Truth Unites - Why Do Protestants Convert? With Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo

Episode Date: January 22, 2024

In this video Gavin Ortlund interviews Brad Littlejohn and Chris Castaldo about their book, Why Do Protestants Convert? See their book here: https://davenantinstitute.org/why-do-protestants-convert Truth Unites exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville. SUPPORT: Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://truthunites.org/

We're in that moment. We're always in that moment. We need to hear from God. The question is who speaks for God? The Reformation said this is completely backward. The sacrament is supposed to be part of the center of the Christian life. It's being brought out of the side of chapels into the center of the church. It's supposed to be something the entire community participates in, in conjunction with the word. It's in a language they understand. It's in the context of preaching. There are parameters. There are boundaries. But we as Protestants seek to tether unity, as you have both said, in the gun. gospel itself. That is the center of gravity. Well, hey, everyone. Welcome or welcome back to Truth Unites. I'm here with Brad, Little John, and Chris Castaldo, and we're going to talk about their excellent book, Why Do Protestants Convert? And I'm going to put up on the screen a picture of my endorsement for this book. If you want to know a little more thoughts of the things I particularly appreciated about it, a link will be in the video description.

and I would say this book will be of interest to you if you're interested in understanding, why is it that sometimes Protestants convert to another Christian tradition, like Roman Catholicism, for example, sometimes Eastern Orthodoxy? That happens. There's a trend toward that right now. This is a phenomenon that needs to be interpreted, and then how do we respond to that? And this can cause a lot of angst and uncertainty, especially when it's someone that's close to you, or especially when it's someone you really respect.

I mean, there are some very gifted and intelligent. people who make this transition. And so this can be jarring for people. So this book is a really great resource for understanding that. And it's not condescending. It doesn't psychoanalyze people, but it gives some plausible reasons and then helps us respond. And a lot of that is going to be on us as Protestants to reform our own practice where we need to, according to the scripture. So let's just start off. Maybe Brad, you can give us just like a one or two sentence overview. And then, Chris, you can go kind of, what's your hope of what someone might get out of this book? Yeah, my hope that is if you know someone who is struggling with this process of considering conversion,

or if you yourself are struggling, that this book will just offer a kind of a mirror that you can hold up and say, oh, that's what's going on. That is what, this is where that pool is coming from. And also can offer at least just very briefly, that's not trying to be a thorough, apologetic or anything, but offer a very brief sketch of why we think that Protestantism has within it the resources to meet and address that pool. Yeah, pointing out the reasons, intended circumstances why someone migrates religiously. And I think there's maybe three distinct audiences. One would be the convert himself, helping him or her to reflect on the variegated nature. So it's theological, but not just doctrine. It's.

It's also our emotions and our psychology and it's the communities in which we're situated. And then secondly, the person who has a friend or a loved one who's considering conversion, how can we help that person to get perspective? Because very often we develop a myopia on one part. So we want to serve that conversation. And then if there's a third, it would be Protestant pastors and church leaders to look at their ministries and consider how am I retrieving the tradition so that I'm not serving a a theologically anemic low-octane version of the faith. Yes. Well, I appreciated the book because it

seems to me it fills a gap and I'm just kind of amazed. I don't know if you would agree with this, but I'm kind of amazed at how little there is written in this whole territory of kind of defending Protestantism, engaging this conversation. I've just found I've gotten pulled into it, just to try to fill a need. And I've just found that a lot of Protestants assume Protestantism and don't necessarily have good reflection about why they are a Protestant. But this, so this book is helpful in just this whole territory.

You guys talk about the psychology of conversion, the theology, and then the sociology. Now, first question to get into here is just, when you're talking about the psychology of conversions out of Protestantism, you talk about the quest for authority, the quest for holiness, You talk about the inner ring syndrome, all fascinating. And all of this kind of is a starting point to say,

there are problems that are revealed within Protestantism by these hungers. A lot of these things are a hunger for a good thing. So what are some areas where Protestants, where basically as Protestants, we can learn from this phenomenon and where we can see like a mirror holding up, we need to reform our own practice. Chris, do you want to start on that one? Yeah, in regard to authority, hunger, we need stability. We need structure. At our church, we have an intern, and he grew up without a dad, his dad was incarcerated. So now we have the privilege of putting our arm around him and a family in the church has welcomed him in. And this intern recently said, I so appreciate the structure and support I receive from Don, the father of the home. And it works that way in the church. And I think many look at the Catholic. tradition and see that kind of structure and authority. If you think of the identity of a Roman Catholic

priest, what is a Catholic priest? I think he's mostly a shepherd. That's what it was like for me growing up. Father Tom was present. He knew us by name. Prayed for us. And there are, of course, radiant examples of shepherds in the Protestant tradition. But there are competing models today, pastor as CEO, as program coordinator, as social media influencer, you name it. And so I think it's a reminder to us of who we are as shepherds. We need to lean into that identity. Yeah, well, I'll touch on the third of those psychological factors, which I call following C.S. Lewis, the Inner Ring Syndrome.

And this is, you know, Lewis has an essay on this. He writes in the book that Hidious Strength is kind of a novelistic representation of it. And it's that human desire, which is, is of course very perverted by sin, but it's not intrinsically sinful. All of our desires start out as desires for a good thing, right? It's the desire to really feel like you're part of, you belong, right? And you're, you are recognized, you are seen, you are, you feel important, and that you are, you're part of this community that is doing something important, right?

