What You Don't Know About PROTESTANTISM

Today is the anniversary of the day that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the church in Wittenberg.

But as Protestants, do we even know what the reformers concerns really were? Do we understand what it means to be

Protestant today? Why we're not Roman Catholic or some other non -Protestant tradition?

Well, I sat with my friend Gavin Ortland recently and I chatted about this very issue with him. His latest book is all about this.

As a matter of fact, the title is what it means to be Protestant. And now this is a portion of the entire interview.

If you would like to see the full unedited conversation, I encourage you to jump over to the Patreon and help me to continue to further this ministry, amen?

Look, I know this day can be overshadowed by candy and door knocking, but here's something else for you to chew on.

I pray that this blesses you and that it gives you something to think about. So without further ado, here's my conversation with Gavin Ortland.

So Gavin, so I was trying to think back to the first time I met you. And a lot of people don't know this, but you and I were actually separated at birth.

I think that's what the story was that my mother told me. And as it turns out, I'm Danny DeVito and you are

Arnold Schwarzenegger, is that right? I'll take the role of Arnold Schwarzenegger.

He's a great actor. Yeah, come on, come on, I'm right here. No, actually, how did we meet?

It was an interview just like this, right? I just reached out cold. I was trying to remember. I think that's right.

I think you graciously had me on your channel, but I'd known of your videos and we knew of each other.

And then it's been fun. We kind of live near each other now. I've gotten to know each other and you've been a great encouragement, a great friend.

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So yeah, we both live in the Nashville area now. So at some point

I was just doing like, we got to figure out a bigger space so we can do this in person. So anyway.

That would be fun. That'd be fun. Anytime. What it means to be Protestant is the book.

And I wanted to ask, there it is. I wanted to ask you, I guess just right off the bat, how long has this thing been percolating in your brain?

And what was the, I guess, the impetus for this project? Yeah, this one has definitely come right out of my

YouTube work. I never thought I would write a book on Protestantism or really do anything about Protestantism until it got onto YouTube.

And then it came out of a pastoral burden, just seeing people struggle with what

I call ecclesial anxiety. By that I just mean a deep worry, whether they're in the one true church.

And sometimes even worry about salvation, but certainly a worry about the fullness of the church, the sacraments, valid sacraments, these kinds of questions.

You know, five years ago, I was not aware as much as I am now how much this is an issue.

So getting onto YouTube, started to get into these topics. And then there was one point in, oh boy,

I think it was May of 2022. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. And my wife was out of town. I just put the kids to bed and I was thinking through the future.

And I realized, I felt like the Lord was calling me to take a lot of what I was doing and put it into a book. And I didn't necessarily have the desire to do that.

We were just talking about how I have five kids. Life is very full. I don't have a ton of margin. But I just felt this sense that there's a need for that because it's amazing how little there is that actually explains historic

Protestantism. So I felt the call to do that and gave myself to it and hope it will serve people.

Well, so we have a book club and the book club and I went through the book and I think you have accomplished your goal.

So I can just go ahead and say that on behalf of the book club, thank you for it. I wanted to, so we're gonna get into the book, we're getting into the details and I have some specific questions that I wanna ask you.

But you mentioned margin. And so here we are, we do similar things and I'm sure that means that then we struggle with similar things.

I struggle with margin. How did you write a book? Like, what was the, this is a purely selfish question.

Like, how did you work that into your routine where you're like, okay, now I'm gonna go off and just write a whole book?

Yeah, the honest answer off the moment is I have no idea.

It just sort of, you know, you just, the truth is when it really grips your heart and when you're existentially invested, you're able to, you know, apply yourself in ways that lead to greater productivity.

And I really believe in the content of this book. So I, you know, I can think back and remember certain times where I'll take like a week or I'll take a weekend, a long weekend, or certain times and I'll just put everything out of my mind and just plow into it.

And a lot of times it's getting up early in the morning or there's certain little secrets I've learned of how to work productively.

And sometimes even, you know, it'll be from 6 a .m. until 11 a .m. And you just, it's amazing how much you can get done if you completely put your computer away, except for typing, you know, put the internet away and just focus.

So, you know, you learn little things like this, but it came out of the existential burden of these topics and just the sense of people need to know some of these historic arguments.

I mean, the lack of awareness of these things, I think, really plagues people and it affects people's souls. I mean, people are really in anxiety about some of these questions.

So I was, you know, when you're burdened about it, it's a little easier to try to carve out time. Yeah. You've mentioned this before, because I think, yeah, you and I sat down, we discussed something else, but how did you come to the conclusion that Roman Catholicism versus Protestantism should be your focus?

