Truth Unites - Why Protestants Win the Church History Debate (Newman Was Wrong)

Episode Date: February 9, 2026

Gavin Ortlund examines John Henry Newman’s famous claim that “to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant,” arguing that historic Protestantism is deeply rooted in the earliest Christian tradition.Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/X: https://x.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

There's one slogan about Protestantism. You'll probably hear more than any other, and that's the assertion of Cardinal John Henry Newman. To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. I'm sure you've heard this. In this video, I want to respond with two opposing and somewhat counterintuitive claims. Number one, Protestantism is not a departure from historical depth, but an effort to recover it. And number two, historical depth is not about how much history you accept, but how you judge it.

The second point is where we're going to really dive into Newman and see what he meant, and make the point that historical accumulation is not historical depth. That's what we really have to get into here. That's the nub of the disagreement is what does it mean to be deep in history. So let's break this down. First, what do I mean when I say Protestantism sought to recover historical depth? When the reformers themselves faced a similar charge in their own day of departing from church history, they carefully worked through the historical data demonstrating that what they were departing from were slow, late developments, within church history. In some cases, developments introduced relatively late in church history. For example, the reformers protested the vast sacramental system that had developed way beyond

the early church, the swelling expansion of papal authority, financial developments in how salvation was pursued, especially with the Treasury of Merit and indulgences. I'm sure you've heard of that. Biblical ignorance, including overt restriction on access to vernacular translators. of Scripture, especially among the laity. An ontological distinction between clergy and laity. This is a big one we sometimes miss. The way priests are functioning in a mediatorial capacity between God and the people. The way priests are exempt from subjection to the civil magistrate, all kinds of

implications from that. Various worship restrictions, so Latin only masses, restrictions on congregational participation, various legalistic rituals that had accrued very slagreuthers. evolving over time concerning festival days and pilgrimages and fasts and so forth. There are a lot of other examples. These are just a few representative examples. We could give many more purgatory, mariology, icon veneration, relic veneration, praying to saints, clerical celibacy, and that's not an exhaustive list. These are some representative examples. Of course, the big things at the nub of the disagreements in the 16th century concern how authority

works in the church, scripture, tradition, the other functions of the church, issues related to salvation, like justification, assurance of salvation, all of those are on the table. I'm just giving a few representative examples to make the point that the Protestant appeal was these doctrines and practices we reject are novel. They are not deep in history. That is why we reject them. That was the Protestant appeal. They were saying that to be deep in history means to resist the novel accretions that have come about over time during church history and be faithful to the earlier practice that is deeper in history and more plausibly apostolic. That's the nature of the argumentation. And frankly, the Protestant position on some of these matters was very

strong. In a few cases, I think it's absolutely overwhelming. And I've done videos on many of these topics on clerical celibacy, for example. This is a discipline, not a dogma, nonetheless. I work through the early church data. And I show how, you know, in the New Testament, you have apostles who are married, you have the qualifications lists for clergy, which have husband of but one wife, and the practice of the early church is consistent with that. It's very clear from the historical data that in the earliest days of church history, clergy were largely married. Or in my video on the seven sacraments. I point out that there is no attestation. No one in the first millennium of church history said there are seven sacraments, yet the Council of Trent requires that particular number

with anathema. Or I have a video on indulgences. I'm showing the developments from patristic to medieval penitential practice that lead to indulgences as such in the 11th century, and then the further process of development and change from the 11th to the 16th centuries. Or in my work, on the assumption of Mary. I point out the absence of any historical basis for this dogma as a part of the deposit of faith. Its earliest attest attestation is in the book of Mary's repose, which is a heretical text with Gnostic teachings, and it's only in the late 5th century that it gains widespread acceptance within the Christian Church. And though people react strongly to these claims, I am simply the messenger reporting what is standard in the scholarship on these topics, including

among Roman Catholic scholars. The three timeframes you can see on screen are from Roman Catholic scholars dating the story of Mary's assumption. Go watch my video for the full receipts on those things, or you can look up the passages. This is why I'm trying to highlight the nature of the argumentation here. So when Calvin, for example, John Calvin opens his famous institutes of the Christian religion, he claims if the contest were to be determined by patristic authority, the tide of victory would turn to our side, patristic meaning the era of the church fathers. And what Calvin then does is bring the receipts. He goes through 12 specific examples of points in dispute, and he highlights church fathers who very clearly opposed the Roman Catholic teaching on these matters. He talks about

ministerial celibacy. He talks about the use of images and worship, the doctrine of transubstantiation, the administration of the mass to the laity, various fasting regulations, the authority of councils in relation to scripture and many other points. Now, let's clarify this because this is often misunderstood or misconstrued. Calvin was not saying that church fathers were all proto-protestants. No, that is not the claim. He recognized that the church, the early church, doesn't neatly or uniformly support one position in the later divides. The idea is, and the idea that they do is an unrealistic and romanticized view of church history. What he points out is that church fathers often disagreed among themselves.

