Truth Unites - What is Protestantism? With Dr. Jordan Cooper

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Dr. Jordan Cooper and Dr. Gavin Ortlund discuss, "what is  Protestantism?" We address a Protestant view of history, catholicity,  and then authority.  Learn more about Dr. Cooper's ministry: https://www.justandsinner.org/  Dr. Cooper's YouTube ministry: https://www.youtube.com/@DrJordanBCooper  Davenant Institute: https://davenantinstitute.org/ Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

Hey everybody, welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. Truth Unites is a place for theology and apologetics done in an ironic way. And today I'm talking with Dr. Jordan Cooper. We're going to talk about the question, what is Protestantism, which seems like a simple question, just defining the term, right? But actually, we're going to see there's a lot to that and there's a lot of misunderstandings about that. But first, maybe we can just do a couple fun questions here to start with, because, you know, I don't think I really need to introduce you because everybody probably knows who watches my channel. watches your channel and so forth. But people may not know all that goes into Just and Sinner, because it's more than just a YouTube channel. You guys do books. What all is involved in Just and Sinner? Yeah, sure. So probably the thing that if you're watching this on YouTube, you probably know us best for the YouTube channel. Justin Center was an organization that started 10 years ago now as a blog, just a blog on theology that I started and that became a publishing house podcast and YouTube channel. So at this point, we just do broadly theological education from, I mean, we're coming from a Lutheran perspective, so that forms what we do. So we republish a lot of old works.

We have more recently started publishing some more contemporary authors with our publishing house. We host some seminars on different topics. We bring scholars in and pastors to teach via Zoom. So you can sign up for any of those to do online. You go to justice center.org if you want to check us out. And so yeah, the seminars, publishing podcast, that kind of summarizes what we do. Yeah, yeah. For people who want to learn more about Lutheranism, is there one book, and you can mention

your own books, too, if you want to? But is there one book that you first recommend people start with for learning about the Lutheran tradition? Yeah, probably the first book I recommend is a book that we republish. And that's one that we, it's the book that started our publishing house. It was actually this book called The Way of Salvation in the Lutheran Church. by George Henry Gerberding. It was first published, actually, at the end of the 19th century, the edition we published

was, it was updated a number of times throughout his life. The one we publish is the 1918 version, which was the last edition before Gerberting died. And we have updated that into more modern language. We put the ESV in there instead of, I don't think it was the King James, but it was an older translation. I'm trying to recall what it was. but we just kind of put it in newer formats,

make it a little easier to read. But that's a really good introduction to what Lutherans believe. So if you're looking for like just one book to read, to kind of get a basic overview of where Lutherans are coming from, that's probably the one that I would recommend. So of all the videos you've done,

which is a favorite that stands out to you the most, that you're most proud of or you think it's had the best influence? Yeah, the talk that I did with Gavin Ortland on baptism. Because you just demolished him. You just cut the knees up from underneath him. Exactly. Yeah.

There are a lot of books, videos that I've done that I guess I'm pretty proud of. Certainly some that I'm probably not as much. But maybe more than anything else, I'm really enjoying this series that I'm doing right now, which is makers of the modern world,

which is like a series of lectures on modern thinkers. it's more studying philosophers, so maybe it's a little bit different than kind of the theological stuff I usually do. But if I think it's something recently that I'm kind of most excited about, it's probably that. But I really do genuinely always enjoy the dialogues that I've done with other people as well. So I'm not holding one out above the others, but yeah. I know I can't give you any more specifics than that. No, no, that's good. Yeah, and I know what you mean.

Looking back, I mean, I've only been doing it for two and a half years now. you've been on YouTube a lot longer than me, but it is a little, you look back on your old videos and you're like, oh, now, now, now, which video have you done in which your beard was the longest? Ooh, that's a good question. I don't know, but my beard has been quite a bit longer than it is now. I, I trim it a bit more. Probably the video that I did, the one that I remember that sticks out was a video of a lecture that I gave on Union with Christ in a conference in 2014. may totally have that year wrong, but something like that. Okay. That's what I remember that I had the longest beard in. Okay.

See, this is the important information. All right, I'm going to put a link to your YouTube channel and also Justin's in the video description so people can go kind of chase that stuff down and look into it. But let's dive into this question of Protestantism and here's how I'll set it up is, and then I want to ask if you see this as well, but I see a lot of confusion about just what is Protestantism. And even just, you know, it's it's kind of like sometimes you're at a situation where you're needing to be really nuanced and fine-grained and really get into the particulars. But then other times you just sense kind of a massive need for the basics, you know, just to kind of get up to code on some of the basic ideas of what Protestantism is.

Because outside of Protestantism, you get all of these criticisms of, you know, just this idea that, oh, you guys just, you broke off from the church and trying to start a new church and this way of thinking. a lot of times it seems like people haven't really sympathetically understood because here's the thing Protestantism isn't just a different option it's a different kind of option than most of the non-protistent traditions because it doesn't have this institutional exclusivism we're not coming along saying our visible hierarchy is the one true church and most of the major non-protisan options and some of the minor splinter groups are saying that and so I think sometimes it's hard for people to traverse that chasm and really enter into how a Protestant is looking at the nature of the one true church. And then for people who have been born and raised in Protestant contexts, it seems like many times they've never thought this through.

They've just assumed their context and never really been challenged in it. And so they don't have a real deep understanding of what Protestantism is either. So that's kind of what I'm seeing that generates my interest in this. Do you see any of that? Do you see a need, do you see any confusion about this question of what is Protestantism? Yeah, I see a lot of confusion, both on behalf of those who are like self-proclaimed Protestants and on behalf of Roman Catholics and Orthodox to some extent as well. So I think the misunderstanding of the confusion probably is pretty broad out there.

I think I see it on behalf of, and I speak of each of those groups and how they do it a little bit differently, I think. I think Roman Catholics, and I know both of us have a lot of Roman Catholic viewers. So Roman Catholics tend to, I think, overinflate who is a Protestant. They try to use it in the most broad sense possible. That kind of every splinter group of Christians, no matter how veretical, they're all just kind of Protestant. And that makes it sound like there's this complete kind of ecclesiastical and theological chaos that is the world of Protestantism and none of us can agree on anything. And yeah, I mean, it's going to look pretty bad if you just use the label Protestant to refer to, you know, every, you know, weird cults you can find around the world or

every religion or little religious sect that is even vaguely Christian if you just call it Protestant. I mean, okay. So I think that's not really fair historically. So I think when we're talking about Protestantism, and this is something I see amongst a lot of evangelicals as well is a kind of not really understanding our history or the history of what the Protestant movement actually is. Because I think a movement that says, you know, for example, my religion is just me, my Bible, and Jesus. You know, it's, it's me disconnected from the church, disconnected from history. And it's just this personal relationship with Jesus apart from any, like, ecclesial body or apart from history. That's not really Protestantism.

