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Priorities: Fragmented Goals, Divided Witness
Gavin claims that Protestantism shares these common priorities: the removal of historical accretions, the renewal of the gospel in the church, and a return to the authority of Scripture. Below I’d like to problematize this claim to united priorities with some observations I largely made while I was still Protestant.
Removing Historical Accretions1
Protestants are not consistent in their definition and treatment of “accretions”, and it makes use of things that are categorically similar—yet not considered accretions. For example, Protestants often deem extrabiblical doctrines and practices as accretions because they are extrabiblical. Yet Sunday school and seminary are extrabiblical instantiations of the Scriptural mandate to pass on the faith. In the same way, some Catholic “accretions” entail attempts to fulfill texts in Scripture (texts largely ignored by Protestants). For example, the celibacy of priests (discussed in the prior section), certain teachings on Mary, and confession. Other Catholic “accretions” flush out the implications of theological truths derived from Scripture (e.g., the idea of purgatory2). In this way, they are acts and products of interpretation similar to the confessional documents of various Protestant bodies.
In other words, what counts as an accretion is often judged not by clear theological criteria, but by selective instincts about what aligns with Protestant sensibilities. Many Catholic teachings labeled as unwarranted additions are, in fact, rooted in the same interpretive and pastoral impulses that give rise to Protestant traditions like Sunday school or denominational confessions. The difference lies not in whether one develops practices beyond the literal text of Scripture, but in how one discerns continuity with the apostolic deposit.
Ultimately, the Protestant rejection of so-called Catholic “accretions” often reflects not just inconsistency, but a deeper failure to categorize and evaluate such developments on their own terms. Many of these are not arbitrary add-ons but attempts to obey Scripture more fully, to apply its theological logic, or to respond pastorally to its implications—just as Protestants do in their own ecclesial life. What is generally lacking is a principled framework that distinguishes between distortion and organic development, between rupture and faithful elaboration. Without such a framework, Protestantism is prone to mistaking theological maturity for deviation—and to overlooking its own parallel habits of doctrinal and pastoral expansion.
Renewing the Gospel
To “renew” the gospel suggests that the gospel has become old or stagnant. Of course, the gospel can never become so, but Protestants typically3 mean that the Catholic gospel has gone amiss. This raises two fundamental problems internal to the Protestant stance.
First, something can only go amiss from what is right and true—and what is right and true can only be determined, from a Protestant viewpoint, by Scripture. But identifying the contours of Scripture’s gospel is an interpretive act. So what Protestants actually mean by “renew” is that the “Catholic interpretation of the gospel” deviates from “the Protestant interpretation of the gospel”—typically, an interpretation based upon the Pauline epistles.
Second, Protestants often assert that they are united in the essentials of the gospel, despite institutional and doctrinal fragmentation. But this confidence presumes a consensus that does not exist. What counts as “the gospel” and what is “essential” is itself deeply contested among Protestants.
All conceptions of the gospel—and all judgments about what is essential to it—arise from interpretation, and Protestants themselves hold quite divergent understandings of the gospel.4 So which Protestant gospel are we talking about? Which components are essential, and which are not? And which Protestant group gets to decide for all the rest? Some emphasize penal substitution, others Christus Victor; some embrace monergism, others synergism; views on assurance, perseverance, baptism, and justification differ significantly across Protestant traditions. There is no shared definition, no agreed-upon core, and no mechanism to establish one. Without agreement on the gospel’s nature or its proper response, even this supposed unity dissolves into pluralism.
Here, recent insights from Protestant scholars like N. T. Wright and Matthew Bates offer helpful clarity. While they differ in their theological programs, both argue that the New Testament defines “the gospel” in its strict sense as a multi-faceted proclamation of the person and public work of Jesus Christ: his incarnation, death, resurrection, and enthronement. On this definition, there is broad continuity between Protestants and Catholics. Both traditions draw on the same scriptural sources—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—to confess the same core events. There may be differences in how each tradition unpacks the theological meaning of those events, such as the mechanics of atonement, but the gospel itself, as proclamation, remains shared.
If Wright and Bates are correct (and I believe they are), then the real point of divergence is not the gospel itself, but the response to the gospel. And here, once again, the key problem circles back around: Which Protestant interpretation of how to respond to the gospel should be considered correct? Is salvation received by faith alone? By baptism and faith? What exactly is faith and where does it come from? Is sanctification part of justification or its fruit? Who gets to adjudicate these competing responses? Thus, Protestants divide because, whether or not they are willing to admit it, our disagreements come down to differences of interpretation.
