Truth Unites - How Church History Gets MISUSED Against Protestants

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

Gavin Ortlund analyzes five popular critiques of Protestantism and offers a clearer framework for understanding church history.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/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

In this video, let's review five common slogans about church history, especially as criticisms of Protestantism from Roman Catholic apologists. If you spend any time on the internet, you may have heard of these. Number one, Protestants critique changes in church history, but allow for changes in the Old Testament. Number two, Protestants treat church history like atheists or secular historians. Number three, Protestants only argue against something. They don't argue for something. Number four, Protestants have no continuity with the early church. And number five, Protestants are disingenuous about church history.

Now, I'm going to focus on some comments in a video from Swan Sana and Stephen Allspack or Allspok. Forgive me, I don't know how to pronounce his last name for sure. And this started in a Facebook post about me that Stephen had posted. So we'll review these five claims that they sort of come up from that video and from the Facebook post. And then at the end, I'll give three positive pillars of a Protestant view of church history at the end of this video. Now, my response here is going to be a little bit more blunt because they're going against my character. in their video and in their Facebook post. But this is not personal for me.

I like both of them. I would love to have a positive relationship if we could restore that somehow. But because of what they're saying about my character, I think it's appropriate to be a little more direct and just tackle these things head on. So let's dive in. The first issue here has to do with the development of doctrine.

Whenever Gavin puts out a new video, what he does is you'll notice that every single video he puts out, arguing against Catholicism, he seizes on a moment of change in the church's life and says, Asi, they changed. So if they changed, then they're no different from us, right? So it sort of like equalizes Protestants and Catholics, right? And so then it just becomes a matter of saying, which one do you want to be Catholic or Baptist? And then it goes back to the proof texting Bible type of apologetics, right? So I just want to break that down and say that that's a very

unrealistic approach to history if you're going to take history seriously and if you're going to have this historical, you know, apologetics approach. So that's what I was really doing. And then I was also saying, well, wait a second. Let's let's go away from, say, a more benign topic like, yeah, Roman history, right? And let's say Gavin was approaching the Old Testament. Are you going to take that same approach to history, right? And that same, because he could have a whole series of videos just breaking down Israel, Jewish history, and, saying like, gosh, like these weren't really the chosen people at all because they changed so many times, right? So, I mean, from from Critarchy to monarchy to the two states to the Babylonian exile,

or forgot the Syrian exile, right? And the Babylonian exiles and coming back, picking up different parts of identity and even religious changes that are taking place before they come back. Now, there's a couple concerns that I have here. The biggest one is there's a failure to distinguish between changes within the period of public revelation while scripture is still being written, and the period after public revelation, while scripture is no longer being written, these are two distinct eras, and that distinction is foundational, not just to Protestant views of redemptive history, but to Catholic ones as well. One of the comments on Stephen's Facebook post pointed this out, and it was from a Catholic, and I think he's totally correct.

He said all Gavin would say to that is the development within the period of open revelation, Genesis to Revelation, is not an apt comparison to the development which happens in the post-apostolic church. He is right. Every Catholic theologian admits this. And that is correct. You can see this very clearly in the Catholic Catechism, which says there's no new public revelation we expect before the second coming, but we grow in our understanding of the Christian faith.

And that's also a language that will, similar language from Vatican II. this is John Henry Newman's whole theory of doctrinal development. That whole idea is a construct that applies to church history specifically after the period of public revelation has closed. So all of our views recognize a change with the death of the last apostle. Just to make it really conceptually clear, you've got the red and you've got the blue, all right? Let's suppose the line in the middle is represented by when John dies. Let's suppose he's the last apostle. The red and the blue work differently. They don't work the same. This demarcates two different epics of redemptive history. The deposit of faith is now complete and given. For example, if you read Catholic theologians on this

distinction between private and public revelation, that is a very robust distinction. Private revelation is not just less noisy or something like that. Private revelation does not belong to the deposit of faith. all of our systems, Catholic and Protestant, agree that the era of public revelation is over. That's Catholic language, but we all agree on a sharp distinction there after the death of the apostles. So you can't just conflate church history and Israelite history in the way that Stevens' critique does. If you collapse the difference between when God is speaking and when the church is reflecting on what God has previously spoken, You don't just lose a Protestant principle. You lose a Catholic one too. So it's very problematic to say, oh, you object to icon veneration as a change in church history, but you accept things in ancient