And I think when people have gone in those directions, they're taking something like a solo scriptura principle of Protestantism and actually going beyond what the Reformation did. So I'm one who doesn't really want to say that's really Protestantism, and at least in a historic sense. And it depends on how you define your terms, of course. But I think what we have to do is at least distinguish between those groups that really do come out of the era of the Reformation. So, you know, I've used to the classical Protestantism, for example, to distinguish. but there's a difference between the groups you get, say the Reformed, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, kind of being the primary ones. And then you certainly have, you know, like Baptist groups like yourself, that have very much

reformed kind of ties and background as well in many ways. You're kind of come out of that part of the Reformation. But I would distinguish between those groups and then, you know, you're kind of maybe local church plant that's so disconnected from history. It doesn't really have any tied to the Reformation. You know, do they have a right to the term Protestant? At least not in the classical sense, I don't think. I think it's a very different way of approaching church and theology. Yeah. And I'll come back to the question of Soliscriptura. Remind me if I forget, come back to that. But just starting to throw out categories in case it's helpful for anybody watching this, when I use the term Protestant, we could use the term Protestant. That has some boundaries. There are doctrinal parameters. You know, you've got the solo scriptura, Solofida. The five solos, particularly those two.

You've got the priesthood of all believers. You've got an emphasis upon preaching and worship. You've got the marks of the church and how that's understood. There's certain things that are common to those classical Protestant traditions. And then so this would exclude a lot of groups that may have some beliefs about Jesus, but don't hold to Protestant doctrines like Soliscriptura and Solofide. And then you could use the term classical Protestantism or magisterial Protestantism, even more narrowly to focus on especially the Lutheran Anglican reformed traditions.

And I use the term Protestant without the qualifier classical to include the Methodists and Baptists and then many contemporary, like there's the charismatic movement and so forth. I think they fit within the parameters of just the term Protestant. One thing I want to say is to help people out there. Anabaptist and Baptist are not the same thing. People don't realize this. Anabaptist, sociological term, 16th, century continental Europe mainly Baptist mainly Britain 17th century denominational term so

anyway that's a big old thing but yes and that's why I say Baptist kind of coming out of the reform movement because I'm distinguishing them and the Anabaptists they are a tradition in their own right but a very different one you know I don't very different from at least the magisterial Protestant tradition so say you think of like the Mennonites or Amish but but very very different roots I think than than like a Baptist tradition as you generally think of it in the United States Right. And these are all, I'm going off script already, so forgive me. But just I'm imagining these attacks coming. And people are saying, oh, you guys are just throwing the umbrella so wide that you're defending your identity, even though you don't agree with these other people. But I just think this is kind of simple. You can use a term that is a broader level of identity. So you can say, I'm a Protestant Christian. Within that, I'm a reformed Christian or something like this. Just like a Roman Catholic could say, I'm a Christian. And then that's a broader level of. of identity. A Roman Catholic Christian could defend Christianity or even broader. You could say, I'm a theist and you could defend theism by quoting other theists, even if they're not Roman Catholics.

So I don't really see much coherence to this concern when people accuse us of defending the broader label because, you know, we recognize, yeah, we are a part of different particular local churches that have different theology and so forth. But that doesn't mean we can't have this other term that describes the larger movement we're a part of. I don't know if you want to comment on that at all. Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, I agree, but I would also say the same thing is true of Roman Catholicism as well. I mean, to some degree, every group has its differences within that group. So, the question is, you know, how broad are those differences? But I know plenty of Roman Catholics that would identify themselves in very, very different ways from one another, you know, and they're all

fine using the label Roman Catholic to define their own. And usually they say Catholic. I know I use the term Roman Catholic. I do that on purpose because I don't want to give them the Catholicity of the church. So I'll call them the Roman, they're the Roman part of the church. I'm not denying that they're the church at all. But I think they, you know, they have their distinctions too. And this is something that I find a little bit frustrating in some of these conversations is that Protestantism is often attacked as like, you're so divided, almost as if Rome has this very united front when they're going after Protestantism. But then if you if you spend time within, you know, Roman Catholic theology discussion or debate groups, go on forums online, I mean, they're going after each other about this or that. I think the fact is we all just have, we all have larger groups that we're a part of and also have disagreements. Like I think that's just the nature of how the church works because that's the nature of just not having like infallible access to, you know, how we interpret truth. And I understand Rome wants to add the infallible interpret. which I understand the desire for that, but at the same time, how you interpret tradition also does

differ between Roman Catholics, too. So my argument is I think that if, you know, just as much as Rome was able to speak of some coherent Roman Catholic theology, even though there are many differences, I think we can speak about a coherent Protestantism as well. And that doesn't minimize the differences. And obviously, you and I, we've had some, you know, kind of, I don't know if it was really much, of a debate, but, you know, kind of, you know, back and forth on, you know, some of our differences. But I think I think that's also just very healthy. But I don't think it means that we don't also have very significant areas of agreement on some fundamental things. Right. Yeah, yeah, well said, yeah. Well, what we can do maybe is work through three areas to try to tease out the definition

of Protestantism. We'll talk about a Protestant view of history, then a Protestant view of Catholicity, then a Protestant view of authority. And this is a bit selfish because these are the three sections of the book that I'm currently writing as to my brain is already in the way of thinking about these things. But these are three helpful areas to kind of work through. So I have a couple of quotes. In a second, I'll read a quote from Luther and a quote from Calvin, and then we can take a second pass at it. But just to broach into this issue of history, how would you start to answer this question of what was the reformer's view of prior church history? And the reason I'm asking is I think sometimes there's this caricature of this idea that they were seeking to establish a new church and reject what came before.

Yeah, so the Protestant view of history, I mean, if you look at Luther and Calvin, and they're a little different in some ways, but I think they are, they do certainly share a general agreement that they are part of what was the Catholic Church. I mean, we're thinking still of the Western Church. They're part of the inheritance of the Western Church. In other words, I think when we're looking at the time period of the Reformation. You know, I know a lot of people want to say, well, the church was Roman Catholic and then the Protestants left. And I want to say, really Protestantism in those branches, as well as Roman Catholicism, were all kind of outgrowth of what was the medieval Western Church in many ways. And Rome takes some different directions with, you know, the trend and the counter-reformation.

So Rome was a bit of a different entity as well than it was prior to the church. the Reformation. So I think all of us can trace the ideas, the theological themes, the way that we view scripture back to what's going on in the medieval church. It's not like Protestantism is this kind of total deviation that just kind of drops from the sky out of nowhere and just tries to destroy the church. It's just not true at all. It's really coming up from the roots of a lot of what's already being debated and discussed in the church at that time. And that is with humanism with Luther. He was very much an inheritor

of the mystical tradition, particularly the German mystical tradition. And there's a lot of continuity there. I'm more of an expert on Luther than I mind Calvin. So in terms of Calvin, well, I know Calvin uses Bernard Clairvaux quite a bit, and that's something that Luther does as well. But they don't,

the reformers certainly didn't see themselves as creating a new church. It was never the goal to start over. it was never the idea that the church had somehow fallen and ceased to exist for a period of time and they had to recover it. And I see that a lot is like, well, this idea that, oh, the true church just ceased to exist. And the Protestants believe they had to just kind of erase a thousand years of church history and recover the history of the church. And now, I will say, I've heard that kind of perspective presented among certain Protestant groups. But I certainly don't think, I don't think it's accurate to the Middle Ages. but I also don't think it's accurate to the reformers themselves.