Well, I would say I don't necessarily think it is the focus for me. It's one area of that, and it certainly wasn't that.

I thought, oh, you know, let's step back and just consider in the abstract what is most intellectually stimulating for me.

Actually, I love philosophy. I love thinking about Pascal's wager and these kinds of things.

If I were to just sit down and think about what's most fun to think about, that's where I'd go. I mean, I've been doing a lot of research on the problem of divine hiddenness.

That's a great research. And I do that kind of stuff as well. So this is an ongoing tension for me of navigating where I feel like I'm able to make more of a difference because there's just more of a pastoral need versus where I might just naturally incline.

And I'm trying to do both. I mean, I'm gonna do a lot of more general apologetics in 2025 and even this, you know, towards the end of this year, a little bit more in that realm too.

So, you know, it's not my only focus and it wasn't out of the abstract sense of just this is who

I am. It was that pastoral burden of just feeling like right now there's a tremendous thirst for history.

It's amazing how much people are aching for something ancient. I mean, when I put out a video on how church history can inform our worship or something like this,

I don't think that video is gonna get a lot of views, but then that one takes off. And then the other ones that I think,

I think are more interesting, don't. And so one of the things that tells me is, and this has been informed by my research of just the sociology right now as well, people are really searching for history.

People are really aching for something rooted in the midst of all the chaos of the modern world. People are, hearts are yearning for something solid to kind of plant their feet on.

And that plays out in our theology and in our ecumenical conversation. And so there's a tremendous thirst for this right now.

So, you know, it's really as simple as this. I'm just trying to meet needs. Yeah. Well, let's get into the book then because there's a lot of things that you highlight that I thought were incredibly helpful.

And one of the things that you shine a spotlight on is the fact that the church that Jesus established in Acts is quite different from the way we do church today, like the body of believers today.

So without, I guess, running through the entire book, because somebody's gonna have to go purchase the book, by the way, again, it's called

What It Means to Be a Protestant. Can you like, give us some big moments where it led up to the split between like the

Roman Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Protestants? Well, church, to me, church history is this endlessly fascinating story that the more

I study it, the more I realize I don't know. And so while I'll sort of just acknowledge that this is an endless ocean, we could get it, you know, you get into church history and you realize you can get lost.

It's absolutely fascinating. It's just this immensely complicated story. But maybe just to chart out kind of the major sectors of Christendom, maybe this would be helpful for people just to hit some of the biggest issues, is first we have some of these early splits in the fifth century over issues of Christology or the doctrine of Christ.

And sometimes we forget about these, but the Assyrian Church of the East and the Oriental Orthodox Church are the result of these splits.

So basically all of the Chalcedonian Christians, all of those who affirm the Christology affirmed at the

Council of Chalcedon in 451, that would include the

Roman Catholics, the Eastern Orthodox, all the Protestants, et cetera. And we sometimes forget about those early splits. And I almost feel a little jealous for these other

Eastern traditions to not be forgotten because I would say they are properly Christian churches. And then we have in the 11th century, the great schism between the

East and the West that resulted in what we today call Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox. And there's so much to that we could unpack.

And then we have the 16th century Protestant Reformation. And so if we were to kind of think of the big buckets,

Protestantism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the

East, you might think of five buckets, but then there are other groups. And there are, you know, there's protest groups before the

Protestants that come along, like the Waldensians, the Hussites, and so forth. But that might give people at least an initial lay of the land for where we can start honing in a little more.

Hmm, well, what was the initial, I suppose, maybe

I'm already answering my question, but what was the initial moment that sparked this,

I guess, this split? Because at some point, the church, as we look at it and see it in Acts, is they are not divided.

They are meeting, they're gathering together. This is the end of Acts chapter two, right? Sharing everything in common.

And like, what is the thing? Do we even have this in history? Like, what is the thing that causes these splits to arise in the first place?

Well, it's interesting. I mean, so Acts chapter two, we're here at the beginning of the beginning, here on the day of Pentecost.

You know, this is the Holy Spirit is poured out, and this is really when the church is beginning to launch forward.

And the church is still very small at this point. You just have, is it 3 ,000 or so who are added on at that point?

So you have a relatively small body. Most of the church then is sort of added on as a result of Peter's sermon right there.

But even already in the apostolic age, I would say you do have schisms. You do have splits.

First Corinthians talks about the schismata within the church of Corinth. That's the word, the

Greek word there. But also you have false apostles masquerading as true apostles who must be opposed, 2

Corinthians 10 through 12. You have false churches. You have, in Galatians one, Paul warning about falling away from the gospel and so forth.