And you are important as part of that. And so there's this craving at every age of our lives to feel like we're part of that, that inner ring, that inner circle. And, you know, it starts in junior high with various little cliques that everybody wants to be part of. There's the cool kids and there's the uncool kids. And then when you get into your workplace, you're looking for, you know, who are the real decision makers at this company that I want to be part of? And who are the people who are just kind of on the outside and they don't matter.

I don't want to be one of them. And so I think this happens, of course, in church circles too, where a lot of what can draw peoples to leave one church for another is the sense that a certain church is kind of insignificant, unsophisticated, uncool, right? Particularly for young people, right? I think for young people who particularly maybe who are looking for, you know, who are very intellectually gifted or, you know, looking for positions of intellectual leadership or, or, or who are engaged in politics, some kind of cultural leadership. And they want to feel like they are

part of the church of relevant, significant, sophisticated, intellectually serious people. And Protestantism in America, since the kind of fundamentalist controversy has, has often been characterized by the sense of withdrawal, a loss of cultural capital, a loss of intellectual capital, a loss of intellectual seriousness, and Christians, young people growing up in those contexts, feel like they're embarrassed to be one of those fundamentalists, right? And Roman Catholicism offers itself as the sort of ecclesiastical inner ring. If you want to be a sophisticated, connected Christian, you know, join Roman Catholicism. And so I think, you know, that's an itch. As I say, there's a sinful aspect of that itch that we shouldn't try to scratch.

We should sort of help people see, hey, that's kind of a sinful desire to be looking down your nose at the church you grew up in and wanting to feel like you're part of the cool church. That's a sinful desire. But there is a side to it that I think reflects a fault in 20th century American Protestantism, where we did abandon a lot of that position of cultural leadership that had characterized Protestantism in America. we abandoned that intellectual seriousness. And we created a situation where the best and the brightest, growing up in our churches, are going to feel like a little bit embarrassed that this is what Protestantism is, right?

We've got to have something better than that, right? So I think there is a call to up our game, to improve our institutions, to improve our intellectual formation, to improve our cultural engagement, in a way that makes Protestantism feel like it really has something to offer as satisfying that desire to belong to something that is relevant and meaningful. Yeah. Well, implicit and what we're already saying here is that there's a lot that we are going to be learning in this process. We're not just sort of reflexively throwing down a gauntlet and defending something. We're also learning something.

And on my YouTube channel, I always try to be respectful interpersonally with other people of other perspectives of any kind. So let's just hear, this is a more pastoral question. But let's identify some bad ways to respond to someone who is making this transition. Because one of the things I appreciated about your book is you guys aren't sort of psychoanalyzing people at an individual level where you're saying, we know someone's motives. You know, we don't know people's motives. We can't read someone's heart at an individual level. we're going to leave those judgments to God. But we can observe trends and try to be helpful in identifying some of the broader trends.

But when I've seen this happen a lot, someone has a friend or a loved one moved to a different tradition, and they respond very uncharitably. Maybe they feel threatened. Maybe it feels like their own identities being attacked. And so they feel a need to psychoanalyze someone. They feel a need to attack someone. They say, well, I've even, you hear these silly things too of like, oh, there's doing it for the money are these things. I mean, I've had people say this about me. Oh, he's just

defending Protestantism for the money. I'm like, whatever my flaws are. Okay, that's not, that's not it. But let's just pastor people a little bit. How, what are the pitfalls we want to avoid in terms of how we might respond when one of our friends converts? Yeah. I would say, don't freak out. Don't react. I receive emails often from parents whose child goes to Loyola. or Marquette and Notre Dame. Maybe the roommate is Roman Catholic. They've been to a few masses. And then they return home for Christmas and announce they're entering the Catholic

Church. And so they may contact me with questions. And I've had a number of these conversations. And that's what I say. We need to embrace this as an opportunity to think and to pray with your child. I had one dear woman in her words. She was Baptist all the way back to John Bunyan. And she said, you have no idea.

this is going to do to our family. And I said, well, what if you read these books on the church fathers with your son and read the reform? She was very bright, as was her son. And that's what they did. They walked through it together. And she avoided the common mistake, which is to just go into attack mode, as you said, Gavin. And so embrace it as a journey of reflection. We have everything to gain from that. Yeah. And I think, you know, an important part of this is recognizing that we shouldn't view that as, you know, as my child is abandoning, is apostatizing, right?

I think there was a time when, you know, there's been a debate since the Reformation on, to what extent to Protestants consider Roman Catholics part of the church, a flawed part of the church, and yet still a part of the church. and the reformers generally said, look, you can still be united to Christ. You can still be a believer and be in the Roman Catholic Church. It's just, as it were, a path that's much more full of temptations. They're more dangers to true faith. It's certainly impossible to pursue true faith there.

And I think Catholicism today is a different thing than it was then. Catholicism in America is a different thing than in many other parts of the world. So you shouldn't react, you know, I think the kind of, the, the Baptist who maybe has grown up with the idea that, you know, Catholics are, you know, aren't even Christians are going to maybe freak out about that in a way that, no, we would prefer, we would certainly prefer if these converts found what they were looking for within Protestantism. We think they can find what they're looking for within Protestantism. We think they could make rich contributions to the Protestant church. So we would rather they're not swimming the tiber. But this is, you know, the, the, the, that decision ultimately is between them and God and our task is to help them become the best disciple of Christ that they can be. Yes, we're very well said. And I appreciate this emphasis upon showing love along the way. Also, there's things we can learn, you know. But I also think, and as we'll get into now, it's okay to do what you guys are doing in this book and what I know we're all interested in doing. And that's explaining Protestant beliefs, defending Protestant beliefs, trying to remove caricatures from Protestant beliefs that are very, very common. So let's get into that a little bit. Let me ask you about this. In your discussion of the theology of conversions, you discuss the quest for certainty. And I, again, without knowing