So if you look at like the Augsburg Confession, which is the foundational Lutheran confession of faith, which in some ways isn't influential just for the Lutherans, because it does become the kind of paradigm for other Reformation confessions of faith as well. But there's a repeated statement throughout that document that says, we teach nothing against Holy Scripture or the church Catholic. And there certainly is a belief that

what the church is the rest of the church, Reformation are teaching is it is part of the Catholic faith. They're in continuity with the historic church. While we're saying, yes, there were some practices that arose in the church that were major theological and practical problems, we're not saying the church ceased to exist during that time or something like that. And I would, you know, if you want to look at, and I could point you to Reformation era documents, I think, that showed this really well. Martin Kempitz Lutheran Theologian has this four-volume examination of the Council of Trent. And he spends probably more time looking at the church fathers to defend his views than even does scripture, not because he thought they were a superior

authority, but to show like, no, we're consistent here. From the reform side, you can look at Calvin's response to Sadoletto. And he, I think he does, I think he very accurately demonstrates the consistency of many of the teachings of the Reformation with St. Augustine. He does the same with John Cross. them quite a bit as well. So the point is just to say that we certainly don't see ourselves as some kind of new tradition that just came out of nowhere, but a reform within the broader church, the church Catholic. Right. Yeah. And just because I've gotten used to hearing people with these criticisms coming in, immediately they're going to start saying, oh, so you're saying that you look just like the early church? And it's like, no, we're not saying that any, there's no church on planet

earth that looks exactly like the early church what we're saying is the church has changed massively you get into this challenging question of identity how do you identify that the one true church as she subsists amidst changes and growth and schisms and it's really complicated but you you anticipated some of the quotes i was going to share since you referenced the augsburg confession let me just give the quote because it's striking to me that this comes right at the beginning after the lutherans express a desire for unity among all Christians. And then they say, quote, in doctrine and ceremonials among us,

there is nothing received contrary to Scripture or to the Catholic Church. Inasmuch as it is manifest that we have diligently taken heed that no new and godless doctrine should creep into our churches. Now that verb creep in gets at one of the words I use a lot,

and that's accretions. And accretion is a slow buildup. And so what we're saying is there's the deposit of the word of God, which is infallible. And then there are layers that build up slowly over time. So like a great example of this is indulgences. Indulgences are a slow buildup.

They don't just all of a sudden fall from heaven. And you can just read the Roman Catholic, great Roman Catholic scholars on how that development goes. And typically what they will say is that it's the 11th century that you get indulgences proper because that's when this relaxation of canonical punishments is no longer a part of the penitential process. But then from that point, up until the 15th, there's massive mushrooming up of how indulgences are functioning.

So the idea here is relatively simple, and I just would reiterate it in agreement with what you said, hope for clarity and people as they're thinking about what is Protestantism. All we're saying is this simple. There's the one true church. She never dies. Christ is always protecting her. But there's errors. Errors happen.

Errors come into the mixture. They creep in. Indulgence is being one example. I'll give a few others. in a second. I mean, does that sound on base or on point to you? Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's exactly right. And you see that as you study the history of the church that, you know, like I did a series on prayers to the saints, and I traced that throughout history. And as you, you know, as you do, reading on these particular issues that then become a debated point in the later middle ages,

you find that they often begin as something that isn't particularly that problematic, like an idea that makes a lot of sense. And then it just grows and changes and things, you know, come together in historical circumstances, end up creating what become major issues. And then you have to actually confront it. But, you know, Rome does this too. It's not like Rome hasn't confronted these, these issues. I mean, even Trent does confront a lot of the, what was a real Neopalajianism that shows up, especially in a lot of the nominalists. Like, Rome does actually have to deal with some of these issues itself, even though it comes to different conclusions than the reformers do. But this is, yeah, errors come in the history of the church. I mean, errors show up in the New Testament. I mean,

this is why the apostles are, you know, Paul and John are are fighting against some of these, these ideas that are wrong, you know, as early as you get in the first century. So I think we should expect. Of course, errors are going to come into the history of the church. But that doesn't mean those errors are always so serious that they're going to like, you know, overthrow the church or something. But I just, I just want to make a point as you, because I think it's really important. When you're talking about continuity of the early church, no tradition is identical with the early church. And I think you make that point. Well, I think that's so, that's so essential. And whether you're Catholic, Protestant, Eastern Orthodox, when you try to make an argument, and there are plenty of

books from all of these traditions trying to make an argument that their tradition is consistent with the church fathers and nobody else is. You're just, no matter who you are if you're doing that, you're not being fair to those sources. And I think a lot of the debates that show up at the time of the Reformation are kind of the natural outgrowth of some themes that you see in the fathers or tensions that are there between thinkers that just hadn't been worked out yet. I mean, you can see the roots of some of our debates. You know, even think about just. justification. I mean, I think you see the roots of those distinctions as early as you have Christians writing. Yeah. Now, just to a point in clarification, a moment ago you said there are errors in the New

Testament. I took you to meet me, be saying the New Testament records errors happening in the church. Yes. Not just, you know, someone out there is going to take that in the wrong direction. Yeah, I don't mean there are errors in the New Testament text. I'm in an error. So I don't hold that position that there could be. That's not what I mean. And that was clear in what you said, but just to make it super, super clear. And yeah, it's a good point because, I mean, Galatians 1-6, churches are falling away from the gospel. They're abandoning the gospel while the apostles are still alive. So, but just to follow up from the reformed side of things, we've quoted the Augsburg confession. Confession, Calvin, you referenced his dispute with Cardinal Satteletto in 1539.

I'm just quoting from my, I compile some of these in my book, Theological Retrieval for Evangelicals. Another spot is in his prefatory letter to King Francis in the institutes where he just a litany. He gives like two dozen examples of issues and he's basically saying, well, I'll quote him in his own words from his dispute with Cardinal Satelletto, quote, our agreement with antiquity is far greater than yours. All we have attempted is to renew the ancient form of the church. And then he is by ancient, he means like fourth century, fifth century, third century. He's talking about he's referencing scholars from that, or church fathers from that time. Now, lest someone be incredulous about this, let me give 12 examples. examples. Now, I'm not going to go through these. I'm just going to mention them. And then after this, I'll see what you want to say about this. Here's what I want to say to preface it. We're not saying that on every issue the Protestants are in the right with respect to the patristic witness. Not true. Not true. It is messy. We're saying on the main issues, it's a matter of comparison, okay, who's closer. And so some of the ones that Calvin mentions and that I think of a lot is, number one,

the system of salvation with indulgences and the treasury of merit the scholarship on that is very clear that's a medieval idea transubstantiation as the particular mechanism for real presence that's medieval and you can see that in the turbulence of it's how it's developing in the early medieval era papal invalability that there are seven sacraments particularly you can find people talking about more than two but nobody's i don't know anybody who's saying there's seven early on The veneration of images. I'm doing work on that right now. I'm very convinced that's a late patristic accretion. Masses for the dead to reduce time in purgatory. I don't think that's representative of the earliest practices. Withholding communion in both kinds. Withholding scripture to the vernacular. Violence as justified by official church theology in magisterial teaching.

