June 19, 2025 • 52 mins
The term “faith” in our English Bibles could often better be translated as allegiance—or so argues Matthew Bates. The term “allegiance” better captures both the authentic relational import of faith and its relationship to the royal gospel of Jesus, who is Christ the King. Taking seriously both the nature of the Gospel as a proclamation of kingship, and faith as a response of trusting loyalty, is a step toward the Christian unity for which Jesus prays.
Matthew W. Bates (PhD, Notre Dame) is Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary with expertise on the gospel and salvation.
Matthew Bates’ books on salvation themes:
Salvation by Allegiance Alone (2017)
Beyond the Salvation Wars (2025)
Also referenced: Caesar and the Sacrament by Alan Streett
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
And I think that is one of the pastoral strengthsof this term is it's a deeply relational term
that, doesn't easily devolveinto kind of a mere works righteousness
or a mere legalism,where you're just, you know, like, okay,
like obedience to the Lord meansI do these x, y, z things.
So if I check them off,that means I'm obedient or loyal.
(00:21):
I think that part one up, one of the strengthsis the relational dimension of that.
Like that.
If I'm going to know what my king wants, I have to
be in relationship with this king continually,
and that, the king may call calldifferent people to different tasks in life.
(00:44):
Okay.
So please welcome to Anabaptist perspectives.
Matthew Bates.
And we'll be talking about “Salvationby Allegiance Alone” and,
his ambitious latest book, “Beyond the SalvationWars”.
So, yes. Welcome, Matthew.
And if you would like to give.
Yeah, just a brief introduction to yourself.
That'd be great.
(01:05):
Thank you.
Yeah.
So, Matthew Bates, professor of New Testamentat Northern Seminary.
And that's a more recent gig for me.
I jumped over to northern just this fallafter teaching for 14 years at,
Quincy University, which is a CatholicFranciscan university in Illinois.
And, northern, alongside Nijay Gupta.
(01:26):
And, you might recognize Scott McKnight's name.
He was, in the position previously.
So, excited to be at northernas it's a better theological fit for me,
in terms of, my own, sensibilities.
Northern is a Baptist heritage school,by and large, trans denominational at this point.
I have seven children,and married to the lovely Sarah.
(01:48):
So, I'm busy with family life,but also busy writing as,
I've been, crafting a number of books
along, the, themes of gospel and salvation.
And then beyond that,I did work on early Trinitarian ism.
I wrote a book called The Birth of the Trinity,and then one on, Paul's, method of interpreting
(02:10):
scripture, with the terrible title,The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation.
So that was some of my early career work,that I've done.
But, yeah.
So, been now a professor of, scriptureor theology
for some 15 years, and love what I do.
So that's just the real quick, and,of course, I'm, a disciple of Jesus.
(02:31):
So that's that's pretty foundational.
I don't want to don't want to omit that.
So. Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
And. Yeah,I was familiar with several people at northern.
So when I saw you were moving there,that also struck my interest.
No, the other books sound fascinating as well,
but we'll stick to the salvationand allegiance themes.
(02:55):
For this interview.
yeah, I found your workthrough listening to another podcast,
and it helped me put some pieces together,especially this theme, you know?
Okay. Salvation by allegiance alone.
That's a provocative title.
We're gonna have to get you to explain that.
But it helped put pieces together for mebecause, you know, growing up
(03:16):
in Anabaptist circles, I had access to teachers
who had good ways of talking about faith.
And what does it mean?
And, you know,it's a whole life, response to God.
But it also had
some of those same things that you identifiedwith where,
one of your books you talked about good work
seemed to play this role of friend and foe.
(03:40):
We're supposed to have them, but
we're ambivalentbecause there's this very great danger
is presented like, well, you gotta be very carefulthat you're not trusting in your works.
And it it could end up,you know, discouraging, serious effort.
And I had come across even thinkingthrough Hebrews and teaching that in Sunday
school was like, okay, faith here,but you can't separate faith. And,
(04:04):
you know, an active response to God's call.
But yeah, your ideas about
allegiance, combining
the beliefs and bodily action, that was,
very helpful as a term.
And it also helped methink about the importance of,
(04:25):
you know, confessingJesus as Lord, saying that publicly,
that kind of united that,with the idea of allegiance,
so maybe you could introduce
that, you know, that themewhich has been a big theme in your work.
And I especially like to know, like,how did you decide you're going to start
writing about it?
(04:47):
You came across, I mean, yeah, the ideaand how it became something.
Was your writing project.
Thank you. Yeah.
So this is part of my own story
I suppose as I was trying to sort these things outwas, I grew up not in Anabaptist circles,
but in kind of just Bible church, like,kind of non-denominational,
fundamentalistleaning kind of Bible church background.
(05:10):
And as part of that, as you mentioned,some of the concern within those circles
was that we trust inJesus and his accomplished work
for us, that we,we see him as the Savior and the Lord.
