You wrote that your proposition would fail if I could provide one example of an oral apostolic teaching that survived but was later rejected by Protestants.
Consider prayer and Eucharistic commemoration for the dead.
John Chrysostom, in the fourth century, says explicitly: “Not in vain did the Apostles order that remembrance should be made of the dead in the dreadful Mysteries.” (Homily 3 on Philippians
That is not merely Chrysostom saying, “this is an old custom.” He explicitly attributes the practice to the Apostles.
And the practice did survive. The Catholic Church still offers the Eucharistic sacrifice for the faithful departed today; see Catechism of the Catholic Church §1371:
Now compare that with the major Protestant traditions.
Luther, in the Smalcald Articles, rejects the rites and Masses associated with the dead and writes:
“God has commanded or assigned us nothing about the dead.”
And the Westminster Confession, one of the foundational confessions of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition, states explicitly that prayer is to be made for the living:“but not for the dead.”
Westminster Confession of Faith 21.4:
So here is the historical sequence:
A fourth-century bishop explicitly says that the Apostles ordered the liturgical commemoration of the dead; that practice continued in the historic Church and continues in Catholicism today; and major branches of the Reformation later explicitly rejected prayer and liturgical rites for the dead.
That seems to satisfy your own criterion rather directly.
And there is also a methodological problem with the phrase “without the benefit of being put in writing.”
If you mean that the tradition must have remained oral forever and must never have been written down by anyone, then your test is impossible in principle and it’s bad faith to argue otherwise: how the hell could I historically demonstrate the existence of an ancient oral tradition today unless somebody eventually recorded that tradition in writing?
The relevant distinction is not: oral tradition vs. anything that was ever written down.
It is: apostolic tradition transmitted in the Church vs. teaching derived solely from the canonical Scriptures.
Chrysostom’s written testimony is evidence that he believed the Church possessed a practice transmitted from the Apostles. The fact that Chrysostom eventually wrote about that oral/liturgical tradition does not magically make the tradition originate in Scripture.
And it shows directly that the Church retained practices inherited by the apostles while the reformers, in their novelty (which is recognized as such even by Protestant historians like Von Harnack), which consisted in divorcing the Scripture from Tradition and Magisterium (Scripture, Tradition and Magisterium were all parts of the same rule of faith for the Church of the first 1500+ years), refused that.
You wanted a proof, I provided it.
This is rich. Actual historians have “their own intepretation” and so you can simple discard and ignore the evidence they have produced (downgrading it to simple personal intepretation that can be dismissed) instead of trying to refute it. Wow. Just…wow.
I’m certainly not going to accept that the Holy Spirit produces thousands of different churches with mutually incompatible belief. The Holy Spirit is God and God is not the author of confusion. (1 Corinthians 14:33)
Why did you say that I “loathe” Craig? I’ve simply shown that his own intepretation destroys (inadvertently, I’ve never doubted his faith) the Christian monotheism William Lane Craig and the Nicene Creed - #6 by 1Cor15.54
That’s not “loathing” him at all, just showing what happens when someone think that they can judge the decrees of an ecumenical council and that modern people somehow are in position of knowing better and that the Holy Spirit wasn’t inspiring the Fathers at the council (which would lead us to believe that their decrees were manmade decrees and, as such, disputable).
But I certainly don’t loathe him. He is a sincere Christian who has done a lot to promote the love and faith for and in Christ.
Which shows once again how fallacious is that concept.