So, and then you have splits and disagreements and divisions. You know, you think of Acts 15 and the Paul -Barnabas, the famous split there.

So I would say that, you know, there's a line in the Protestant theologian, Francis Turretin, where he says, "'In this life before heaven, "'we do not expect an end of controversy.'"

And I actually find that a little bit comforting. And I know that we do not, not that we have the schisms.

That's not comforting. We don't, schism is not a good thing. But just that we set the expectations right up front.

Because I think some people are saying, you know, "'How do we find a church that doesn't have this problem, "'where we don't have any schisms?'

But I think one of the strengths of Protestantism is it can simply recognize the church exists amidst multiple institutions.

And so when you have a schism, that's a sad thing, but it doesn't necessarily mean one side is the true church and the other side has ceased to be a church.

And because we can find these divisions going back all the way into the, and even into those first several centuries of church history.

So the schisms are not good. But the ability to recognize, you know, I do think as we seek to heal schism, as we seek to heal division, we need to recognize those are true

Christians over there on the other side. And recognizing that our differences, there are differences that go back to the very beginning of church history, actually

I think is helpful to bear in mind as we try to make progress. This reminds me of Jesus.

Jesus says this line, and it's a little difficult to interpret it, but he says that, you know, from the days of John the

Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence and the violent take it by force.

And there's a way that, there's this picture in the original language where it's like this constant combative element has always been there and present and pushing back.

And I wonder if that's just something that we don't appreciate, you know, that this is part and parcel of the plan that Jesus had from the first century, which was, it was always going to be this way.

There was always going to be false doctrine. There was always going to be people that were going to enter into the church and seek to pull people away.

And so then we read the epistles and we see Paul, you know, we go, oh man, like, you know, where's this perfect utopian stasis where no trouble exists?

And maybe it's just, maybe it's just, it was always supposed to be this way. What do you think about that?

Is God like, you know, I guess you could ask it this way, this question, why the division?

Why does God allow this? And is in some sense the answer, because it's in some sense good, this sort of clash.

Yeah, it's interesting to think about this. I mean, so my mind goes to Jonathan Edwards, the great

Puritan theologian, and he wrote this, he wrote several works about revival.

And he, one of the things he points out is that when the Holy Spirit is poured out and God is doing a wonderful work,

Satan often tries to mimic it. So Satan will oppose revival in various ways.

But one of the ways is he tries to get inside and cause counterfeits so that it discredits the revival.

And I thought that is so interesting when Edwards pointed that out. And I think to some extent, I think that's always a work of the enemy. He's never, the pressure against us is never just external to the church.

In the New Testament, far more energy is spent on the false teachers within. And I think that's always a dynamic.

I mean, it's easy to think, oh, if I was back in the first century, I'd know exactly who are the teachers that I should listen to and who are the ones

I shouldn't listen to. But I mean, Paul was pretty unimpressive in his own day from, to worldly eyes.

You know, the super apostles were the really impressive people with lots of noise and so forth. Paul was constantly suffering and this beleaguered man, you know, so I think it's,

I just think it's a helpful sort of expectation to bring to the table that Satan is always at work doing counterfeit work and doing and bringing false teachers within, even as he is pressing upon us from without.

Yeah, that's good. You know, it's interesting as I sort of survey the disagreements now between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

I just, I get the sense that we don't fully appreciate the history of Protestantism.

And as you were sort of unpacking this in the book, it just really hit me, especially the story of, is it

Huss and the atrocities there. So I was just wondering if you could help us to understand some of those atrocities that were perpetrated on Christians who, it seems, were just trying to take

God's word seriously by the Roman Catholic Church. Yeah, this is a tough topic.

I get emotional sometimes talking about the martyrs and talking about violence in church history. I'm firmly committed to nonviolence within the church, to being peacemakers, to never speaking about this in a triumphalist way that will just make the wounds deeper.

But I think it's also good and healthy to simply plainly tell the truth and for forgotten stories to bring them out into the light and say, let's discuss what happened.

And the fact is, first of all, there's no room for triumphalism at the level of just Protestant versus Catholic because Protestants have been terribly violent at times, especially towards each other, actually.

The number of Anabaptists who were drowned in the context of the Protestant Reformation is greater than the number of Christians killed by the

Roman Empire in the entire first three centuries of the church. So, you know, we've got a lot of bloodshed that we need to look back on and all of us should be humbled to the dust.

None of us should be, you know, rising up, looking down at others. But I think it will help provide context for the

Reformation for people to understand how oppressive, frankly, the

Roman Catholic hierarchy was toward dissent. And we see that with proto -Protestant groups.