But we want to be careful with the Lord businessbecause we don't want
to, like, believethat we're saved by submitting to him as Lord.
We need to confess him as Lord.
But but we don't want to be confusedand think that we need to do any works, right?
(05:35):
Or else we might, fall afoulof the principle of justification by faith alone.
So, some confusing tension around that, that I,
you know, I was trying to sort out as,you know, as I grew up in those circles,
and I confess, I didn't find the, frameworksto be very satisfying.
But at the same time,I was interested in other things.
(05:56):
So I was studying physics and scienceand doing doing completely other things.
And, really,it was when I took a New Testament course
when I was in college that,my life was changed, through this course.
I was changed prior to that, but this course was,you know, if we were to talk to our
Wesleyan friends, maybe we would say, you know,as a sort of second act of grace or something
(06:17):
along those lines.
And so that was something that, as I spent
this intense time reading the New Testament,it was in January term intensive course.
So was this a three week course?
But but I did nothing but read a New Testament,
listen to a lecture on New Testament,think about eat, sleep, New Testament.
And that really, actuallykind of shook me up a bit as I
maybe realized I didn't know how to read the Biblevery well.
(06:39):
I thought I did, but I didn't really have any cluehow to read the Bible.
And then beyond that, it kind of just awakenedthe need for me to repent in my life
in a whole bunch of ways, as I was
kind of just really grapplingwith the New Testaments, clear call to obedience,
and to help me kind of moveout of the framework of cheap grace, perhaps,
and, you know, and to get involved in service,I got involved with,
(06:59):
you know, serving in the inner city,in an inner city ministry at that time.
And, so that was a real transitional pointin my life.
And,it helped me then to begin to take the Bible
seriously as a, as an intellectual projectto not just, as, something
that's like God's word that descends from on high,but is something that really would require
(07:20):
the best of my thinking
and the best of my historical thinking, learninghow to think in ancient categories
and how to bridge to modern,you know, through that, contemporary categories.
So anyway, eventually,I was working as an electrical engineer,
after college and eventually went to seminary.
And it was whileI was actually taking my first course in seminary,
(07:41):
we were given the opportunity to read any books
we wished out of, like a 50 book bibliography.
So the professors,it was actually a co-taught course.
They gave us like a list of 50 books.
They say you choose out of these 50,anyone you want to,
any ones you want to do, readand do a little mini reports on or whatever.
We had to do a little book reviews.
So as part of that, I chose N.T.
(08:04):
Wright’s “The Challenge of Jesus”.
And it was when I was reading that that I first
had the inklings of faithin a more allegiance, direction.
Right.
In that book recounts an episode where the Jewish
historian Josephus,is actually leading his people.
So Josephus is, a general of sorts in the waragainst the Romans.
(08:26):
Okay. and things aren't going well.
There's a lot of factionalism. Okay.
So he ends up having to to call some people
to repent and to be allegiannt to him.
And it uses the language of faith,like the it's the same word group,
like it's all it'sactually the adjectival title form of pistos.
It would be the word in Greek,but it's the same root.
(08:46):
Pistis pistueo,All of these are all related terms, right?
In Greek.
So whenever we talk about believing in Jesus,having faith in Jesus, the Pistueo word group,
and it's all interconnected, right, in Greek.
So that got me thinking, right?
Like what what is going on with this language of,
you know, of faith as allegiance?
And is there something more to that
(09:08):
that could be helpfulin, in thinking through Faith works issues?
So just kind ofjust like filed in the back of my mind.
So that's the first, part of the story.
I have moreI could say if you want to continue to probe,
but we'll see maybewhere you want to take us next.
Yeah.
I remember hearing N.T.
Wright mention that same one somewhereand that was clarifying.
I also noticed in, you know,your latest book you've added quite,
(09:31):
quite a few more sources, examples having to do
with emperors and, and so on.
I mean maybe just,
you know, unpackdirectly a little bit more of the,
you know, why use allegiance instead of faith and.
Yeah.
What that adds.
(09:53):
Yeah.
In truth, it's really justa continuation of the story I was telling.
So I'll maybe I'll answer that in storyform a bit.
As I continue to do, graduate work in the NewTestament, I went to University of Notre Dame,
where I was studying under a Lutheran scholar,surprisingly right as you think.
It's like a Catholic framework, which it is.
But, there's obviously a lot of different folks.
(10:15):
And I was writing on Paul'suse of the Old Testament.
And so as part of that,I was looking actually at an overall theory
of Pauline scriptural interpretation,like what we might call a Pauline hermeneutic.
And, Paul really binds together,
his hermeneutical statements with,
with, with statements about the Old Testamentand about his theory of interpretation.
(10:37):
It's all connected to the gospel.
So like some of our, our,our statements about like that
are clearer statementsabout the content of the gospel.
Romans 1:2-4, first Corinthians 15:3-5.
These passages, like in Romansone two through four, Paul talks about the gospel
being pre promised promise in advance, right.
