the OT as our final and only authority, which of course is silly.

There of course is much more to reveal this man made tradition, but this was just an answer to the 2 Timothy 3:16 verse which does not, no matter how much protestants want it to be, a proof for their Bible alone doctrine.

Pax Tecum