How I Accidentally Became a “Protestant Apologist”

Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is president of Truth Unites and theologian-in-residence at Immanuel Nashville in Tennessee. He’s a highly sought after speaker and apologist, and his new book What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church releases on August 20, 2024.

I never set out to defend Protestantism. I got sort of pulled into it. In August 2020 I started a YouTube channel called Truth Unites. My intent was to release content mainly in apologetics, as well as some general theology. I was completing a book arguing for the existence of God, and I had come to see YouTube as a space where I could engage on such questions with a wider and more diverse audience.

As I began putting out videos, I found myself drawn into the various issues that separate different Christian traditions. On YouTube there is a huge amount of energy in conversations between Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant Christians (among other traditions as well). I began to engage a bit in this space. One video led to another. I started connecting with other channels addressing these questions.

Quickly I realized there was a huge need for greater Protestant representation. For one thing, there were simply fewer Protestants involved in these conversations. Beyond that, I noticed that traditional Protestant argumentation was often not articulated in the contemporary conversations, such that historic Protestantism was misunderstood or altogether invisible.

So I immersed myself in classical Protestant texts, hoping to represent my tradition as best I could. Soon I began to do dialogues and debates. Before long I had become, to my surprise, a “Protestant apologist.”

This whole experience has been a fascinating journey of discovery from which I have learned and profited immensely and made many wonderful friends. Four observations stand out and form the background to this book:

1. There is currently an enormous amount of interest in church history. 

Many evangelicals, in particular, are currently exploring more sacramental, liturgical, and historically conscious traditions. It’s hard to convey how strong this hunger for historical rootedness is right now. People are aching for the ancient, the transcendent, the stable, the deep. I routinely get emails or Facebook messages from Protestants who have suddenly come to terms with the sheer hugeness of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy and are struggling with it. When I address issues like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the essence-Energies distinction, or apostolic succession, I am flooded with comments like, “I was just wondering about this!” or “I’ve been waiting for help on this!” And I hear testimony after testimony of those who, seeking a more historically rooted expression of Christianity and finding the anti-Protestant arguments of popular YouTube ministries un answered, leave Protestantism for another tradition. 

Related to this, there is an enormous amount of what I call “ecclesial angst” right now (i.e., anxiety about being in the true church). Over and over I hear from people who feel completely overwhelmed by the complexity of ecumenical disagreements. Some are concerned about their salvation (or that of a loved one). I am deeply burdened that those in that lonely and confusing place find the rest and security that comes from the gospel.

2. Among evangelicals, there appears to be insufficient awareness of, and response to, this phenomenon. 

This is not to say there are no evangelical Protestants engaging in these conversations. But the resources available to struggling Protestants are shockingly sparse. On the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox side (especially Catholic), there is a huge body of literature, social media presence, and apologetics ministries that are unmatched on the Protestant side. Just do an Amazon search for books in the genre of “Roman Catholic apologetics,” compare that with a search for “Protestant apologetics,” and you’ll see what I mean. And although I increasingly hear from people who have friends and family members transitioning out of Protestantism to different Christian traditions, many evangelicals remain completely unaware of this trend. Thus, when it comes to explaining why we are Protestant, we have our work cut out for us. This was the opposite of what I expected. I had assumed that, since these conversations have been happening for five hundred years among groups with hundreds of millions of people on each side, there would be little to say that hadn’t already been said. Trying to make a fresh contribution would be like pouring water into the ocean. But I have come to the opposite conclusion. There is a gap that needs to be filled. It’s like there is a gash in the side of the Protestant boat, and water is pouring in— yet too few people are fixing the hole. 

3. Gradually throughout this process, through both study and dialogue, I came to see that many of the perceptions I had gathered about older traditions like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy were caricatures, or at least simplified or warped to some degree. 

I also gained a more accurate understanding of other Eastern traditions like the Oriental Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East. I had always found it easy to respect these other traditions and learn from them, disagreements notwithstanding. But I never really felt the pressure to explain why Protestantism was the better option. I functioned in contexts that were mostly Protestant, so I easily assumed my own tradition as the respected default option.

On YouTube the sociological dynamics I encountered were the opposite: I began to encounter huge numbers of people who were mystified at how anyone could be Protestant. Slowly I learned to see Protestantism through their eyes. What was once obvious as a recovery of the gospel, I could now understand as they saw it— a historical deviation and oddity.

I also began to see the complexity of the issues better. Let me put it plainly: The issues that divide Christendom are rarely if ever so obvious that everyone will come to the same conclusion about them if only they would study them long enough with a good will. Rather, sincere and intelligent people will and do disagree about them because they are not simple. They are enormously complex— historically, theologically, and in terms of the range of values and concerns represented on each side.