This has direct implications for Gavin’s framing of one of Protestantism’s unifying priorities: the “renewal of the gospel in the Church.” If Catholics still affirm the historical gospel, then “renewal” cannot mean the restoration of the gospel itself. It must instead mean a correction in how the gospel is understood or responded to. But that is no longer a claim about the gospel itself—it is, once again, a claim about interpretation. Thus, the idea that Protestantism renews the gospel falters on two fronts. First, because such a renewal would require a common Protestant conception of the gospel—something that, if it ever existed, no longer exists, and could not exist apart from fallible acts of interpretation. Second, because it amounts to elevating one interpretive tradition over another—without the authority or consensus of the oldest and largest churches. In this light, the “renewal of the gospel” becomes rhetorical shorthand for a fiction: a Protestant consensus that does not exist.
This ambiguity about what the gospel even is directly affects how one reads and applies Scripture. For Protestants, the authority of Scripture is not just a theological commitment—it becomes the arbiter for resolving these disputes. But what happens when that authority is itself dependent on interpretation?
Returning to the Authority of Scripture
Ironically, through deep study of the 66-book Protestant canon—assuming all the while that Scripture was the supreme authority—I became increasingly convinced that it could not be rightly understood apart from the Church that canonized and preserved it. This realization nudged me toward Catholicism, though many other insights would need to converge before I could genuinely envision entering the Church. Even now I consider the authority of Scripture to be indisputable—unequaled by any theologian, bishop, pope, or Reformer. Yet anyone who has seriously studied Scripture across history knows the real question is not “What does it say?” but “What does it mean?” The text and the interpretation derived from it are two very different things.
So the idea that Protestantism is a “return” to Scripture (or the authority of Scripture) rings false to me. My own journey felt less like returning and more like being freed from interpretive assumptions that confined Scripture within narrow frameworks—frameworks that often claimed the Bible for themselves while cutting it off from the very Church that formed it.
Nor does it make sense to claim that sola scriptura means rejecting all interpretive helps. This was never the Reformers’ intent, and most informed Protestants recognize that. In fact, Protestants consistently rely on interpretive aids—as evinced by the translator’s dependence on Greek and Hebrew lexicons, biblical commentaries, or the basic idea behind the teaching office. The phrase “return to the authority of Scripture” is often a veil—one that obscures a more selective rejection of Catholic interpretive tradition rather than an actual return to some pure, unfiltered biblical meaning that never truly existed.
Catholicism, to be sure, does acknowledge other sources of authority—but not in opposition to Scripture. It is important here to distinguish between the primacy of Scripture, which Catholics affirm, and the Protestant principle of sola scriptura.
What other source is so revered, so consistently turned to for daily sustenance? For Catholics, Scripture is God-breathed, authoritative, and utterly singular in its sanctifying power.
But Catholics also insist that Scripture cannot be rightly understood apart from the ecclesial context in which it was canonized, preserved, and interpreted.
Sola scriptura, by contrast, presumes that Scripture is self-interpreting—or at least interpretable—apart from the apostolic tradition and magisterial mediation. This premise, Catholics contend, is both historically untenable and theologically reckless.
Thus, the Catholic Church not only recognizes other authorities such as the Magisterium, but it even allows these authorities, as part of their pastoral and spiritual responsibilities, to clarify duties or teachings not explicitly addressed in Scripture. Nonetheless, these authorities serve a subordinate and stewarding function: to guard, interpret, and apply the Scriptures—not to replace or rival them.
The real difference is not whether Scripture is authoritative. Both Catholics and Protestants affirm that.
The difference is whether Scripture can be rightly interpreted apart from the Church.
Protestants, by rejecting the teaching office that once settled interpretive questions, have no mechanism for resolving doctrinal disputes with finality. No matter how urgent the disagreement, their authorities remain local, provisional, and fallible. The result is endless contestation and eventual fragmentation. Protestantism cannot advance together; its internal authorities lack the scope and cohesion to provide universal answers.
In place of a unified Magisterium, Protestantism offers a patchwork of leadership structures—each shaped by its own history and limitations, each isolated from the voice, wisdom, and memory of the whole.
Some might object: Isn’t Catholicism just another tradition among many? Aren’t its authorities essentially the same as, say, those of Anglicanism, Lutheranism, or Presbyterianism?
But this misunderstands the scope of Catholic continuity.
The Catholic voice isn’t just one tradition among others. It’s the majority voice—speaking across centuries, cultures, and councils. To disregard it is to disregard the main line of Christian memory.
