Truth Unites - Evangelicals, We Must Learn From This

Episode Date: April 8, 2025

Gavin Ortlund reviews a recent conversation about the Eucharist to encourage evangelicals to retrieve their own heritage regarding the church and sacraments.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Recently, there was a discussion at MIT that got a lot of attention. Stuart and Cliff connectically received a question from Maret Malaku. I hope I'm pronouncing their name's right. If I got any wrong, sorry, let me know in the comments, and I'll pin the comment to make sure I correct that. Sometimes a discussion like this that gets a lot of focus. I don't know, I kind of had conflicting feelings of do you even comment on it, but lots of people were asking about it, and I thought, hey, this could be a good teaching moment just to reflect on this. And I just want to say something to my tribe of evangelical Protestantism.

I'm an Orthodox Christian. And basically, the question I had was directed basically to you anyway. So Maret, if I understand correctly, is a student at Harvard and an Oriental Orthodox Christian. This is a different tradition from Eastern Orthodoxy. I've done two videos on Oriental Orthodoxy, if you're interested. One was the first discussion between Luther and Melancthon and an Oriental Orthodox Christian, amazingly ecumenical time. And another is about a reform movement in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church prior to Luther in the 1400s.

You've talked about your stance on baptism and the Eucharist and how you believe that they're just basically symbolic outward professions and not actually efficacious for salvation. And basically my critique or my question really is when we look at the extant records of the first, second, third century Christians, all of them say that these are effications for salvation, that they're not just symbolic, that they have an actual deifying effect on the person that receives them. So I guess my question is, how can you say that you're following what the Bible says if your interpretation of the Bible is not lining up with the people that directly receive the Bible and even compiled the canon of the New Testament? This is a totally fair question. It's a great question, even if maybe the framing is a little too strong of a contrast between efficacious unto salvation and deification on the one hand versus mere symbols on the other, because there's other options in those. But nonetheless, this is a super good question and very respectfully asked, and Maret keeps his respectful demeanor throughout this conversation, which I thought was really commendable. If that's true, then what's the history of why so many millions upon millions don't think it's the case? You can argue the same thing about why so many people don't believe in the gospel.

I mean, that's just... No, no, but who are the people? I want you to say the names, the church fathers, and who you're referring to on both sides of the fence. Well, there's no both sides because we don't have any... records of anyone that believes in Spong. So you're saying it's later with Luther? Not even with Luther, because Luther famously said he would rather drink blood with the Pope than you have it come about?

It came with Ulrich Zwingli and some of the radical and reformers, which is like, what, 500 years ago? So rather than answer the question here, Stewart is basically saying, tell me about the other side in church history, and this is not a good rhetorical way to respond because it gives Moret the chance to basically say there is no other side until Zwingli. That is not totally true. You can find debates all the way up to the 9th century. Ratromnis is a monk who's debating against Pascasius, Red Burtas in the 800s.

Retromnis has a view pretty similar to memorialism. That is just a symbol, the Lord's Supper. Red Burdus has a real presence view. And Retromnis does not come under any discipline, like Beringar later will, two centuries later. So there's still some open debate about this, so it's not totally unanimous, as it sometimes said. nonetheless, Maret is absolutely right that some form of real presence is the overwhelmingly predominating position of church history, and he's right that we should care about this.

And Stewart sort of concedes that some of the church fathers believe this, but he seems to be disputing that this was the view during the time of Christ, but I think the general vibe I got from the discussion and that I think was the general sense is this was not an effective response to this question, and it gives us a chance to reflect on just not to isolate one person, but to reflect on evangelicalism. Because honestly, I think the overwhelming, predominating view of evangelicals today is probably not any form of real presence and not really an informed rejection of that. Sometimes there is. Sometimes you find people who've really studied it and landed on that view. I don't mean to be disrespectful to that, but I'm just saying, I think most people kind of aren't

really aware. I mean, put it like this. One of the things that is consistent there is, all of church history is an emphasis upon the Eucharist or the Lord's Supper as the climactic point of worship. A lot of evangelicals celebrate the Lord's Supper or the Eucharist maybe once a month, maybe less than that, and it doesn't seem to be not only not climactic in the worship service, it seems to be kind of sidelined and derivative and not very important. And so that's why, so again, seeing this episode is a chance to step back and say, hey, we have some learning to do because that's, here's the thing. People are going to say, Yeah, but that's not representative of all Protestants, and of course.

But it's not even representative of historic evangelicalism. And that's the thing that I think is worth thinking about. One more point here, though, scripture came up, because at some point, Stuart was saying, well, yeah, Augustine believed that, but not in the time of Christ. And Maret responded by pointing to 1st Corinthians 11. It's not a stretch because every single one of the early church fathers say that it's actually his body, actually is blood. If you go to 1st Corinthians chapter 11, St. Paul even says that those who didn't examine themselves properly before taking of partaking of the Lord's supper could die. If it's

just mere bread and wine, why St. Paul is saying it was killing precaricians that didn't examine themselves properly before partaking? Now, although I personally agree with a real presence view, and I've argued for that in various places, I don't think 1st Corinthians 1130 actually proves this. Maybe it implies it. It's certainly consistent with it. But remember that, the Corinthians are getting drunk during the Lord's Supper. So you can totally believe that it's just a symbol, and yet that kind of sacrilegious practice would receive divine judgment. So I don't think that verse is conclusive. I think a better, though it's maybe suggestive, you know, it certainly is consistent with it. But I think a better proof text for real presence is 1st Corinthians 1016

