Mark 7:8-9
"'You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.' Then he said to them, 'You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition!'"
The whole passage is actually Mark 7:1-23 (also Matthew 15:1-20), but the two verses I have given pretty much sum of the Protestant argument concerning this passage. They say that Jesus condemned tradition, so therefore we are to go by the bible alone.
The problem with this argument is that if Jesus condemned tradition, then He also condemned Paul! In 1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, and 2 Thessalonians 3:6, Paul talks highly of tradition. So, right off the bat, we can see that not all tradition is bad. So, what traditions was Jesus condemning? He was condemning traditions that go against God's commandments (Mark 7:8-9). Just because the Pharisees taught human doctrines as God's word doesn't mean that the Catholic Church does also. If Protestants can't show that the command to follow the oral Tradition in 2 Thessalonians 2:15 ended, then there's no reason why we should group Catholic Tradition with the Pharisees' tradition of men. Now, some Protestants may say that Catholic Tradition goes against God's word, but that's besides the point. I am not going to defend every single Catholic doctrine here because the point here is whether or not Jesus condemned tradition, which, as I have shown, He didn't.
Matthew 22:29
"Jesus answered them, 'You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God."
Protestants use this verse (along with others such as Matthew 4:4, 7, 10; 11:10; 21:13; 26:24, 31; John 6:45; 8:17) where Jesus appealed to Scripture to try and "prove" sola scriptura; they say that Jesus never appealed to tradition. As a matter of fact, they say, Jesus even condemns tradition in Mark 7:1-23! As I have shown, Jesus did not condemn tradition, and, as I will show, Jesus did not believe in sola scriptura.
First of all, both Catholics and Protestants hold Scripture in very high regard and appeal to it often, so Jesus' appealing to Scripture was not contrary to Catholicism.
Even if Jesus never appealed to tradition, that STILL would not prove sola scriptura because He never said to go only by Scripture! However, as I have shown, Jesus DID approve of tradition (Matthew 23:2-3). Also, the apostles, who taught everything that Jesus taught (Matthew 28:20), appealed to Jewish tradition. One example is Jude 9, where Jude talks of the exchange between Satan and Michael the Archangel concerning what would happen to Moses' body. Where is this in Jewish Scripture? It isn't!
