WHAT IT MEANS TO BE PROTESTANT (Review)

What it Means to be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church by Gavin Ortlund is a smooth and peaceful read. He does not use clubs and knives but gentle persuasion, from Scripture, church history, and sanctified common sense.

We live in an age where some pockets of Protestantism can be, as is often said disparagingly about America, very wide but also very shallow.

Ortlund sums up his book’s intention in its concluding chapter: “I have articulated a vison of Protestantism in the spirit of Philip Schaff as a renewal effort within the one true church … I have also commended Protestantism as a return to the authority of Scripture. Protestantism does not reject tradition or other authoritative norms in the church. It simply subordinates them under the superior authority of Scripture. Nothing else the church possesses as a rule rivals the very inspired words of God given to us in the text of Holy Scripture. This alone is an infallible rule because God alone is infallible, and nothing else we have as a rule consists of the very speech of God … Protestantism is not the creation of a new church, but simply the ancient faith in the posture of dynamic change and reform.” pgs. 219-20.

This is a good book for any who may feel that they have been left stranded in one of those shallow tidal pools of Protestantism where the tide of deep and meaningful Christianity has gone out. May the Lord be pleased to use What it Means to be Protestant to help rescue His people with the rising tide of Biblical Protestantism.