Throughout this process, my Protestantism has been challenged and chastened in various ways. At the same time, I’ve ultimately become more committed to Protestantism and more convicted about the nobility of the Protestant cause. I’ll say more about this as we go. The point for now is that this journey has helped me understand the powerful allure of these non-Protestant traditions and burdened me that they are often not treated with sufficient respect and thoroughness. 

4. I have come to appreciate that the caricatures go both ways. 

Unfortunately, Protestantism is frequently misunderstood and poorly represented by those who criticize it (and occasionally by those who defend it!). People often characterize the whole of Protestantism through the lens of their anecdotal observations of this or that Protestant church or tradition. There is large-scale ignorance of historic Protestant creeds, confessions, catechisms, and major canonical theologians. In many cases, low-church, evangelical Protestantism (predominantly Baptist and nondenominational) is equated with Protestantism as a whole. And many particular Protestant views are mangled by caricature. (I have especially noticed this with sola fide and sola Scriptura, but it happens in other areas as well).

Sadly, I believe imprecise conceptions of Protestantism are a huge factor in defections from it. For instance, people often compare a particular experience in a Protestant context to what they read about the church fathers on an apologetics website. They are in effect comparing the worst of Protestantism to the best of the non-Protestant traditions, and as a result, they leave Protestantism for other traditions without an authentic grasp of what Protestantism really is (and often without fully looking into the other traditions). Of course, I am not saying all conversions are like this. But it does happen a lot.

An example of how Protestantism is often unfairly represented and contrasted with other traditions:

In early 2020, a clip of the popular evangelical leader Francis Chan (whom I appreciate and admire!) was widely circulated and discussed. Speaking about the Eucharist, Chan said,

I didn’t know that for the first 1,500 years of church history, everyone saw it as the literal body and blood of Christ. And it wasn’t till 500 years ago that someone popularized the thought that it’s just a symbol and nothing more. I didn’t know that. . . . It was at that same time that for the first time someone put a pulpit in front of the gathering. Because before that it was always the body and blood of Christ that was central to their gatherings. For 1,500 years, it was never one guy and his pulpit being the center of the church. It was the body and the blood of Christ— and even the leaders just saw themselves as partakers.¹

Chan’s observation here represents a common way of framing the differences between different Christian traditions. It reinforces the popular perception that, on topics like the Eucharist or worship, Protestantism is an obvious departure from the catholic and historical consensus in the church.

A narrative like this gains traction because it is rhetorically powerful, but it is ultimately unfair and misleading, because:

It oversimplifies views on the Eucharist during the first 1,500 years of the church, glossing over both the diversity of the patristic testimony and the turbulence of the medieval development when the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation officially emerged in the thirteenth century. 

While some variety of “real presence” is the predominating view of the Eucharist throughout church history, there is unsettledness and diversity within that consensus, and occasional departures from it. In fact, as late as the ninth century there was open debate concerning both whether and how Christ is present in the Eucharistic elements.²

The narrative imagined in Chan’s remarks misframes where the differences between the Reformers and their opponents actually lie. 

Most of the Reformers affirmed the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and opposed transubstantiation on the grounds that it represented a departure not only from Scripture but also from patristic testimony. For example, early Protestants like Peter Martyr Vermigli and Thomas Cranmer argued that for church fathers like Augustine and Theodoret, the bread and wine remained bread and wine in substance while also becoming Christ’s body and blood.³ The whole appeal of their Eucharistic theology was a return to catholicity, against the changes introduced by the substance-accidents distinction in the medieval development.⁴ It is true that many modern-day evangelicals have adopted more of a symbolic view, but that is by no means representative of Protestantism wholesale.

The idea that the Reformers were intending to replace the Eucharist with a pulpit is quite nearly the opposite of the case. 

The Protestant effort was to reclaim the Eucharist, not replace it. Lay Christians in the late medieval West hardly ever partook of the Eucharist. For most it would have been only once a year, if that, and even then, it was generally in one kind only (the bread, not the wine). For many the Eucharist had become more of a spectacle, and its celebration was plagued by superstitious beliefs. One of the central, animating concerns of the Protestant Reformation was to reestablish for lay Christians a meaningful and frequent participation with the Eucharist in both kinds. Chan’s comment that “even the leaders just saw themselves as partakers” is also misleading—the Reformation reduced, rather than increased, the division that had accrued between the clergy and laity in the late medieval West.

There is much more to say about the Eucharist, which I have gone into in online discussions. The point for now is just to see how commonly and easily Protestantism is misrepresented, even by Protestants. It is sadly commonplace for Protestantism to be characterized in terms of the street-level practice at contemporary evangelical churches and ministries, rather than in terms of historic, official, confessional doctrine.

My heart aches for Protestants to understand the riches of their own tradition— especially before they consider leaving it.

