Church History & Apologetics w/ Dr. Gavin Ortlund

Welcome, Upcoming Interviews, and the Guest Introduction

All right, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today we are going to have an excellent discussion on the topic of church history, apologetics and Christian conduct.

And my choosing those three topics to cover with my guest tonight is very intentional as I think that this particular guest who you're about to meet in just a few moments, I think covers these areas very well on his YouTube channel which I will invite Dr. Ortlin, Dr. Gavin Ortlin on in just a few moments.

Maybe he can tell us a little bit about his YouTube channel which I highly recommend. But before we officially get started with our guest today, I'd like to kind of just point people to the fact if you're just joining this YouTube channel, I know I've received a lot of new subscribers just recently, especially in light of my post debate slash discussion with Dr. James White, just right after his interaction with William Lane Craig.

If you've just subscribed to the channel, please go back to some of the old episodes that I released. And there are some excellent interviews that I have with scholars like Michael Kruger, James Anderson.

We even had Hank Hanegraaff on to talk about Eastern Orthodoxy. And then I invited Dr. Tony Costa to kind of engage with Hanegraaff's position and things like that. So it was really a lot of great dynamic conversations and interviews that you'll kind of see at the backlog, the earlier episodes on this channel.

So if you're new, welcome. If you're an old listener, then thank you so much for your continued support, it's greatly appreciated. Just by way of upcoming interviews that I wanna share with folks, I'm in the works of having Jeff Durbin on to discuss abortion, which is an area of focus in his ministry, as well as presuppositional apologetics and other related areas.

I'll also be having Nate Sala. Now, if you don't know who Nate Sala is, he's over there on the YouTube channel, The Wise Disciple. He also does those very popular videos, The Debate Teacher Reacts. He's a former debate teacher.

And so he analyzes various apologetics debates and stuff like that. So I'm really excited to have him on. And of course, I'm very excited to have our guest today or tonight, I guess I could say tonight.

It's 6 p .m. over here is the evening. So, but well, now that we have a couple of people already listening in, I want to kind of just jump in into introducing my guest who will share a little bit about himself in just a moment.

And hello, Dr. Gavin Ortlin. Welcome to Revealed Apologetics. Hey, Eli, good to see you. Thanks for having me. Well, it is a pleasure to have you on. I know that you're busy. We were just speaking before going live.

You have four children. I have three children. God only knows how we have time to do anything. So welcome. Hey, thanks for having me. Yeah, this is fun. Excellent. Well, why don't you tell folks a little bit about yourself and then you can share a little bit about your YouTube channel.

And then we'll jump right into the topic for tonight.

Historical Theology and the Shape of Church History

Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'm a pastor in Southern California in a town called Ojai, which is north of LA, about 80 miles. As you just mentioned, I have four young kids. And so we're right now gearing up for Christmas, which should be a lot of fun.

I write, I have a PhD in historical theology. So a lot of my publications are in historical studies of some kind. I've done a lot of research in some of the church fathers, St. Augustine, Anselm, people like that are really interesting to me.

And then I've just gotten into apologetics. In the last year and a half, it's become a major passion. So my most recent book, which came out last month, is an apologetics book called Why God Makes Sense in a World That Doesn't.

And then I've started a YouTube channel also about a year and a half ago. And that was mainly supposed to be on apologetics issues, but it's pulled me also into ecumenical conversations and debates and Protestant versus the other non-Protestant traditions, those kinds of differences and talking through that.

So that's been a really interesting journey as well. So people can find that on YouTube. It's called Truth Unites.

Yeah, excellent. Well, I highly recommend your content. I say that I know that, and we were speaking about this just very briefly before we went live. There are folks who are on all sides of the various fences.

I tell people all the time, every time I have a guest on, there's always someone who's messaging me. Why do you have this guy on? Or this person's a heretic. Everyone's a heretic apparently. But I'm sure there are areas in our theology between the both of us that we probably don't agree.