exactly what's going on in any individual, I have to say, I do suspect that this is commonly out there. And I do see this a lot, especially right now in our world where there's so much uncertainty and anxiety. I sometimes think people are looking to a church tradition to meet this particular need in the heart for certainty. And I just wanted to give you both a chance to maybe just unpack. How do you observe that? How do you see that? And I'll say at the beginning, my concern is that I want to shepherd people to find those deepest needs in the gospel itself. I really do believe the Holy Spirit has a ministry of assurance to the human heart through faith in Christ. And he communicates a powerful sense of assurance to our heart. And so I want to ultimately be shepherding people toward that. And that's whenever we go into deep theology, that's what

it's ultimately geared for. I want people to find Christ himself, of course. But in terms of this quest for certainty and how it plays out in conversions, just comment about that a little bit. How do you see that playing out? And what concerns do you have about how people may be looking in the wrong place to meet that need? Yeah. I preached from Daniel too this weekend. And so Nebuchadnezzar has a dream. And there needs to be a word from God. Otherwise, all the prophets are going to die. We're in that moment, we're always in that moment. We need to hear from God. The question is who speaks for God? My experience like yours, Gavin, is when I heard the gospel and I came to Christ, I found in scripture the solvent for all of my fears. I found hope, and I couldn't read enough of it. That's at the

center of Protestant identity. It's our conviction. When we talk with our Roman Catholic friends, they will often point out the various traditions that comprise Protestantism, say, but how can you know for sure who is right? And that's a legitimate question. There is variety, diversity. And that's when they'll point to the Magisterium, the teaching office of the church as the arbiter. That's a difficult case to make, though, and I realize this is controversial, but just as an example, you know, I follow James Martin on Twitter, X, who's whose feed is clad in rainbows. And I also follow Robbie George, who is a champion for conservative conviction. Both of them insist on the Magisterium. Who is right? In other words, it seems like the

Magisterium itself needs to be interpreted. And there you will have different understandings, different conclusions among Catholics. Yeah, I think part of what is going on here is the result of a misconception of Soliscriptura. You speak of scriptures, the solvent of all of our fears, but it's not the answer to all of our questions. In fact, one of the part of what scripture does is teaches us to be to be patient with not receiving answers to many questions in this life. And I think, you know, Christians, for most of the past, Christians grew up in contexts in cultures and societies in which there were strong cultural norms, there were tight-knit communities, there were a lot of expectations that were set by the world that you were growing up

in, right? And so there are all kinds of questions that you might conceivably arise that were sort of already answered for you as to how you should conduct yourself and what sort of beliefs you received. And those weren't, those questions weren't answered by scripture. They were answered by the norms of your community. And we live now in a world in which, that's really not the case anymore, right? Everything is sort of up for grabs. Every subculture is sort of laid bare and open to the clash of all these other subcultures.

And so young people find themselves growing up in this world in which everything is up for grabs. Every question needs an answer, and those answers aren't being provided by anything. And I think one Protestant response is to say, oh, well, okay, the Soliscriptura, that means scripture is going to give you all those answers. and so you have a sort of a legalistic approach to scripture where or some versions of the Christian or the Christian worldview movement where it's sort of like you've got a,

the Bible becomes a universal answer book for all of these cultural questions that once upon a time would have been settled by custom and tradition. And so we find the Bible isn't providing the certainty that we want. We live in a world of uncertainty the Bible isn't providing all that certainty, what can? And then the turn is, oh, maybe if I can't get it within, you know, the Bible and my Bible church,

I can get it at Rome. And Rome has this huge body of tradition, this huge body of teaching, addressing all sorts of questions. And so it looks like, oh, maybe I can get certainty there. But of course, the fact is, if the argument is that an authoritative text, scripture, can't be self-interpreting, than a much, much larger body of authoritative texts, all of the papal bulls and all of the commentaries and the Thomas Aquinas and so on, they can't be self-interpreting either, right?

So just increasing the total amount of text that you're dealing with doesn't solve the problem of certainty. Another question is about unity. This is another big appeal is it is true. Protestantism has a major problem with fragmentation and splintering and so forth. At the same time, often this will be turned in a way that is unfair, I think, and that overlooks the challenge toward unity that all churches have. And in your book, you talk about this for those who might have the book in front of them right now, it's page 57. You talk about how the restriction of the Eucharist to Roman Catholics is an example of where it raises this question of what is unity?

and there are different kinds of unity, institutional unity, a more organic kind of unity. How would you respond to those who are interested in Roman Catholicism or perhaps Eastern Orthodoxy even out of a desire for unity? How would you respond to them and say that need is valid, but it isn't necessarily best met by leaving Protestantism? You know, we need to ask, what's the criteria of? for determining unity. And if it's organizational or institutional, then yeah, you have in Rome a common clerical attire

and body of teaching and liturgical forms. It hangs together in a very visible way. But if you understand the essence of unity to be the message, message of the gospel, and now Matthew 16 is in the background here, what is the rock? Well, then you can drive down Main Street and have a Presbyterian Church and an Anglican Church and a Bible Church and a Methodist Church.