Israel like the Davidic covenant or the construction of the tabernacle and things like this. Those are directly appointed by God. This is apples and oranges. That's the first issue here. The second problem is that Stephen represents me as saying, quote, every single video Gavin puts out against Catholicism, he seizes on a moment of change in the church's life and says, ah, see, they changed. So if they changed, they're no different from us. That is not correct. That is not what I do. What Protestants, like myself, object to is not changes in general. The church is alive. Of course it's going to change and look very different. What we object to is changes that don't have a foundation in divine revelation. They are not actually from the

red period, but they are purported to have a foundation in divine revelation. That's our beef. If you want to know what I object to in Roman Catholicism, that's it in a nutshell. When you take a human development within church history and put a divine stamp of approval on it and say, you have to accept this. Like icon veneration, like the bodily assumption of Mary and so many of the things that I don't think we have any reason to think are actually from God. They come about way after the period of public revelation, and yet they're mandated, and they're claimed to be of the deposit of faith. So in other words, I'm not just objecting to change in general, I'm objecting to changes that would be inconsistent with the vast majority of even Catholic

views of development. So, for example, from John Henry Newman, you get these various criteria for distinguishing between a valid doctoral development, on the one hand, and a corruption or innovation on the other hand. And in my book and in various videos, I especially quote his discussion of the principle of conservative action upon the past, where he's basically saying, changes that contradict and reverse the order of doctrine, the course of doctrine which has been developed before them, are certainly corrupt. You see, as radical as he was in his own day, Newman was actually very sophisticated, very careful in laying out how you tell what's a valid development. Or you can read other Catholic theologians like Matthias Schabin, for example.

They're very careful, very sophisticated in delineating how you measure changes in church history. And he, in particular, Shabon, has a huge emphasis on the organic and internally coherent nature of a valid development. So when I criticize something like icon veneration, what I'm pointing out is that this is, to use Newman's terms, a reversal and contradiction. I called it a U-turn, for example, because first you have Christians saying there's no religion where there is an image, then you fast forward a few centuries and you've got people saying you have to venerate the images. And I'm not trying to make the case here. I'm just trying to show the nature of the argument. You can see my videos on that to see the actual argument itself.

But the point is just to show I'm not just objecting to changes in general. I'm objecting to the kinds of changes that even sophisticated Catholic theories of doctrinal development disallow. Protestants are not against the church changing. We are against you taking something that is human and making it divine. Taking something like icon veneration or papal infallibility or the bodily assumption of Mary or seven sacraments or indulgences or the necessity of confession to a priest after mortal sin and all these things I do videos on, the objection is not changed. The objection is departure from what God revealed Christianity to be. And I think the evidence is overwhelming in many of these issues.

I kind of struggle to understand how people still believe in them. If you look at the early church, there's no foundation for them in the red period. So that's what we're objecting to. We're not against changes in general. Okay, that's a good way to understand the nerve center of a Protestant position. We're saying keep it on what God said. Now, this conflation of the Old Testament and church history comes up in a second criticism that they give that Protestant views on church history are secular or fail to appreciate divine providence.

All of us have to somehow trace that line of development. And unless you're going to be like the most skeptical person in the room, you're exempted from that. Whereas like, you know, if you actually have a claim that there's divine providence, a continuity here, then you have to give that explanation of that account. And so, yeah, those are just some things I had in mind. I think what you're getting across is that he's he you know because he's focusing so much on like us as catholics he's not realizing how much he also needs development and other things oh 100 percent and and that's the problem is that he's he's he's as catholic uh of a historian as can possibly be when it comes to the old testament but all of a sudden he switches to be a secular historian when he's studying the history of the

church okay so you heard that term secular historian he goes on to say this risks potentially dethroning Christ in some sense. And this criticism comes up a lot. You may have heard of this idea of ecclesial deism that Protestants don't really believe God is actively governing and overseeing the church and this kind of thing. You'll hear this stuff. I mean, all these responses are worth engaging

because these are common claims that I want Protestants to think through and think how to respond to. And now the problem with this critique is that it assumes a Catholic view of history and then concludes, if you reject that, then you reject God's work in history. But we're not rejecting God's work in church history.