And through the prophets.
(10:57):
And so as we're thinking about like
as I was thinking about that moreand I was reading first Corinthians 15, right.
Where it talks about, you know, Jesus diedfor our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
Like I was really forcedto do very close work on the gospel.
I was working on the gospel in, in detail.
And one of the convictions that emergedas I worked in detail on
(11:18):
it was that the gospel had mostly a royal shape.
That it's about the Christ.
It's about, that, that that term,the Christ, isn't an empty signifier.
We were so used to hearing it,we kind of just read right past it.
Right?
And we just kind of see itas an alternative way of saying, Jesus.
But that's not that's not actually correct.
Scholars who have really studied the term Christwould identify it as an honorific term.
(11:43):
And so, like honorifics in our society,some honorifics might be,
something like, doctor, like,
on the one hand, like, that's, there are a variety of technical
degrees, like, you could have a PhD or an MDor whatever it might be.
And and you've you've accomplished,you know, that degree.
But if someone chooses to refer to youas doctor so-and-so,
(12:05):
that's their way of honoring your accomplishment,right?
It's an honorific.
And so there were similar kinds of thingsin Jesus's world.
And, and so, yeah, one example would be
Judas Maccabee, like, was called The Hammeror this became a title.
Right. The Maccabeeactually means that it means the hammer.
And and similarly, you know, Caesar
(12:25):
Augustus like, whenever,he came to be, like, venerated.
Right.
By, the title of his real name is Octavian.
But by the title, Augustus like that,that's actually an honorific, the Augustus part.
We just use it todayand we almost think of it as his name some more.
A similar thing has happened with Jesus Christ.
Or we tend to think of Christ as,as a just an alternative way of saying Jesus.
(12:48):
But when we really dive into it,we find that it's actually a royal term,
and that it means the Jewish kingwho would arise, you know,
in connection with the promises of Davidand who who would have such an enormous importance
that the nations would, in one way or another,either stream to him, or he would lead them
through his law, or that there would bea variety of visions of this in the Old Testament.
(13:11):
But it's also an honorific title.
So coming to recognize, for instance,like that Paul
in first Corinthians 15 3 to 5when he defines the gospel right?
It's not about likeJesus's death is about the Christ.
Okay?
Now Jesus is the Christ, but we have to payattention to that specific use of language.
So recognizing that the gospel was royal,that really kind of brought together
(13:33):
the two things I was thinking about, like,like like faith as allegiance.
And on the other hand,what does it mean to respond to the gospel then?
It means to give loyalty to a king.
So it was really like,as those two kind of pieces of data
sort of spark togetherthat the full blown thesis of, of kind of gospel
allegianceor royal allegiance model, came to fruition.
(13:55):
And then, of course, I had to lookat a lot of evidence to see, is this true?
Like, is this a valid way of, of.
Yeah, I had to look at a lot of linguistic data.
So yes. Anyway, that's that's the basic.
Yeah. Very good.
And that idea of royalty also helped a lot.
You know, growing up,we talked a lot about the kingdom of God.
(14:15):
And the specific focus was oftenon, you know, the ethical teachings
of the sermon on the Mountand so on, which are really good.
But seeing that as, you know, the royal gospelhelp to connect pieces because often we felt
just a little bit of didn't know how to integrate,
(14:35):
you know, the teachings of the kingdomand then the statements about the Christ.
So that helped.
But speaking of the royal gospel,how would you put the gospel in one sentence?
Well, the quickest sentenceI would use if I was to just do
one sentence would be Jesus is the saving king,or Jesus is the rescuing king.
Jesus is the forgiving king
to some way of like I, I'mtrying to capture two ideas in that sentence.
(14:59):
Like on the one hand that he's the king.
All right, that's the basic gospel fact.Jesus is the Christ.
That's that's the most consistentsummary of the gospel in the New Testament.
Look like, what's the gospellike whenever our New Testament authors do it,
they're going to like, say, Jesus isthe Christ is going to be their breakfast summary.
They give I think it is importantto qualify that to describe
what kind of king he is like,that he's a king who brings rescue in some way.
(15:20):
And so that would obviously be trying to highlightstatements like in first Corinthians 15 three
through five where it talks about, like him dyingfor our sins in accordance with the scriptures
or things like that, like that in in that action,like he's, he's in some way rescuing.
But it also would link to other modelsof atonement, right.
Of him winning the victory over death and oversin and over evil spiritual powers.
(15:41):
So it kind of connects to the the CristusVictor model or could be connected in that way.
So I think that's a helpful way of starting,you know, in terms of just giving the most brief
definition of the gospel we can,because it really does like accomplish
like the rescuing or healing dimensionof the gospel, but also like his kingship.
And. Yeah, it goes beyond one sentencea little bit.
(16:04):
You've also done quite a bit of work onwhat is the basic
content of the Bible as,Do you mean the content of the gospel?
Yeah, Yeah. The basic content of the gospel.