About My Book, What it Means to Be Protestant

Stemming from these four observations, the purpose of my book What it Means to Be Protestant is to help those navigating ecumenical disagreements by rehabilitating an awareness of historic Protestantism. As you will notice, it is not an exhaustive treatment of Protestant distinctives, and it has a broader and more general scope than an academic book. The goal is simply to convey an overall sense of how Protestantism makes sense and hangs together on its own terms. Thus, this book is very far from being comprehensive. But I have felt so burdened about the widespread ignorance of classical Protestant argumentation that I wanted to provide at least a basic introduction. My primary audience is Protestants seeking to understand their own tradition, but I also hope it can be helpful to Christians from other traditions who are open to hearing Protestant arguments, or even those outside the debate looking in.

The book’s overarching flow of thought has three basic movements:

Part 1 considers Protestantism’s relation to catholicity (the wholeness of the church). 

Chapter 1 suggests Protestantism is a renewal effort within the larger church, drawing from the work of the nineteenth-century Protestant historian Philip Schaff. Chapter 2 contrasts this vision of catholicity with that of other traditions, particularly Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, by arguing that the true church cannot be limited to one institution. Chapters 3–4 specify the particular kind of renewal Protestantism occasioned— namely, recovery of the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide) as a response to various medieval errors. My hope is that this section of the book would help readers gather an overall sense of the nature of Protestantism— as a movement of revitalization, renewal, return, reformation, recentering, recovery. This is the vision of Protestantism I wish to commend in this book: not an unqualified rejection of the rest of the church, but rather a movement of renewal and reform within the church.

Inevitably, debate about Protestantism’s position in relation to the broader church boils down to the issue of authority: By what standard do we measure authentic renewal movements from spurious counterfeits? Thus...

Part 2 of the book engages questions of authority, where some of the deepest methodological differences lie between Protestantism and other Christian traditions. 

Chapters 5–6 commend the Protestant claim that Scripture alone is the infallible rule of faith for the church (sola Scriptura), while chapters 7 and 8 consider two alternative proposals of ecclesial authority in the non-Protestant traditions. The goal of this section of the book is to show that the Protestant view of how Christ exercises authority over his church is more plausibly true than the alternatives but also more conducive to the health and vitality of the church.

Part 3 of the book considers Protestantism’s relationship to church history. 

It is commonly argued that Protestantism has no historical basis. Anyone who takes church history seriously, it is claimed, can no longer remain Protestant. After all, the Protestant movement began as late as the sixteenth century. In response, I argue that the Protestant Reformation was not an attempt to create a new church, but rather to reform the historic church of Christ by removing various errors that had gradually developed over time (chapter 9). In the effort, the major Protestant tenets had strong historical basis. I then focus on two test cases: the assumption of Mary (chapter 10) and the veneration of icons (chapter 11). These two topics are particularly appropriate examples of the Protestant concern, both because of their historical record as well as the significance attached to them by several of the major non-Protestant traditions. My hope with this section is that a sympathetic reader would not only understand the Protestant position on these specific examples but would also gather an intuition about how Protestants understand their general situatedness within the history of the church— not as a departure from ancient Christianity, but as a return to it by the removal of various innovations or (as I will often call them) accretions. A brief conclusion sums up the overall resulting vision of Protestantism and offers practical advice to those facing such questions.

In sum, I commend Protestantism as first, a renewal of the gospel in the church; second, a return to the authority of Scripture; and third, a removal of historical accretions. Or, stated in terms of negations: part 1 opposes the assertion that any one institutional hierarchy comprises the “one true church”; part 2 opposes claims that the postapostolic church can act infallibly; and part 3 opposes the sentiment that Protestantism is a departure from ancient Christianity.

A question some readers might have at the front end is, “Which particular Protestant tradition are you defending in this book?” The answer is none. Although I am baptistic in my theology and ordained in a Congregationalist denomination, in this book I am seeking to commend a mere Protestantism, much in the manner that C. S. Lewis sought to defend a mere Christianity. Sometimes people criticize me for being a particular kind of Protestant and yet defending Protestantism as a whole. But it is perfectly permissible to defend one’s broader level of identity. It would be like a Roman Catholic Christian defending “Christianity” to a Muslim or an Eastern Orthodox Christian defending “religion” to an atheist.

Of course, the differences among Protestant denominations are important, and each of us must consider which particular church we will join. But many people are wondering whether they should be any kind of Protestant, or whether the very idea of Protestantism makes sense. It is those kinds of readers whom I hope to help.