And inasmuch as they all maintain the gospel of Scripture, they enjoy true unity. I have a gathering of pastors here in Naperville, thanks to the generosity of Center for Pastor Theologians, we gather for lunch. They're from all different kinds of churches, and yet we are one in our confession. And so it's important to pause and ask, okay, what are we assuming about the basis of unity? And that's where Catholics and Protestants operate on different assumptions. Yeah. And I think, you know, we could add, you know, Chris has already mentioned, you know,

the can find Catholic leaders on Twitter, one of whom is an outspoken proponent of conservative causes, and others is an outspoken proponent of progressive causes. You can find more or less the same spectrum of opinions. any spectrum of opinions that you can find within Protestantism, you can basically find the same spectrum of opinions within Roman Catholicism. The difference is simply the kind of the maintenance of this sort of outward pretense of unity through a unified disciplinary apparatus, which is not particularly, it's not very active actually in policing certain things that that perhaps it should, right?

And on the other hand, you have within Protestantism, this apparent disunity of different denominational structures that, in fact, operationally might have a great deal of unity, as Chris has said. So not only can you look at these different churches, different Protestant denominations, and say, oh, well, they all, actually, if you look at it, they're all confessing the same gospel,

but very often they are testifying to that unity in the gospel by having, you know, they recognize one another's baptisms. Often they'll recognize one another's ordinations. They'll recognize they'll have shared Eucharistic communion. Now this depends, of course, you know, like Lutherans notably do have a more restricted view of Eucharistic communion and different Protestant denominations sometimes draw those lines differently. But in broad terms, that denominational variables, variation turns out to be a lot like, I would say, the kind of the difference of orders, of monastic orders in the Roman Church, right? You have Jesuits and Dominicans and Franciscans and so on, and there's the sense that there are different gifts in the body, and those have to be

recognized institutionally in these different structures, and yet they're all part of the Catholic Church. Similarly, I think denominations in many ways can function similarly in Protestantism. The fact that we have these different denominations doesn't have to be a scandal. It can be a scandal sometimes the way denominations treat one another. But often there's a recognition of, look, the Methodists have been given certain gifts. They see certain things differently than the Presbyterians and the Baptist and so on. But we share the same, we share one body, we share one cup. Let's follow up on this a little bit, and I'll throw out a question here, throw out my own thought on it, and then to see how you can help me think this through. But the question is, are there any respects in which the Protestant vision of the church

is superior to alternatives with respect to unity? And I'll get the ball rolling here and then just see how you can help me flush this out further. But, you know, you think of the fact that Protestants have historically not restricted the church to one institution. So you think of Luther and Calvin basically faulting their Roman Catholic opponents in their day for rejecting some of the Eastern traditions outside of communion with Rome, like Eastern Orthodox, and in Luther's case, the Oriental Orthodox, and saying basically, how can you reject them from being true members of Christ? Because in the 16th century, that institutional exclusivism was very tight. And there were not exceptions to that in the medieval era that I can find. And so I think sometimes today people are just not aware of how restrictive this has been historically. And to me, I mean, honestly, what it feels like in my heart in the 16th century is a wonderful breaking open to recognize that actually the true sheep of Christ are present in multiple institutions. And that doesn't solve all the problems, but to me it's at least like a starting point where we can recognize that person over there has a valid Eucharist, even though they're not within my. institution, they are a valid church, they're part of the church. And I don't need to qualify that

in various ways and so forth. To me, this is wonderful. To me, this accords with Mark 9, where the disciple John wants to accost someone for casting out a demon in the name of Christ. And Jesus says, don't stop him. Whoever's not against you is for you. They didn't have a kind of, they didn't know each other. The apostles didn't know who that exorcist was. And Jesus does seem, to call them to appreciate this kind of larger sense of unity that they have. He's for us. He's doing this exorcism in the name of Christ. And importantly, it's an exorcism in the name of Christ. So I sometimes have people misunderstand this as though this were religious pluralism. And that's not the idea. There are parameters. There are boundaries. But we as Protestants seek to tether unity,

as you have both said, in the gospel itself. That is the center of gravity. not an institutional set of parameters. I find that just so much more compelling in terms of the New Testament and in terms of the actual workings of the kingdom of God today. So I'm talking probably too much here. Help me flush this out any further. What would you like to expand upon on this? Yeah, that Christ-centered vision broadens your horizons

to recognize the person of Christ living in and through all kinds of different people from different cultures, different Christian traditions. The danger in the Roman tradition is that Christ gets obscured. And so over the summer, I was in Naples, Italy, following the footsteps of Peter Marta Vermili, and I went to San Lorenzo, great big church. You walk in, and it's amazing all of the images. You've suddenly confronted with Mary and Padre Pio and other Franciscans and conquistadors of conspicuous virtue. But the only Jesus you see is on the crucifix until you walk around the back of the altar where they have various chapels. And there is an ascending Christ, a statue of an ascending Christ where it says, Jesus confidoente, Jesus I trust in you. And I looked at my friend, who's a Reformation scholar, and I said, this is the evangelical Jesus.

This is the Jesus that showcases the hope of the resurrection. I came away thinking this is a metaphor of what sometimes happens in the Roman Catholic tradition, where this great cloud of witness gets in the way such that we no longer see the person and work of Jesus as supreme. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I would just add that I think Protestant ecclesiology, since it's, at its best, has always been focused on making the distinction between the essay and the Bene essay of the church. and it says, look, it's not that a lot of these things aren't important. It's not that structure and authority, church discipline, and historical continuity, and all these things are not valuable and are not important.