I mentioned the Waldensians earlier. There's maybe 15 or 17 or 18 of these different groups that are popping up throughout the medieval era calling for reform.

Some are more Orthodox than others. The Waldensians are definitely more Orthodox than the Cathars, but they were all sort of stamped out like cockroaches.

I mean, it really was absolutely brutal. There were crusades called for against these people in which the women and children were not spared.

And so, you know, as ugly and dark as this is, we just, I just find people need to know.

People have forgotten. People are not aware of this. You mentioned Jan Hus. It's very hard to not recognize that Jan Hus was just a godly man, a very godly, pious man.

And he was burned at the stake at an ecumenical council. I just did a video on William Tyndale.

And I'm trying to combat some of the common false narratives told about William Tyndale. Like, well, he also was strangled and then burned at the stake.

And the claim is, oh, well, that was because he was a heretic. And his translation of the

New Testament was opposed because it was heretical. And I'm just going through the video showing, no, that was not the reason.

The King James Version followed Tyndale's version very closely. It was a good translation.

Tyndale, of course, was the first person to translate the Bible into English from the original Greek and Hebrew. And it's a good translation.

But he was opposed. And it wasn't just other beliefs of his. It was for the act of translating the

Bible into the vernacular language that he was opposed by the highest levels of leadership in the

Roman Catholic Church. So without trying to be provocative here, I just think we gotta know these facts.

And they're not in dispute among serious historians. And I think it will give some people a little bit of sympathy for those who felt like, oh, the

Protestants, you know, we get these caricatures a lot. Like, the Protestants are just these arrogant individualists who jumped off the ship because they didn't like church authority.

And that is just offensive to the memory of some of these godly men who clearly were following their conscience on very reasonable points.

Tyndale and the concern of John Wycliffe before him to bring the word of God into the vernacular language so people are not sheerly ignorant of scripture is a noble concern.

Hoose's concern about indulgences is a noble concern. And these people were brutally treated.

So, boy, you know, here we go right into it. But people need to know this stuff. And that's why I'm trying to put out these videos to try to create more awareness.

Yeah. I mean, considering all of the abuse, and this was something that we actually hit in the book club was this question, like, was there any other recourse that contemporary

Christians of the period had other than protesting against the Roman Catholic Church?

It's difficult to see what one can do when there is clear error being pressed down upon one.

Say, the theology of indulgences, as it's functioning at that time, as one spark. You know, that was a big issue for Luther, of course.

And if one protests, one is being persecuted for the protests. And that was what's going on in like the 1400s, for example, early 1500s.

So, no, I don't, I think, especially if you're being either excommunicated or burned alive for the protest, and this is happening.

So, you know, another whole group of people that I'll do another video on at some point is the Lollards, who are the followers of John Wycliffe in England.

Same thing. They're trying to translate the Bible into English, and it is being opposed, and there's no alternative translation for them.

So, no, I think protest is the only recourse we are given. I think here's what

I would invite our Roman Catholic friends to try to understand is we seek to follow our conscience.

Like Luther said, my conscience is captive to the word of God. I feel the same way. I just have to do what I think is right.

And there's particular beliefs that are demanded by the Roman Catholic Church. We've mentioned a few of them already that seem to me to be not in scripture, but to be later developments or accretions,

I often call them, in church history. And they seem erroneous. Indulgences is a great example.

So if we're committed to following our conscience, what can we do but protest?

What can we do but stick with what we think Christianity actually is according to our founding documents and founding sources?

That's the intention of Protestantism at its best, even while, of course, Protestants don't always do that perfectly or even very well all the time.

Well, and you bring this up in the book too, but Protestants don't even understand Protestantism. Unfortunately, many do.

And you can point to examples of this. Maybe you could say another word about this too, because what

I really loved, and it really came across well, it comes across in your videos, but it came across also well in the book, which is your heart for a return at some point to a unified church.

Whatever that looks like, whatever the details are, whenever that happens in the future, this desire to return to the church that is now in the schism, a return to its unified self, the way it was.

And I think that's also something that's missing in these conversations, which is Protestantism wasn't just, hey,

I don't like the way you play this game anymore. I'm out. It was an appeal to, no, this is the way the church should be.

Let's go there. Let's be there and do that. Is there anything that you can add here that can kind of color in this picture for us?

The two things I think are so foundational in terms of seeking healing and reunification and so forth are number one, focus with laser -like energy and precision on truth, and number two, pray and pray for miracles.

So it's gotta be in the truth. In John 17, Jesus prays for our unity, but the unity he's praying for is predicated in the truth.

