Gavin Ortlund’s 2024 book, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church,1 offers a gracious and reflective contribution to today’s ecumenical discourse. It highlights elements of Protestantism’s theological DNA and raises challenges that deserve thoughtful engagement. As someone who came out of Protestantism, I see this as a natural conversation to join. I hope to issue a series of posts engaging Gavin’s arguments from a Catholic perspective—perhaps one or two topics from each chapter. My aim is not to offer a comprehensive reply, but to invite conversation.
Several questions from the Introduction invite comment:
- What is Protestantism (xx)?
- Why do Protestants convert to Catholicism (xiv-xv)?
- Is Protestantism a departure from the historic consensus on worship or the Eucharist (xv-xvii)?
- What is the nature and goal of Protestantism (xviii-xix)?
- What is the proper attitude for ecumenical discourse (xxi-xxii)?
Each of these questions deserves serious attention, and I plan to return to many of them in future entries. In this first article, however, I want to prepare the ground for how these questions should be approached. In ecumenical dialogue, debates over details—while necessary—are downstream. The more foundational struggle lies in gaining the right perspective. What should we make of any given argument or historical detail? Until we know, even accurate details may be misused, enflame division, or send us down the wrong path. That’s why the first—and often most difficult—step toward gaining the right perspective is adopting the right posture: one of humility, charity, and listening. Gavin underscores this with the advice of Harper Lee’s character Atticus Finch: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view . . . until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
That spirit helps us avoid misjudging not only arguments, but the nature of the conflict itself. Our enemies are not those Protestants or Catholics on the other side. The enemy is our division, the battle is our fidelity to Christ’s call, and “winning” is only something that we can do together. Gavin doesn’t merely quote Atticus—he exemplifies the spirit, saying, “It is one of the driving passions of my life to be a person of charity who sincerely seeks to love and bless (and learn from) the other side amid our conversations and debates” (xxi). This reaffirms the necessary attitude and proper tone for ecumenical work.
For my part, I have lived within the skin of Protestantism for most of my life, and my departure from it was long-considered. I hope that qualifies me, in the eyes of most readers, to reflect critically on its perspective with both sympathy and clarity. This series will examine problems that Protestantism has consistently struggled to resolve—some because it lacks the ecclesial and theological scaffolding to do so, others because they lie beyond the reach of its principles.
Gavin rightly laments that many Protestants leave their tradition out of ignorance—and I agree. But the same is true in reverse. I’ve been part of churches where ex-Catholics—who never truly understood their own tradition—made up a significant portion of the congregation. Both Protestants and Catholics are often uninformed, not only about one another’s traditions, but also about their own. This widespread ignorance makes real unity harder because it prevents the substantive discussions we need. Instead, we often just “swap sheep.” These shared misunderstandings create a tragic barrier to unity.
And the problem runs even deeper: we often don’t know what we don’t know, and what we think we know is often inherited, secondhand, or distorted. The deeper one studies, the more its contours come into view—and the more we realize what we’ve overlooked. That was certainly my experience.
After five years of seminary—immersed in Greek, Hebrew, Latin, and the full sweep of Scripture—I became more aware of what I didn’t know than ever before. I saw gaps in my theological formation that I hadn’t even known existed. The more we learn, the more we’re confronted with the need for a framework—not just facts—to make sense of what we’ve uncovered. That realization is one reason Catholicism became attractive—because it offered what I was coming to see as essential: a visible, trustworthy interpretive authority.
This experience is not unique to me. Many converts arrive at Catholicism not because they misunderstand Protestantism, but because they have come to understand it well—and find it wanting.
For many others, however, the journey is far less clear. Without a trustworthy interpretive authority, the burden of discernment falls squarely on the individual—often without the tools or support to bear it well. Most people lack the time, energy, or resources to gain the knowledge required for a fully informed decision. I know many faithful Protestants well past their primes who no longer have the stamina, inner docility, eyesight, or even will to study further. Many must rely on experts, but even here confusion abounds, as experts often point in different directions. Who can blame someone for clinging to their tradition with a silent prayer—or for grasping at the glimmer of light from another tradition, unsure if they’ll have time to discern whether it’s right?