What Calvin was arguing is that the witness of the early church undermines these more ambitious claims of his theological opponents in the counter-reformation. And you see this throughout the reform tradition. Later on, Francis Turriton is making the same point. He's responding to the charge of novelty, and he flips it upon his opponents. He's saying, it's one thing to purge an ancient doctrine of its corruption and recall men to it, another to devise a new doctrine not as yet delivered, and propose it for belief. The former, not the latter, was done by the reformers. In other words,

what he's saying is we're not inventing something new. We are purifying what is old and what has always been there. In other words, we're resisting the novelties. And then he gives examples. He brings the receipts. He goes through carefully sifting the historical data on five issues, the veneration of images, the supreme authority of the pope in both temporal and spiritual matters, transubstantiation, purgatory, and communion in only one kind. That means not both the bread and the wine for the laity in the Lord's Supper. And he makes the argument that it could easily be shown that both, that they were unknown to the apostolic and primitive church and were introduced afterwards at various times,

and so are novel and more recent. So I'm trying to highlight the nature of the Protestant appeal. The idea is we're trying to be deep in history. we're attempting to go back, and they have a strong historical case that on many of these points, the claim of continuity, the claim of this is the practice of the early church, is simply not correct. So that's representative examples from the reform tradition. You see the same kind of arguments in other Protestant traditions like the Lutherans. The Augsburg Confession is the primary Lutheran confession of faith, and it's fascinating.

It opens its preface by casting itself as a rejection of novelty for the sake of, Catholicity. Think about this statement. 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 doctrines should creep into our churches. That adverb diligently there is true. I'll talk about some of the Lutheran scholastics. The Lutherans have some amazing church historians. But like Calvin, they give examples. They bring the receipts. They talk about legalism and monasteries. And they're saying, this is very clearly the result of a process of accretion where by the late medieval era,

you have people seeking justification from God in mendicant orders that involve vows of poverty, in pilgrimages and indulgences, in avoiding marriage, and in avoiding civil office, and other things like this. And the Lutherans are building a historical case, not just a biblical case, showing this is not what St. Augustine would have recognized. This is the result of a very small, process of accretion. That's why we're rejecting it. It's not deep in history. Another example they work through is the connection of church and state with resultant church violence. And what they're arguing is this isn't just a departure from scripture. This is a departure from the early church and how she

wielded authority and related to civil power. In other words, it's not deep in history. So I'm trying to give representative examples of the nature of the argumentation. I'm not trying to chase down and give a thorough canvassing of all of these issues. We've done Lutheran and Reformed. Let's give a flavor from the Anglican tradition, the third major branch of the 16th century Protestant movements. Here, John Jules' apology of the Church of England is a good example because he's constantly appealing to the witness of the ages and the church fathers and so forth.

He makes, this is a flavor of the nature of his argument, quote, the ancient bishops and the primitive church do make on our side. He's not saying they're all proto-Protestants, but he is saying they support our position about church history, which is what we're going to cover in the second half of this video is really the key point. But just to give a flavor of his historical posture, look at how Jewel treats the Eucharist. When he opposes transubstantiation, he gives a careful, he again brings the receipts. He's working through Galasius and Ambrose and Theodorette and Augustin and Cyprian and Chrysostom

and Origen and a few others. and he's arguing, he's very clear to say, we are not denying the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. As you can see on screen, he's saying that's a slander against us. It's not true. But we're denying transubstantiation as the mechanism for understanding that. It's not patristic. It's not deep in history. That's the argument. And then beyond the question of how Christ is present in the Eucharist, he's opposing various negligent and abusive practices in the administration of the Eucharist that had accrued over time within the late medieval Western church. The buying and selling of masses, the parading about and venerating of the consecrated host with all the pomp associated with this, often at the neglect

of imbibing, actually eating and drinking, very infrequent actual partaking of the elements among the laity, and crucially, the withholding of the wine from the laity and giving of the bread only. That's communion and only one kind. That was a big issue back then. You saw that in Turriton as well. And he's building a case saying that is not what the early church did. That's not deep in history. He had a good point on actually all those things, but especially the communion in one kind only. Now, what I'm trying to draw attention to is this kind of historical argumentation,