We're rejecting particular errors that eventually come into the picture. But we affirm that God is providentially leading the church for every nanosecond of church history. Sometimes this is caricatured, and Protestants don't even realize this. They have this death of the church idea. That's not how historic Protestants have thought. Here's how John Calvin puts it, quote, The Church of Christ has lived and will live so long as Christ reigns at the right hand of the Father, it is sustained by his hand, defended by his protection, and is kept safe

through his power. But that doesn't mean that the Roman Catholic positions and the Roman Catholic councils over and against their various and numerous alternatives are always the correct ones. You can believe God's on the throne without believing, oh, that counsel is right and this counsel's wrong. So like after Nicaea II, for example, we believe Jesus is on the throne, guiding his church, but that doesn't mean Nicaea too is right and Frankfurt is wrong, and Claudius of Turin is wrong and all this other Western resistance is wrong. A Catholic could understand how this criticism comes across when we're told we're being secular. If one of us said, because you reject the Waldensian confession,

often called the noble lesson probably dating to the 12th or 13th century, you are rejecting God's providence and failing to submit to his work and adopting a secular framework. Well, you'd obviously say, but that assumes that the Waldensian confession is the right one. That is the result of God's providence, and that's the very thing we disagree on, right? What I experience is Roman Catholics treat church history very territorially, at least the apologists. I mean, I'm speaking to the apologetics scene right here.

If there's a gentle Catholic scholar watching this, I'm not talking to you because there's much more reasonableness there. But the online world, it's very territorial as if we own. church history. So if you don't accept our view of it, then you're just rejecting Christ's leadership in the church or something like that. I get that a lot. I get people telling me I'm refusing to submit to Christ's church and this kind of thing. Now, let me identify two of the reasons. I don't think that's fair. First of all, Roman Catholicism is not the only church that makes that claim. Here's an experience I have. I engage a lot with both Roman Catholicism and

Eastern Orthodoxy. And then I've done a few videos. on other traditions like the Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East. And it's an interesting experience to be told over and over, trust the church that God set up, submit to God's church and this kind of thing. And then sometimes, when this is said, I literally do not know which church they even mean. They just assume I know what they're talking about. And I'm like, I don't know. Are you Catholic? Are you Eastern Orthodox? Is it a different option? You have multiple groups all claiming, obviously church history is our history. And that very fact raises questions about how obvious that is. It's like if you go to the

hospital and you see three different doctors and each one gives you a completely different diagnosis and treatment plan with supreme confidence and then they are irritated, you're not believing them. At a certain point, you might say, your guy's confidence is unwarranted unless you can give an argument for why your claims are superior to the alternatives. And a lot of times, it's a lot of times it's just assumed, you know, if you accept God's guidance in the church history, then you're going to agree with our side. I'm like, but there's a lot of different people saying the same thing. I find the Protestant vision of church history most compelling and most generous, because it allows you to be honest about how much change there has been. It allows you to say God has never

abandoned his church, but to also say he is at work through multiple institutions, and even when they have errors, they are not dead. I'll come back to that point at the end of the video, but we measure all of that by the superior light of God's revelation. What God says is your North Star for governing all the blue stuff after John dies. All right, now there's a second problem with claiming God's providence over our own positions in church history, and that is you can believe God is providentially guiding the church even while sin and error still occur. And actually, the comparison that Stephen and Swan make with the Old Testament makes this point. For example, if you just ask the question, was God's providence operative during the book of judges? Or during

the book of kings, you know, the last seven chapters of First Kings, Ahab and Jezebel take over. All the hierarchy is corrupt. Does that mean that God's jealous husbandry of Israel is somehow failing or something like that? Well, no. And so if, really, recognizing when God's people fall into sin doesn't make you a secular historian unless the Bible itself has a secular view of history. And that is why it is so important to get the relationship right between Israel and the New Covenant, the church, because there are differences here, but the differences are not that there are going to be sins and errors that come into the picture. And we can recognize them when they are there. That doesn't mean we think Christ has fallen off the

throne. The New Testament promise is, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. Amen to that, the church shall never die. Just like Calvin said, every nanosecond Christ has been protecting her, but it nowhere says in the New Testament, I will build my church and no errors shall ever come into her. And if you want more on that, I have a whole video on Matthew 16, if you're interested in that. Okay, here's another criticism that I want you to be aware of, because you'll face this as well. You'll hear this a lot. Protestants never argue for something. we only argue against something. This was reflected in Stephen's Facebook post where he writes, I find Gavin's entire method disingenuous. You cannot merely argue against something. You have to argue