and the language of participation here, which is very significant word. And I've made my case about all of that elsewhere so you can look into my videos on this. Let's just step back and look at the big picture. What can we learn from this? Two quick lessons. Number one is lots of people put way too much stock into a conversation like this. I'm watching on Twitter and people are saying things like, well, Protestantism is imploding, as though, you know, this conversation is representative of these traditions that comprise nearly a billion people. Or others, other Protestants are really shaken by this and they're not sure whether they can be Protestants anymore. Others are saying we should stop using the word Protestant and this kind of thing. And I think all of that is just, you know,

we need to stop viewing the latest social media spat as determinative for these much larger structural questions that go way back into church history. The way to determine whether or not a Protestant position on the Lord's Supper is correct is to not just watch the the latest kerfuffle on social media, it's to read and to study. Or if you don't like reading, listen to an audio book instead, but, you know, get into some deep theology and read the classic theologians of the past. Here's the thing. It's not just the case that this particular conversation doesn't represent all of Protestantism. It doesn't even represent like low church evangelicalism. And this is one of the things that I've argued for is that until the 19th century,

even Baptists believed in real presence. And so the second thing I want to say, and the main thing, is just to see this as an occasion for evangelical Protestants. I guess I keep saying this, but I don't think we can say it too much, and I think it just really needs to be said. If you hear me say this too much, forgive me, but there's lots of people who probably haven't heard this yet. The masses of evangelicalism, I think we need to keep saying,

we need to go back and retrieve our own theology. We need to go back and study what have evangelical Protestants, even low church evangelical Protestants, believed about the Lord's separate through our church history because there's a shallowness that has set in today that is not representative of even our traditions, let alone the rest of church history. As we've said, the Eucharist has been the climactic moment of worship

all throughout church history. And so if we deviate from that and don't even know why we have, have deviated from that, it's no wonder that our young people become a bit disillusioned and disaffected. So if there's nothing else that Truth Unites does, I hope to just be a resource encouraging greater knowledge of church history and greater knowledge. And, you know, that's why I say it's not just gospel assurance that I'm after here. It's I want to pursue theological depth. And I think that's needed to suit the times we live in. So let me give just a couple of resources.

I'll mention a few things I've done in case it's helpful. I've given just a five-minute case for real presence. If all you have is five minutes, but you just want to hear a case for why someone might believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist or in the Lord's Supper, there's that. I've also done a video trying to document that that is the historic Baptist view, and I think that's pretty overwhelming from, I'm not saying universal, but the predominating 16th and 18th century Baptist view. I've also done dialogues on this. I did a dialogue with Brett Salkeld, who's a really smart theologian from the Roman Catholic tradition, talking about spiritual presence view of real presence versus transubstantiation, the Roman Catholic view. I also have a friend named James Arkady, who's an

Anglican theologian. I interviewed him about his great work in this area. You can check out that video. Oh boy, I don't want to mention only my own resources. Let me mention some really good books here. So Thomas Watson has written a fantastic book. That's just kind of a primer on, you know, how do you describe it, just basically saying, what is, what is, you? a reformed account of the Lord's Supper, and it's an extremely devotional book. I'm pulling up my notes here so I can remember all the books that I want to recommend. I'll put all of these in the video description and encourage people to read them. Michael Haken has a great book on Baptist views of the Lord's Supper throughout church history. Fantastic resource. Richard Barcellos has a book called The Lord's

Supper as a means of grace. This is a great book for us to read. And then Stanley Fowler's book is more on baptism. It's called more than a symbol. It's basically making a case that a sacramental view of baptism is the historic Baptist view. Here's the big, so those would be great resources. Here's the big picture. All throughout church history, the sacraments have been absolutely vital to Christian worship and practice. The Lord's Supper has been the climactic moment of worship. That is true from the dawn of the church up until the 19th century. And among low church evangelical Protestants, the tradition I love and want to serve and want to defend at times, but also encourage to return to its own roots, that has fallen away.

We need to think about that. We need to wrestle with that. So the last thing I'll say is this. I think it's become extremely trendy to criticize low church evangelicals. So I just find this is the overwhelming vibe amidst the corners of the internet that I inhabit where the high church Protestants are just as condescending. descending as can be to the low church Protestants, the Baptists and the evangelicals, and God forbid, the non-denominational churches. And one thing I also don't think that's helpful.

The fact is that these are the churches that are generally the ones that are growing and reaching people and doing evangelism the best. So there's really, the better approach, I think, would be for each tradition to have enough humility to say other parts of the body of Christ have strengths that we don't have. And so actually, amidst our polemics, there's actually blind spots we have and we can learn from them. I'll end with this image. Think of two churches in the same town. Okay. One is like a really high church, Protestant church that really emphasizes the sacraments that has a rich theology of preaching, you know, beautiful architecture in the sanctuary, historically aware, but they're not growing. And I'm not saying this is representative of all churches like this. It's a thought experiment,

but this is true for many. They're actually a bit of aloof and a bit superior and a bit out of touch, and they don't even realize it. But they're not reaching the actual people around them. Okay. And now imagine a church across town that is incredibly engaged in social action and evangelism and they're transforming the community and they're making an impact, but there's a shallowness, liturgically, historically, aesthetically, et cetera. Wouldn't the ideal scenario be for each part of the body of Christ to learn from the other? And does that apply to every single single situation and conversation, of course not, but that is something that does apply a lot. So the main

thing, though, is, hey, evangelicals and non-denominational churches, we, I mean, we got to keep ringing the bell until we all kind of wake up and say, wait a second, we've actually fallen away from our own theology from even 200 years ago, and we've got a lot of work to do at retrieving it. So those are my thoughts. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. I'll be curious how others felt about this conversation.