More fundamentally, the objection begs the question. It presupposes the very vision Gavin promotes: that all churches possess equal validity, equal voice, equal value, and equal standing in the one, true Church. But Catholics reject this assumption. Instead, they believe God has protected the proper interpretation of Scripture in one visible Church marked by apostolic succession and sustained by a dynamic, interwoven relationship among Scripture, tradition, councils, the Magisterium, and the Petrine office. This structure does not erase human weakness, but its corroborative multiplicity does help protect against it. In addition, it provides the framework—historically traceable and theologically coherent—by which the faith has been preserved and transmitted.
This conviction is not a medieval invention, nor a later deformation of Christian origins. While it is true that the early Church did not yet possess the full institutional articulation of later centuries, from the outset its shape was unmistakably episcopal, sacramental, and oriented toward visible unity. The letters of Ignatius of Antioch—written while the ink of the New Testament was still drying—speak of the bishop as the center of local unity and sacramental integrity. Cyprian of Carthage, in the third century, affirmed that the Church is one and that no one can have God as Father who does not have the Church as Mother. Augustine, too, insisted on unity with the Catholic Church as the necessary context of truth. What developed over time was not an invention, but a maturation—guided by the Spirit within the ecclesial body Christ founded.
Some Protestants may argue that magisterial authority merely replaces one fallible interpreter with another—that it endangers the primacy of conscience and individual’s responsibility before God.
But the issue is not whether individuals have a role in discernment. It’s whether that discernment happens within a divinely instituted structure of visible unity and shared doctrinal accountability.
The New Testament envisions such a structure: from the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 to the pastoral epistles, the early Church is marked by ecclesial order, episcopal oversight, and communal resolution of doctrinal disputes.
The alternative? An open field of autonomous interpretation, where everyone’s word is final—and no one’s is authoritative. Protestantism’s long experiment in decentralization has borne fruit not in clarity but in cacophony.
A Protestant reader might object that appealing to ecclesial authority displaces the personal responsibility of the believer before God. Does institutional deference threaten the freedom of conscience or the clarity of Scripture? Not necessarily. Catholicism does not reject conscience but situates it within a communal and sacramental framework, where the interpretive burden is shared and safeguarded. As the early Church’s life shows—from Acts 15 to the pastoral epistles—truth and unity were preserved not through isolated reading but through discernment within a structured, Spirit-led communion.
Without this shared interpretive locus, conscience tends to become privatized, and Scripture’s clarity becomes a matter of personal conviction. This decentralization of interpretation has not yielded unity or clarity, but fragmentation and exhaustion. As N. T. Wright, the influential Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar, describes it:
“It seems to be the case that the more that you insist that you are based on the Bible, the more fissiparous you become; the church splits up into more and more little groups, each thinking that they have got biblical truth right.”5
Clearly, autonomy of interpretation cannot be the basis for a common identity. It has yielded neither greater clarity nor consensus.
Once hailed as a corrective, private judgment now underwrites endless division.
It has splintered the very body it seeks to reform.
If the interpretation of Scripture cannot be disentangled from tradition and ecclesial authority, then Protestantism’s self-understanding as a return to the Bible rings hollow. It begins to appear not as a unified tradition grounded in Scripture, but as a constellation of interpretive communities grounded in their own assumptions.
Having examined Protestantism’s identity, doctrine, and priorities, we are left with a pressing question: if it fails to cohere on any of these fronts, what, then, is it? If Protestantism is to persist as more than a posture of protest, it must offer a constructive and coherent identity—one that can stand the test of both history and theology.
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- In Chapter 11 of the book we are reviewing and in his YouTube video material, Gavin provides a noteworthy and complicated example of “accretion”: icon veneration. It deserves a thoughtful answer (forthcoming). ↩︎
- Articles that explore aspects of purgatory: Can the Soul Be Harmed? Rethinking What Must Be Purified and Making It Right: The Forgotten Logic of Indulgences ↩︎
- I say “typically” because there are multiple Protestant viewpoints on Catholicism. ↩︎
- For a short survey of different gospels within Protestantism, and for more resources on this topic, see my article entitled “Is the Gospel ‘Simple’?“. ↩︎
- N. T. Wright, “How Can the Bible Be Authoritative?,” at: https://ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/how-can-the-bible-be-authoritative/, accessed: July 22, 2025. Originally published in Vox Evangelica 21: 7-32 (1991). See subsection entitled “Evangelicals and Biblical Authority.” ↩︎
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