the elaborate role of Mary in daily piety, legalism in monasteries, and the complete loss of rigor in church discipline. Okay, those are examples I would mention as what the reformers were saying, look at these important issues, and the Roman Catholics are way further from the patristic testimony

than the Protestants on those. So in case anyone's saying, you don't have really, it's just a claim, you don't have specifics like no there's a lot of things you can see that are mushrooming up in that medieval era so i don't know if you want to comment on that yeah i think you're exactly right that's a that's a really good list i mean that's very similar to the kind of the list the same list that i would probably give on these issues um like you know i'm doing a i do a series

uh going through the augsburg confession which i've been doing for a while um and i've at this point we've just kind of gotten into the abuses section so the second half of the augsper confession which starts to get into specific medieval practices so so i've been exploring a bit of this recently and doing some reading, particularly on the issue of withholding the cup from the laity. I mean, there, and you brought that up as one of your points, but to me that's so significant, because here is an example of a practice that has no historical support. I mean, none. I mean, there is no father who allows for the cup being, you know, withheld from laity. It just isn't there in the in the early church. But we also there have an example of a very clear scriptural command

that is continual for the church being withheld or not. I mean, they're saying, you know, Jesus said do this. The entire history of the church says do this. And at some point in the late medieval period, it's decided that the church shouldn't do this. You know, so I think that among many other issues, they do become kind of the groundwork for a lot of the debates between the Protestants and Roman Catholics, say throughout the 17th century, as you get a lot of the more detailed scholastic work, you have Robert Bellarmine writing, and then you have guys like Johann Gerhard from the Lutheran side, or you have like a Francis Turriton writing for the reform side, or, you know, these various other theologians that are looking at at the early church.

And I think that really the historical work just made it clear that there were many practices in the medieval church that, and especially post-Trent, that just don't have patricic precedent at all. So what do you do with that? I mean, you can try to argue the sources, teach those things anyway, which for a time I think people like Belarmein did, and Belarmein probably did as well as anybody could.

But I think that's where you end up with the development hypothesis of Newman. Because it's a way to say, well, it doesn't matter that the church didn't agree with us here because there had to be this development of doctrine. And in many ways, I feel like that, and that is kind of the standard go-to for Roman Catholic apologist today. And I think it kind of has to be. But in a way, that's kind of a capitulation to the Protestants being correct on these issues.

It's kind of an admitting that, yeah, these things didn't exist in the early church. Yeah. And a thing to emphasize, too, is someone's going to come along and say, oh, well, you know, when I mentioned violence, people say, well, the Protestants had violence too and so forth. But notice how I worded it, violence as does. justified and as an expression of official church theology in magistral teachings. Also, communion in both kinds. Someone's going to say, well, that's just street level practice and error. It's like, no, at the Council of Constance, that's affirmed over and against the Hussites who were opposing that view.

So that was official church teaching. praying that Mary would propitiate Jesus. Those kinds of prayers are with the official approval of the church, not the level of infallible teaching, but still, they are official they are circulating as officially approved liturgy. So these things are not just here or there somebody did something. And that's where I just would appeal to people to say, what were the proto-Protestants and the early Protestants supposed to do if their consciences forbade them from withholding the wine from the laity? You're kind of stuck, you know, and you, in fact, you may be in a really bad position if you speak out, you know. So anyway, those are, those are appeals that hopefully can help people see that.

again, it's like I think we can acknowledge a lot of contemporary Protestants have also fallen away from church. You know, a lot of the things we're saying now could be pivoted in the other direction to critique contemporary Protestant practice because a lot of contemporary Protestants. But what I would say is the solution to that problem is not to leave Protestantism altogether. And that's, of course, the glory of Protestantism is always reforming. But what do we talk about Catholicity a little bit? because this actually bleeds into this because someone's going to still say, oh, yeah, but still there's this, the one true church and you're still, whether it was Luther getting excommunicated, that was the initial spark, or whether the intention was to start a new church or not,

you're still outside the institutional parameters. How would you say Protestants understand the nature of the one true church? Yeah, yeah. So I think, you know, in different, even different, among Protestant traditions, to some extent, we define unity in very different ways. And so I think, you know, for Rome, the tendency is that when we're talking about unity or one church, we mean one church institutionally. And there is, you know, one head of the church that is the Pope. In the East, you kind of have that, but not quite in the same way. But among Protestants, we're not saying that there are, you know, multiple churches.

We're still confessing one Catholic church. but and we speak about that not just as something that's invisible right because i think people are often point to like what you're saying the and this is the critique that someone like robert bellarmine had uh they talk about that you believe the church is some kind of platonic form meaning it's it's you know something you can't access physically or it's up not that that's necessarily an accurate way to represent plato but that was the criticism so uh it's that like it's this invisible thing who knows who's really part of the church there's there's nothing it's due to about it at all. And this is why we speak very clearly about the visible church as well. So we recognize

these two different aspects of the church. Now, Augustine has this distinction in many ways. I mean, Augustine talks about the church being the elect. He makes this distinction between the church and then the church as the institution. The difference with Protestants, though, is we're going to say in the fullest sense, right, in the truest sense, the church is made up of all believers. I mean, that's the church. But that's not to be this kind of isolated thing divorced from the community or institution or visible things. So we're going to come up with ways of talking about signs of the church. So the Lutherans, at least in our tradition, we would say that there are marks of the church that are the proclamation of the word and the administration of the sacraments in accord with the gospel.

So word and sacraments, we're really going to see as the foundational, visible mark of where the church is. So where God's word is proclaimed in community, and the sacraments are partaken of in community with an ordained minister providing over those things, that is the church. I know the reforms are going to have a third mark where they talk about the discipline that happens in the church. The Lutherans won't do that as much.

But I think regardless of like getting, you know, trying to not get into that particular debate, it's always the intention to say the church is not just something that's invisible. It's not just something that exists in the heart, but it exists in and through the local, physical, actual gathering together of God's people. But we don't, and certainly we need to prize unity, right? Jesus tells us that he prays for unity. I mean, John 17 in the high priestly prayer, that we may be won, is he and the Father once? So certainly unity is something that we all should strive for. But I think the question is what kind of unity are we looking for?

Does that unity mean unity in that we all, you know, are part of the same institution? Whereas not going to say yes. And Luther is not going to say yes. At least Luther. And, you know, maybe if we're talking about Protestants, you know, Anglicans have a little bit of a different take on this as well. but at least for Luther, it's not really going to be institutional unity that is ultimately what matters most. And it's not that institutional unity is bad. Institutional unity is good.

But for example, my church body, the AALC, we're a pretty small Lutheran church body. And we are in, we have Alter and Pulpit fellowship with the Lutheran Church, Missouri, Senate, which is the bigger Lutheran Church body that many more people know. And I often get this question is like, well, you guys are small. and you're already in fellowship. You have the same doctrine. So like why are you not just, why don't you just merge? Isn't it better to have one institution?

And I say, well, why? Like what? Not necessarily. I don't know that it necessarily is because we, we have declared that we have unity. We've declared that we have fellowship. In, you know, in either of our traditions, at least we have bishops,

but they kind of go under different names. But, but, you know, it's kind of like I have a bishop. I have a different bishop than you do. But do we need to have the same one? in order for us to be, you know, in unity. Is that really what unity means? And I don't think it is. I think it's a unity of doctrine and unity of faith. Ultimately, all Christians are united in that we partake of the mystical body. We're part of that mystical body of Christ. But then we declare show that unity in, you know, official fellowship, say, when we can have doctrinal discussions and we're in agreement. And I think the goal is

always toward more unity when we can do that when we have have genuine agreement. But the point of all of this is to say that I just don't think that we have to speak just of institutional unity. And that's kind of the error in thought that unity necessarily means institutional. And I think also the reality is there's even to have institutional unity, Roman Catholics are divided two. They're just divided different ways. And we all have to deal with division.