for something. If you are saying that Catholicism is not the Church of the Apostles because it introduced novelties, you then have to demonstrate how the Baptist did not introduce as many novelties. And then he goes on to say, I never do this. And then this also comes up later in their video. He runs the risk of basically like packaging Baptist internet trolldom in the trappings of scholarship when he does this. If he doesn't do it, he wouldn't be a troll, right, at all. He would be a serious contender, right? But the more and more he does these things and uses this methodology, it's like the more and more that I'm just seeing like, well, once I just pull the cover off of this argument, what I'm really just seeing is that, again, you're just poking the bear and

saying what you're not, never saying what you are and walking away. And that's, doesn't help anything. That doesn't do anything, right? It doesn't foster an actual substantive conversation. Now, I'm going to ignore the insults there. I've always said I'm happy for my academic articles and books to speak for themselves. They go through the typical blind peer review process that academic works go. And there are legitimate Catholic scholars who review my work positively. I'll put up two examples of that on the screen. So I'm just going to look to those things for metrics of my scholarship. But let's ignore all that stuff and just focus on the criticism here, because this comes against Protestants as well. You heard those words, Gavin is saying what

he's not, never saying what he is. Now, this is false. I do videos and books and articles ceaselessly, weekly, making a positive case for my views. For example, on the baptism issue, the thumbnail for my most recent video on baptism is, this is why I'm Baptist, and then I walk through the first five centuries of church history and make an argument that Pytobaptism is a gradual development, perhaps starting with emergency baptisms. Of course, I'm not the only one to think that. I have a whole other separate video entitled Why I Am a Baptist, and I've done numerous other videos on baptism. I've also done dialogues on that with Lutherans, with Catholics, and others. So when Stephen says, if you are saying that Catholicism is not the Church of the

Apostles because it introduced novelties, then you have to demonstrate how the Baptist did not introduce as many novelties. That is exactly what I'm attempting to do. That's why the title is why I'm a Baptist and why I'm arguing, Credo baptism is more plausibly apostolic. A person can disagree with those arguments, but you can't say they don't exist or I'm not doing that. On the Lord's Supper, same thing. I've argues, videos arguing for my view in the Lord's Supper. I've done multiple dialogues on that. I'm advocating over and against memorialist views and transubstantiation for a real presence,

a Calvinist version of real presence. On the Trinity, on Protestant ecclesiology generally, I have videos, especially drawing from Philip Schaff, arguing for this. I've done dialogues on these things. I have videos on the incarnation, the resurrection, all kinds of different topics I'll do things on explaining my beliefs, Calvinism, complementarianism, so on and so forth, lots of general Christian apologetics. So pretty much any topic that I can think of, anything that comes up that disturbs gospel assurance and is therefore relevant to my mission, I'll make a positive

case for that, and you can just search on YouTube or Google to pull those up. So this criticism is just inattentive to detail. It is equally inattentive to detail when it comes to Protestant as a whole. Protestantism is a renewal movement rooted in a proclamation of the gospel itself. Protestantism is against errors because it is for the clarity and simplicity of the gospel. So on particular issues, Protestants argue against something because they believe the alternative to that is more plausibly apostolic, more plausibly rooted in divine revelation. It's pretty simple what a Protestant is. We're just trying to stick with what God said. So, for example, we oppose mandated clerical celibacy because we are, not because we're just against something and we're not

for anything, no, because we are for what is clearly the apostolic practice, namely the right of clergy to choose whether to marry. We're against seven sacraments because we are for too. which is much more plausibly apostolic. We are against a longer Old Testament canon because we are for a shorter Old Testament canon, which we think is more plausibly apostolic. Because you look at Jerome and you look at early testimonies like Milito and so forth.