But they don't constitute the essay of the church. The essay of the church is hidden in Christ with God. And so you can have a, as you say, this more by God, this more capacious vision of what the church is saying, look, the church is very unhealthy in many places. There are many corruptions in many of these branches of the church, and yet I don't have a problem calling them branches of the church, because what is essential to the being of the church is this hidden reality. And Roman Catholic ecclesiology blurs those two, or confuses those things together, the essay and the Bene essay, and all of these things that Protestants would say,

those are maybe important and valuable things for a healthy and well-ordered church. Roman Catholicism says, no, those are essential to what make the church the church. And therefore, there can only be one structure that is actually the church. And anything outside of that structure is not the church. Now, that's one of those things since Vatican, too, certainly they've changed their language a lot, and it's a lot, you know, they're making something more like the distinction between essay and Béna essay. They talk about Protestants as being ecclesial communities. And so I do think they're, they've sort of Protestantized their ecclesiology to a large extent, although it's certainly a contested legacy. But as soon as you say that, you just raise the point,

you know, that creates a great tension within these historic claims of unchanged. changeability and infallibility, if suddenly that church is, you know, sort of quietly changing their doctrine to admit the reformers were right about a lot of things. It undermines some of their other claims. The things we've shared thus far kind of raise a question about the historical roots of Protestantism. And even just our doctrine of the church, you know, one of the charges that will be raised against us is that we don't have historical precedent for our, way of thinking about the church. And I think that's wrong. I think we do. But let's get into this question a little bit, this charge that is often raised against Protestants, that we don't have any

historical roots, really. And I think what happens a lot is a caricature in which a non-Protestant tradition like Roman Catholicism is contrasted with the most visible, anecdotal, street-level evangelical practice rather than the entirety of the Protestant. tradition. And one of our goals I think we all share is we want to help people understand the riches of historic Protestantism and how much there is to it. So you guys talk about the ditch theory in your book and this idea, it's a particular historical, well, let me just ask you to define what that is and help us maybe get beyond that in terms of understanding a Protestant view of church history. And I hope I'm not, I hope you can remember your, I'm throwing this question at you on

the spot here. What is the ditch theory? Yeah, the ditch theory is a certain understanding of church history, which recognizes authentic Christian faith at the very beginning. It was there during the apostolic era. But then in the fourth century, when Constantine rose to power and suddenly the church was politicized, it fell into the ditch of compromise. And there it remained for centuries until the year 1517, at which point it came three quarters of the way out of the only to be restored to its pristine form at the founding of my particular church or denomination. Now, it is reductionistic and ridiculous, and yet I challenge you to listen to the way we talk about church history in our tradition. Very often, that historiography underlies our vision. So we need to do business with it. And practically, Gavin, I think.

this is where pastors and church leaders need to craft services that reflects the richness of our heritage. Do we have a call to worship? Do we read scripture and confess the creed and pray the prayer? How do we preachers present to our people the events and the movements and the ideas of church history so that they recognize, as Timothy George has said, the Holy Spirit has a history and it matters that in every era there have been believers through whom Christ is advancing his church. So there is a need for us leaders to take that seriously and to do it in the context of gathered worship, to do it in Sunday school and in all the other places where we meet. I've often thought, I'll throw up this thought, and then I'll hear from Brad on this,

but I've often thought if we could just retrieve many of the practices, much of the theology and liturgy of the early Protestants, the 16th century Protestants, the 17th century Protestants, contemporary Protestant practice would be so enriched. And it would help us not frame the Protestant versus Roman Catholic or Protestant versus Eastern Orthodox divide in such an unflattering light to the Protestant side. You see how much more there is to this tradition. But Brad, what do you want to say about this? Yeah, I mean, I would say this is certainly an area in which we do need to reckon with the failures that we've had as American Protestants especially. But this is a temptation that does go right, it goes right back to the Reformation. You know, Luther versus Karlstadt, where

Luther said, hey, there's a lot of things wrong with the Roman Church. We need to fix those. And Karlstadt said, why don't we just get rid of all of it? And sort of start from scratch, right? And so two different visions of reform where it's sort of like, you know, kind of we've got a tree. A lot of the, some of the branches are diseased. We need to carefully examine those branches and cut off the ones that are diseased as opposed to approach that says, let's just cut off the trunk at the ground and then try to regrow it from, you know, from scripture alone, right? And this is why, you know, in my work, I constantly come back to the late 16th century English theologian, Richard Hooker, who kind of diagnoses this temptation and says, we really, like, this.

This is not what the Reformation is about. The Reformation is not about saying, if Rome does it, it must be bad, right? Because it's like, you know, Rome might do it just because the church has always done it, or because it's just like a really good idea, given human nature. Like, human beings need certain things in order to worship effectively, right? And so we need to have a more discerning approach to which aspects of the historic church are being carried forward, unchanged, which ones are being carried forward with important reforms, and which ones are being

cut off as abuses. And I think you see the leading reformers trying to have that kind of discernment, and that's reflected in most of the historic liturgies. But there was from early on, I think, in Protestantism, that sort of temptation just kind of, you know, get rid of it all, root and branch. and that's certainly the way that Protestantism, particularly in America, has often operated. So, yeah, I think the reformers have give us a better vision, but we also have to reckon with the temptation that's been there from the beginning. Yeah. I really like the metaphor that you just used of the removal of branches, not the sawing off of the trunk. That's a great image for, because I've heard other people say, a friend of mine, Roman Catholic, says, yeah, you can,

talk about Protestantism as removing accretions, like getting off the barnacles on the hull of a ship, but it was more than that. And that's a fair point. It is more than just a couple of barnacles here or there. There were significant changes that came about in the 16th century. But there is a difference between resurrecting a dead thing and starting over or starting over versus the reform and removal of things from a living thing, even if those are significant removals. And so, like to give an example, I think as Protestants, we would all agree that the way praying to Mary happens is bad. And it's an accretion. It's a development throughout church history that's not authentic to the apostles' teaching. And it's slowly growing and growing and growing and getting to points in the medieval era where it's like, this is really bad. People are seeming to locate Mary as a sort of place of salvation in ways that trust in our heart should be directed to Christ alone. So we want to reform that. But we want to reform that. we're not saying that like the entire church vanished or died. And it's, I find people have a tough time really appreciating that middle space where you, you can say it's a significant reform, but it's a reform, not a resurrection. And that's what Protestantism is. If people could understand