Yeah.
So it does go beyond the idea of Jesusjust being the Christ.
Obviously we want to fill that out with a largernarrative and I think it's important to recognize
it is a narrative. It does take a story shape.
And the easiest way to rememberit is to remember that the story shape
(16:26):
is kind of a V shaped pattern, right?
That it's, and that insight is not new to me.
Lots of people have described this trajectory,right?
Where,
if you wanted to break it into three stages,you could maybe talk about the incarnation, you
could talk about the crucifixion, and you couldtalk about the resurrection unto enthronement.
Right. Like that.
That would be a way of kind of like
getting the three parts like he,Jesus begins and glory alongside the father.
(16:47):
Right.And then he's dispatched on a divine mission.
So the father sends the sonto take on human flesh,
and does so in a very specific promise,fulfilling way into the line of David.
So the incarnation is, is central
to the gospel, and it often gets neglected.
It will often in our church traditionsaffirm the gospel,
of course, affirm the incarnation, of course,but we don't.
(17:10):
We often don't see it as part of the gospel.
We'll tend to focus on the cross,which is indeed part of the gospel.
Right?
But, if we miss the incarnation,we begin to miss the logic of the gospel,
which is that Jesus is taking on human fleshnot just to die for our sins,
but also to become the ideal ruler
so that we, and also the ideal human,so we can see what it means to be fully human,
(17:33):
and also
so that once he's crucified and raised to reign,there is a human who's now ruling the cosmos.
Jesus is like taking on human flesh.
And so now, like, cosmos is receiving
the proper image bearing that it was designedto receive, as humans are made
in God's image in order to to bear his imagecorrectly into creation, it's an active idea,
(17:55):
that isn't happening until,
at least in the full sense,until we have the model human, the model king
who then begins to do this,and then we then can get united into that rule,
by our own transformationinto the image of Christ.
So, anyway, yeah, the full gospel involves,obviously the idea that the father sent the son
(18:15):
to take on human flesh, then he dies for our sins,and according to the scriptures, he's
buried, which is really talking about thethe reality of his death.
Right.
And then he's raised on the third day, accordance with the scriptures,
and then he's seen like he'she's witnessed or people see him.
And then after that, then we get the partthat I think gets gets neglected also like
incarnation gets neglected, but enthronementright then he's raised at the right hand
(18:36):
of the father where he begins to rule,and then the father and the son send the spirit.
And then there will be a final judgment.
So the sending of the spirit, right, is kind oflike connect the Trinitarian pieces to the,
the Gospels about the father
who sins the son so that the father and the sonthen can send the spirit.
Yeah. Thank you.
That's very helpful.
(18:57):
So you've talked a lot about baptism
and brought in practices of baptism.
In talking about this as allegiance.
And you describe.
Kind of the pledge
accompanying baptism, as an oath of allegiance.
And I'm curious about that from a couple angles.
(19:21):
One is just a little bit of the details,
like,you know, what's our historical evidence for that?
Do we know much about the specifics of,
you know, what the person is saying,as they're baptized?
And then also,
again, with my Anabaptist sensitivities,
(19:41):
we've had lots of controversies, over,
you know, the things that Jesus saidabout not using oaths and so on.
And so maybe a little bit on the angle,how is the baptismal oath different than the,
you know, when James says, don't swear by anything
or Jesus says, don't use an oath.
(20:03):
to answer your first question and then about likekind of the historical evidence for oaths,
actually the term sacrament term rightmeans oath that we,
we get, you know, the sevenfold sacramentsin certain traditions, right.
Like are connected to, originally to the oath
kind of idea that is, is part of all this.
So in terms of the,
(20:25):
the oath language, specificallyin the New Testament, around baptism,
we would see, for instance, that in First Peterwhere Peter talks about it being a pledge,
that your baptism is a pledge of your goodconscience, toward God,
which I would think would also involvetoward the Christ in God.
We also see it just in the idea
(20:46):
of calling upon the name of the Lord like that,that calling upon Jesus's name in baptism.
The name part like it suggests, like his authoritative position,
like those who have done studies of name languagelike the name above, every name
and all that kind of stuff. Right?
The name part, has to do with reputationand authority,
especially with Jesus's reputation and authorityin the cosmic realm that he is.
(21:10):
He's the highest authority overall.
Principalities and powers.
And so calling upon his namethen, would be our recognition
that he is the supreme power,to whom you owe your allegiance.
So that language,
you can try to trace it back into the OldTestament, but calling upon the name of Yahweh
in the Old Testament of the Lord, right,is also an oath practice.
(21:32):
In in, in certain contexts in the Old Testament.
So, so we see evidence in that direction,and then we see evidence
from early church history, like peoplelike Tertullian who mention, right, that,
that as part of the baptism,that you made a pledge.
So we, we do see evidence from it
that this continued into early Christian history.
(21:55):
So that's the basic evidence, for,there's also a really interesting one.