We all have to deal with the fallen world that the church is fractured. And I think we just all have to, to some extent, acknowledge that. And solution isn't necessarily going to be trying to make some unified institution. Right. Yeah, you raised to, you put it well in saying, because this is what happens. People, when we distinguish between visible and invisible, the invisible and visible church, people think we're denying the visible, which is, as you say, that's the misunderstanding. What we are saying is the church is not restricted to one institution.

And this, to my, where I'm coming from on this, and seeing the way the Holy Spirit is at work in various ways, I mean, you look at the globe today, like when, when you hear of Muslims coming to Christ through dreams, and you see the church spreading in ways that don't involve a kind of technical succession, you know, it's more organic. What that enables you to do is to say, that is a true church of Jesus Christ

in so far as they have the gospel and the sacraments. If they have the word and sacraments, then they have the Spirit of Christ. And that to me, you know, you think of in Mark 9 when the disciples are trying to stop this exorcist and they find him casting out demons in Christ's name and they say, well, we told him to stop

because he wasn't one of us. And Jesus says, don't stop him. Whoever is not against us is for us. Now, to me, this way of thinking is it enables us to be generous in the way that Christ would want us to do. Now, to anticipate some of the concerns, people are going to throw Cyprian at us and Ignatius at us and say, oh, look at how seriously they took schism.

What I would say to that, and then I'll see what you want to say about this. I would say Cyprian is functioning in a different context. You have one million Christians when he's writing on the unity of the church total. The church is one million people. The schisms he's talking about, it's like the Marcionites, the Gnostics, people who betray Christians during persecution. You're a tiny persecuted minority at this point. you can't extend his statements forward 2,000 years later, and now you've got over 2 billion Christians,

and there's been different kinds of schisms and divisions that have occurred today. So I think people often naively just pluck a quote out from Cyprian or some others about the importance of institutional unity. And I would say in agreement with you, institutional unity is good and to be sought after. It's just not the only thing that matters. So I don't know if you want to comment on

that and then I got some more questions. Yeah, I think that does get to the broader issue of trying to take things that were said among the fathers and then applying it in a contemporary context. And I think we should read the fathers. There's plenty of with them. We should get from the fathers. So I'm certainly not saying that we can't use them in our context, but we have to recognize the very different culture that they lived in, a very different church situation. So you're exactly right. When they're talking about these, you know, these various sects that they're warning people away from, they're heretical sects. You know, this isn't a question of, do you have, you know, a different bishop than somebody else? Or this is just, it's not really the point under discussion.

So, and it's also not addressing the question. Well, what if the institution that you're under is actually promoting pretty heterodox practices? like we see during information. What would Cyprian have said about withholding the cup from the lady, for example, or I don't know what he would have said, but what I will say is I don't know that he would have done exactly the same thing that he did in his own context. Yeah. I just don't think it's a fair way to read history.

Yeah, yeah. Well, let me ask you this, because I think one of the things that's amazing to me is the generosity of the reformers, even to Roman Catholicism. because one of the things, another of these caricatures, as we're trying to chip away at this definitional question of what is Protestantism, and we're under the heading of Catholicity here,

one of the caricatures is the Protestants said, well, it's us rather than any of the non-protestants out there. Let me read two quotes, and then I'll invite you to comment on this. Luther asked by two Lutheran ministers about baptism, is a Roman Catholic baptism still a baptism? In the context of saying yes, this is in the early 1520s, he says,

no, no, sorry, late 1520s. He says, quote, in the papacy there is true Christianity, even the right kind of Christianity and many great and devoted saints. The Christendom that is under the papacy is truly under the body of Christ and a member of it. Calvin, in the context, in the institutes, in the context of asserting that the Roman Catholic Church is corrupt in all kinds of ways, he says, quote, when we categorically deny to the papists the title of the church, we do not for this reason impugn the existence of churches among them." So they're there, on the one hand, it's like this, it's this very tricky thing.

There's these just brutal criticisms of the leadership, the hierarchy. They're calling them ravenous wolves. It's the Antichrist. It's worse than Sodom and Gomorrah. You know, they're just ravaging the sheep. But then they're saying also there's churches there. There's true Christians and true churches there, and they're a part of the church. How do you reconcile those two things?

Yeah, I'll point to it. another place. This is in Luther's Galatians commentary where he's specifically speaking about the pope being the antichrist. So he's using some of the most harsh language toward Rome that you can imagine. But in that context, he talks about, you know, Paul written to the Thessalonians and speaking about the man of lawlessness, who is in the temple of God. And he says, that's the Pope of Rome. But he makes this point. He says, but Paul does say that he's in the temple of God, as in the church. So he's he makes pretty explicit that the criticism is that the devil has caused this wickedness from many in leadership within the medieval Roman church, specifically the papacy. And I mean,

any honest Roman Catholic historian is going to tell you that there was some pretty wicked stuff going on with the papacy in the medieval period. I mean, they got the nickname pornocracy that was known among the people commonly. I mean, it got pretty bad. So in saying that, he's not saying Rome is not church. It was never his Luther's intention to say Rome was was not church. And yeah, he's certainly not saying I'm the head of a new church and only my people are are really believers. I mean, he's like a cult kind of mentality. Luther's not like a Joseph Smith figure. Luther's ultimate desire was always for this unity that that eventually Rome would actually hear him out. I mean, his original desire was that he would just be able to have a conversation with the Roman.

leadership and the Lutherans would be able to present their case and that they would actually have like an engaging debate and figure these issues out he was very willing to desire was to do that but rome said said no um so if you're you know then asking the questions what about other churches say you know the eastern orthodox church early lutherans often cited the orthodox church as an example of christianity can exist without the pope here's here's we have the whole eastern church and there was no doubt that they're a church. Luther speaks at one point highly of the Ethiopian church that they didn't even really have contact with at this time,

but they knew of their existence. So Luther and the early reformers were very willing to say, of course there are Christians outside of our groups. And that ended up actually being part of their argument against the claims of the papacy was they were the exclusivists, right? They were the one saying, you have to submit to the bishop of Rome or you're not in the church. And the reformers are the ones

saying, no, the church is far broader than being under one particular bishop. Exactly. Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because I was going to read a quote from Calvin to this effect. And it's really is interesting. You know, if someone thinks the Protestants were coming along and saying, okay, now we're the church and we disregard everything else rather than what they were saying, which is we're a renewal and reform initiative within the church. then how do you explain their appeal to what they called the Greek church? And they meant the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the institutes, you can see how much I've marked up to this page because I find it so fascinating. Calvin, it's right here plain as day.