So all of us can agree, we will not achieve that unity by just compromising.

We have to, and I've actually found this to be true in real life context, whereas you just make a beeline for the gospel.

You oppose the spirit of the age. You seek the truth with all your heart. All of a sudden you realize in the context of that, it actually does bring you into alignment with all kinds of people you never would have expected.

And this is the great emphasis of my channel that I have named it after, is truth unites. Again, there will always be opposition.

We do not expect a cessation of controversy in this life. Satan is alive and well until we get to heaven.

And 1 Corinthians 13, seeing through a glass darkly is no longer our paradigm.

There will always be opposition, controversy, division. We don't expect there to be a cessation of those things, but having an open heart.

So we seek the truth and then we pray. And what I found is, because I think the Holy Spirit is at work in so many different places.

We do need to be open to having our prejudices checked. There's so many places the Holy Spirit is powerfully at work that I don't even know about, or that I need to be open to being corrected and saying, okay, that's the

Holy Spirit's work over there. And I always think of the disciples in Mark 9, unable to cast out a demon.

Someone else is casting out a demon later in the chapter and they're jealous and they're saying, oh, stop doing that because he's...

And Jesus says, don't stop him. Whoever's not against us is for us. So I wanna have a, on the one hand, really flexible approach to unity in that I never,

I would wanna let go of all prejudice and pride and be radically focused on Christ. On the other hand,

I wanna have a completely inflexible approach to unity in that it's got to be Christ.

So there's kind of a balance there of, we don't wanna have this wishy -washy approach to it, but on the other hand, it does take humility.

And there are ways where we can have sort of fundamentalist tendencies today where we just, we don't even have an interest in conversations with Christians who disagree.

That actually is a huge thing right now that we gotta oppose. So I see a need for balance here. Yeah, so objection, speculation,

Your Honor, this could purely be something that is way down the line, who knows. But I am curious, right?

We're talking about not even Eastern Orthodox, okay, but just Roman Catholic and Protestant.

How is it possible that the church could, at some point in the future, one day come back together?

It has to be, in my mind, around key principles, one of which is sola scriptura. And so I was gonna ask you, because I don't think we're willing to budge at all on sola scriptura.

I'm not. Shouldn't it have to be that the Roman Catholic church budges on sola scriptura in order for us to even find a middle ground at all?

What do you think? Let's get ourselves in trouble. Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.

If we haven't already, right? Yeah, I'm with you.

I think sola scriptura is a noble and true doctrine, and I can't ever go against what I believe is true, just like we were just saying, unity has to be based in truth.

I think it's just true that the scripture is the only infallible rule. I think the thing that is hard about this is, so for a, let me,

I guess I could make a distinction between a full unity and sort of steps toward unity that we might make.

I don't see how a full unity is possible short of a miracle, because for us to have that, there would need to be a reforming of those doctrines that are held to be irreformable in the

Roman Catholic church. I mean, so in other words, there's anathemas, and there's, well, let's leave the anathemas aside, because that gets disputed.

There's allegedly infallible teaching, and that therefore it is irreformable.

That is the stuff of contest. So as long as we have those differences,

I don't see how it could happen. The Roman Catholic view that is, again,

Sola Scriptura, for example, that's not a reformable doctrine for them. That's not something they can reform without really falsifying their whole system.

So that's where we're at. That is, again, partly why protest is actually necessary.

However, maybe there can be steps toward unity that we can take. Just something as simple as having friendship with our

Roman Catholic friends, admiring them, learning from them, and building and seeing, and then we have an open heart, and we're saying, what can

God do in the context of time and prayer and so forth? But that will,

I think that will result in approximate unity, not a perfect unity, unless there was some massive foundational change.

No, I'm with you, I'm with you. I was trying to dream there for a minute. Well, so, and we're talking about this right now,

Sola Scriptura, Sola Scriptura, but even Sola Scriptura is misunderstood even on the Protestant side. So is there a helpful definition that you found to clearly articulate what

Sola Scriptura is? I, okay, so I'll do it real short so people can remember this.

Only infallible rule. Sola Scriptura means Scripture is the only infallible rule for the church.

Infallible means incapable of error, and a rule is something that governs our faith and life.

So for, you know, for example, a confession of faith is a rule of faith.

If your church has a statement of faith, that's a rule. You typically will have to affirm the statement of faith to be a member at that church and receive the

Lord's Supper and so forth, but a rule like that isn't necessarily infallible or irreformable.

A church's statement of faith can sometimes be revised. You know, they can revisit things. I was just a part of a denomination that revisited the issue of the millennium, and they said we're no longer gonna require pre -millennialism as a part of our statement of faith, and so that was interesting.