And those differences are probably important, but ultimately we're able to benefit from learning from the different traditions and different perspectives. And it is possible, and I think you do this well, it is possible to disagree with someone and yet hold to your convictions without compromise.

You don't have to be a marshmallow or a snowflake, as they say, just by being kind and respectful to those you disagree with. And I think you do an excellent job at that. Just real quick by a quick plug, I do highly recommend that folks who go over to, can I just call you Gavin?

And most people, I don't wanna keep saying Dr. Ortlin, but if you guys go over to his YouTube channel, he's got a great, I don't know if it's on your channel or someone else, I listen to it. You have a great interaction with an Eastern Orthodox gentleman, where I thought the conversation was excellent.

So I really appreciate those dialogues that you're having. Well, without further ado, I would like to ask you to clarify something for the audience. You did mention that you have a PhD in historical theology.

And I know a lot of people are familiar with what theology is, and they're familiar with church history, but why don't you define for us what historical theology is?

Why Historical Theology Matters for Christian Thinking

Okay, yeah, historical theology is just very simply, you might think of it as a subset, maybe you could think of it as a mix between systematic theology and church history. Basically, you're just looking at the church's theology throughout history.

So you're doing church history, but with a focus on the theology, on the ideas of the church, not just the events and so forth. I find that a extremely fascinating discipline. I find it so helpful, especially right now in our culture, in the modern West, there's been so many changes that are, there's many ways in which our culture in the modern West is different from every other culture in human history.

And yet, we often tend to assume that our context is the normal one, and all the other contexts are the strange ones. And it's good and humbling and healthy to realize, actually, that's not necessarily true.

Why privilege our culture? The modern West has a lot of blind spots. Studying historical theology has been so profoundly helpful for me personally as a Christian and also as a theologian for many reasons, but one of them is precisely that, to challenge modern Western assumptions and to expose different ways of looking at something that if I could boil down, for example, one of the things I've learned from Anselm, a medieval theologian, would just be the word God-centeredness, to start your theology with God, not with human questions.

And so there's so many, I could unpack that a lot, but that's a brief snapshot of kind of just why I've become so passionate about how helpful it is to study historical theology. Now, how would you differentiate.

Between historical theology and say kind of just a survey of church history?

I think a survey of church history would have more of a comprehensive focus that would look at a little bit of theology, but it would also really just be looking at everything to do with church history, the events, the people.

You might have a lot of focus upon how did Charlemagne impact the changes of Western Christianity or something like that. Okay, well, historical theology, you're not really gonna be focusing on the politics, the events, wars, plagues, et cetera, except in so far as they're relevant to the church's thought.

So historical theology is just looking at the church's doctrine and thought.

All right, well, I see a lot of comments coming in. I would encourage folks, if you have a question for Dr. Ortlin, as we normally do on these live interviews, he is more than happy to take any questions that you'll have on any area that he is able to respond to.

So church history, apologetics, things like that. And just to make sure, I have to say this, make sure you guys behave in the comments. And they're normally good on this channel. I do appreciate it. But just wanted to throw that out there for folks.

Real quick also, and I say this every episode, make sure that you preface your question with the word question so that I can differentiate your question from all of the comments. So there's that. All right, well, okay.

So thank you for defining our terms there, historical theology, and how it's different from just a survey of church history. Now, when we bring this into contact with apologetics, what is the relationship between historical theology, church history, and Christians fulfilling the mandate of 1 Peter 3, verse 15, to always be ready to give a reason for the hope that's in us?

How do you connect those? How can you share with my listeners why it's important to kind of meld these things together?

Church History as an Aid to Apologetics

Mm, okay. Yeah, this has been, I wrote a blog post about this once on my blog, how theological retrieval, which is just the task of drawing from historical theology for doing theology today, can inform apologetics, which is a really interesting question.