He's in arguing against the Roman Catholic claim at the time of the 16th century that we are the one true church. He says, quote, they make the Greeks schismatics with what right? because in withdrawing from the apostolic sea they lost their privilege. What? Would not they who fell away from Christ deserve to lose it much more? This pretense of succession is in vain unless their descendants conserve safe and uncorrupted the truth of Christ, which they have received at their father's hands and abide in it. Now there's a footnote where the editor notes that Luther held the same view on the Greek Church

Eastern Orthodox, and Luther in 1519 said, nothing more detestable than this blasphemy can be spoken with reference to the idea that all the Orthodox Eastern Orthodox were damned. So what's interesting is that, you know, today we don't necessarily wouldn't anticipate it like this. The Protestants were being far more inclusive and generous to the Eastern traditions than the Roman Catholics of their own day because the Roman Catholic said, no, you have to be under the Pope to be saved, you know, and so they're damned.

They're off the Ark of Noah. They're drowning in the waters. And the Protestants were saying, no. the Eastern Orthodox. And then you can see the Lutherans in the 1570s writing to the ecumenical patriarch of Constantinople, starting this dialogue and addressing him as a Christian. I don't know if you want to say anything more on this area. Yeah, there's not a lot to say about that because those dialogues never really went far. You know, they kind of died out pretty quickly. I would love to have seen that continue. You know, I have all of these questions on my head of like, what if those conversations happened? But I know that there were even some Calvinists. dialogues with the Patriarch at one point as well, because such that there was at one point a Calvinist Patriarch of Constantinople. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I think that was much later on, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. But that's, I wish that those conversations happened more. I know. So that space was up. But I think geographically, you know, it's not like it is today. It's not quite as easy to have those conversations. Yeah. That is, to me, one of the most fascinating episodes in all of church history where you've got these, you know, these two groups, Lutheran and Eastern Orthodox in the 1570s talking.

And yeah, I totally agree. And I will point out it was not the Lutherans who ended the dialogue. They had three-letter correspondences back and forth. And basically, Jeremiah the second basically just said, don't write anymore. So it's like, okay, well, you know, that kind of ends it. But they did carve out enormous agreement. They agreed on a lot. but there were those sticking points and they weren't able to overcome those.

But it just speaks to this question of, you know, Protestantism is not saying it's us rather than everybody else. That's not the idea is we're a reform effort in the church. Now, one last comment on Catholicity, just briefly, can we speak to the 30,000 denominations charge? This is obviously, I mean, I'm amazed we still hear this because it's been debunked so many times. But I do think we want to acknowledge, I would acknowledge, Protestantism has been too divisive. Yeah, yeah.

And that number comes up all the time. I've even heard the number expanded, depending on who's using it. I mean, I feel like every time I hear it, it's getting higher and higher. But I think the better of the Roman Catholic apologists don't use the number anymore, because it's just not accurate. So the idea is there are these 30 something thousand Protestant denominations. And so this is proof that like Protestants can't agree on anything. If you have a Sola Scriptora, you're basically left in a position where like nobody can agree. You don't know anything because the Bible.

is totally un-understandable without this infallible interpreter. So without the magistrate, we're just kind of left to just keep dividing and keep dividing and dividing and dividing. But to counter that, I mean, there are a number of things that I would say. One of those is that the study that was used to produce this, because it doesn't come from nowhere, but included among Protestants individual congregations. It included Mormons and fundamentalist Mormon breakoff sects. It included Jehovah's Witnesses.

It included cults of every kind. It included old Catholic groups that are very self-consciously not Protestant. I mean, the way that you get to that number is just not honest because you're not talking about denominations and you're not talking about groups that would necessarily be called Protestant in any sense. And I'm not even just talking about in like what I'm defining as a more classical Protestant sense of those kind of three branches of Lutheran, looking reformed but I'm talking in protest in any sense at all yeah um so you know it's like you know if the cathars were around today you'd call them the Protestant group so so it's just not it's just not a fair number but but I would also say it large numbers even if you got rid of that the number would be obviously a lot smaller but it would also include something like my own church body as a distinct

denomination from the lutheran church Missouri senate as a distinct denomination from the lutheran church of Canada as a distinct denomination from and and I could name all the other churches when in reality we're all part of one broader group um which is a group called iLC which is the international lutheran conference so it's a bunch of lutherans that we all have fellowship to some agree like together we come together for conferences share community together all those kind of things um but the distinction between that was really just we're under for different locations and different jurisdictions so so is that really division well no that's not division that just means we live at different places. So I'm sure you could do the same with any group. I mean, you know,

take the Napark churches or something, you know, where you have a group of different churches. Obviously, are probably the same theological tradition and fellowship with each other, but they're a little different. So I think when you really pair things down among Protestants, I think that there are far less groups than you really, far less groups than certainly Rome wants to say, or even that a lot of Protestants tend to think. Because it's, think pretty much everybody comes down to, I don't know how many groups, but pretty much you've got, and you've got the Protestant liberals, and I'm kind of not counting them. Maybe that sounds unfair, but oh, well, but I'm talking among, like, Protestants that really

believe that scripture is the word of God and authoritative. I mean, you've got Anglican groups, you have Lutheran groups, you have reform groups, you have Baptist groups, Methodists, and some charismatic. you know, there aren't, and among those general larger groups, there is mostly agreement within those groups. And I think even when you're talking about, you know, as a Lutheran, we like to distinguish ourselves from the reformed a lot. We do. I mean, we say we're not Roman Catholic, but we're also not reformed. But I think there, even among Protestants generally, like talking more kind of creedal Protestants. We have far more areas of agreement, I think, than we do disagreement, even when that disagreement is rather significant. I think that's just, that's really important

to get out of the way. But to get to your question then, or your comment that like, are we too quick to divide? Yes. I mean, I think that is, and I think when Rome points that out, we do have to kind of be honest, to some extent, to say like, yeah, I think that that is one of the dangers of Protestantism. I think it is a genuine danger that there are, you know, sectarians. There are people who make the church smaller and smaller and smaller dependent on, you know, some little doctrinal particularity. I know of a Lutheran church body that has two pastors because they've basically anathematized everybody else. They think nobody else is as Orthodox is there. So, you know, you get these groups, you do get these groups. So Protestantism,

because it doesn't have as, you know, hierarchical of a structure, does it leave room for those kind of things? I think it's a danger, yes. But is that inherent to what Protestantism is? Absolutely not. Right. Yeah. Yeah, when I read the Protestants that I respect the most, they really are alert to this and acknowledging it. You know, Boveng, Kerman Boveng talks about the rise of sectarianism as this dark phenomenon. Philip Schaft talks about, you know, this is one of the poisons of that that can spring up within Protestantism. But what they're saying is the solution, the way to redress this problem of sectarianism is not to abandon Protestant principles. These are actually the best way to address it. And yeah, the other thing that people

should know about the 30,000 denominations statistic is that same way of reckoning leads to a bunch of different denominations within Roman Catholicism. So that's one way you can tell. This is something is going to skew in the way we're kind of wiring things here. But yeah, anything else on this? And then I want to ask you a little bit about the question of authorities. Maybe one other thing to add to that. I tend to think the problem isn't Protestantism so much as it is American individualism. I think it's, and I know that Rome is often Roman Catholics are going to argue like, well, that's causative. The reason we have this individualism is because of Protestantism.

I don't think that's the case. But I think that it's more so that in our, especially, you know, we're both in the United States. And in an American context, you do see the splintering of Protestantism and the growth of these kind of new religious groups like the, say, Seventh-day Adventists, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons. You know, I live in upstate New York. It seems like all these groups started here, you know, after with the revivals. So I think that it's very simplistic to say, because I think these are real problems, but I think it's very simplistic just to say, well, Protestantism causes those problems. when I think it's a lot of other things that are going on in the post-enlightenment West, and a kind of rising individualism and a consumerism of I find a church that that fits me best, which isn't really what you see kind of an historic Protestant countries per se.

