A Protestant View of Church History

Sometimes Protestantism is caricatured as the view that the church died, went apostate, or skated off the rails in some way until Martin Luther came along to set things right. Here I outline the actual historic Protestant view, and then give two reasons why it's plausible to think that longstanding errors may have existed throughout church history.

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.

My books:

[Jingnan-jh]

Wow im Catholic but I have NEVER heard this opinion before, and I am an absolute maniac when it comes to devouring theological information. Thanks a lot, makes me reconsider Protestentism. Something I would have NEVER said before I saw this.

[natedog]

I have to say Gavin that i found this in a time of some distress over church tradition. I am Protestant and I have respect for the other traditions but they seem to say that I’m out of the body if I don’t join them. This leads me to discover what really was the true church of the olden days and everyone tries to gatekeep that. This video to me struck through those gates and allows me to continue this journey to finding the historical church but also living in the freedom of Gods grace to embrace my brother and sister from various Christian traditions.

[jamestrotter]

I agree brother. It's pretty simple really. The Lord Jesus said, " I will build My church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." He's still building His church, and the gates of hell up to this time have not prevailed against it and it never will.

[mcgilldi]

I am a Roman Catholic, and I love your thoughtful, studious, respectful and educational videos.

[gabrielgabriel]

I am eastern orthodox bit this is what i have been thinking about me as well. There is actually very reasonable reasons to be protestant.

[coriworth]

Dr. Ortland, I’m so grateful to have found your channel. Your work has helped me wrestle with church history, and work through some Baptist distinctives. May God continue to bless your ministry!

[colmwhateveryoulike]

I'm very grateful for your voice on these matters as I try come to terms with what appears to be a scattered flock after being led back out of the wilderness myself.

[richardbeall]

Greetings Gavin from the north of England, and thank you so much for your channel. I'm not entirely sure whether it's for theological or romantic reasons, but I have been seriously contemplating becoming Catholic. I am so grateful for your reasoned and gracious arguments for remaining Protestant, all of which have contributed to my own thinking. May I wish you and your loved ones well. Keep up the good work, Richard.

[DrChristpherGarrow]

Great quote from Calvin who sums it up. Great information here as well. Thanks for sharing.

[robinconnelly]

You truly are a wonderful teacher. Your knowledge on this is so deep and helpful. Recently I started watching a lot of Catholic apologists and you are so unlike most of them. Full of reason. There is no attempt to manipulate meaning. You are so respectful but you don't waver on the truth. You have been a great help to me

[harrywilson]

Thank you so much for this teaching! There truely is unity in truth!

[wilwelch]

Much appreciated Pastor Ortlund. I would obviously disagree about the sacraments but I really appreciate your careful review of church history in order to defend the classical Protestant position. I would love to see you engage more with the slavery question, which you mentioned. I am a student of American and Civil War history and I have thought a great deal about the Bible and slavery. Blessings

[CodyANeal]

Thank you, thank you, thank you for making this video. I’m an Anglican here struggling with what it means to be a part of the one, true, catholic, and apostolic Church. I often wrestle with whether or not my views should be aligned as close as possible with what has been taught throughout tradition—especially in the early church. Sometimes it seems like we should believe what was taught in the earliest of times in church history because those folks were closest to Christ in terms of our timeline and surely they were passing along what we would need to know today.

But you have helped me think about the possible errors that the early church had and that it’s possible that there could have been long lasting errors. Therefore, Protestants can have much as a claim to being part of the one true church just as Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Anglicans (viewed from a more Anglo-Catholic perspective) can.

Again, I appreciate you making this. I’m gonna chew on this for a bit.

[shihyuchu]

The simple reality is that THE FAITH was ONCE delivered...and did NOT need to be developed/distorted as Catholicism has obviously done

[BibelFAQ]

Man, that was really really good!!! Love your videos. Keep it up!👍🏻

[Stormlight]

Dr. Ortlund - I greatly appreciate your voice in these ecumenical discussions. You seem to truly aim at truth and try to present all sides in a such an accurate and fair manner. I pray that you will continue on this ecumenical path and that it will bear great fruit for you, your Christian tradition, and Catholics alike.

I was drawn to how you framed Protestant thought as a return to the orthodox views of the early church and only casting away errors that crept into the Church.

As a former Lutheran and now Catholic, I was taught the same thing too. However, it now seems to me that the problem with this view of history is the Protestant reformers inserted their own novel ideas as their guiding principles, they were not returning to orthodox principles from the early Church. This seems especially true for sola fide and sola scriputra (although there are many others).