There's so much to that that we could maybe get into. We could talk about, say, how Christians first faced the challenge of Islam, like John of Damascus and some of these other early Eastern Christian theologians who are first facing the challenge of Islam, and how that could inform our dialogue with our Muslim friends today, for example.

You know, there's all kinds of specific avenues where we might just learn so much content. But one of the other things that's a little more subtle and kind of interesting that I've observed is church history can also just kind of help us position the gospel to be really clear for people.

So, you know, it can help us distinguish between what is sort of mainstream classical Christianity versus what are elements of the faith that are kind of more just a result of our context and our culture, okay?

So, like, I'll give two examples of times I've seen this. One is William Lane Craig in his famous debate with Christopher Hitchens at Biola University. I wanna say this was, you might know this more than me, I wanna say this was like early, like mid -2000s, 2000.

Yeah, 2000, between 2008 and 2011, I wanna say, somewhere between.

That sounds right. I remember the time I was, yeah, that sounds right. So in the debate, he referenced St. Augustine's view of Genesis 1 as a way to say that a non-literal reading of Genesis 1 is not merely a response to modern science, okay?

Now, I'm not trying to make a point about Genesis 1 right now. Sure, sure, sure. Whatever one thinks about that is fine, but it's just, that was an example of where, in a public apologetics context, you can say, look, Christian, and that's a general point about this whole area is church history can be a sort of objective witness.

It can be a check to us because it's gonna be a pre-modern. It's gonna give you a lot of pre-modern voices, and therefore, it can tell you whether something is merely being a result of the changes with modernity.

It can give you a kind of outside perspective on the modern kind of liberal versus conservative spectrum that we have today. It's really interesting to do that. Another example would be Ross Douthat on Bill Maher's show.

There's an episode, it's not on YouTube anymore, unfortunately. It was a really fascinating discussion. So basically, Bill Maher, as you know, is not exactly the most friendly person to religion. Come on.

Not exactly. No, he's about, he's, yeah. I mean, when you think of the new atheists, he's almost more sarcastic than them. So he was going on and on, and I thought Ross Douthat did such a good job at defending Christian beliefs, and he referenced the rapture.

And he said, look, what you think of as like the normal Christian view is actually a 19th century innovation. He's using basically theological retrieval. That's another way, a specific way, is it gives us kind of, it's a distinction between, you know, we see it as kind of the normal Christian view versus what is actually classically, consistently been orthodox.

Would you say, so kind of to draw another example, would you say that that's kind of equivalent to interpretations of Genesis, for example? Some will say that certain interpretations are given to respond to evolution in kind of current situations.

Would you say it's similar to the idea that, say, for example, St. Augustine had a particular interpretation of Genesis that shows that it is plausible to interpret it in different ways without the pressure of the modern evolutionary context?

Would you say that that's similar to the point you're trying to make with respect to understanding scripture within a specific context, and then having that as kind of apologetically useful? Does that make sense?

If I understand your question right, that's exactly my point. I may not totally correct, but I think it's exactly the point I'm trying to make, that, yeah. Yeah, in other words, when you see that Augustine doesn't think the days of Genesis 1 are ordinary, solar 24-hour periods of time, that might incline you to be more open to the fact that this isn't just a capitulation to 19th century geological discovery.

And that's true even if you disagree with St. Augustine's interpretation. So if St. Augustine says, hey, we could understand Genesis in this way, we don't necessarily have to understand it in that way, you can disagree with him, but it shows that people were asking these questions and thinking about these things in that way without the pressure of evolution.

So it's not just a modern example of responding to a specific context as opposed to taking the scripture in its proper historical context.

Exactly right. You might conclude that Augustine was wrong and that the days are 24-hour periods of time, but if you see that this view is present in Augustine and not only in Augustine, but actually in many people prior to him and many medieval interpreters as well, you might at least be inclined to say, okay, that's still a difference that's within orthodoxy.

This isn't like a dividing line between the people who take the Bible seriously and the people who don't take the Bible seriously. And sometimes it is framed as that by certain contemporary ministries that have a particular view on these things.

