Sola scriptura is self-refuting. It is sola ego

By Bob Sungenis

Every doctrine one believes is based on the authority one accepts. I decided to test the pet theory of [sola scriptura] by asking numerous Protestant scholars and pastors to help me find sola scriptura in the Bible. By this point, I wasn't too surprised to find that none was able to provide a convincing answer.

They pointed to verses that spoke of the veracity and inerrancy of the Bible, but could show none that explicitly taught that Scripture is our sole, formally sufficient authority. Interestingly, some of these Protestants were candid enough to admit that the Bible nowhere taught sola scriptura , but they compensated for this curious lacuna by saying the Bible doesn't have to teach sola scriptura in order for the doctrine to be true. But I could see that this position was utterly untenable. For if sola scriptura—the idea that the Bible is formally sufficient for Christians—is not taught in the Bible, sola scriptura is a false and self-refuting proposition.

As I studied Scripture in the light of the Catholic materials I had been sent, I began to see that the Bible in fact points to the Church as being the final arbiter of truth in all spiritual matters (cf. 1 Timothy 3:15; Matthew 16:18-19; 18:18; Luke 10:16).

This made sense, especially on a practical level. Since only an entity with the ability to observe and correctly interpret information can act as an authority, I saw that the Bible, though it contains God-breathed revelation, cannot act as a final "authority" since it is dependent on thinking personalities to observe what it says and, more importantly, interpret what it means. I also saw that the Bible warns us that it contains difficult and confusing information which is capable of (if not prone to) being twisted into all sorts of fanciful and false interpretations (2 Peter 3:16).

During my years of wandering through the theological wilderness of Protestantism, I always knew that something was wrong with it, but I just couldn't put my finger on it. Now I was beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together. The more I thought about it the more I began to see that the theory of sola scriptura had done untold damage to Christendom. The most obvious evidence of this damage was Protestanism itself: a huge mass of conflicting, bickering denominations, causing, by its very nature of "protest" and "defiance," an endless ; proliferation of chaos and controversy.

My seventeen-year experience with Protestant biblical scholars had made one thing very clear to me: Sola scriptura is a euphemism for "sola ego."

What I mean is that every Protestant has his own interpretation of what Scripture says and, of course, he believes that his interpretation is superior to everyone else's. Each advances his own view, assuming (if not actually claiming) that the Holy Spirit has personally led him to that interpretation.

As a Protestant I greatly admired Martin Luther and John Calvin for their boldness to interpret the Bible for themselves. Now I was faced with the probability that these heroes of mine were very intelligent but also very prideful and rebellious men. After I had read a few scholarly biographies of these two reformers I realized that much about their personal lives was never told to us in seminary. These insights caused me to take an even more skeptical look at the Reformers and the Reformation as a whole. I realize that there are problems within the Catholic Church. In every age, the Church has had to endure the blight of worldly, sinful, and heretical members.