I'm going to do a video on Milito at some point, too. We're against communion in one kind because we are for communion in both kinds, so on and so forth. We give lots more examples. The point is Protestantism is, against errors because we are for their alternative. We are opposing the numerous additions that come in in the blue era because we are in favor of being accountable to the red era. Christianity is a revealed religion. Stick with what God revealed. That's the idea. So we're not just arguing against

something. We're arguing for what we believe is true. All right, here's a fourth claim. Protestants have no continuity with the early church. Here's how it was put in Stephen's Facebook post, specifically concerning Baptists. Quote, the Baptist churches not only have few continuities with the apostolic patristic medieval church, but they have almost none. I personally cannot think of a single instance of continuity that the Baptist have with the church of the first 1700 years, let alone enough continuity to outweigh that of the Catholic Church. Now, I'm not sure how to understand that, to say you can't think of any continuity, let's just go to the doctrines that are most important to the early church and at the core of the Christian faith, the doctrines of God and Christ. If affirming the

Trinity and the incarnation aren't meaningful points of continuity with the early church, then I don't know what would be. I don't know what could rank higher than that. And if you read historic Baptist theology, you'll notice that it's very similar to other Puritan groups like the congregationalists and the Presbyterians, all of which explicitly affirm the Trinity and Doctrine of God more generally and the Christology of the early church. You could read the Baptist confessions on the doctrine of God, like 1689 Second London Baptist, and you'll find classical theism there with the whole package of divine simplicity, divine impassibility, immutability, asseity, etc. It's even clearer there than at Westminster, interestingly.

The doctrine of the Trinity, you see affirmations of classical Trinitarianism, eternal generation, procession of the Holy Spirit, the filiocque. So also with the person and work of Christ, so also with other essential doctrines, many, many other, like core foundational Christian doctrines like the final judgment and so many things we could mention. You could also read historic Baptist theologians like John Gill, whose treatments of issues like the Trinity, eternal generation, and things like this are just as high as the other Protestant scholastics and other traditions.

So this statement that Stephen makes, I personally cannot think of a single instance of continuity that the Baptists have with the Church of the first 1700 years. I don't know how to understand that. The way it comes across is as though Catholics think you have to be, it's all or nothing. You're either a part of our institution or we can't recognize any sort of spiritual or doctrinal continuity. And here, the danger is making the institution central rather than Christ himself. And at the end of the video, I'm going to come back and lay out how Protestants are looking at it, emphasizing the substance of the faith across different institutional and circumstantial and cultural expressions

and why we think that's more plausible and more generous. All right, here's the final critique that they give, the charge of being disingenuous. So earlier we saw Stevens' charge in a quote I put up that were disingenuous. came up, and this comes up in their video as well. This comes up against Protestants a lot. I hear this more these days, which is unfortunate. This idea is if you study church history and you don't become Catholic, or, like we always say, others will make the same claim for a different tradition, then you're just not being

honest, you know. And this is unfortunate. The word disingenuous means dishonest or lacking sincerity. Even if every criticism that Stephen and Swan were giving in their video were correct, nothing in their argument demonstrates disingenuousness. At most, it would mean Gavin's framework for church history is really bad. It wouldn't prove I'm insincere. But Swan and Stephen tried to paint their charge of disingenuousness as a common response to me based on how I've interfaced with critiques. And that's one of like a thousand examples. I have plenty of other apologists, you know, friends online

stuff that have had the same type of engagements with him where it's like all of a sudden he goes, like, hands off, well, I can't respond to everybody, right? And like, well, yeah, but you don't have to respond to everybody. You can respond to the point, though. Like, don't even mention our video. Don't mention us. Just go to the point, though. And argue that. Like, steal man, the opposition and the response videos. And so I've seen that as just, like, a consistent enough theme where you take that plus the method, and I'm just thinking, like, I can't conclude anything else, but, like, just a little bit of disingenuousness. Yeah. Just do things right up front. I mean, the first thing is that what you're saying here

is not at all particular to you. There's so many Catholics online, and I think even other Protestants, well, not as many Protestants, but like there are tons of Catholics who have interacted with Ortland throughout the years who are now just saying, he's just saying the same points over and over,

and there's, like, no new objections have been considered. Now, when I put out my video on icons, I got a lot of different responses. I counted them up one time and there were like over 50, I think. So I responded to some of them. I responded to the ones that were just most visible and most influential. That included Swan.

I put out this video where I responded. The second half of that video was responding to Swan. It's true that I didn't give a comprehensive response to Swan. One of his videos was four hours long. So I didn't respond to everything, but I did address what I take to be our core difference, and that's whether Nicaea II allows for doctrinal development, and I explained my position for why I just don't agree with that.