It's framed as though here's the serious view for people who uphold the Bible as God's word, and then people who are pitch compromising to modern science. Right. The Augustinian tradition of exegesis in mind, even if you disagree with it, you might categorize that differently.

Right, and I think that's unfortunate. I hold to a specific interpretation of Genesis, but I don't buy some of the criticisms of say like old earth creationists that they're just compromising. I think that, I mean, this is not a discussion on Genesis, right, obviously, but I do think that people just look at the biblical data.

They have different understanding of what the proper context is and the genre, and they just understand it in a different way. And they think that there are other options than at one particular interpretation.

And I respect that even though I hold to my own position for the reasons that I do. So that's a great point. All right, so let's kind of jump more into kind of, not to say that everything you said is impractical.

I think all of it is practical, but let's jump into a more practical example where something like church history and historical theology will be very useful within an apologetic context. How can we use, how can you convince someone who doesn't, they're not really up on church history or historical theology, how can you convince someone that it is important and then provide an example, say for example, the role church history plays when you're doing apologetics with a Roman Catholic or an Eastern Orthodox person or a Muslim.

Perhaps we can kind of draw some specific examples as to where this type of information, this type of study, this historical church history perspective, how this can come into an actual dialogue with someone from those different perspectives.

Using Church History in Dialogue with Catholics, Orthodox, and Muslims

Okay, yeah, well, the first appeal that I love to make to people is if you fall in love with church history and it's the main thing is just so that you can know what to say in this conversation, then it's kind of like, oh, well, but we should just love church history personally because we love Jesus.

So Jesus is at work throughout church history. We are, when we become a Christian and we're not just entering into a personal relationship with Christ, we're brought into this spiritual family we call the church and the church extends throughout time as well as throughout space.

So we have brothers and sisters in Christ who have gone before us. And so to me, there's just such a basic appeal that we can make and it's so edifying. I mean, if someone reads Augustine's confessions and isn't moved emotionally, spiritually and intellectually, then I don't know what can move us because that book is so from the beginning when he says our hearts are made for God and they're restless until they find their rest in him.

This is such a penetrating book. However, to answer your question, it is so helpful. In fact, I just feel embarrassed at how many times Protestants are woefully ignorant of church history today and it makes Protestants extremely vulnerable to the apologetics efforts of non-Protestant traditions such as Orthodox or Catholic or others.

And I see it happen over and over again where people don't know a thing about church history and then they hear these appeals from an apologetics ministry about how early on bishops enter into the church as a mystic office, about how everyone thought the body and blood of Christ was literally present in the bread and wine of the Eucharist.

Oh gosh, we could go, everyone believed in baptismal regeneration in the among the church fathers. If there's anything universal, it's that, and all these different appeals and Protestants are just completely swept off their feet.

And I think that a basic understanding of church history is amidst a zillion other reasons, it's healthy and good. It's good so that we'll be more capable in terms of interacting with those kinds of arguments.

Hmm, so let's get a little more specific then. So you're talking to an Eastern Orthodox person, right? And the person says, well, the problem is, pardon, the problem is you Protestants have really strayed away from historic Christianity.

What we teach is what the church believed from the beginning. So why don't you provide a response for us, maybe give some, I don't wanna use kind of the military language, but ammunition for a Protestant who says, hey, my cousin who's Eastern Orthodox, he told me that I didn't know what to say.

How would you speak to that and kind of provide someone the beginning of how they might engage that sort of claim?

Okay, I'll draw attention to two example areas where we could draw attention to these in the midst of that dialogue. But I would wanna encourage people to do their own homework and to make sure that their own knowledge is sufficient for what they say.

In other words, don't just pull out a claim and then say that because I think someone could get themselves into trouble by over speaking or speaking when they don't know enough to back up the claim. So maybe these would be areas for the Protestant to study so that then they're even more equipped in that dialogue.