So I just think the historical story is a little more complicated than that. Yeah. And I want to add one last thing on this too, and that is that there are real tangible ways we can express unity, even short of, of total institutional reunion and total, total theological alignment. If you were in town and were willing to preach at my church, I would be honored to have a Lutheran preach at my church. That would be wonderful. That would be great. When our church does a Good Friday service here in the Ohio Valley,

we partner with seven other churches to put on a church service together. So these are the kinds of things where it's like, now is that perfect? Is that all that needs to happen? Of course not, but it's not the case that, see, that's the thing is when we have these divisions, we can still at least recognize, the other side as Christian churches with whom we are partnering for the kingdom of God. And that's a key distinction between the, at least the, you know, 19th century and prior way of

thinking about the one true church idea, where today, there's been a real change on that. That's a whole other thing we could. I just did another video on this of just this idea of no salvation outside the church and the way that's interpreted today versus 500 years ago. And it just is a massive change. So it's a huge change. Rome has, I think Rome has adopted a lot of Protestant ideas within itself,

especially post-Sapatican too. And I just don't think there's a way to argue against that historically. It just seems obvious. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and so people can watch out. I don't know if this video will come out first or that one, but either the one just prior or the one next, I'm going to tease this out more,

but I think you're right. I mean, it's in, it's at the Council of Florence, it's in the Unum-Sankham, it's in these clearly statements that meet the conditions of an ex-catheter statement and it's like they're nailing it down as clear as you can be like at council of florence they literally say if you're a martyr and you've shed your blood for the gospel it doesn't matter if you're baptized and it was a it doesn't matter if you have extravagant alms giving it doesn't matter you must be in the catholic church before you die or you go to hell where satan goes i'm paraphrasing but it's about and it's like how could you say it more

clearly and yet today you got the Vatican two idea even Jews and Muslims can be and and you get all these new qualifications being introduced of well you can be invisibly connected to the visible church and I'm like who thought like that nobody was saying that in the 13th century the 14th century and so forth so it's uh I think I think you know if nothing else it it would be nice to reduce some of the triumphalism against Protestants for other traditions to recognize they've had to kind of move the goalposts a little bit on a question like this as well. So yeah. Let me ask about authorities questions quickly to finish off here.

So this is another area where Protestantism is often misunderstood. One of the ideas is we're rampant individualists. Soliscriptura means that the Bible is your only authority and your only source for doctrine. How many times have we heard this said that, well, you have to get every single doctrine out of the Bible. Soliscriptura is not in the Bible. Therefore, Soliscriptura is self-defeating. And what I want to say is actually, and maybe I'll document this more in a second, Sola Scriptura doesn't say every doctrine falls ready made out of the Bible.

The doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture, which is often seen as derivative of Sola Scriptura, which means only infallible rule for faith and practice, is cashed out a little differently in different traditions, but in no tradition. Does it mean that every doctrine's ready made out of the Bible explicit? For example, in the Westminster Confession, it talks about by good and necessary consequence, you get all things necessary for God's glory and so forth. People just completely lop off the words by good and necessary consequence, as though it all had to be explicit in the Bible.

So what, so Solo Scriptura means the Bible is the only infallible rule, not the only authority or the only source for explicitly everything. What would you like to say about this in terms of just how this is often misunderstood or mangled and how we're caricatured? Yeah, yeah, I think I would say that, and I have a lot to say this, this I feel like it is the area where I get so, I think, frustrated at the mischaracterizations because it's just not, that portrayal is clearly not what the reformers were saying. I mean, any of the reformers. I mean, the Anabaptist may be a little bit more so, but in terms of the ministerial reformers, they certainly weren't. So I would say this, tradition, when, what we say that scripture is, is the highest authority. that doesn't mean that tradition is not authority. It doesn't mean that there are no ecclesiastical authorities like pastors or bishops or however the church is structured. It means that those authorities are fallible authorities.

What we're saying is just that scripture is the only God breathed authority. So that I think we do this all the time when we have authorities in our lives in all sorts of ways is we understand that there is a kind of hierarchy of authorities, right? We understand that there are certain things that can be corrected by other things. So when we're looking at the authority of Scripture, we're saying that this is the God-breathed authority in that the church, doesn't mean the leadership of the church does not have authority. But when the church steps out of bounds, Scripture has to correct that. The church doesn't get to stand over Scripture. So great example of this would be communion in both kinds. Scripture is very explicit.

that Jesus says take drink. And again, the history of the church is also explicit about this. So you've got scripture and history on your side saying the same thing. But the Magisterium says, no, what do you do at that point? Yeah, you have to make a choice. And one authority kind of has to be, you have to place one higher than the other. So what are you going to do? And it's at those points. You say, no, scripture is the ultimate authority. And so if I have to choose between tradition and scripture. I'm going to choose scripture. And this seems to be the same principle that Jesus himself lays out with the Pharisees. Because Jesus demonstrates a respect for tradition in many ways. He seems to celebrate Hanukkah. He and he goes to the synagogue. The synagogue wasn't a divinely instituted thing. It showed up as a tradition in the intertestimental period.

But Jesus rebuked the Pharisees when their traditions trumped the word of God. And so I think that's a general principle that we have to look at when looking at tradition and history is not those things are bad or we all start from square one as these isolated individuals with my with our bibles and Luther was very adamantly against that mentality Luther criticized especially the Anabaptists who many of them said you know they had private revelations of this or that and so they knew that these things were right because God told them individually and in response Luther consistently pointed to his external calling. And he said, look, I was, he said, I have the authority to do what I do. Luther didn't believe he was some, just some kind of prophet that God, like, divinely called,

or he didn't believe that he was just an individual of the Bible, and any individual of the Bible could do whatever they want or fight against authority in any way they want. But Luther says, look, I was given a call, and he had the laying out of hands. He was ordained. He was commissioned to teach the Word of God. But Luther also said, hey, I was sent. by the church. I had authorities externally sending me to say, go get your doctorate and be a professor of theology. And I was commissioned and called to teach the word of God. And so that's what he did. So Luther understood he wasn't doing this just as an isolated individual, but when he had to defend himself, he constantly went back to that doctorate because he saw that as God has externally verified to me

that this is my position because I've had, I've had a call. I've been told to do this by others. So he certainly didn't see this kind of teaching in this isolated individual context. He saw it as all happening within the context of the church, which is how it should be done today. We do this in the context of the church. This is why we have confessions of faith. You know, it shouldn't be that, you know, when you have a church's body, it shouldn't just be that any pastor can just teach whatever whatever they want. I mean, you can have a situation where a pastor just says, hey, I decided that, you know, the Bible teaches that, you know, God has a wife or something. You know, like, you can't do that because you're submitting yourself to a church body. But can that church body change its theology on something?