And this Allen Street,is, Caesar in the sacrament.
His book, helped me clarify.
I was aware of the idea of oathas your allegiance, as an oath.
But he he foregrounded some of this, and, well,I, I don't know, I'd have to dig up the reference,
but there's a reference in acts22 where it talks about Paul,
(22:18):
baptizing, himself, probably like,
to call upon thatand calling upon the name of the Lord.
And, that language there seems to speak of oath.
Probably in context.
Anyway, thereI think is good strong evidence for this idea.
And it connects also to Greco-Roman realitieswhere, troops would,
(22:38):
would swear their loyalty to Caesar'sor to generals
or to a whole bunch of different kind of like,yeah, it connects to the Greco-Roman world
more broadly and makes sense both withinthe Jewish world, the Greco-Roman world.
Anyway, so back to your, your, your
your second question, which was, about, you know, kind of tension
(22:59):
over that within Anabaptist circles about oaths,I don't that's a great question.
And I don't have a ready answer.
I would say that, we first of all,just need to deal with a historical reality,
which would be that, it does seem that early
Christians did use oath of allegiance to Jesusand that this was considered
(23:20):
part of what, what was saving, right?
Calling upon the name of the Lord.
And in that way. Right.
Confessing him with the mouth, was a form of,
I do remember that word is the homologeo.
it is a, it's a word that intends public confession,
for instance,when we have, that in Romans, you know,
(23:41):
in Romans ten 9 to 10 where it talks about,
you know, that, if you confess with your mouth,Jesus is Lord.
And so, yeah, I think we have to on the one hand,
just say that's just how early Christians operatedso they didn't feel the tensions.
We feel.
my hunch would be that that it'sprobably a slightly different register
(24:02):
that whenever,there's a concern with especially oaths,
in the New Testament that it has to doespecially with vows and with, making vows
toward God to fulfill certain kinds of promisesthat you don't have control over.
Like those are contingencies, right?
If I if I in ancient Israel,I was to swear to offer a lamb to the Lord
or something like that, right?
(24:23):
Like I, I don't have the absolute abilityto fulfill that vow.
Right.
I, I may find that I actually, you know, ascircumstances unfold don’t have a lamb to offer.
Even though I had intended thateven though I'd even vowed it.
And in so doing, if I swear, you know, by the Lordhimself that I'm going to fulfill that vow, I.
If I if I don't fulfill that vow, subsequently,I bring the Lord into disrepute.
(24:46):
So like, it's it's a it's a concernwith slandering the name of the Lord.
Right.
If I, so I think it has to doespecially with the legal sphere
and with maybe with, undertaking of vows, would be a lot of the concern around some of that.
And so that when we're swearing our loyaltyto King
Jesus, of course, there is the same concernthat we may deny the Lord someday.
(25:09):
And, and in so doing, we may bring the Lord'sname and offering into disrepute.
And you'll noticethe author of Hebrews is concerned about that,
that, those who and and Peter as well
like that, those who have, started on the path.
Right. Following Jesus.
If they turn back,then they are actually, bringing the Lord's,
(25:30):
sacrifice and offering into disrepute.
Yeah.
I think that's helpful.
And, I mean, one thing I thought about is
if I'm going to make a commitment to youabout something, whatever it might be.
And then I were to invokean oath on that, I'd be saying,
(25:50):
you know,
basically inviting God to judge meif I don't fulfill this thing
for you.
But if I'm talking to God and committing myself
to God, it's all, well,there's automatically it's to God to start with.
So it's automatically
kind of in that oath thing in the sense of
(26:10):
God will judge me if I'm not loyal.
Yeah.
Thanks for those comments.
And again, to come
from a different a different angle.
Especially where you highlight,
you know, faith as allegiance,submitting to the royal king,
(26:32):
that involves bodily things and so on.
And yeah, I've really appreciatedyour emphasis on allegiance.
You know, the circles I've been familiar with,they tend to talk about obedience,
which, closely relates.
But one of the critiques we get,and I think sometimes it's, it's justifiable.
(26:52):
Other times it's not necessarily is that,
you know, we're replacing the.
Replacing a focus on God's action with moralism
or we think kind of a flat moralismor we have kind of our.
You know, our code,the obedience becomes kind of stylized.
Here's the list of thingsthat we expect to qualify as obedience.
(27:15):
And we think, okay, we're demonstrating our faithbecause we're we're checking some of these boxes.
And I feel that critique.
I feel it sometimes from, you know, more Calvinist
friends are like,no, this is about the glory of God or whatever.
I mean, they emphasize obedience toif they're proper Calvinists.
You know, but I feel that
(27:38):
I don't like their way of answering the question.
But yeah, I'm curious if you thought about thatin terms of a kind of a pastoral risk
where we're always talking aboutallegiance and it leads to.
I don't know the wrong kind of human focus.
sure.
I think that's actually one of the strengthsof the allegiance model.
