Gavin Ortlund’s Case for Protestantism

I grew up and came to know Jesus as my Lord and Savior in the Greek Orthodox Church. During my college years, the Holy Spirit, partly through the ministry of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, moved me into the world of Evangelical Protestantism. That took place during the 1980s, a period when many Orthodox, Catholic, and high Protestants found their way into the low Protestant world, often joining Baptist, Charismatic, or non-denominational Bible churches.

Over the last fifteen years, I have noticed an unexpected reversal in that movement. Again and again, I have watched as my finest, most committed, most godly students have left Evangelical Protestantism to cross the Tiber or the Bosporus to join Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox. My own daughter recently joined the Roman Catholic Church. As I have questioned those students, my daughter included, I have discerned a strong desire among young people for liturgy, sacraments, holiness, beauty, and mystery. I have noticed a hunger as well for devotional practices that go beyond having an evangelical quiet time in the morning.

Interestingly, at least among my college students, the yearning for liturgy and devotion often begins with a study of the early, Nicene, and medieval Fathers. They find in these writings a historical depth that they have found lacking in the evangelical denominations in which they were raised. I think it is for these people in particular that Gavin Ortlund has written his well-argued and irenic book, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church. He does not express anger or even a lack of charity toward those who leave Protestantism for Rome or Constantinople, but he does want them to think through the true and full history of the Reformation before making their decision.

Ortlund, president of Truth Unites and theologian-in-residence at Immanuel Church in Nashville, does not present Protestantism as the One True Church. Rather, he presents it as a reform movement within the One True Church, a body of believers called by God that should not be confined to one single ecclesial body—as it is in what Ortlund calls the “institutional exclusivism” (21) of the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox communities. Referencing the work of early church historian Philip Schaff, Ortlund distinguishes the “Reformation from both a revolution (which consists in violently overthrowing what came before) as well as a restoration (which consists in a mere repetition of what came before)” (6).

The Reformers did not intend to set up a totally different church, but to properly clarify and preserve the deposit of the faith handed down from the Bible and the early church. Share on XWhile Ortlund admits to the flaws of Protestantism, particularly its tendency to split into ever-new denominations, he insists that its strength is its genius for continual reform. “Protestantism has a built-in capacity for course correction, for fixing errors, for refining practice. To put it colloquially, when you get stuck, you can get unstuck. This opens up pathways for catholicity that are closed for those churches that hold their own pronouncements as infallible” (11). This flexibility within Protestantism allowed it to revive, rather than invent, the early church’s focus on justification by faith and the central and unique authority of the scriptures.

After summing up in a clear, well-researched manner the abuses in the church at the time of Luther (1517) and the execution of the reforming Jan Hus a century earlier (1415), Ortlund devotes a chapter each to making the historical and theological case for the two cornerstones of the Reformation: sola fide (justification by Christ through faith alone) and sola Scriptura (“Scripture is the only authority standing over the church that is incapable of error” [72]).

Sola fide, Ortlund explains, “does not deny the necessity of good works, as it is often caricatured. Luther insisted that good works will issue forth from a genuine faith. But he also maintained that good works contribute nothing to how a sinner is actually made right in the sight of a holy God. Justification was, for Luther, a forensic declaration of our status before God, grounded solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ, received by the empty hands of faith” (60). Thankfully, rather than drive a wedge between Protestants and Roman Catholics on this central aspect of the gospel Ortlund argues that disagreements on this point are based in large part on a linguistic confusion.

When Roman Catholics use the word “justification,” they mean what Protestants mean by both justification and sanctification.  “Roman Catholic theology,” he adds, “also distinguishes between initial justification and ongoing justification. Thus, good works are not necessary to come into an initial state of reconciliation with God” (61). Though making such distinctions will not heal all wounds, they highlight Ortlund’s main thesis: that the Reformers did not intend to set up a totally different church, but to properly clarify and preserve the deposit of the faith handed down from the Bible and the early church.

Although sola Scriptura is a greater obstacle to reconciliation, Ortlund does emphasize that the Reformers were not against ecclesial authority per se. The church and its leaders do have the authority to establish rites and ceremonies and creeds. What they do not have is the authority to hold to practices that contradict the Bible and then make those practices binding on its members. While Ortlund concedes that the Bible does not explicitly outline a clear doctrine of sola Scriptura, Jesus himself, he demonstrates, clearly treated the Old Testament as the final authority against which the traditions of the Pharisees were to be measured (see Mark 7:1-13).The church and its leaders do have the authority to establish rites and ceremonies and creeds. What they do not have is the authority to hold to practices that contradict the Bible and then make those practices binding on its members. Share on X

So important is the issue of authority in the church that Ortlund follows his chapter with three more that answer objections to sola Scriptura and then take a closer look at claims about the papacy and the apostolic succession. To those who have argued, and continue to argue, that the church gave us the Bible, Ortlund helpfully distinguishes between the church as final authority and the church as caretaker of the authority of scripture. “For Protestants,” he explains, “the church’s charge extends not only to recognizing the canon but also to protecting the Scriptures during times of persecution and to translating, teaching, and proclaiming them. Thus, Protestants have spoken of the church as not only a necessary witness to the Word of God, but also the custodian and herald of the Word of God” (88).