Protestantism as a dynamic posture, an ancient posture of reform, you know, I think that will really help people with this. Now, one of the areas we need reform in today as Protestants is the sacraments. So let's talk about this a little bit. You guys talk about word and sacrament for all the emphasis on the sacraments in non-protistent traditions. One of the things that I think Protestants do really well is emphasizing word and sacrament together. I'll read from page 48 of your book. Word and sacrament together are the God ordained means for spiritual life. And they are necessary to protect the church from sub-biblical accretions, whether they have developed over time or or were invented yesterday.

I love the fact that you used the word accretions. I use that word a lot to try to convey the sense that we're not saying the church suddenly vanished or suddenly died. A lot of the errors and concerns that the Protestants, the errors that the Protestants were concerned about were gradual. There were things that were building over time. So anyway, let's talk about worded sacrament and maybe we could say, how was the Protestant reformation a helpful recapturing of word and sacrament?

sacrament. Today we recognize we actually need to reform our own practice of the sacraments, but in the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation wonderfully re-centered the Eucharist and reemphasized the Eucharist, and also put fresh light and emphasis upon the word of God. Maybe we could just comment about that a little bit. Yeah. Following Augustine, Vermeely described the sacraments as visible words, and he has this marvelous metaphor in his Oxford disputation, where it's like putting a sword or a piece of iron, into the fire and it gets imbued with that power and that intensity. That's what happens to the, to the elements in some inexplicable way such that we're empowered. And I think there are practical implications to that. One, it puts the cross before us every time we celebrate the table.

And so hopefully we're doing that in our preaching. But when we come around the Eucharist or communion, we have that reminder that Jesus died, which is so important in this. world because life is hard and we suffer and we're called to take up our cross. So it's a reminder that our experience is cruciform. But also it calls for a response. You know, you're you're looking at the table, you're hearing the word spoken, and then you need to do business with God and you will have to repent, look around at your brothers and sisters and see whether there's anyone with whom you need to reconcile. So those are a couple of of important elements. A book that I'm reading now by Kevin Emmert,

the water and the blood is a marvelous treatment of this. The other thing he'll say, he says, which I've benefited from is it reminds us that we're embodied, that these physical bodies matter and that God uses tangible means to extend his grace and that has all kinds of moral and missional implications. Yeah, I think a kind of a misconception is that we Protestants think that, you know, Roman Catholicism was more sacramental, and the Reformation is all about de-emphasizing the sacraments. And so many people who are dissatisfied with the unsacramental character of modern American Protestantism say, oh, well, I want a more sacramental faith. I'm going to go back to Rome or Eastern Orthodoxy. And what we don't realize

is the extent to which the Reformation was actually about re-sacrimentalizing the Christian life, because at least for the ordinary layperson, it was a dramatic reframing of the role of the sacraments, and particularly the role of the Eucharist in the Christian life. If you went into a typical medieval cathedral, you know, in 1501 or whatever, you know, in any given day, there would be dozens, maybe hundreds of Eucharists being celebrated. But they would each be celebrated.

It would be a priest over in a side chapel muttering in Latin, that he didn't really understand. And then another one in the next chapel, another one in the next chapel, all around the church would be individual priests celebrating masses with no, with no congregation. And they were just commuting by themselves

because they were, this was seen primarily as a, as a propitiation. They were offering a mass for the sake of some perhaps, you know, wealthy donor who had passed away and wanted them to offer the mass for their soul. Meanwhile,

the ordinary Christian, didn't only commune once a year. And so the Reformation said this is completely backward. The sacrament is supposed to be part of the center of the Christian life. It's being brought out of the side of chapels into the center of the church. It's supposed to be something the entire community participates in, in conjunction with the word. It's in a language they understand. It's in the context of preaching.

And it's supposed to be regular, frequent. The reformers actually wanted to make the communion very frequent. And a lot of that was, that frequency was lost or in some place it was never really implemented because people were just so unused to it. There was sort of freaked out of the idea of taking communion more than, you know, once a quarter or whatever. But the original reformational vision was that of really re-centering the sacrament at the heart of Christian worship. And that's one where I think, again, you know, Rome has in many ways reformed its practice. Like that medieval picture is not what people associate with the Eucharist and Roman Catholicism.

But that's an example of Roman Catholicism kind of responding in some ways to the critiques of the reformers. And our actual Protestant sacramental practice has so much richer of a tradition than we realize. It's a really great point of, yeah, boo, people just are not aware of this, how much the Reformation really did re-center the Eucharist, as you're saying, and receiving it in both kinds, bread and wine, and as you've said, more frequently. and that's just an area where I really pray and hope that Protestant churches today will sort of reclaim our own heritage of a really rich and robust theology of an experience of the Lord's Supper. I also say myself, I just think the Protestant case that there are two sacraments rather than seven is simply correct. And I think it's just so well attested in the New Testament and the early church.