Is that I think it gives biblical languagethat is true.
(27:59):
Like that.
I do think that, the word pistis in Greek,faith means many things.
But one thing it can mean incontext is allegiance.
And I think when we're talkingabout responding to the royal gospel,
that's the best way of summarizing.
I mean, sometimes it means other,sometimes it just means trust
Sometimes it means beliefs, it's a big word, right?
But, I do think as a way of summarizing, it'san accurate way of summarizing to say allegiance.
(28:21):
And I think that is one of the pastoral strengthsof this term is it's a deeply relational term
that, doesn't easily devolveinto kind of a mere works righteousness
or a mere legalism,where you're just, you know, like, okay,
like obedience to the Lord meansI do these x, y, z things.
So if I check them off,that means I'm obedient or loyal.
(28:42):
I think that part one up, one of the strengthsis the relational dimension of that.
Like that.
If I'm going to know what my king wants, I have to
be in relationship with this king continually,
and that, the king may call calldifferent people to different tasks in life.
It could be that, for instance, if,if I was an apostle to, the Jews, like
(29:07):
Paul was right that God might call me to live,
a a law, obedient life,
in ways that other people might identifyas legalistic.
God might call me to keep a kosher tableso that I could be
a good apostle to those Jews.
Do am I saved by keeping a kosher table?
No. Does it risk confusion? Yes. Right.
(29:29):
But nevertheless like to be to be allegianceto the king
might demand that I live a law obedient.
It would always demand thatI fulfill the intent of the law.
But it might demand that I live a awhat other people might perceive
as a legalistic, kind of life.
But also, what if I was called to be an apostleto the Gentiles?
(29:50):
Right.
Then, such strictures may not apply to meand may actually harm my allegiance, my mission.
Right.
To be allegiance to the King for one person,
could be quite different from the other,especially with these matters that are,
what we might consider Adiaphora Like thatare matters of indifference, right?
As the New Testament puts it.
those things aren't matters of indifferencein terms of our obedience to the King.
(30:13):
If we're attuned to to his voice. Right.
It may be actually a matter of of moral failure.
If I was to if I was calledto be an apostle to the Jews, and I shirked that
right by not actually being allegiance,and being lazy about it,
then then I'm actually in disloyalty to my king.
So I do think it helps, actually,with some of these,
(30:36):
these challenges, these pastoral challengesthat we have faced.
And it's not just the Anabaptistsacross the tradition, especially with the
you choose the Protestant tradition.
There has been a struggle with how do we handlethe idea that we need to actually be obedient
to the Lord with questions about works,righteousness and questions about legalism?
Yeah.
So part of the response I hear there is,
(31:00):
is actually personalizing it
and saying not only is this about,
you know what we might call basic righteousness.
Like don't commit adultery.
But also these things that are specific callings
to an individual and it's all wrappedin that allegiance to the King.
(31:20):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, we can think of even moral scenarios like,you know, a Robin Hood
like scenario where, you know,they're in the face of gross injustice.
You know, by the state like that,that it would be actually,
you know, allegiance to the kingto to work on behalf of the poor.
You know, even if that was illegal,it could be, that could be a calling.
Right?
That is an Allegiant calling to the kingthat we have to navigate with our, like,
(31:44):
other kinds of loyalties and statementsin the New Testament where we're called to,
you know, to submit to the state.
But our higher loyalty to Jesus.
Right.
Like, might give us a frameworkfor thinking about civil disobedience.
I do think it's a helpful term.
And, you know, regardless of whether it's helpfulor not, it's true, which I think is,
is the more important.
(32:06):
It's the more it is pastorally useful.
But maybe I at least my conviction is it'spastorally useful because it's in fact true.
So, anyway, that's a little biton the pastoral implications of allegiance.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So, your most recent book, which just came out,
(32:28):
not too long before we're recording this,
Preordered and got the copy called
Beyond the Salvation Wars. And.
I don't know if you didn'twant to step into enough hot button issues before.
You sure did.
With this book.
(32:48):
But you're bold enough
to suggest that the gospel allegiance model,
really gives some tools for,
for thinking, well, and
hopefully moving past some of the disputes
between Protestants and Catholics.
Yeah. Introduce us to a little.
(33:08):
Introduce us to that a little bit.
Yeah.
So, beyond the Salvation Wars,it was a deliberate strategy in publishing,
this material to a degree that I wantedto, have kind of a core model,
where I talked about the central,maybe the central and most
central issues, in this whole conversation,which is what is the gospel?
(33:30):
What is faith?
What is grace? What are works?
And I really deal with those.
In, the first book that you mentioned, salvation
my allegiance alone, but even more in a secondbook that followed that up called Gospel
Allegiance, where I really get into,some more disputed issues.
I do more work on faith, more work on, works
and works of the law, but especially on grace,which I hadn't really treated yet.
(33:53):
I have a whole chapter on that.
So I wanted to kind of securethe foundations of that.