But one of them would be how icons and other images and physical objects of an artistic nature are utilized in Christian worship in the early church because the Eastern Orthodox claim is that venerating icons is an essential and necessary part of worship.

And that comes out of the Seventh Ecumenical Council at Nicaea too. And there's an anathema placed upon those who don't affirm the veneration of icons. But if you look into church history, I think the case can be made very compellingly that the veneration of icons is not well attested in the first several hundred years of church history.

In fact, many of the earliest church fathers say they renounce all use of icons, let alone venerating them, bowing before them, kissing them, anything like that. And I think a good case can be made that this is a later accretion in church history.

Now there's a lot to that. There's counter arguments we need to engage in circle, but that's an area that I could encourage people to really look into. And I think we've got a pretty good case that can be made.

Sure. Now, what sort of responses,.

You said that there's a good argument to be had that it's a later accretions. What are some of the things that Eastern Orthodox folks bring up in response to that assertion? And maybe you can kind of, not in as in depth as you possibly could, but can you kind of play out a back and forth in terms of, well, Protestants typically say that, yeah, it's a later accretion, but really what sort of information do they appeal to to combat that assertion?

Yeah, they will appeal to various claims of evidence that it is apostolic, that it does go back. They'll talk about certain inscriptions on early Christian tombs. They'll make various architectural appeals from early Christian buildings, and then they'll appeal to certain fathers early on.

So it's hard to get into this without getting, it's hard to just get a little bit into this without getting really into this. But essentially, I think that the basic way I'd interact with those claims is it is true that you can find the use of images among Christians early on.

But in terms of their veneration, the reason we know that Christians didn't practice that is because we have so many testimonies from early fathers, or just we'd say ecclesial writers like Origen, who are, they're saying, we don't venerate images, and they're saying that this is a distinctive point of difference between Christian worship and pagan worship, because it's so common in the pagan culture around the veneration of images in some way or another.

So those testimonies from so many fathers are hard to dismiss. Another area that I would encourage people to engage in if they're talking with Eastern Orthodox Christians is the filioque clause, which is the phrase in the creed that's Latin, means and from the son.

It's the idea of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the father and the son, or just from the father. And the historic Orthodox view is that affirming the filioque is a heresy, and a damnable heresy.

And you can find lots of Orthodox.

From the Eastern Orthodox perspective. Isn't the Western, the Western church would affirm that the spirit proceeds from the father and the son, right? So that was the heart of the split in 1015, am I correct?

1054, sorry.

1054, yes. I mean, there's a lot, that's at the heart of the theology and the differences. There's a lot of politics to that split as well. But yeah, so that's another area where I think a good case can be made that you've got a lot of Western fathers that the East will not want to anathematize, will not want to say we're heretics, but they pretty clearly affirmed the filioque.

And yeah, again, there's responses here to that, but I think a good case can be made. So I'm just trying to flag two areas where. Yeah, yeah. We'd like dive into those things if they're looking for help in responding to these strong claims.

Protestant Diversity, Unity, and the Limits of Appeals to the Fathers

Now, okay. So when I speak, for example, with Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox folks, they tend to appeal to the authority of different streams of church fathers. So that the Eastern church has their church fathers and the Western church has their church fathers.

Do you think that it's apologetically important to focus on those different streams? So for example, a Protestant might want to challenge the authority claims of both a Roman Catholic and an Eastern Orthodox.

Would that be a good route to take when engaging in any one of them? So for example, the Eastern Orthodox says, this is what the church has always believed. But then you point out, well, the Roman Catholics kind of disagree with you.

And they say that this is what the church believed. Which authority should we be following? Is that a okay route to take? Or do you think there's a better route to take in engaging those sorts of issues?

Yeah. What's interesting is both churches tend to claim the consensus of all the fathers. Mm-hmm. Okay. So both will tend to collect the Eastern Orthodox church will want to appeal to Western fathers.