In response to critics of Protestantism who say that too heavy a focus on private judgment (our individual reading of scripture) leads to anarchy and division, Ortlund responds that private judgment is not itself the authority. Then, going on the offensive, he argues that “while erroneous private judgment [of the Bible] is a real danger, another danger is far worse: erroneous ecclesiastical judgments. It is one thing to be able to err; it is another to be yoked to error” (100). That is to say, an individual member of a church who misinterprets the Bible can be put straight in his error. When the error comes from a Pope or ecclesiastical council imbued with infallibility, an entire church, together with all its members, can be led astray with little hope of redress.

After surveying the slippery historical ground for an infallible papacy and apostolic succession, Ortlund argues that such offices, far from aiding the cause of unity in the body of Christ, has increased division. Indeed, he argues that “for the rest of Christendom, including not only Protestants but also the Old Catholics and various non-Catholic Eastern traditions, the papacy is arguably the single greatest barrier to unity” (116). Protestantism, he holds, is far better poised to effect unity around the central, non-negotiable doctrines of the faith.

In his final two chapters, Ortlund takes his readers on a historical journey through two doctrines held by Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox alike (if in a slightly different manner) that have no precedent in at least the first four centuries of the church: the bodily assumption of Mary and the veneration of icons. I will not survey his arguments, but he has done his due diligence and brings a sharp critical eye to the evidence. He does a particularly thorough job tracing the struggles between the iconoclasts and the iconodules, arguing that the struggle was not really over artistic images of biblical figures and stories but whether those images should be venerated.

Protestantism is poised to effect unity around the central, non-negotiable doctrines of the faith. Share on XStill, I did have three problems with these final chapters. First, I suspect Ortlund’s main problem with the assumption and the icons is not the beliefs themselves but the fact that the church issued anathemas against believers who did not accept them. I know many Protestants who have legitimate disagreements with Roman Catholics on doctrinal points—and yet, deep down, their real source of animosity seems to be their (probably erroneous) belief that their Roman Catholic friends think they are going to hell. Even in the past, many Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have been able to be involved members of their community while holding reservations about the assumption of Mary or the veneration of icons. Even so, there are plenty of Arminians in Calvinist churches and Calvinists in Arminian churches who can accept the basic confessions and covenants of their church despite their disagreements on issues like free will and irresistible grace.

My second problem, and this has less with Ortlund than with Protestantism in general, is the refusal of many Protestant purists to understand and accept the need to build bridges with new believers who have come from a different theological and cultural background. Although I am a Baptist, I cannot overlook the fact that much of Mexico was won for the gospel because of the appearance of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I also have no problem celebrating Christmas despite the many pagan elements involved, for I believe that the fourth-century church used such cultural connections to convert much of the pagan Roman Empire to the faith.

Finally, though Ortlund’s research on the veneration of icons is exemplary, he leaves out some important historical dimensions. He does not mention that the period of iconoclasm overlaps with the period of Muslim aggression, the armies of which quickly seized Alexandria, Jerusalem, and Antioch and came perilously close to taking Constantinople as well. It is clear, to me at least, that the Byzantines could not understand why they kept losing battles against the Muslims. Islam is a strongly iconoclastic and “puritanical” religion that forbids all images, and it makes sense that the iconoclast party (which was strongest in the army) would think their losses stemmed from God’s anger at their use of icons.

Also, though Ortlund made me think about iconoclasm in new ways, he should have mentioned that the iconoclasts who rose up during the Puritan revolution in seventeenth-century England smashed icons whether or not they were being venerated. Some of them even removed crosses from churches because they considered it idolatrous. Protestants, Ortlund convinced me, need to do more critical thinking about the whole subject of religious images. J. I Packer’s inimitable Knowing God is a classic for evangelicals, but its chapter on “graven images” is quite troubling. I hear it echoed today in a few otherwise solid Protestant voices who have spoken out against The Chosen—an excellent miniseries of the life of Christ directed by Dallas Jenkins—because it “violates” the second commandment. Again, more discussion is necessary on the role and status of religious art. I think Ortlund has given us a good start, but we who are Protestant must be careful lest we fall back into a semi-gnostic discomfort with images.

Despite these reservations, Ortlund is to be applauded for presenting the case for Protestantism in so accessible and non-combative a form. In his conclusion he wisely counsels would-be converts to take their time, to pray, and to “read and engage the best of each tradition” (223). Good advice for an impulsive age with an increasingly short attention span.

Image credit: Clear Retro Telephone | Adafruit Industries | Flickr.