What is the overall impact of a man’s teaching, despite his credentials?

Readership: All; Christian Men
Theme: Christian Community; Metacognitions; The Christian Red Pill;
Length: 1,100 words
Reading Time: 6 minutes

Intro

In a previous post, Tubal Cain told us about a young married Protestant pastor who converted to Orthodoxy, but was deterred from pursuing the Orthodox priesthood because his wife didn’t want to be married to an Orthodox priest and filed for No Fault divorce. This threat is potent because divorce disqualifies a man from a leadership position in the church.

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“His wife recently filed for divorce because of her husband’s conversion process from Southern Baptist to Eastern Orthodox. He’s a graduate of Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, with an M.Div. Sadly, his desire to attend Orthodox distance seminary and become a priest has been hampered due to a No Fault divorce he didn’t want nor ask for. He is maintaining frame, and will be completing a 1 year catechism, and will be baptized, chrismated, tonsured, and received into the church soon.”

Tubal Cain also spoke about a young married man whose wife stepped out because he intended to convert to Orthodoxy.

“Also, I’ve seen this same ploy played out before with a young married man with children whose evangelical wife threatened filing no-fault divorce when he left Vineyard Fellowship and began catechism at our parish. He subsequently left due to this.

Weaponized No Fault divorce is certainly on most men’s radar, and for more often unbiblical and willy-nilly reasons cited.

Another one of the things he’s shared with me is that things really went south when his wife started listening to Gavin Ortlund. His words: “Thanks, Gavin Ortlund, for breaking up our family”.”

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“Do you know of this guy, and curious if you’ve written about him?  I’d be interested to get your twist and analysis on the situation.

He’s a Reformed Baptist apologist, seems to take things out of context, appeals to emotions, attacks Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox alike…

Personally, I find him unsettling, and don’t listen to him.”

It is noteworthy that this man pinpointed the teachings of Gavin Ortlund as a contributing factor to his divorce.

So let’s take a closer look at Gavin Ortlund.

Profile of Gavin Ortlund

Gavin Rutherford Ortlund is an American Christian apologist, Reformed Baptist theologian, and author.

Ortlund is known for defending theologically conservative evangelical Protestantism from an irenic perspective, engaging with proponents of atheism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Liberal Protestantism.

Sources

Curriculum Vitae

img-1783677498-6a50c23ac21010.29268836.jpgGavin Ortlund. That lopsided, smirky grin gives me a bad impression of the man.
  • Born in Scotland; DOB: 1983/6/30 (early Millennial Gen)
  • Married to Esther, father of 5
  • 2006 — B.A. in Philosophy and Religion from the University of Georgia.
  • 2009 — M.Div. from Covenant Theological Seminary.
  • 2016 — Ph.D. in Historical Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
  • 2017-2018 — Post-doctoral research at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, conducting research on Augustine‘s doctrine of creation.
  • 2018-2023 — Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church, Ojai, CA.
  • Since 2023, he left the pastorate to pursue full-time ministry through academic roles and digital platforms.
  • Fellow of Credo
  • Fellow of The Center for Baptist Renewal
  • Fellow of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics
  • Member of St. Basil Fellowship of The Center for Pastor Theologians
  • President of Truth Unites
  • Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville
  • Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary
  • Visiting Scholar at Reasons to Believe
  • Author of nine books
  • He won Christianity Today’s 2024 Book of the Year award for his work, What It Means to Be Protestant: The Case for an Always-Reforming Church.

That’s quite a lot of irons in the fire!  Obviously, he’s had some ‘help’. But from ‘whom’?

At the Truth Unites webpage, the YT channel is described thus.

“Truth Unites has a dual purpose as both a theological resource to the church as well as an apologetics voice to our culture. In its inward-facing role, it seeks to serve the church with theological education. It especially focuses on historical retrieval and theological triage, seeking to buttress and unify evangelical theology amidst its current fragmentation. It also produces content in defense of Protestantism.”

He also has two brothers in the ministry: Dane Ortlund, author of Gentle and Lowly: The Heart of Christ for Sinners and Sufferers, and Eric Ortlund, who serves as a Lecturer in Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Oak Hill College in London.

img-1783677500-6a50c23c131387.81711956.jpgDr. Eric Ortlund, Gavin Ortlund’s brother and a lecturer in Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Oak Hill College in London.

The Influence of Gavin Ortlund

Concerning Ortlund’s teachings, the first question in my mind is this:

Is Ortlund teaching something true, and the wife doesn’t want to face that truth, and decided to back out of marriage altogether?

Or…

Is Ortlund teaching something false, and it made the wife Feeel ‘empowered’ enough to ditch her marriage?

By perusing Ortlund’s YT channel, Truth Unites (an ironic name, given TC’s story), I found a few clues.

Browsing over the titles of his videos, there are many video talks that offer arguments against virtually anything NOT Protestant and Sola Scriptura, including Atheism, Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and others.

Let’s remember that Protestantism was birthed out of a disagreement over marriage and divorce with the Catholic church. Protestants prioritized marital harmony (even at the cost of divorce), while the Catholic church dictated ecclesiastical conformity and condemned anyone or any faction that disagreed. Overall and in general, one of the main differences between Catholicism and Protestantism is that the latter tolerates divorce. It could be that Ortlund is riding hard on this grand point and subtly emphasizing the correlating doctrine.

img-1783677501-6a50c23d628899.92736021.jpgPastor Timothy Keller, RIP.

I also found that Ortlund has produced content in cooperation with names like Ligon Duncan, Collin Hansen, Tim Keller, Albert Mohler (of Dalrock fame), Matt Smethurst, and others of their kind.

Also, Ortlund is apparently an acolyte of Tim Keller, carrying on his work of shoring up the fragmentation of Evangelicalism by whatever means necessary.

As if the AEP church is prioritized over faith and even marital solvency — Sola Ecclesia under the guise of Sola Scriptura.

Conclusions

In conclusion, I don’t believe Ortlund himself is ‘evil’, per se, but instead, I tend to believe that he is merely an exceptionally accomplished manifestation of Enlightened Post-Modern Protestantism, including all the hallmarks thereof: the emphasis on Irenic perspectives and logical Aristotelianism (just shy of raw Positivism), culminating in his unwittingly whitewashed gynocentric Complementarianism and the resultant promulgation of the bitter fruits of Feminism, including the plague of divorce.

All I can say is what Tubal Cain suggested: 1 Timothy 6:3-5.

You will know them by their fruits.

Matthew 7:15-20 (NKJV)

All this seems to support my earlier assertion that Headship is more Important than Religious Affiliation.

Readers are invited to offer other views and additional information in the comments.

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