The Crumbling Pillars of Protestantism

I. The Protestant Claim

Classical Protestantism asserts Sola Scriptura: that Holy Scripture alone is the sole infallible rule of faith. This claim is presented as humble submission to God’s Word. The Protestant does not deny the usefulness of history, councils, or teachers; he denies only that any of these are infallible. Scripture alone is said to be infallible.

This position rests, whether explicitly acknowledged or not, on two essential pillars.

II. The Two Pillars of Sola Scriptura

Pillar One: Divine Preservation of Scripture

Protestants hold that God has preserved the Bible such that His Word remains intact and reliable for believers today. This includes:

• the canon of Scripture (which books are inspired),
• and the text of Scripture (that it substantially conveys what God revealed).

Importantly, Protestants generally do not claim to know how God did this in detail. They simply affirm that He did. The Bible is received as a given fact of providence.

Pillar Two: The Right and Sufficiency of Private Interpretation

Protestants further hold that Scripture can be understood sufficiently by the believer, assisted by the Holy Spirit and sincerity. While interpretations may differ, they maintain that what is necessary for salvation is accessible, and that God judges the heart rather than perfect intellectual precision.

Crucially, Protestants do not claim infallibility for their interpretations. They openly admit the possibility of error and often say that final certainty will only be known at the judgment seat of Christ.

III. The Instability of the Two Pillars

At first glance, these pillars appear complementary. On closer inspection, they undermine one another.

1. An Infallible Text by Fallible Means

The Protestant claims certainty about the existence of an infallible rule of faith (Scripture), but admits uncertainty about his grasp of that rule. Thus:

• The rule is infallible.
• The reader is fallible.
• No infallible interpreter exists.

This produces a paradox: absolute confidence in the rule, paired with admitted uncertainty in its meaning.

2. Canon without Infallible Authority

The Protestant must also accept the biblical canon as a fact - but without appealing to an infallible Church. The recognition of the canon therefore rests on:

• historical judgment,
• scholarly consensus,
• or personal conviction that God has guided the process.

Yet all three are acknowledged to be fallible. Thus, the Protestant believes he possesses an infallible Bible while conceding that the grounds on which he knows which books belong to it are not infallible.

IV. The Admission of Uncertainty

When pressed, Protestants frequently concede:

• “I may be wrong.”
• “We’ll know for sure at the judgment.”
• “God looks at sincerity, not perfect theology.”
• “We just have to do our best with what we understand.”

This is not a caricature; it is a widely acknowledged Protestant posture. Certainty is postponed to the afterlife. In the meantime, sincerity substitutes for doctrinal certainty.

But this admission has consequences.

If one cannot know with certainty whether one’s interpretation is correct, then the present act of faith is no longer grounded in objective divine authority, but in a hopeful trust that one’s sincere effort will be accepted.

V. The Role of Self‑Deception

Protestants also readily admit that:

• Christians can misunderstand Scripture.
• Even sincere believers can be mistaken.
• One can believe falsely while thinking oneself guided by God.

Thus, self‑deception is an acknowledged possibility within the system.

Yet without an infallible external authority, there is no principled way to distinguish:

• true illumination from mistaken conviction,
• guidance of the Spirit from personal bias,
• correct understanding from self‑deception.

The believer must therefore trust that his reading, his discernment, his sincerity is not deceiving him - while piously admitting that it could be.

VI. The Unavoidable Collapse

At this critical juncture, one might expect the Protestant to invoke a higher safeguard against error: “It is not just my own intellect; the Holy Spirit Himself guides me into all truth.” This claim appears, at first, to transcend mere subjectivism. It invokes divine help, promising light beyond private reason.

But here is the inescapable dilemma: Every Protestant makes this same appeal - across every denomination, with every contradictory doctrine. Lutherans, Baptists, Pentecostals, Anglicans, and thousands more each claim the Spirit’s leading, each find different truths. If the test of truth is “the Spirit’s guidance,” but all claim it and yet disagree, then the appeal to the Spirit as judge is rendered powerless and indistinguishable from one’s own conviction.

Protestants themselves acknowledge:

• The Spirit’s guidance does not render their interpretation infallible.
• Sincere believers, invoking the same Spirit, reach irreconcilable conclusions.
• Self-deception remains a live threat, even for those who invoke the Spirit.

Thus, “Sola Scriptura” soon collapses into “Sola Spiritu” - not Scripture alone, but “the Spirit’s guidance” as the operative principle. Yet this, too, must be judged, weighed, and ultimately decided by the individual. No external, objective criterion exists to prove which “Spirit-led” reading is truly of God and which is merely self-assured.

The end result is inescapable:

Sola Scriptura collapses into Sola Spiritu, which collapses into Sola Ego.

The rule of faith, claimed as God’s Word or God’s Spirit, is ultimately the rule of self: the individual’s judgment, under the banner of sincerity and supposed guidance, is the final authority. What begins as an appeal to the infallible text, mediated by the Spirit, ends as nothing but confidence in oneself.

VII. Where Certainty Actually Resides

When all appeals are exhausted - history, scholarship, inner conviction, sincerity - what finally grounds the Protestant’s confidence?

Not an infallible Church.
Not an infallible interpretation.
Not even infallible certainty that one’s faith is correct now.

What remains is this:

“I believe this is Scripture, and I believe this is what it means.”

That belief rests nowhere but in the individual subject.

Thus, when reduced to its first principle, Sola Scriptura does not end in Scripture at all, but in the self who judges Scripture.