because that's going to set us up for where the real fault line of difference lies, which we'll get to in a moment. And this kind of historical argumentation, the removal of accretions, my term that I use, continues among Protestants into the modern era, many of the pioneers of the study of church history as an academic discipline are Protestants, and it's their study of church history that makes them Protestant. A good example of this is Philip Schaff, who's very thoughtful about why he's a Protestant, read his lecture, the principle of Protestantism, and no human being can study church history without standing on his shoulders, and there's many examples like that.

The very term, patrology, as a distinct term from patristics, was developed in Lutheran scholastic circles in the 17th century because, as I mentioned earlier, the Lutherans were painstakingly careful and sifting through historical data, tracing out the development of these various practices that they were attempting to sluff off as novelties to retain Catholicity. So from what we've surveyed so far, there is a very clear challenge for Protestants today. Much of contemporary Protestantism is susceptible to the charge of being shallow in history. Newman's quip gains traction, and we need to take it seriously because it's targeting a real problem. To the extent that contemporary Protestants have departed from this kind of historical posture I've just outlined,

we have departed from our own Protestant roots. However, up to this point, we've not really reached the fundamental divide. Because what someone can object is that even if these various developments arose later in church history, that doesn't make them optional. What we need are criteria for evaluating what constitutes genuine historical depth. This is the more complicated question, the more interesting question that leads us to Cardinal Newman and the question of what does it mean to be deep in history? I want to argue that historical depth is not just about how much history you accept,

like the more the better, but it comes down to how we evaluate it. But let's explore this first by giving Newman the microphone and saying, what does he mean by being deep in history? People who triumphantly deploy this passage against Protestants today often underappreciate how fiercely controversial it was among Catholic authorities in Newman's day. Newman said this at a time when he himself was still a Protestant. He wrote this passage in 1845 just prior to his reception into the Catholic Church and many Catholic theologians regarded his outlook. as remaining to Anglican. Let's see why. The statement to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant comes near the beginning of his famous essay on the development of doctrine. And in context, he's interacting with a criticism from the 17th century Anglican theologian William Chillingworth.

And Chillingworth had basically argued that church history lacks coherence and unity, and therefore only scripture can provide a solid foundation for Christian belief. Here's how he put it. quote, I can see plainly and with my own eyes that there are popes against popes, counsels against counsels, some fathers against others, the same fathers against themselves, a consent of fathers of one age against a consent of fathers of another age, the church of one age against the church of another age, in a word, there is no sufficient certainty but of scripture only for any considering man to build upon. Anyone who studies church history, I think, has to know what he's talking about there,

because you are confronted with the labyrinth of complexity and change, and there is change a lot throughout our church history. We'll come back to that. Interestingly, Newman responded to this by conceding that there is a level of ambiguity in the testimony of church history, and then he casts his whole theory of doctrinal development in response to this challenge. Quote, this is a fair argument, if it can be maintained. He's talking about Chillingworth there, and it brings me at once to the subject of this essay, that's doctrinal development. This is why so many Roman Catholic approaches to history, many of us who are Protestants find the Roman Catholic approach to history more compelling than some of the Eastern traditions that will use the language of an unchanging

church. Because Newman is brilliant. The synthesis he's offering is really careful and constructed and worth grappling with. And he's recognizing something that is absolutely undeniable. And that has been resonant in Protestant argumentation from church history, namely change, dynamism, development, even ambiguity in church history. Newman is grappling with that honestly. And this was, so what Newman is doing is, in effect, a movement towards Protestant argumentation, in the sense that this was a different kind of appeal than the Counter-Reformation theologians like Robert Bellarmine were using. Of course, the idea of doctoral development as such is not totally new, but Newman is wielding

it more ambitiously, even if he's very careful compared to some contemporary uses of it. But this is partly why Newman is so controversial among the Catholics in his own lifetime. Ken Stewart has a chapter called A Tale of Two Newman's in his book, In Search of Ancient Roots. And he highlights, you know, Newman is in his own development. he's changing very much during this time in his lifetime. And what Stewart points out is that Newman was properly sized up as a theological thinker and writer who was still extensively Protestant in his outlook. Why did people say that?

