What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church

by Gavin Ortlund

Later in the sixteenth century, a group of Lutheran theologians wrote to Jeremiah II, Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, to send him a copy of the Augsburg Confession and engage in theological correspondence. The Lutherans treated Jeremiah respectfully, addressing him with titles like “the Most Honorable Lord,” “the All-Holy Ecumenical Patriarch,” and “God-Beloved Sir.”36 The Lutherans opened the dialogue with an assertion that Eastern Orthodox Christians possessed a common salvation in Christ and expressed their earnest desire for a closer unity with the Orthodox Church.37 The subsequent interaction (three letters each way) revealed an enormous amount of agreement on matters such as the truth and inspiration of Scriptures, the doctrine of God, the Trinity, the two natures of Christ, the nature of evil, the saving office of Christ in his death and resurrection, the future second coming of Christ, and much more. They also shared many points of doctrine over and against the Western Roman Catholic church: for example, affirmation of communion in two kinds and rejection of indulgences, the papacy, and purgatory. Nonetheless, disagreement persisted between the Lutherans and the Orthodox on topics like the filioque (the affirmation among Western Christians that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father), free will, justification, the number of sacraments, invocation of the saints, icons, relics, and a few other matters.38

So much in common, and yet so many differences. Who is right?