So now whatever somebody thinks about that, that is possible. People can make changes to their own statement of faith, but we're not gonna go back and change the

Scripture. This is irreformable, infallible. This is the supreme rule of faith under which all our confessions and our creeds and our catechisms and our sermons, all are underneath, reformable, revisable.

They are subordinate under Scripture. So think of a pyramid, Scripture's at the top.

So only infallible rule, and where we wanna distinguish that from the caricatures is we're not saying it's the only source for theology.

So we're not saying that the only way you can learn or function is just by quoting the

Bible. No, we actually have a tremendous respect. Historic Protestants have sometimes been the pioneers in certain fields of church history.

Going back to the 17th century, for example, the very word patrology, meaning study of basically the church fathers, that came out in the context of Lutheran scholastic theology.

And we could say so much about other great Protestant church historians. So we have tremendous respect for church history and for tradition, but it's not infallible.

It's subordinate under Scripture. So that's maybe just an initial, putting out some categories there.

It seems like a lot of people, for some reason, think it's that last, the definition of sola scriptura is that last thing that you tackled, which is it's the only source of theology.

It's the only authority. And that is just, I don't know. I don't know how that slipped in there.

Like, you know, it got switched around or something. What would, let me ask you this. So I'm trying to anticipate people in the

Roman Catholic, the Roman Catholics in my audience, but, you know, they look at, they accept the definition and they go, okay.

But we have, so we have the magisterium. We have Scripture, but we have the magisterium. You have

Scripture, but you don't even have one sort of other type of category of authority.

You have all these other confessions. You have all these other councils. And depending on which denomination or, you know, which church that you align to, you accept some, but you don't accept others.

Like, how would you respond to an objection like that, that our authority, our other church authorities are too split?

First, with some level of understanding. Protestantism, I mean, one of the things

I talk about in the book is Philip Schaaf's criticism of Protestantism, even as he's defending it, that we are too sectarian, and that's been a besetting weakness.

And I talk about how you can believe a split was justified even if you recognize that both sides are diminished in various ways.

And this is a weakness of Protestantism. It's a built -in weakness. I think we need to repent of. I think we need to think about.

I think we need to, you know, acknowledge and let it weigh upon us and seek to do what we can to push against it.

The tendency towards an escalation of separation. Having said that,

I think part of it can be an unfair framing if there's Catholic versus Protestant, if this is the framing.

Because Protestants are not all claiming to be one institution. So if it's like, well, you guys have a bunch of different rules of faith, not necessarily for individual

Protestant traditions. Like, in the Anglican tradition, you've got the 39 Articles, the Lutheran, you've got the

Book of Concord. We do, you know, I grew up in Presbyterianism where you've got the Westminster Standards, the

Westminster Confession of Faith, the Shorter and Larger Catechism and so forth. So there is order and coherence for particular

Protestant communions with respect to their rules and their standards and their governance and so forth,

I think. Now, having said that, there's also a lot of non -denominational Protestant churches that have, I think, kind of just strayed from their own

Protestant roots. We just need to sort of go back to historic Protestant practices and learn from our own heritage, if that makes sense.

But in all of that, we can do that with the scripture as the supreme North Star, which is the fundamental conviction. Yeah. You talked about Schaff.

In chapter one, you mentioned, I think you mentioned Schaff, and I'm trying to find this really great quote that you had in here.

But he talks about kind of the two diseases of Protestantism, which is, here it is, rationalism and sectarianism.

Can you help us to understand that a little bit more? Like, why are those, according to Schaff, the two diseases of Protestantism?

Well, he's in the 19th century. Philip Schaff's a great church historian that I wish more people were more familiar with.

He's something of a controversial figure, and I didn't intend for him to be the sort of paradigm for how

I'm casting Protestantism. So some of the reviews of the book are kind of taking Schaff and running too far with him, because all

I do is exegete a couple of points from Schaff and then bring them into dialogue with Luther and Calvin and Richard Hooker and others, other

Protestants. But in the 19th century, Schaff is noticing rationalism.

So a lot of Protestants are kind of going liberal. The rise of modernity is sweeping through Protestant denominations, and sectarianism as well.

There's a lot, especially in America. It kind of fits with the American spirit of individualism. There's a lot of separation.

So, you know, he goes through and flushes that out in great detail in his book,

The Principle of Protestantism. I would just say, for our purposes, we need not deny that there are real sins and weaknesses within the various Protestant traditions.

