Gavin claims that Protestantism affirms the visible Church by allowing it to cohere across multiple institutions—a model in which unity is expressed not through a single body, but through a plurality of separated, yet spiritually aligned, communities. He uses this model in support of a larger claim: that Protestantism better supports the Church’s catholicity because it lacks the institutional exclusivism of Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy.1 But both assertions are problematic—not just because the model he proposes lacks historical and theological foundation, but because his argument relies on a contested vision and circular logic. First, there is no single Protestant view of ecclesiology. This is merely one view among many Protestant views. Second, the particular model Gavin proposes—visible unity through institutional plurality—is not foundational to any major Protestant tradition, but a derivative implication adopted only by some.
Protestantism does not speak with one voice on the question of ecclesial identity—so it cannot speak with one voice on unity or catholicity either. Some Protestants adopt a view like Gavin’s, claiming that the one Church is visible across multiple institutional expressions. But many others insist that their church alone is the true Church—effectively reproducing the Catholic claim in a Protestant key. Still others, particularly among evangelicals, deny the need for visible unity altogether, prioritizing personal faith and spiritual fellowship over institutional continuity. Given this landscape, Gavin cannot credibly speak of “the Protestant view” without either ignoring Protestantism’s internal diversity or presuming the authority to define Protestantism himself—yet Protestantism has no living magisterium capable of such things.2
He might reply that his account reflects the Protestantism of the Reformers. But this merely restates the problem at an earlier point. The Reformers themselves diverged sharply, and once the Reformation rejected a visible, authoritative teaching office, it lost any internal mechanism for resolving such disputes. To appeal to the Reformers as normative is to invite the same question under a different guise: who decides which Reformers, which doctrines, and which ecclesiologies define the tradition? Absent a shared authority, Protestantism cannot offer a coherent account of itself—let alone a unified ecclesiology.
Even among those Protestants who believe the visible Church is distributed across multiple institutions, this vision of distributed visibility is not central to any classical Protestant ecclesiology. It is more an adaptation to fragmentation than a theological commitment—often invoked to justify post hoc the fragmented reality of Protestantism. Take Lutheranism, for instance. Its ecclesiology emphasizes the right preaching of the Word and the proper administration of the sacraments, not the idea that multiple divided bodies together constitute one visible Church. Gavin’s account may reflect a derivative strand of Protestant thought, but it does not represent a unified or representative whole.
This post hoc model, however, finds no endorsement in the Reformers themselves. Philip Melanchthon, Luther’s close collaborator and successor in leading the Lutheran movement, offers a revealing contrast. Among the most irenic of the Reformers, he once lamented, “If my eyes were a fountain of tears, as rich as the waters of the river Elbe, I could not sufficiently express my sorrow over the divisions and distractions of Christendom.”3 Had he believed that unity could be satisfied through institutional plurality and doctrinal diversity, there would have been no reason to grieve. On the contrary, his sorrow reflects the conviction that such division was not a legitimate expression of the Church’s unity, but a wound to it.
Moreover, Melanchthon was not criticized for being overly narrow or rigid, but for being too conciliatory toward Rome. The first generations of Protestants were not celebrating pluralism; they were defending their own legitimacy, often against both Catholic and rival Protestant claims.
Gavin’s case for Protestant catholicity fails on two fronts—one ecclesiological, the other logical. First, the model he advances is not representative of Protestantism as such, but only of one particular vision within it. His claim only works if one already accepts that multiple, doctrinally diverse institutions together constitute the visible Church—and that a broad enough range of Protestant bodies qualify. But this is not a settled Protestant conviction; it is one among several contested ecclesiologies. Many Protestants, in fact, hold that unity requires organic institutional coherence and claim exclusive legitimacy for their own tradition. Others claim that only certain Protestant bodies meet the marks of the Church. If Gavin’s model is neither representative of Protestantism, nor even garner consensus within it, how can it support a claim about Protestantism’s catholicity as a whole?
The second problem is one of logic: Gavin’s argument turns in on itself. He claims that Protestantism better supports catholicity, but that conclusion only follows if one already accepts the very ecclesiological premise it is meant to establish—namely, that Christian unity may be fully realized through a plurality of divided, yet spiritually aligned, bodies. If instead one adopts another view—Protestant or Catholic—that unity requires institutional form, then his claim collapses outright, for there is no institutional unity—and therefore no catholicity either. The argument either presupposes its conclusion or collapses under Protestant diversity. Thus, it seems that Gavin’s error lies in treating a contested vision as if it reflected a Protestant consensus, and in assuming its validity in order to prove it.