Those kind of core issues,as those are often matters of debate.
And then I wanted to apply it.
See, like, how useful is this to maybe solving, some other longstanding
controversial issues in the church or not solving,but contributing at least to the conversation.
Right. Baptism. How is that saving? Is it right?
(34:17):
Questions about regeneration.
Does that happen?
Like before we can even give faith as, the reformed position
would tend to say, or simultaneous withor is that more a human decision?
Right. How does that work?
Like how like how do we how does that coordinate
with God's grace to larger questions?
And so, yeah, this book, the second bookis dealing with more controversial topics.
(34:41):
And the idea was partly that I would be
I was hoping that the, that, core modelwould get some consensus around it.
And people say this is true,
or if it wasn't, then there would be opportunityto correct untruths there.
And then apply it to these,these more, controversial issues.
So it's creating some good conversation,
(35:01):
so far and,getting a really strong response to it.
There's been, some very strongly positive responses
and maybe predictably,those who are wed to a Calvinist framework.
The Gospel Coalition, for instance,I had a quite honestly, a very inaccurate review,
as they just don'teven get the facts right in the review at all.
(35:24):
It's it's highly misleading
review, but also a quite uncharitable reviewin my judgment.
But it is, it is creating some waves.
Yeah.
So one piece of that,
book was you said you wanted to.
I think you said use the word like re aim.
The Protestant critique of, you know,
(35:47):
Roman Catholic, doctrines of salvation
and by saying, re aim,
I took you to say, you know, there was
something very much right about the Protestantinstinct to,
to critiquethis and something that needed to be critiqued.
But, The classic Protestant wayof framing that in terms of how they think
(36:09):
about justification by faithand what our works of law and so on are.
Misconstruing it a little bit and
re aim.
So yeah, but just elaborate on that a little bit.
Yeah. You're right.
So, you know,part of the project is to, to ask,
both Catholics and Protestantsto rethink how we're talking about salvation.
(36:33):
And the claim isn't here that we, like, like,both groups are totally wrong, or that anything
I'm saying doesn't have some sort of footprintin the tradition somewhere.
I want to be careful.
Like the this is, like, perceived
as some sort of like, you know, out of outfrom left field novel project.
It's more of like a careful reading,hopefully, of,
the Apostolic Witness of what the New Testamentand the early Christians, said about
(36:56):
how we're saved and to, to ask Protestants
and Catholics to consider some of their most,
careful ways of articulatingthat could be more nuanced.
I guess, and that there are waysto get even closer to the truth.
So there's a very much a, a continually reformingkind of project, for the church.
(37:18):
And it's really got a long termaim of unity for the church.
I realize in the short termit may just cause more squabbling.
But in the long run,I do hope that it, is something that will be,
a model that doesn't solveall the Catholic Protestant problems.
But does offer maybe, a truer path forward,
(37:38):
in some very carefully nuanced ways.
So, yeah, it does as part of the book.
It does walkthrough, issues of justification by faith
and one of the problemswithin Protestant Protestantism.
And speaking as a Protestant here, in my judgment, is that, from the very beginning,
Protestantism sort of baked into its DNAthat justification by faith
(38:03):
is the heartbeat of the gospel, and by thatit was intended personal justification by faith.
Luther is like, like worriedthat God is angry about his sins.
He's trying to offer penance, right?
And he finds relief when he realizes thatthe righteousness that God gives is a gift, right?
And that he's justified by faithand by faith alone.
And this for him, is the the definitive good news.
(38:26):
The problem is,when we look at Scripture with with
I think was really a careful, fine tuned comblike look with great care.
Scripture never says that justified personaljustification by faith is part of the gospel.
That that's just not how the Gospel is defined,
the Gospel is a royal narrativeabout what Jesus has done.
It's not about like what we get out of the gospel
(38:47):
other than like it's about whatJesus has accomplished for the group.
Like Jesus accomplished various things for thewhoever happens to be part of his people, right?
He has accomplished forgiveness.
He he has provided the means for justification.
But the idea that we personally get itas part of the gospel,
I don't think actually is part of the gospelwhen we read with care.
So my project on the one handaffirms the Protestant,
(39:10):
the insight that justification by faithis a true doctrine.
That is true.
We are justified by faith.
And I think what if we speak trulyabout how the Bible defines faith?
We could even say faith alone if we if we.
By that we mean somethingthat's more like holistic, like something bodily
or like allegiance.
Right.
But, but at the same time, we could say thatjustification is a benefit
(39:30):
that comes from the gospel, and that it's actually not part of the gospel.
So it's partly about rearranging our,our categories of salvation
so that we can be even more exactingso that we can say that it's true.
Justification by faith is a true doctrine,but that doesn't mean it's part of the gospel.
It means that it's, it's connected to the gospel,through benefit
and through response to the gospel.
(39:51):
But isn't exactly the gospel itself.
Yeah.
Well. And I do want to affirm.