Because this is not how Roman Catholic opponents to Protestantism had typically argued. There is something that is changing here. Now, I'm not trying to sort of make a firm judgment about all of this right now, as much as to raise the question that I think, we need to now envision and grapple with, and that is, what does it mean to be deep in history in light of the undeniable changes and developments that accrue across the centuries? How do you be deep in an entity that itself does have ambiguity and can function like a vast labyrinth? The question is not whether doctrine develops. Newman is right that it does, that is

undeniable. The question is how we evaluate those developments. And so let me give, in this video, this is the apex of it, two alternative paradigms that can function as two different instincts for this that might help us start to make some progress. Mainstream depth and ancient depth, this is drawn out more fully in my book what it means to be Protestant. Mainstream depth measures what it means to be deep in history by what is most visible, most prominent, and or most widely represented throughout church history. To be deep in history has a more diachronic thrust. It's oriented toward the trajectory and overall result in what eventually becomes mainstream. And so the assumption behind this outlook is that church history is moving in a straight line,

and later consensus will yield the truth. An alternative can be labeled ancient depth, and according to this way of measuring what it means to be deep in history, what becomes mainstream is to be greatly respected, but it is not infallible. or decisive. Rather, what is infallible and decisive is the original teaching of the apostles, what is earliest, what is deepest. Deep means early. Deep doesn't mean big, deep means early in this instinct. Because even though the church never dies, particular erroneous practices and understandings can become mainstream. What is mainstream is not always reliable. So what Protestants have insisted is that mainstream depth should be measured by ancient depth rather than vice versa.

Don't measure ancient depth by mainstream depth. In other words, measure the large visible results of church history by what is earliest and most plausibly apostolic. That's what it means to be deep in history. Deep means early. In adopting this position, the early Protestants appealed to a principle widely articulated among the church fathers. For example, in his examination of the Council of Trent, the Lutheran theologian Martin Kemnitz

utilized this passage in Cyprian, noting Augustine's approval of it as well. If we return to the head and origin of divine tradition, human error will cease. For if the channel of water, which flowed copiously and purely, either fails or brings muddy water, then certainly one goes to the source in order to find out. And he's basically saying, where did the mud come in? Was it midway? Was it at the source? So you understand the metaphor, right?

if you're looking at a muddy water in a stream, you can go back and look where did the muddy water come in? And that's the Protestant instinct here about what it means to be deep in history. Being deep in history means, you know, deep means early. The ultimate reason for using ancient depth to measure mainstream depth rather than vice versa has to do with the structure of Christianity as a divinely founded religion. And I've discussed that point a great deal in my videos on Solo Scripter. where I'm saying where do we locate infallibility with respect to the rule of the church? And I'm saying measure the human by the divine.

That's the appeal there. But let me give here two additional considerations that kind of underpin the Protestant mentality. That's the big picture. These are some specific ways to cash that out. The first is something that Newman was forced to reckon with. I think any honest engagement with history must recognize with, and that is mainstream depth is slippery. Errors can go mainstream. and if you study church history, it's impossible to deny this.

One example I've drawn attention to in various places is Augustine's affirmation of the damnation of unbaptized babies. And there are qualifications to that idea, such as the idea of limbo, but the general posture, the general position, no ultimate salvation, for example, the beatific vision for babies who die apart from baptism, is overwhelmingly dominant for a millennium. I am not aware of any Western theologians who affirm that deceased unbaptized babies get the beatific vision, which is full salvation in the West between Augustine and the Reformation. And that point is consistent with the 2007 publication of the International Theological Commission, a study that was commissioned by Pope John Paul II in 2004. They're going through the Latin fathers, the medieval theologians, and they're saying the same thing.

There's some development, again, qualification with limbo, but you don't get what people want to affirm today for the most part for that entire vast span of time. I'm not as sure about the East. You can see from the confession of De Scythias on screen that same position, but I haven't chased it down as much there to know if there may be any exceptions. But nonetheless, if you dispute this, sometimes people do rebuttal videos and they kind of latch on to a real particular point and miss the forest for the trees. If you don't like this example, you can find lots of other examples. Look at the church father's view on loaning money on interest, which they seem to unanimously regard as sinful. There's all kinds of issues where you can recognize something comes to predominate for a huge span of time and yet is in fact error. Mainstream depth is not a good guide to truth. And that's the simple point here.

Think of it like this. If someone said to you, to be deep in history is to cease to affirm the beatific vision of unbaptized babies who die, and you think, how am I going to respond to that? You're on the road to saying, okay, here's why we need to clarify. What do we mean by deep? Deep can't just mean really visible or coming to predominate eventually. Another reason for that is the people of Israel.