VIII. From Sola Scriptura to Sola Ego

It is now clear that the Protestant claim to Sola Scriptura cannot sustain itself on the ground it claims to occupy. What began as “Scripture alone” quickly became “the Spirit alone,” but without any objective means of verification, this inevitably resolves into the authority of the individual - Sola Ego.

Every step of the Protestant epistemology is a retreat from objectivity. First, the Church’s authority is denied; then, the canon of Scripture is accepted by private judgment; finally, the meaning of the scriptures in that canon is entrusted to the supposed leading of the Spirit, which is judged, again, by self.

Thus, the principle of Sola Scriptura is not just unstable; it is self-defeating. It reduces, inexorably, to the sovereignty of self; the individual as the final judge of God’s revelation, the canon, and the meaning of truth itself.

What kind of faith remains when the ultimate standard of truth is no longer God’s objective revelation, but each individual’s private judgment? When self becomes the interpreter and judge of unchanging truth, what follows is not unity or certainty, but a practical confusion about what that truth demands of us here and now.

To recognize this is to see that Sola Ego is not merely a personal mistake, but a radical rupture with the very foundations of God’s authority, authentic faith, and even right reason.

IX. Relativism Devours Faith

Even the most zealous Protestant will recoil at any accusation of relativism.
They will insist: “Truth is absolute. God has revealed it in His Word. The Bible is the final standard. What God has spoken, no man can overturn.”

But this is where Protestantism’s final contradiction comes into view:
It confesses an absolute truth, but admits that no one can know it with certainty here and now. Every doctrine, every interpretation, every “truth” remains open to endless dispute and personal revision; subject to the shifting judgments of each individual conscience.

In theory, Protestantism preaches the sovereignty of divine truth; in practice, it reduces truth to a multitude of private, competing, and uncertain opinions.

1. Functional Relativism: Many Absolutes, Endless Opinions

Protestantism loudly affirms an absolute truth, yet admits that:

• No one has an infallible grasp of it.
• Sincere, Spirit-invoking believers reach contradictory conclusions.
• Every interpretation is fallible and open to revision.
• “We’ll find out who was right on Judgment day.”

What is this but practical relativism?
Not the denial of truth, but the collapse of any living access to it.
In practice, faith becomes an endless process of personal searching and private opinions; always being open for more truth - always seeking and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.

2. Sola Ego: The Cult of Self

Here, the final judge is not God, not the Bible, not the Spirit - but self:

• My conscience,
• My sincerity,
• My interpretation.

Protestantism enthrones the individual as the only arbiter of divine truth on earth.
Every man is his own magisterium, his own council, his own pope.

3. The Tragedy: A Faith That Cannot Save

This is not only theologically bankrupt, it is an affront to both God and reason:

• Against God, because He gave the world not a book to be deciphered in a thousand ways, but a living Church to teach, guard, and proclaim His Truth with certainty.
• Against Faith, because true faith requires an assent to divine truth on God’s authority, not a tentative opinion based on private conviction.
• Against Reason, because reason demands an objective, knowable rule of faith, not a personal interpretation that might be wrong until proven otherwise in eternity.

What then becomes of faith?
It is reduced to a wish, a hope, a best guess - never certainty.
The supposed “objectivity” of Protestantism is an illusion; under the hood, it is Sola Ego; faith in self, masked by appeals to sincerity and the Spirit.

So at the end of the road for Sola Scriptura,

• It promises truth, but delivers only opinions.
• It claims certainty, but leaves the soul in doubt.
• It claims to honor God, but enthrones self as the last judge.

This is relativism with a Christian accent, and it is not the faith delivered once for all to the saints. Only in the Church which Christ established does faith escape the prison of private judgment and become, truly, the obedience of faith.

Conclusion

We have traced the logic of Sola Scriptura to its bitter end.
Despite every assertion of biblical authority, Protestantism ultimately rests upon the shifting sand of private judgment - Sola Ego. The result is not certainty, but a chaos of personal opinions; not unity, but division; not faith, but doubt. The claim to hold absolute truth is hollow when every believer is left to guess, hope, and dispute - without any real means of knowing if he stands in the truth or in error.

If faith is to be more than a guess, more than a private conviction, it must be grounded not in self, but in God - as He speaks with living, visible authority on earth. Christ did not leave His followers a book to be endlessly debated, but a Church:

“He who hears you, hears Me.” (Luke 10:16)
“The Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.” (1 Tim 3:15)

The answer is not to abandon your search for truth, but to abandon the illusion of self-sufficiency. The Catholic Church stands alone as the living voice of Christ, the only home where faith is not mere opinion, but divine certainty; where doctrine is not a matter of private judgment, but is received from the hands of the Spouse of Christ herself.

The way out of the prison of Sola Ego is the way Christ Himself established:
submission to the authority He gave to His Church.

To every soul who seeks truth (not just another argument, but certainty grounded in something greater than one’s own reasoning) consider this: On what foundation does your confidence ultimately rest?

If your confidence is built only on your personal knowledge of scripture, your debating skill, or an inner sense of conviction, then what do you possess beyond the echo of your own mind? But if Christ, who is Truth itself, truly established a Church to speak with His authority on earth, then only there can your faith rest upon the word of God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

The call is not to abandon the pursuit of truth, nor the study of Scripture, nor even rigorous debate, but to root all of these in the authority Christ gave to His Church - so that faith might rest not on human opinion, but on the unshakable foundation of divine testimony.

Do not settle for the shifting certainty of your own understanding. Seek the assurance that comes from God Himself, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, speaking through the Church He founded. Here alone is faith not mere opinion, but certitude worthy of God.

“I would not believe the Gospel, were I not moved thereto by the authority of the Catholic Church.” - Saint Augustine