Yes. But it does that through a process of looking to scripture and discussing and debating. It doesn't do that through one guy said this or that. So I think. think that's why it is important to have as much as I don't believe that scripture, so from a Luther respect to scripture doesn't mandate one particular form of church government. We're a little more open than some others are on those issues. But I think there is a lot of wisdom in having those checks and balances as well, so that it's not just you kind of believe or do whatever you want by yourself. And the good and necessary consequence is a huge, huge part of that.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One thing, that I would like to, again, in the spirit of kind of just reinforcing things that you want to get out there more in the discussion is this distinction between authority and infallibility. I hear people pivot back and forth between these two, as though an argument for authority is an argument for infallibility. As though to have authority, you need infallibility, but they are totally distinct ideas. Authority means practically binding over the people under its jurisdiction. Infallibility means incapability. of error. So there's lots of authorities that are fallible. Actually, most authorities in the world are fallible. So like, you know, so to tie this into the discussion, in a Protestant context, I am under authority. I can lose my ministerial credentials if I violate my ordination vows, which are authoritative over me. I can be kicked out of our church and be barred from the Lord's supper if I deny our church a statement of faith. That's real authority. But I'm not, but they're not infallible. We don't think there's a charism of infallibility or something like this.

So I just would love it if that distinction was more because I hear confusion, a lot people will pivot from one to the other. They'll make an appeal that we need an authority and then somehow smuggled in is now we need an infallible authority as though those were the exact same thing, but they're not the same thing. Yeah, no, I totally agree. I totally agree. I think that's, I think that's really important. And I do see, I very much see some Roman Catholics going, switching back and forth between those two things. and assuming that if you need an authority, you need an infallible authority. And the reality is even the reformers, especially Philip Melanchthon said,

hey, if you want to just say the bishop of Rome is the head of the church by human right, sure, I'll submit to the pope. You're even willing to say, sure, if you want to just say he's an authority, but it's human right, it's not something that's divinely necessary, then sure. So clearly those two things, I think, have to be distinguished. Yeah. Well, my final comment, and I want to say, too, that the heart behind all of these comments is to try to defend what we think is a noble tradition in need of

defense and that's Protestantism. We're trying to, we see these caricatures and we're trying to say, no, this needs to be understood properly and treated with respect and treated with accuracy. And so that's the heart behind all these comments. But my final comment is just, I was talking to my dad about this and he was, you know, we were both kind of reflecting that we can understand how people, if they're not, if they're not, that they don't have a lot of on the ground contact with Protestant contexts, they can look at Protestantism and it can see like a lot of chaos, you know, a lot of, there's just all these different churches and so forth and understanding that. But trying also to look at the flip side of that and say, you know, everything can be looked at for its good side

and its bad side. The good side of that is the freedom that we have to follow our conscience. And this is one of the things that I love. Well, you see it right there with Luther at the Diet of I mean that the courage of he's not willing to bend his conscience in the face of pressure. Now, this can go too far, of course. But one of the things you do see that is a good value of the Protestant Reformation is an emphasis upon freedom of conscience, liberty of conscience, a sensitivity to at various levels, not overbinding the conscience. And the flip side, the shadow side on the other direction of chaos would be tyranny.

You know, people can look at a democracy and say democracy is chaotic. But the reason democracy came about is because we're afraid of the error in the other direction, and that's tyranny, which is also really bad. So I think what my dad was saying is what is so bad about a freedom of thought and a freedom of association that is able to say, and that is actually different from a radical individualism, because the way that is expressed is done with a deep concern for Catholicity. You're looking to the scriptures and you're looking to the full church. When I do theological retrieval, one of the things I'm always hoping is that I'm being corrected in the process by submitting to the broader body of Christ and the things they see that I don't see. So I'm not putting myself above the church as an individual, but there still is the ability to not be yoked at my conscience to all these different things that there's anathemas about, you know? So anyway, that's kind of a final comment from my standpoint on this. Is there anything you'd like to say, finishing off on this issue of authority?

What is the Protestant definition of authority? Yeah. I think I'll just maybe say this. As I think about these questions, I think about those I know who struggle with these issues. Because, you know, I have friends that look into Rome or are looking into Rome. And it generally tends to be the case that most of these people come from really rather chaotic Christian backgrounds. And I think I've seen that kind of maybe. theological chaos in their own congregations in one way or another. I think they tend to be not

really, and this isn't always the case, but oftentimes they're not really rooted in those more historic or classical Protestant traditions. And when they see Rome, so many people for the first time are encountering something that takes history seriously, tries to bring them into something that's much bigger than themselves, something that cares about tradition, cares about ritual in some way. And there's a respite, I think, from the, from the modern world in a lot of ways that people see. And I would just say from a real Protestant perspective, especially from a classical Protestant perspective, I think you can have all of this as well. And I think we need to acknowledge that there are those issues within certain circles and certain churches that there isn't

rootedness, right? There isn't. There isn't people, people aren't being equipped theologically. They're not being equipped in apologetics. There's a kind of shallow, you know, shallow preaching, you know, church just restarted in the 1950s or something for that church. So I think we have to be sensitive to that and recognize that that is a problem. But you don't have to jump all the way to Rome in order to address what are, I think, real issues. And I just want people to know that these other, there are these other options out there,

for, and I know you started saying Protestantism is just another option, but Protestantism is out there, and I see people jumping to Rome without actually really exploring, I think, the best of the Protestant traditions. I encourage people to do that,

before just kind of making this maybe distinction between you're either in this, like, very shallow church without any rootedness, no, no denomination, no connection to anybody, or it's Roman Catholicism. Like this isn't an either-or kind of thing.

Yeah, that's kind of a good note to finish on, I think, but I will just ask one practical and brief question to completely finish off that stems out of that. In the process of doing that, what are some of the ways, let's say someone's watching this video and they're saying, okay, I really do want to give Protestantism, kind of get in the weeds a bit more

and get into historic Protestant documents. What are some things that you'd recommend for them, especially things that might be a little bit lower on the shelf that is accessible, not super expensive or difficult? But how would you advise them to start moving towards that? Yeah, sure. I mean, you know, YouTube channels help. I know your channel and my channel kind of sort of this is what both of us strike to do for people here. In terms of, you know, maybe wanting to get into some text, you know, historic text. I mean, if I could just plug my own publishing house, JSPublishing.org at Justice Center Publishing.

I mean, we republish a lot of more classic. It is Lutheran sources, but we republish a lot of things. And a lot that is really pretty accessible. And we try to give things to people at a price that is pretty cheap, at least compared to some other publishing houses. But there are a lot of groups doing these kind of things. So Davenat Institute, I know, is one that I know well. and they're trying to republish things more from kind of an Anglican and reform perspective and putting out new essays.

I think that new volumes of essays that address, I think, a lot of the issues that Roman Catholics are attracting people by addressing. So those are at least a couple things that I would point people to in terms of publishing. I don't know if there's, you know, like, is there a book that comes to mind that I would tell someone to read? I mean, I don't know if there's one particular thing that comes to mind. Most of what I would recommend would be more specifically Lutheran than just broadly Protestant, but because, you know, that's what I know. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's good.

And I'll put a link to Justin Center, also a link to Davenant Institute in the video description. People can check them out. In the comments, people who are watching this, if you'd like to see Dr. Cooper and I talk more, what topics do you want us to talk about? Leave a comment saying, oh, you know, because probably what we would do if we talk again is honed in more specifically on a specific area so let us know in the comments if you'd like us to do that thanks for watching everybody see you next time god bless