On the Catholic Brothers video, I left a comment with eight points, and then once I'd finished it, put several more points. But, you know, so Stephen and Swan are suggesting that I'm just responding to the low-hanging fruit and just going for the easy wins. That's not correct. Early on, I'd put out a response to Jimmy Aiken and Trent Horn because that was a very well-highly viewed video, and that was making a similar appeal to doctrinal development,

which is similar to Swan's overall way of arguing. I responded to Craig Truglia and some other Eastern Orthodox apologists like Michael Garten and Serafim Hamilton because they have a different way of arguing. They don't emphasize doctrinal development. They put more of the focus on finding icon veneration in early texts like in Uranus and origin and others. And I think it's fair game to respond to that. That's representative of what a lot of people in the Orthodox tradition, at least online, think.

And I remember there being some energy about those views as well. so I think it's fair game to respond to that. I'm just trying to respond to the most influential, visible things out there. I wouldn't agree with this calculus that there's such a disparity in the quality, and I'm just going for the easy wins, and then I'm just moving on when I, you know, I really don't recognize myself in that at all. I mean, it's an interesting experience to have so many responses put out to you and then be told you're disingenuous when you don't respond to the right ones and so forth.

It's not true. I'm not disingenuous. I'm just responding to what seems most pressing. And then at a certain point, I was just moving on in my research to other things. But what I will say at this point, so that you don't feel Swan and Stephen, you guys don't feel that something's been neglected, identify what you think hasn't been sufficiently responded to yet, and I'll give it a fresh review. Whether you want to make one particular argument or your best case, but if you could put it in something more compassible, not like a four-hour video, something more compassible, and I'll give it fresh look so you don't feel like something's been lost in the shuffle. In the meantime, I suggest

a reduction of the motive attribution and the charges of disingenuousness, because this is not helpful for the overall dialogue. I mean, I'm reading through your video and the comments, and they're calling me, comments are calling me malicious and a master of deception and dishonest and all this stuff. I mean, it's pretty shocking. It's like a, psychological experience to read through these comments and think, how did we get here? I mean, I kind of bumble into doing Protestant stuff, and it's a fascinating lesson in sociology and then trying to manage that over the years. So I suggest we move it away from that and just keep it on the arguments. All right, final section of the video, let me drill into the deeper vision

that's underneath these various particular responses that we're working through now. because at the end of the day, what we're working with is different paradigms for what the church is and how God works in the church throughout history. So let's finish by pulling back from the trees and look at the forest. What's a big picture Protestant view of church history? And let me mention the three pillars that are, I hope, are conceptually clarifying. These are representative of Protestantism in general. I know there's some differences between like the Lutheran and Anglican wing over here and then the more low church wing over here.

But these things actually, there are things that unite us across the spectrum of Protestantism, and these things are broadly representative of that. Number one, organism over institution. Okay. Protestants emphasize the church as organism over institution, not because Roman Catholic ecclesiology has no emphasis upon the church as organism. it does, nor because Protestant ecclesiology has no emphasis on the church as an institution, having an institutional character, having particular institutions within her, we believe in that. But as a matter of emphasis for where you set the boundaries, this is a priority. And an example I often give is imagine a church that sprouts up spontaneously because of the

internet or because Muslims are having dreams or something like this, and it leads to a community and they're baptized and they're partaking of the Lord's supper and they believe in the gospel, this church might look really different, not just from the early church, but even other churches around the world today. But that's okay, it's still a church, potentially, because what makes a church is ultimately Jesus himself.

Wherever the gospel penetrates in both word and sacrament, there is the potential for a valid Eucharist and a valid church. The spiritual reality of the work of Christ, is what is determinative for ecclesiology. Just as in Acts chapter 2, Jesus is installed as the Davidic king. He pours out the Holy Spirit, and it just creates this upswell of Christians, people are getting baptized and so forth. So also Jesus does the same thing today.

Jesus is still in the throne. He's still pouring out his spirit, just like on the day of Pentecost, and new churches are popping up all over the place. The institutional expressions of the church are important, but our ultimate loyalty is not to one particular institution, but to Christ himself wherever he is found in word and sacrament. That's foundational to a Protestant paradigm. Now let's flesh that out a little bit,

especially the word and sacrament bit, by pointing out that Protestants allow for greater accidental variation in our perception of the church. So accidents here, I don't mean accident like I stubbed my toe on accident. I'm distinguishing between accidents, and essence. All right, the accidental expressions of the church might be very important, but they're not strictly necessary to have a church as such. What is essential to the church must be there for you to even be a church. For a classic Protestant ecclesiology,

what is essential is word and sacrament. Sometimes you will have church discipline as stated. Other times that's left unstated because it's implicit in the administration of the Lord's supper. So we can just say word and sacrament. Wherever you have the true gospel and word and sacrament, you have the potential for a valid church, even if the accidental features look very different from one time to another and from one place to another. And there can even be errors in the way sacraments are conducted without draining ecclesial status. John Calvin argued that if a church has the marks of word and sacraments, quote, we must not reject it so long as it retains them, even if it otherwise swarms with many faults.