1) Imputed righteousness with sola fide

The point at issue is a little difficult to explain. It centers on the question of the location of justifying righteousness. Both Augustine and Luther are agreed that God graciously gives sinful humans a righteousness which justifies them. But where is that righteousness located? Augustine argued that it was to be found within believers; Luther insisted that it remained outside believers. That is, for Augustine, the righteousness in question is internal; for Luther, it is external.

In Augustine’s view, God bestows justifying righteousness upon the sinner in such a way that it becomes part of his or her person. As a result, this righteousness, although originating outside the sinner, becomes part of him or her. In Luther’s view, by contrast, the righteousness in question remains outside the sinner: it is an “alien righteousness” (iustitia aliena). God treats, or “reckons, ” this righteousness as if it is part of the sinner’s person. In his lectures on Romans of 1515–16, Luther developed the idea of the “alien righteousness of Christ, ” imputed – not imparted – to the believer by faith, as the grounds of justification....

In brief, then, Trent maintained the medieval tradition, stretching back to Augustine, which saw justification as comprising both an event and a process – the event of being declared to be righteous through the work of Christ and the process of being made righteous through the internal work of the Holy Spirit. Reformers such as Melanchthon and Calvin distinguished these two matters, treating the word “justification” as referring only to the event of being declared to be righteous; the accompanying process of internal renewal, which they termed “sanctification” or “regeneration, ” they regarded as theologically distinct.

**McGrath, Alister. Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 4th ed. p 125-126**

2) Sola scriptura

Commonitorium (Vincent of Lerins) c. 434

Chapter 2: A General Rule for distinguishing the Truth of the Catholic Faith from the Falsehood of Heretical Pravity.

[4.] I have often then inquired earnestly and attentively of very many men eminent for sanctity and learning, how and by what sure and so to speak universal rule I may be able to distinguish the truth of Catholic faith from the falsehood of heretical pravity; and I have always, and in almost every instance, received an answer to this effect: That whether I or any one else should wish to detect the frauds and avoid the snares of heretics as they rise, and to continue sound and complete in the Catholic faith, we must, the Lord helping, fortify our own belief in two ways; first, by the authority of the Divine Law, and then, by the Tradition of the Catholic Church.

[5.] But here some one perhaps will ask, Since the canon of Scripture is complete, and sufficient of itself for everything, and more than sufficient, what need is there to join with it the authority of the Church's interpretation? For this reason — because, owing to the depth of Holy Scripture, all do not accept it in one and the same sense, but one understands its words in one way, another in another; so that it seems to be capable of as many interpretations as there are interpreters. For Novatian expounds it one way, Sabellius another, Donatus another, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius, another, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian, another, Iovinian, Pelagius, Celestius, another, lastly, Nestorius another. Therefore, it is very necessary, on account of so great intricacies of such various error, that the rule for the right understanding of the prophets and apostles should be framed in accordance with the standard of Ecclesiastical and Catholic interpretation.

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Also, you mentioned the Protestant view is that the Church is always reforming. I am sure you are well aware, but this is a statement that Catholics would whole-heartedly agree with too. It seems to me that the Catholic Church has been a visible institution that has stood the test of time because God has guided, protected, and reformed the Church when needed (e.g. Council of Trent). On the other hand, it seems the fruits of the Protestant Reformers is endless division.; empirically, there seems to be no way for an average Christian to know which Church has true doctrine in the Protestant world as they disagree on so many things, many of which seem they may be essential doctrine (e.g. baptismal regeneration).

Again, I greatly appreciate your voice in these discussions. God bless!

[OrthodoxofUSA]

There is a difference between errors getting into the Church and errors overwhelming the Church to the point that breaking off from the main body is necessary. The Church could have gotten a few things wrong, or maybe more than a few things wrong, but saying they got as many things wrong as the Protestants claim for as long as they claim is a stretch. There is a difference between getting moral issues, ideas regarding the philosophy of gender, or the corollaries of various dogmas wrong (without even dogmatizing those corollaries) and having a fundamentally incorrect church polity, a fundamentally incorrect view of the Sacraments, and a fundamentally incorrect view of soteriology. If the Church got all those things wrong, what is to say that it didn't get the Trinity wrong as well, or the hypostatic union, or the status of Saint Mary as the Mother of God (which most Protestants accept, as far as I am concerned)?
You made a reasonable point about the Israelites falling into error and getting called back from it. However, God did that repeatedly and regularly, not every three hundred years. From my own calculations, the Book of the Law could not have gone missing (only to be found during the reign of King Josiah) for more than ninety or so years. God seems to be pretty consistent about nipping stuff in the bud early on, or at least condemning errors without letting a lot of time pass. This is quite different from letting the Church slide into error after error, into serious error from a very early stage, only to revive the true doctrine after over one thousand years had passed. There is a big difference in scale.
Also, I was an Orthodox Presbyterian for a number of years, and they are to my knowledge far more in line with historical Presbyterianism rather than contemporary Evangelical Protestantism. What I learned from them was that the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox teachings on salvation (and perhaps other things, such as the Eucharist and the veneration of saints and images) were damnable heresies, and that most Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox people were going to Hell. Such an extreme view does not permit much continuity with Church history.