The Catholic church will want to appeal to Eastern fathers. And so one of the things that I think that Protestants can, that might help Protestants is to not position it as just, it's just me over here as an individual Protestant versus wow, you know, all the church fathers over there with you.

But to recognize, first of all, Protestantism is not the first division. If you were to subtract Protestantism from the equation, you still have a church that's deeply divided at multiple levels. So it's helpful for Protestants to realize that we've got the other Eastern traditions, the Oriental Orthodox church and the Assyrian church of the East or two other Eastern churches.

And then we've got other groups that have split off from the Roman Catholic church, both what are called proto-Protestant groups like the Waldensians are a medieval group that split off from the Catholic church which eventually joined in with the reformed tradition, a Protestant tradition.

You've got the old Catholic church which split off at Vatican one. So, and then you've got, you know, all kinds of in within orthodoxy, you've got schisms, you've got the true Orthodox who think that the, what they call the world Orthodox have become heretical and because they've become too open to ecumenism and so forth.

So it's helpful to realize because often it's leveraged against us. Like, well, there's just the one church that's totally united and then you guys split off into all these different groups. And it's helpful to kind of even it out a little bit and say, and also then with appealing to the church fathers then I think it's appropriate to show how the consensus of the church fathers, I'm sorry, but it does not neatly support any one contemporary church.

It just doesn't. There will be on many points the fathers don't have a consensus on many particular doctrines the fathers say have different views. And then on the points where they are in agreement I don't think that it neatly services or aids the apologetics efforts of like one particular church.

And so I think that's one way Protestants can start to think about that in order to be prepared to not be swept off their feet by these overconfident assertions that we hear.

Now I have a friend who he has an apologetics website and he has a section on the church fathers and he has an article entitled, my church father can beat up your church father. And the point he's trying to make is that it seems to be that when Roman Catholic tradition and Eastern Orthodox tradition appeal to the fathers in reality, there's a lot upon which the fathers contradict each other.

Is that true? Do you see a lot of contradiction in a lot of these claims that if we're gonna put our trust in the majority of the church fathers taught this one thing and well, when you appeal to different people there seems to be conflicts.

Is that an accurate picture of the church fathers or am I missing something?

I think it will depend upon what the issue is. There are some points where the church fathers at least in strong majority or in perhaps near unanimity tend to arrive upon one view. And here's a lot of times why people leave Protestantism.

They go into these discussions naively thinking, oh, this is gonna be an easy case. All the truth is obviously on our side. And the fact is it's actually pretty tricky. There are some points that can be leveraged against much modern evangelical practice.

The less so I would argue against historic Protestant views and practice that can be pretty powerful. And I would wanna encourage Protestants to humbly listen to the appeal and consider, hey, the other side is not necessarily insincere or stupid.

They're smart and sincere in many cases. So you gotta really take seriously what they are saying. At some points, there may be a strong appeal from the church fathers that can be made against us and we'll have to wrestle with that and work through that.

In some of those cases, there will be Protestant traditions that are more historically aware that can better accommodate that criticism. A Lutheran or an Anglican might be able to say, yeah, we would agree with the point in question here on some of those appeals that are made.

Yeah. And other points, yeah. And other points, but I think you are right that yes, often the claim of the consensus of the fathers is overstated. Oftentimes there is more diversity among the fathers than is acknowledged by those claims.

Sure.

Now, how would you respond then to, and by the way, I'm asking these questions on purpose. I don't have prepared questions, but I am asking these questions on purpose because I hope that people will see the way you're answering.

It actually is exemplifying the apologetic significance of knowing church history. So if I were to say, well, what if a Roman Catholic says, well, the church always believed A, B, and C, and then you give your answer and hopefully people are making the connection.

Well, wait a minute. When I engage a Roman Catholic, it's really helpful to kind of know a little bit about that information. So hopefully, Gavin's answers are a good exemplification of what it looks like to incorporate knowledge of church history into the apologetic task.