I've said many times I cannot name a single, not one church father, who said there are seven sacraments, not a single one. You can find some who will say there are more than two or use the word sacrament more broadly, but never seven to my awareness. And I've not found anybody who's pushed back and given me an example of that yet. And even in medieval era that's rumbling on. So it's really interesting than just an area where hopefully people will be learning more about that today. Feel free to interrupt me and speak on that. but the last two more questions second to last i want to ask about the scripture and uh maybe you know i think one of the things that i think is good about the reformation is it uh reemphasizes holy scripture

and in particular places holy scripture as our chief authority and the more i've studied this doctrine we call sola scriptura the more i have come to really value and cherish this doctrine i'd love to just ask you both. Why is it important that the scripture be our chief authority as the church, our sole infallible rule as the church? You're right. This is the fundamental difference. We ask the question, where do we encounter apostolic faith? And often the Roman Catholic will answer that in terms of continuous incarnation. There's a parallel between Jesus, the living word, and the one holy Catholic apostolic church in which he continues to manifest his presence, prolongation, as it sometimes described. For the Protestant, there is a conviction that the living word gives us his presence in the written word.

In the beginning was the word, was with God, the word was God. So we embrace it for theological reasons. We believe that's the teaching of scripture itself, but then also experience. It's there that we hear the voice of God. It is the means by which the Holy Spirit reaches into our souls to bring about renewal. And so for that principled conviction and also because of our lived experience, we have the scriptures at the leading edge of our Christian identity and calling. Yeah. And I, I mean, I said earlier, I talked about the danger of viewing scriptures this universal answer book. And many evangelicals might hear that as, oh, you're kind of denigrating the doctrine of Soliscriptura. But far from it, what I'm seeking to do is allow the doctrine of Soliscepture to

function as it's supposed to, which is, say, scripture tells us what we need to know, but at the same time, by the same token, it tells us what we don't need to know. It tells us those things that we need to have infallible certainty of, and then those things that it doesn't tell us, therefore implicitly saying, you don't need to have infallible certainty on this. there isn't necessarily one universal, you know, appropriate Christian response to X or, you know, this certain question of liturgy or church government or how Christians should engage in political or economic debates. A lot of those things are, scripture doesn't tell us and therefore leaves us with this freedom of conscience, right? The doctrine of soul scripture is closely connected to the doctrine of Christian liberty. And one of the concerns the reformers had is if you don't have that, you don't have scripture,

that kind of razor blade that can cut off all these accretions, then all these traditions, these man-made teachings are going to grow up and there's a place for man-made traditions, as long as we recognize that they are only human traditions and they don't have the same authority as the Word of God. But left to their own, they'll tend to grow up and kind of claim this authority for themselves and they'll multiply and they will become this burden upon the Christian life, a burden upon the conscience, a burden upon the Christian community, where it's every direction you turn. It's, oh, there's that rule, there's that rule, there's that rule, there's that rule.

And they're all kind of claiming to be from God. And of course, Jesus is facing this with the Pharisees and the accretions of Phariseical teaching and the burden that those had been. And so the reformers are doing something similar. And I think, yeah, this is why that Protestant doctrine of Scripture is so important by enabling us to distinguish what are those things that actually have devise. authority, and therefore we can have certainty of those truths. And what are those things that have merely human authority? And we have, we might, we don't, we sort of, we still recognize human

authority counts for something. But it doesn't necessarily give us the same certainty, and that's okay. It doesn't need to give us the same certainty because we're called to exercise maturity and discernment and wisdom in those things. Let's tie it back to the person at the beginning we mentioned someone who might be thirsting for a sense of certainty, and we also identified the desire for authority at one point. For someone who's watching this and they're feeling this deep desire, I need something certain and authoritative to base my life on. And that thirst is playing out, and they're recognizing that as they're considering ecclesial questions of which church tradition to be a part of. How would you

pastor them and shepherd them and help them to encourage them to make the scripture, that ultimate foundation that addresses that need in the human heart for certainty and authority. Yeah. Jesus is the cornerstone, the foundation upon which our lives are built. We have opportunity to consider what part he plays in our life. And so as one is looking for a church, any sort of church, that's the key question. Is this community, is this teaching and preaching and all that I experience here, broadening my vision of Christ, is it causing me to love him more? Is it moving my will to serve him to a greater degree? Does this church have mentors who are going to model godliness for me and speak into the lives of my children? In other words, to what degree is it

going to help me to build my life upon the person of Jesus, the rock? And, um, I believe, we believe that scripture is the way that happens. It's in the context of the church and tradition matters, as Brad pointed out, but scripture is the inspired means by which God, by his spirit, does that work of grace in our life. So if you're that person, I would encourage you to ask that question, how is this church deepening my relationship with Christ? Yeah, just piggybacking off of that. I think, you know, pastoral, the question to ask is, where is that thirst for certainty coming from?

What is driving it? And what would you need to really have it fully satisfied? Because sometimes people, as I say, are looking for a kind of certainty that they're not actually going to find, they're not going to find that satisfied in scripture because they're demanding, they're demanding answers again to all these questions

that Scripture may not feel the need to give us. I mean, an example of this would be that's been common in American evangelicals and would be kind of end-time speculation. I would say there's this, Christ says no man knows the day or our. This is something you need to rest, relax, you don't need to know that, but

there's a whole movement of American Evangelicals for a lot of the last century that are like, no, we do need to know that. And so we're going to find the answer. And we're going to find it here in Scripture somewhere, right? And let me just make on my charts and I can tell you. And so I think the question to ask is what is that that restlessness of soul that is driving you? Why? Where is that restlessness of soul coming from? And it's, I think it's often, it's coming from a sense of not, not feeling, not hearing the word of the