But a lot of them come from straying from our own Protestant resources. And so I would say a lot of what

Protestant churches need today, I think so many churches would be healthier if we were more engaged with, say, the 16th and 17th century

Protestants and practices of church government, practices of church discipline, practices of worship, a theology of the sacraments, a theology of preaching.

There's a lot of richness in our own traditions that I think we've strayed from. Well, so as you survey the landscape, this is interesting, because we have our various denominational splits now.

And I suppose we can set aside non -denominational churches, because maybe you've already commented on that. Which church structure, whether it's denominational or otherwise, is the one that has retained the traditional

Protestant spirit, so to speak? Well, very difficult to say, because unfortunately,

Protestantism has, when we say the original Protestant spirit, we can recognize that going straight back to 1529 at Marburg, where there's a split between two of the early reformers,

Luther and Zwingli, and others with them, over the Lord's Supper. So again, in the spirit of total historical honesty, look, if I'm gonna be honest in criticizing

Roman Catholics in church history, I need to be honest about criticizing Protestants. And I would need to say that the tendency of fragmentation goes back to the beginning of Protestantism.

And I think we just need to acknowledge that. Now, what we make of that and what we interpret of that is another thing.

But we have to acknowledge the historical fact that the Protestants were never fully united. So we can look back and see these different streams, especially broken down, you might think about, the

Lutherans, the Anglicans, and the Reformed are three broad, and then the Anabaptists are kind of four broad categories.

And it's interesting how Protestantism has played out. And now in the 20th century, especially, you have this explosion of the charismatic movement, especially in the

Southern Hemisphere. And so it's interesting that the landscape of Protestantism today is very different from back in the 16th century, because probably just the greatest number of Protestants would be

Baptists, Pentecostals, non -denominational Christians like this, which have less historical ties.

And so a lot of what I wanna do in my work is encourage all Protestants today to be more historically rooted and to sort of return to and retrieve our own resources, because I think some of the besetting weaknesses and temptations of Protestantism are we have forgotten church history.

I really, this is a simple point, but I guess I just need to make this simple point repeatedly of contemporary

Protestants, whom I love and am one of and wanna serve, have much to benefit from becoming more historically rooted.

This is a huge need of the hour. And it's what I, in some ways, it's what I feel like I'm trying to give my whole life to.

Oh, so that's interesting. If there is a pastor that is watching this, and now they're starting to, you get in the gears turning, praise the

Lord. What is like one or two things that they can do to sort of take their contemporary

Protestant church now and sort of shift it and return it to historic

Protestant practice? Well, I just put out a video on this.

The video title is Evangelical Worship Needs Church History. And I gave five suggestions in that video.

So someone, if they're wanting a longer answer, they could watch that video and see what I say there. A simple practice that I found incredibly fruitful in my own ministry is to take an excellent historical resource.

Maybe one of the books of the Puritans, for example. Thomas Watson wrote a book, The Lord's Supper.

It's a simple book. It's like 80 or 90 pages. It could be read in one sitting. It's in the Puritan paperback series.

Thomas Watson was one of the Puritans. It's just a wonderful, reformed account of the Lord's Supper. So people don't have to choose that example if they don't want a reformed account of the

Lord's Supper. But if they want something more basic and devotional, I love encouraging people to read

Richard Sibb's book, The Bruised Read. It's basically another one of these, the

Puritans have a stereotype of being kind of cold and austere, but actually they were incredibly pastoral.

And in some cases, they were the best at giving nourishment and comfort to the heart. The wave of anxiety that people feel today, especially young people, which

I'm constantly trying to give peace and assurance to, the Puritans have so much to say to that. So a pastor could simply dive into some of these historical resources.

And when I was at our old church, I loved to start reading groups. And you know, you just like on a

Thursday night or something like that, you have some people over and you just read a little bit, or maybe it's Bonhoeffer's Life Together, or maybe it's

Augustine's Confessions or something like this. But just trying to spread a love of these classic historical texts is a great first step.

And then in terms of the worship of the church, I give some suggestions in that video about liturgy, simple things like a call to worship, a benediction, the passing of the peace, these basic things that, without making radical or violent changes to our church, just more historical awareness can help us a lot.

So I go into that too in that video. Yeah, well, that's good. By the way, you know,

I assume this, but I shouldn't assume anything. Everybody should go check out Truth Unites. Your videos are, we were talking about this before we went live, just top tier.

So, and they've helped me a lot. And I'm grateful for your efforts in this area too.

So, Given, you mentioned something just now about people desiring history, something ancient, you know?

And I don't know if any of your degrees are in psychology. None of mine are. But I was wondering if you could just,

I don't know, again, speculate a little bit. Like, why is that the case? Is that because of the sort of lack of meaning right now in our current zeitgeist?