A Word to Non-Protestant Readers

Let me say a word to my readers from different Christian traditions. Believe me when I say I understand how frustrating and jarring it can be to patiently listen to the other side. Being on YouTube and seeking to remain irenic in the face of deep disagreements has sensitized me to the intensity of the dynamics of human disagreement. It is one of the driving passions of my life to be a person of charity who sincerely seeks to love and bless (and learn from) the other side amid our conversations and debates.

In my interactions with other Christian traditions through my YouTube ministry, I have frequently reflected on what I regard as the great theme in Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird: the unmaking of prejudice. Constantly in my process of engaging in non-Protestant views I have thought of Atticus Finch’s profound advice to his daughter:

If you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.⁵

I believe many (though not all) of the divisions within Christendom result from— or at least are exacerbated by— a failure to employ Atticus’s counsel in this passage. There is much prejudice, much pride, much caricature, much tribalism, much aloofness, much unwarranted enmity and distance. None of us are totally above this, so we must seek to listen patiently and really hear what the other side is saying. It is a mark of intellectual maturity to lower our guard and sympathetically consider how another person’s position makes sense to them. Healthy, God-honoring disagreement, however vigorous, cannot bypass this initial step.

In this vein, I have done everything I can to describe opposing views accurately. I also want to articulate my deep love for my non-Protestant Christian friends at a personal level and my respect for these other traditions at both an intellectual and aesthetic level. The approach I seek in this book and in my YouTube ministry is to encourage candid and robust argumentation about our differences, downplaying or minimizing nothing, while at the same time seeking to maintain a conciliatory relationship. In various videos, I have expressed my appreciation for the wealth of Roman Catholic scholarship and learning, for example, or my admiration for the rich tradition of prayer and spirituality in many Eastern traditions.⁶ I could give many other examples of areas of appreciation as well.

Hopefully it is clear that my motive behind this book is not personal animus against anyone. Instead, I write from my sincere conviction before God concerning the truth about our theological differences. These differences are important. They matter profoundly—to the gospel, to the church, and to our mission in this world. We must not and cannot shrug them off as irrelevant or avoid them out of a desire to maintain a superficial “unity.” We should pray for unity, to be sure, but never at the cost of glossing over important differences concerning the truth.

Ultimately, I am deeply convinced in my conscience that the claims of traditions like Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy to be the “one true church” that Jesus founded are wrong. Further, I maintain that the Protestant Reformation represented a genuine recovery of multiple biblical and apostolic truths. I do not maintain that these various non-Protestant traditions have entirely lost the gospel, but I do believe, with conviction, that the gospel has been both obscured and added on to in them. I also maintain, as will become evident, that Protestantism (despite its many imperfections) is best positioned to maintain a truly catholic vision of the church today amid its current fractures and divisions.

In line with that vision, it is my sincere prayer that my case for Protestantism would ultimately serve the unity and welfare of the one true, catholic, and apostolic church founded by Jesus Christ.

Lord Jesus Christ, on your final night in this world, you prayed that all your people would be one. We know that this unity cannot come at the expense of truth, yet we also know that our witness to the world around us depends on our pursuit of it. So we pray for humility and healing amid our often bitter disagreements: that we would better understand your gospel and better love one another in the process. Help us not to shy away from our disagreements in fear, nor reject one another in contempt. Teach us, as we talk to one another, ultimately to look to you. In your holy name, Amen.

NOTES:

Content adapted from the introduction of What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church.

1. This clip can be viewed at Relevant, “Francis Chan on Communion: “Everyone Saw It as the Literal Body and Blood of Christ,” https://relevantmagazine.com/culture/francis-chan-on-communion-everyone-saw-it-as-the-literal-body-and-blood-of-christ, accessed August 5, 2022.

2. I am referring to the famous dispute between two monks: Ratramnus, who advocated for a spiritual interpretation of the Eucharist in which the elements represent Christ’s body and blood figuratively, and Paschasius Radbertus, who advocated for more of a realist view in which the elements are identified with Christ’s body and blood at the moment of consecration. At this time neither view was condemned (as Berengar of Tours’s symbolical view would be two centuries later). For a helpful overview of this medieval development, see Brett Salkeld, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2019), 57–137.

3. See Peter Martyr Vermigli, The Oxford Treatise and Disputation on the Eucharist, trans. and ed. Joseph C. McLelland, The Peter Martyr Vermigli Library, vol. 7 (Moscow, ID: Davenant, 2018), 48–62; Thomas Cranmer, A Defense of the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Our Saviour Christ (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2004), 45–63.

4. On the patristic roots of Vermigli’s view, see George Hunsinger, The Eucharist and Ecumenism: Let Us Keep the Feast (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 39–46.

5. Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird (New York: Grand Central, 1960), 39.

6. E.g., see my video, “The Essence-Energies Distinction: A Protestant Reflection,” Truth Unites, May 30, 2022,

Eucharist Photo by James Coleman on Unsplash