Any further allowed that there may be errors in the way a church practices these two marks, and yet it is still a true church. Some faults may creep in to the administration of either doctrine or sacraments, but this ought not to estrange us from communion with the church. So, for example, I just put out a video on worship in 150 AD, and I pointed out that it's different in some ways from most churches today. For example, the communal extemporized prayer. But that is not an essential difference.

So put it like this. A church is meeting in Africa right now, very spontaneous and charismatic. A church is meeting in China that is meeting underground and looks very different in her structure and liturgy. And then there's a church in Pittsburgh with a pipe organ, and it looks very different from both of those. These differences might not be essential. They might be worshipping the same Jesus, fighting for the same kingdom, and in heaven together one day, if they've got the gospel expressed in Word and Sacrament.

All three might have a valid Eucharist. And a Protestant basically believes you can allow for this kind of accidental variation without trivializing the differences, but this gives you a coherent view of church history because now you can recognize the fruits of the kingdom of God wherever they appear. And that's what I often argue for from Matthew 7, Matthew 12, 1st, Corinthians 12. 3 and Mark 9. And you can see chapter 1 in my book, what it means to be Protestant, or what it means to be Protestant for the full case there. Last thing is that error and death are not the same. This is a crucial point that, again, we're trying to step back and see the big picture here. I'm trying to help conceptual clarity on where I see us differing, because we will often

face this charge. I know we'd all agree with this in principle, but we'll often face this charge that, well, Protestants, you believe that errors came into the church, and therefore you have sort of incoherence. You know, it's just like church history, the lights went out, and everything's chaotic. But again, compared to the Old Testament, you can believe errors come in while still believing the church is very much alive. The distinction here is indefectible and infallible. Indefatible means the church cannot die. Infallible means she cannot err. Those are two different things. We believe in the fallibility of the church. Just like in the Old Testament, God is

faithfully guiding his people, but that does not stop sins and errors that require correction. And therefore, God's revelation in Scripture, to do it one last time, people are going to make fun of the red and blue, but I'm just trying to for conceptual clarity because it helps, because people need to think about this. You need to measure everything in the blue by what is in the red, because that is our standard. And that's just inherent in what Christianity is as a revealed religion. This does not mean we reject all of church history. We measure it by the superior light of divine revelation. In principle, we can agree on that as something we should do. We just don't accept that all these later accretions are actually part of the deposit of faith.

This leads to the honesty. You're just able to say, you know, the church is a lot. It's actually, I'll finish with this thought. It's actually thrilling to see that God has been faithfully at work across the centuries through a very imperfect people, and the thread holding it together is not one particular institution, but a living savior. This is about the freedom to rejoice in what is true, but also be honest about the errors and sins that occur in church history, but keep returning again and again to Christ himself. He's the epicenter, and that organizes our whole engagement with church history. I'll put it like this. When I see the church in Africa or China or whatever may be that looks very different in its accidental expressions, if I recognize Jesus Christ in that church,

in Word and Sacrament, who am I to reject them? And who am I to say they don't have a valid Eucharist? Those are the kinds of values guiding a Protestant ecclesiology. Okay, one last thing I want to mention that's I'm starting a book club, and it's on Anselm's Percellogeon, and it's for supporters only. So I try not to do that too much, but people who support me, you know, you know, ask for this kind of thing, and it's like, yeah, it's a way to say thank you to them. It starts on May 26, that's 7 p.m. Central. We're going to read through the proslogion together.

We'll take a little bit. I'll probably lecture for about half the time. That's the text I wrote my doctoral dissertation on, so I have lots I want to say about it, but we'll have dialogue and discussion as well. Starts May 26th, goes four weeks through June 16th, 7 p.m. Central. And all you've got to do is, if you're a regular supporter,

all the information's already there on either Patreon or the website. We'd love to see you. Join us for that. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. I hope this video is helpful in explaining a Protestant view of church history.