This contrast raises a particularly revealing question: Why do those who know Protestantism’s riches—like I once did—still convert to Catholicism?
The answer invites reflection on two foundational questions, each pregnant with theological significance. First, does the Spirit of Wisdom lead the Church to grow in understanding over time, forming a living and enduring repository of truth? Second, does the Church possess the authority to draw upon that wisdom to resolve doctrinal disputes and clarify the faith?
And in my own journey, these questions were not abstract. They were urgent—and the deeper my formation went, the clearer the implications became, and the more I saw that many theological questions cannot be resolved by sincerity and effort alone. Scripture is deep, and tradition is wide—and no individual, however trained, can bear the weight of discernment alone. This wasn’t a failure of seminary, but a discovery of the limits of private interpretation. I began to see the need not just for study, but for a trustworthy interpretive authority—something living, visible, and stable.
Taken together, the ignorance, confusion, conflicting traditions, and weight of individual discernment point to a persistent and unsettling question: If God desires truth and unity, wouldn’t He have preserved a mechanism to discern truth and achieve unity? Catholics affirm that He has. This mechanism is the Magisterium—the Church’s living teaching office—which serves not as a rival to Scripture, but as its faithful interpreter through time.2 It ensures that the Church can develop in understanding without fracturing in identity. Protestants, lacking such a mechanism, face an enduring authority problem, leaving them without the resources to recognize and preserve genuine developments—or to remain united.
Indeed, Protestantism itself is an instance of this problem. It does not represent doctrinal or institutional unity. Instead, it functions as a broad category for those who adopt certain theological attitudes or approaches, as Gavin outlines in Chapter 1. There is no singular Protestant authority—only denominational leaders, personal interpretations of Scripture, or appeals to the Spirit’s guidance. Each chooses which authorities to heed. This fragmented approach generally doesn’t trouble most Protestants much, because it is rooted in Protestantism’s governing conviction: that Scripture is the authority, and that a sincere interpretation, even if flawed, is sufficient—since salvation is by faith alone. But what if that foundational conviction rests on false premises?
The historical record challenges Protestantism’s claims to authority. Its central commitments—Scripture alone, private interpretation, salvation by faith alone—were not accepted by the majority of Christians during the Church’s first 1,500 years. Yet this rarely troubles Protestants either, because their notion of “biblical authority” often leads to a de-prioritization, or even disregard, for the interpretations of the pre-Reformation Church.
This is not to deny the sincere efforts of many Protestant communities to pursue faithfulness. But without a unified authority, Protestantism cannot resolve its own authority crisis. It can either replicate the Catholic model (one visible institution claiming legitimate authority) or embrace an unregulated multiplicity of authorities with no principled way to adjudicate between them. In one way or another, this problem will continue to nettle Protestantism, and because of it, all tangible forms of unity.
These are not simply isolated tensions—they point toward the kind of perspective needed for meaningful ecumenical work: one that begins with the right posture of charity and listening; that acknowledges the scale of our mutual ignorance; that recognizes Protestantism’s enduring authority problem; that takes seriously the Church’s first 1,500 years; and that knows what questions we must ask if reform is to result in true unity.
Finally, I would gently press Gavin to consider why the ongoing movement of revitalization, renewal, and reform must remain outside of Catholicism. Reform is vital to the Church’s life and always has been. But what justifies rupture, rather than renewal within communion, as the normative path? And what safeguards ensure that such reform remains tethered to the true center of the faith? How can they avoid fracturing and hardening into countless divergent identities? And what mechanisms exist for recognizing genuine reform—and preserving it as part of the Church’s life? These are urgent questions—not only for Protestants, but for all who long for unity in the Body of Christ.
- Gavin Ortlund, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2024). ↩︎
- The term “Magisterium” rings ominous to some Protestant ears. For those in this situation, it may be helpful to know that it is merely the noun form of the Latin word for “teacher” (magister). In other words, the real Protestant objection focuses not upon its name or teaching function but upon its claim to infallibility. ↩︎
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