Yet beneath these failures lies a more haunting question: what kind of unity can a fractured Church offer the world? If Gavin’s vision of unity is as ecclesiologically superior as he suggests, why has it not produced unity? Protestantism remains fractured, and the very divisions that Melanchthon once wept over still persist. If, as Christ prayed, the unity of the Church is meant to be a sign “so that the world may believe,” then any model that fails to make that unity visible and compelling before the world falls short of the Church’s vocation—no matter how conceptually tidy it may appear.
Gavin and I agree that the Church must be visible. But we differ on what that visibility entails. He suggests that visibility can be preserved even as unity stretches across multiple institutions. I contend that unity itself must be visible—that the Church’s oneness must be embodied in a form the world can recognize. This is not a question of simple headcount or minimal theological overlap. It is a question of coherent, recognizable identity. Christ prayed, “that they may be one, so that the world may believe” (John 17:21). The credibility of the Church’s witness hinges on the visibility of its unity. For most of Christian history, catholicity was not a label applied to multiple groups, but a lived reality grounded in visible, organic unity—rooted in shared sacraments, doctrine, and governance.
This visibility, however, should not be confused with mere numerical consequence—i.e., how many groups might be counted under the label of “Church.” One could misread Gavin’s and my positions as opposite answers to the same numerical question—whether unity requires one or many—but that misframes the debate. The deeper issue is whether unity is recognizably manifest in a way that fulfills Christ’s prayer and serves the world’s faith. Unity may have quantitative consequences, but it cannot be reduced to arithmetic. It must be something the world can see and identify.
One might argue that visible unity and institutional multiplicity can coexist, and in a limited sense, Catholicism affirms this. But much depends on what we mean by institution. In one sense, the term refers to historically distinct groupings—local churches, orders, or communities shaped by particular circumstances. In another, deeper sense, it refers to the Church as a unified, visible body with shared doctrine, sacramental life, and governing authority. Catholicism embraces both senses: diverse historical communities are gathered into one communion with a coherent identity. Protestantism, by contrast, offers no such integration. Its institutions diverge not only in polity but in doctrine, sacraments, and core ecclesiological assumptions. That is not visibility—it is disintegration.
Thus, while Gavin wants to argue that Protestantism supports the Church’s catholicity, he does so by (1) presuming a model that lacks consensus within Protestantism, and (2) advancing a vision of unity that requires redefining it in a way foreign to the Church’s historical and theological self-understanding. Without a shared body, shared faith, and shared authority, the world cannot see the Church’s unity—because it is not there to see.
This internal diversity is not merely theoretical. The Lutheran and Reformed traditions developed sharply different ecclesiologies, not only on sacramental theology but on the very nature of the Church’s presence and authority. Meanwhile, radical reformers—and later Baptists and evangelicals—often discarded any meaningful concept of institutional continuity or visibility. Some traditions emphasize apostolic succession; others deny it. Some hold to binding confessions; others avoid doctrinal constraints entirely. The result is a wide and splintered spectrum of ecclesiological commitments, lacking both a shared framework and a coherent center.
This landscape does not reflect a unified Protestant ecclesiology, but a field of divergent—and often incompatible—visions. No one of them can claim to represent Protestantism as a whole, nor can their plurality collectively sustain a coherent doctrine of catholicity or visible unity. Without a common theological structure or authoritative body to bind them, Protestantism cannot manifest the kind of visible, integrated unity Christ expects: “that they may be one . . . so that the world may believe” (John 17:21). Under such conditions, instead of the unified body of Christ, the world sees the very would he came to heal.
- Gavin Ortlund, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024), 32. ↩︎
- See my prior series posts for more reflections on this point: What It Means to Be Protestant, Introduction: Seeking Perspective and What It Means to Be Protestant, Ch. 1: What Is Protestantism, and Can It Unite the Church?. ↩︎
- Philip Schaff references this quotation in his History of the Christian Church, vol. 7, p. 46, but I have yet to decisively corroborate its exact form. ↩︎
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