So I think you're doing an excellent job there. But so Protestants get a bad rap because Protestantism seems very segmented. We hear, you know, I lost count of the number, but you know, there are 1 trillion, billion, quintillion denominations, right?

You know, of course, that's not a real number, but how would you respond as a Protestant to the claim that Protestantism has brought nothing but division? And it's just proved positive that Protestantism does not have the truth because look at all the different denominations.

How would you help my listeners engage in that sort of challenge?

Protestantism, Sola Scriptura, and the Charge of Division

If someone were to state it as Protestantism has brought nothing more than division, I'd wanna push back at the lack of charity and the uncarefulness of an assertion like that. Most of the Roman Catholic theologians who are some of my dear friends who I respect the most will acknowledge that some good things came with the Reformation.

It's not just this pure unadulterated evil. They would disagree with the fundamental material claims of the Reformation. So those kinds of overstatements I would push back on. Now, if someone makes a more modest and careful statement that says, I'm really concerned about the amount of divisiveness in Protestantism.

I would agree. I don't think there's any good in denying that that's a real challenge. And I would say, to be a Protestant Christian doesn't necessarily mean that you think Protestantism is perfect or that there's no, in fact, one of the whole glories of Protestantism is the principle of semper reformanda which means always reforming.

That we always want to continually self-examine in light of scripture and improve our faith and practice if it can be improved in any way. And they're probably, especially with our practice continual adjustments we can make.

I'm sympathetic to this concern. Now, one of the ways it's overstated is the amount of division in other traditions, non-Protestant traditions is sometimes swept under the rug. Because there's this sort of institutional overhead, therefore it's acting like, well, we have unity.

But the truth be told, unity is more than just institutional unity. What Jesus prayed for in John 17 is more full-orbed than just, well, we're all technically a part of the same institution. Even though the fact that you've got radical progressive and arch-traditionalist who hate each other and don't recognize each other as Christian.

Well, that's not unity, but they're still in the same institution. So I think drawing attention to the complexity of the word unity and all that's involved with that, I think you also have to look at the historical context that we're no longer in a kind of state church nexus.

Between Constantine and even continuing on through the Reformation, the church and state come together. Well, denominations, which is what Protestantism has, make a lot more sense when you understand that we came into being after that had been broken up somewhat.

Because we're not claiming to be the one true church. Denominations are a way of negotiating our theological differences without violating our conscience. And so I think it's helpful to try to just draw attention to the fact that even though there is lamentable disunity in Protestantism, the fact is that we can actually still have various kinds of unity that aren't enough, but they're still very meaningful and real.

Sure. And that also is lost when these criticisms are overstated. But at the basic core concern, I think it's okay for a Protestant to just say, yeah, that's a valid criticism. I mean, J. Gresham Machen said it in his Christianity and Liberalism very plainly.

Protestantism, and Herman Bobbink talks a lot about this. Protestantism does have a tendency to fragment too much. And I think that's something we should humbly consider. Yeah.

That's very important. I think it's important that we admit when there's an issue and not necessarily get into defensive mode. I mean, when we do apologetics, we prepare so much to kind of like give an answer.

But sometimes when someone makes a statement, we need to acknowledge the validity to some extent to what they're saying and really honestly engage in light of the valid aspects of their objection or their challenge.

So I think that's very important. Now, an important principle within Protestant theology is of course, sola scriptura, and kind of related to what I previously asked with respect to the divisions within Protestantism.

How would you respond to someone who says that sola scriptura in particular is one of the key reasons why you have all of these different denominations? And so sola scriptura has produced more division than unity, if anything else, and that's a good reason to reject it.

How would you respond to that with respect.

To the context of sola scriptura? Okay, there's so much to this. Yes. Sola scriptura is a big topic, but let me just say two things that might be helpful just at the very beginning. One is we wanna press for clear definitions because of all the things that in Protestant theology are often caricatured, I think sola scriptura may be the most frequent.