So going back from church history into redemptive history prior to the writing of the New Testament and looking at the history of the Jewish people prior to the coming of the Messiah, we can recognize errors get mainstream recurrently. And a simple reading of the book of judges or the book of kings, you see how prevalent is this tendency toward idolatrous accretions that are coming in and even remaining in practice

during the reform efforts of good kings like Dresaya and Hezekiah. Again and again and again and again, the majority or mainstream goes wrong. The followers of Ahab could have appealed to majority depth against Elijah or against Micaiah and by a wide margin. So again, you can imagine the appeal of someone making to be deep in history is to cease to follow Elijah and instead trust the Israelite monarchy that God has established. And think about how you're going to respond to this and you're on the road to seeing why you need to find the word deep.

And deep can't mean just big and visible. But one objection here is the promise of Jesus in Matthew 16, so people will want to argue that Israel is different from the church because the church is given infallibility. But I would point out that in this text, what Jesus says is, I'll build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against her. He does not say, I will build my church and no errors shall enter within her. And I have a video on Matthew 16 where I point out that being prevailed against by the gates of God, gates of hell is referencing essentially death. It's saying the church is not going to die. All Protestants agree with that. The indefactability of the church is a historic Protestant doctrine in our various confessions of faith. Indefactability and infallibility are different.

Error and death are two different things. If your wrestling coach promises you, you are going to win this match. Your opponent will not prevail against you. That does not mean he thinks you're going to make no mistakes along the way. It means he thinks you will finally prevail. Ultimately, what Protestants envision, I'll say, so what does it mean to be deep in history from a Protestant perspective? We are looking at church history more realistically, without romanticizing it or assuming a single institution moving in perfect lockstep continuity from one century to the next. We see the church more organically, not just as one institution. That doesn't mean we deny the visibility of the church, but we don't restrict the church to one institution.

And I explain that in this video, how to find the one true church. But we must recognize. Every honest person must recognize vast changes within church history. For example, the early church looks different from every church today because she germinated in the context of the Roman Empire. And that hugely affected her. The Roman emperor was called the co-ruler of the church with God, and a Roman emperor convoked and presided over every one of the first seven ecumenical councils. But we don't say, well, to be deep in history, you have to resurrect the Roman Empire. We recognize that vast developments and changes can occur in the outward appearance of the church and even in the functionings of the church.

But it's still one church, just like you look very different today from how you looked when you were seven years old, and yet you're the same person. The simple fact is no contemporary church looks just like the early church. Here's how I put it in a post on X this past fall. The early church did not look Protestant. It also did not look Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. The early church looked like the early church, imperial, diverse, foreign, changing, harsh, beautiful, and profound. It is a tradition we all relate to, but no single church today owns.

or here's how C.S. Lewis put it, speaking of Roman Catholicism in particular, the Roman church, where it differs from this universal tradition and specifically from apostolic Christianity, I reject, the whole setup of modern Romanism seems to me to be as much a provincial or local variation from the ancient tradition as any particular Protestant sect is. So Protestants are able, to be honest, with church history. And I think the best reply when someone says, but your church looks different from the early church, is to just quote Lewis and say, so does yours. To lose the romanticized view of history, we have to grapple with that. But my final thought is this, what is essential to the church, what makes the church the church, because we're not

advocating universalism or no boundaries, is the gospel itself, as Christ dwells among and gives life to his people through word and sacrament. And so if you're struggling with these questions, my simple advice is, pray and ask for Christ's mercy and guidance in your study of church history in the same posture with which you ask for salvation itself. The solution to ecclesial anxiety is the same as the solution to all anxiety. And that's the fear of God and humility before God and then a saving faith unto Christ. And so the doctrine of the church is an article of faith to be pursued with a Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, mentality. Trust in the Lord with all your hearts. Do not lean on your own understanding in all your ways

acknowledge him and he will make straight your paths. That counsel applies to our ecclesiology or our doctrine of the church as well as every other aspect of our lives. And yes, let me say to somebody out there watching this, complicated as these issues are, you can have peace about them, not because you're going to be smarter than everybody else, but because you can trust in the gospel and the Holy Spirit will seal that on your heart. So I hope these comments will be. both advance understanding about how Protestants view church history and why we disagree with Newman that to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant. But I hope it will also challenge and summon Protestants to come back to our own roots and do what the best of Protestantism has done.

We need a lot more Philip Shafts today.