To sum it up, there is a vast difference in scale. For example, saying that good parents occasionally make mistakes and yell at kids when they should not, discipline them unfairly, or are perhaps at times too permissive makes a lot of sense. It does not make much sense to say that good parents make mistakes such as routinely physically abusing their kids throughout their childhood. The principle is the same, that good parents make mistakes, but clearly the second scenario takes the principle way further than it ought to be taken.
By reading early church documents, you can see that from very early on, it would not fit the Protestant mold, at least not by most standards. In the Didache, which is an extremely early text, you can see the use of liturgies, or at least their beginning, which some, but not a lot of Protestants use. Even if Protestants are right about the letters of Saint Ignatius being inauthentic (which I don't agree with), the Shepherd of Hermas (second century) still describes a distinction between bishop, priest (or teacher, in the words of that text), and deacon. Saint Irenaeus (second century), Saint Hippolytus (second and third), Clement of Alexandria (second and third), Origen (second and third), and Tertullian (second and third) affirm its existence, and it was very wide-spread, if not universal at their time. Saint Irenaeus and Saint Hippolytus said the institution was apostolic in origin. As for the terms bishop and presbyter being used interchangeably in the New Testament, Saint Chrysostom has a response to that in his commentary on Philippians. There are Protestants that have the episcopal polity, but there are far more who do not. Tertullian (among others, such as Augustine) also says that prayers for the dead were a practice in his day, and from what he writes, they seem to be a liturgical practice, not a merely private one. There is even a section in the New Testament where Saint Paul prays for Onesiphorus, who was probably deceased at the time. Very few Protestants pray for the dead, and even fewer ask for the intercession of the saints. The earliest prayer to Saint Mary that we know of is called the Sub tuum praesidium. However, Saint Methodius of Olympus, Saint Cyril of Jerusalem, and Saint Augustine all mention the practice as something done in liturgy or include prayers to the saints in their works. Perhaps, one day, conclusive evidence will turn up to show that such things were practiced well before these saints lived.
Note that I did not include all the saints I could find who supported the practices I mentioned. I could ave listed more sources and more topics if I wanted to, but I only have so much time. I included who I did to show how early these practices, which were standard in the Church as early in the early Middle Ages had an early origin. The claim that these things were medieval innovations is easily refutable. Low-church Protestants have to reckon with the fact that they are far off from the practice of the Church on a great many things for a great many years, and from a very early point too. Anglicans and Lutherans might have more of a leg to stand on, but there are still a lot of points of contention. I did not include what the Fathers thought about schism. From what I have read of them, I don't think they would have looked kindly on the idea of different church bodies being in prolonged and determined (important words) schisms while still being part of the One True Church despite that. I am aware there were several schisms that popped up throughout Church history. I think the fact that such an effort was made to reunite on an institutional level is evidence in my favor. Had the Acacian Schism not ended unity, I do not think the Bishop of Rome would have regarded those separated from communion as still part of the One True Church despite that. I could probably find some quotes to back up my position if I wanted to, but it is late, and I do enjoy getting up early.
I've said this in response to one of your other videos, and again, I do not mean to be condescending, but I really do think you would be far more intellectually honest with yourself if you were an Anglican or a Lutheran.

[ReformedCatholic]

Thank you for your video! As an Anglican, can I just say that not ALL affirm baptismal regeneration and apostolic succession through the laying of hands, although it is a popular high church view.

[Dagfari]

Eastern Orthodox Catechumen here: I think you're right that this idea comes from that Saint.

As to my reading: God's justice isn't just beyond us and unlike human justice, as some would suggest. Rather, God's justice is perfect and superior to human justice but generally of a like kind. That is, our own sense of justice is imperfect, but not completely contrary to God's.

All that being said - if the idea of tormenting infants forever because they have ancestral corruption seems unjust to us, that's because it is. Therefore on that basis alone, infants who die before baptism are not damned to eternal torment.

Whatever it is that may happen to them, we can trust in God.

[jgiaq]

Your channel is quickly becoming one of my all-time favorites! Keep up the good work! I love your blog too, btw.