And so therefore there is this hunger for something, something rooted, something ancient, or is it some other sort of,

I don't know, psychological condition? Like why, especially young people, why are they desiring these things?

And then because of that, they're leaving the Protestant church and they're going to something that's highly more liturgical, like Eastern Orthodox or Roman Catholic Church.

Yeah. I don't have any degrees in psychology, but my wife is a counselor and got her degree in psychology and then a master's in counseling.

And so I - Get her on, let's bring her in. She'll be a much better guest than myself,

I'm sure. She's a pretty fascinating person. But, and I actually do talk about this with her.

She's leading a small group right now with younger women at our church. And so we talk about the culture of Gen Z and we both kind of like younger people and find them delightful and want to serve them.

And a lot of what my life is about right now is trying to serve younger people and trying to pray for revival among younger college students and so forth.

But, so I find this question absolutely fascinating. I think about this every day.

Why, what is this thirst for history? Because again, this has become a big part of my ministry is trying to meet this hunger and trying to do everything

I can to provide resources, bring food to the hunger, bring the puritans to the anxiety.

These great theological resources we have apply to modern needs. That's what the conviction that drives my ministry.

And so I wonder if part of it is this feeling of an information overload.

People feel anxiety because they have access to the internet. They have way too much information at their fingertips and they don't know how to organize that and they feel dizzy and overwhelmed.

800 years ago, if you wanted information, you would just walk down to the priest in your local village and ask him the question and get the answer.

Today, you have Google. And so people feel absolutely overwhelmed and there's a tremendous amount of anxiety feeling like,

I don't know how to figure all of this out. And so history comes along and it offers this sense of stability and people are aching for that.

It just, part of the ethos of modernity is this sense of emancipation from the past. And so that's what's gotten us to the present moment.

I think like the prodigal son, when he's hungering out there in the faraway country, I think a lot of people today are kind of hungering for those things that were pretty good about the pre -modern era, like community and context and meaning and these things that we've lost.

So there's so much to this, but it's good just to recognize we are in our time of rootlessness.

People are searching for roots. And my great passion is let's give them the gospel of Jesus Christ.

That is an ancient message. That is a rock underneath their feet. And of course, all of these ecclesial questions are so important and can also touch upon that hunger as well but we can also idolize them and feel like, well, if I'm in the right church tradition, that will deliver the ultimate.

And then the truth is that it's the gospel itself that with all that comes with that, that will meet that need in the human heart.

So without sidelining these important church tradition questions, I also want to encourage people to remember the simple point that Jesus himself is that bread for which our souls hunger.

And one aspect of that is he does fulfill that yearning for peace and that yearning for roots and that yearning for meaning and so forth.

Yeah. You hit this in, I think, the final portion of your book. You note that there are people who are in one church tradition, let's say

Protestantism, but they're looking around because there's just something that, I don't know, isn't rooted, is not satisfying this deeper hunger.

But then you say something interesting, which is some of these people will move too quickly into another tradition.

Especially from Protestant, going from Protestant to non -Protestant. What do you mean by that?

And how should people be thinking through which tradition to hold to, which denomination to be in?

Well, of course, this could go the other way where someone could take too long.

If you're taking 20 years to study these issues, that's one thing. But I see as the more common path is that people can sometimes be very reactive.

And so one common narrative is a person grew up in a very low church non -denominational setting that didn't have any familiarity with church history, and suddenly they discover church history simultaneous to an apologist from one of the non -Protestant traditions.

And it's like this just lunge in the other direction without a consideration of the intermediate options and without a consideration of historic

Protestant churches. I do see that happen a lot. Of course, that's not all, but it happens more than we'd hope.

So in these cases, I just think real patience and study and prayer and carefulness and really considering all the options and looking at each tradition at its best.

Often people will read the best of the Roman Catholic tradition and compare that to their own anecdotal experiences at a

Protestant church rather than reading the best of these various traditions. And that means diving into the

Puritans and diving into the scholastic reform theologians and Herman Bovink and some of these other great, huge, gigantic figures on the

Protestant horizon. So taking our time, studying, doing due diligence, just making sure it's a healthy process of decision -making.

It's easy to get kind of carried away. And I think kind of plotting through it methodically, carefully, prayerfully is the way to go.

Well, that's all the time that we have for this video. If you wanna see the full unedited conversation, I encourage you to go to my Patreon community and check it out.

Gavin takes questions from my audience there, and I think it will continue to bless you. I will return soon with more videos, but in the meantime,