gospel, that you are redeemed in Christ, you are valued in Christ, that Christ claims you for his own, that your identity is secure in him, right? I think there's this crisis of identity. Many people, everyone feels the sense of who am I, do I matter, where do I belong? And that sense of, that crisis of identity leads to this crisis of certainty. And unless you have that ability to rest in Christ as He offers you in the gospel, then I think that's the entry point into the peace and certainty that Scripture offers. I think Luther is very crucial on this, right? So the doctrine of Solofide is the gateway into the doctrine of Soliscriptura, not vice versa, right? We don't approach scripture as primarily a solution to an epistemic problem. We say there's an existential problem that is answered

through the gospel. Then from that, that sense that, oh, I don't, I don't need certainty about some of the things that I thought on the end of the certainty about. I can find the certainty that I do need in the scriptures. That's a wonderful thing just to, as I'm reflecting on what both of you are saying, just to encourage our viewers, the ministry of the Holy Spirit in applying the work of Jesus Christ to your heart in life at that existential level, like you're talking about, Brad, does meet that deep need in the human heart. And we won't have a full certainty of all of our answers, but what we're looking for is found in the gospel,

and we want to encourage people with that. But let me ask you just one last question, kind of of a practical nature. There's lots of people who watch my YouTube videos who picture a younger, I don't know, maybe late college or early grad school, something like that, and they're working through these deep questions, and they really feel a little overwhelmed

because it is overwhelming. There's so much to read. There's so much to think about. These are complicated disagreements. How would you just help them practically move forward through their questions as they're working through these things? Maybe they're a Protestant, but they're unsure of whether they should be a Protestant. Are there a particular, maybe there's a book you want to encourage them, or maybe there's a piece of practical advice that you'd want to help them know how to wisely work through these topics. Kind of give a parting word to pastor and help someone who might be in that place. Yeah. Two books that spring to mind, I almost said this earlier in regard to the rootlessness, is Julian Evans, Roots of the Reformation, and then Ken Stewart in search of ancient roots. And those books connect the dots, as you were saying earlier, Gavin,

between the teaching of the church through the centuries and the present moment. Yeah, take your time. Don't rush. make it a devotional exercise before the Lord and do it in community. This is where our rabid individualism here in the West really lets the side down on us. Talk with pastor, trusted friends, parents. Don't be afraid to tell them what questions you're asking. Use wisdom. Not everyone is safe.

But allow those people. that you know and trust to come in and reflect with you. And in conversation, trust the Lord to guide you into all truth. Yeah, Jim, just piggybacking off that last point. I think that willingness to be patient is so key and it's so contrary to everything about our current lifestyles. We want answers now. And we've been brought up in our technological milieu with the expectation that you can get

answers now. and I think for many people going through this process, there's a sense that of maybe, you know, maybe I'm in the wrong church, maybe my soul is at peril. I need to, I don't want to waste a day. You know, if I'm supposed to be received in the Roman Catholic Church, I don't want to waste another day in doing that,

which I think is in a sense, it doesn't even make sense from the standpoint of Roman Catholic teaching, where they would now, you know, they see Protestants as separated brothers. They wouldn't generally say, no, your soul is in peril until the moment you have received into the Catholic Church. So even from their terrain, I think, take time about it. It makes sense.

And I think certainly from our terrain, it makes sense. So I think a willingness to make sure that you actually have, like, make sure you know what it is you're leaving before you leave it. And I think that's the vast majority of converts. There are exceptions. There are people who have been great scholars of church history who have converted from Protestantism to Rome. but for the most part it's people who don't under they they know that whatever little branch of Protestantism they grew up in or whatever has some obvious flaws that must be all that Protestantism is Rome looks more interesting I'll go there right make sure you've actually familiarized yourself with the riches of Protestant tradition before you you know conclude that they have nothing to offer and I guess a book recommendation you know tuning my own horn a little bit here would be a collection of primary sources that we that I put together and we published at Davenant a few years ago Reformation Theology, a reader of primary sources. So I think just actually read the Reformation era text,

and that book puts both sides. And again, sometimes you realize, oh, Roman Catholicism, the way I'm hearing it now from my friend at Notre Dame is a much more, that sounds very persuasive. When I actually look at what Roman Catholic teaching was in the time of the Reformation, I understand more, why they needed to reform, right?

So we present primary sources on both sides of it on a whole range of issues. And I think that's a very important place to start. Fantastic. I think your comment there, Brad, about make sure you know what it is that you're leaving is especially kind of poignant and relevant for so many of us as we're working through these things. And following up on Chris, Chris, your helpful comments about doing this in community, we've built a Discord server specifically designed to help meet that need.

I don't talk about it enough. I always forget to mention this, but it's called striving side by side. It's listed in the video description for every video I make. So you can click on that link. And there's also a video about that Discord server. If you don't know what like a Discord server is, we've seen some great fruit born from that. So if you're needing some help, that's not a replacement for local church. But as a supplement to everything else you're doing, that might be just a context.

It's actually some really nice people there who just want to be a friend in the process and so forth. So I want to say thanks to both of you, although I think we lost Brad, but that was providential timing because he Just finished his answer there. And now, so no problem at all. But Chris, I can just say thanks to you for your great book. Thanks for taking the time to talk about all these things. And I know people will really be appreciative of reading it. So thank you.

Yeah, my pleasure, Gavin. Thanks for having us. Yeah. And I'll just say to everybody watching, check out the video description to get their book. It's only about 100 pages. It's not a super long read. but it is packed with information. So you'll find this a helpful resource along the way.

So check it out in the video description. All right, thanks for watching, everybody. We'll see you next time.