You said it's not intended to be novelin the sense of it wasn't there before and
Yeah.
The things you're sayingdefinitely have that footprint.
I mean, I think I find you doingvery good work to put them together and,
and fill in details and so on.
(40:14):
I think depending on someone'stheological background,
they're going to feel completely novel.
But again, I,
I very much see it as, as building on things,putting pieces together in ways that are,
for at least for me, have been very helpful.
And yeah, while we're talking about, the Protestant critique
(40:37):
and then maybe in termshow you critique Protestantism a little bit,
you argued for a distinctionbetween imputed righteousness, which is the way
kind of classically Protestants have talked about
Jesus.
Righteousness is imputed to the believer
and argued for something different,slightly different,
(41:00):
which you term incorporated righteousness.
Yeah.
So, Really, I'm trying to.
Yeah.
Discuss, different models of how righteousness
is felt to be possessedby the individual believer.
On the one hand, Catholics have favored ideasof what we might call imparted righteousness.
Or secondarily, they might talk about thatas infused righteousness.
(41:24):
And I won't try to get into that right now,because you kind of asked more about imputation.
Protestants have tended to favorideas of imputed righteousness,
which usually, especiallywithin the reformed tradition, for instance,
have involve the ideas of Jesusbeing the righteous one,
that his active obedienceis credited to our account.
In terms of how salvation happens.
(41:46):
So the idea is, I'm not righteous,but I need some righteousness.
Well, how do I get it?
Well, it's actually Jesus's own righteousnessthat then is credited to my account,
and then I am found to be righteous.
And so the problem with imputed righteousness
from a biblical standpointis that it's not how Scripture describes it.
Scripture doesn't say that Jesus's righteousnessgets credited to my account anywhere.
(42:10):
It says, instead that faith is creditedfor righteousness, which is quite different.
Right. That faith is credited for righteousness.
And so whenever we, we
kind of dive into that a little bit, I think thatwhen we see that, that allegiance is,
is the kind of the core idea thereand might help us to see, like,
why is it that we get right with the Kingwhenever we give allegiance to him?
(42:33):
It's because all the benefitsthat attend the gospel become ours.
Whenever we give our loyalty to King Jesus. Right?
That faith is credited for righteousnessbecause we are
we are in right standing with the King.
Whenever we we, we turn away from our previousloyalties and we pledge loyalty to him.
So a better way of modeling,
I argue, that's more carefullyattends to Scripture would be incorporated.
(42:57):
Righteousness,and incorporated righteousness would affirm
that, indeed, we do share in Jesus'srighteousness, but it's not through
the metaphor of like, kind of likeus having a bankrupt personal account, like we're
we're lacking righteousness in Jesus righteousnesskind of getting applied to that account.
But that, that which, which kind of presupposesa certain kind of merit framework
(43:20):
that seems like it's not prominent in Paul,that the
that was, that was accepted by both Catholics andProtestants during the time of the Reformation.
They were both invested in a merit frameworklike that.
I have a certain lack in my account.
I need that that lack taken care of.
And it it invites us to think moreabout corporate metaphors.
(43:40):
That it was more often that like, for instance,
whole peoples were enslavedand that they were ransomed, right?
And that they were then purchasedas a kind of corporate like transaction,
and that then move them into a new reality,
and that it wasn't so much about personal debtbondage or things along those lines.
So, incorporated righteousness fronts, the idea
(44:02):
that there already exists a righteous kingand a righteous body.
Before I come on the scene.
Like what I'm looking for salvationas an individual today, right?
Jesus has already actually provided itlike he's already died, right?
He's already created a justified body,which is this church.
And that what it means then,
to join that justified body meansthat I declare my allegiance to King Jesus.
(44:24):
And then the benefits of Jesus's kingshipthen, are applied to my case.
As I am united to that body,I become part of that body
that is, the justified body.
So we're being incorporated into his benefits
would be the best way, I think, of putting thisfrom a scriptural standpoint.
(44:44):
So there's some, I think, some advantagesto thinking about it that way.
And it's not that these ideas are I'm drawingespecially on Michael Byrd's work on incorporated
righteousness and a lot of other peoplewho have done work on participatory frameworks.
This is something that would be in linewith a lot of that.
But I think that even within those participatoryframeworks, often the,
(45:06):
the idea is especially on individual salvationrather than on corporate salvation first,
and then the individual, like kind of linking into that corporate salvation.
And I'm really trying to front
that idea of a, of there alreadybeing a justified body that we then connect to.
So one of the
heartbeats that comes pretty strongly throughyour book
(45:28):
is the sense that
Christians should be
demonstrating unity
much better than we are,
you know, where are united in, in Jesus.
But we have
fractures among ourselves.
So I just want to raise
(45:49):
just a couple questions, related to that here.
At the end, One, you mentioned in the book that
if you were go beyond Catholics and Protestantsand talks about Eastern Orthodoxy,
that would be an entirely separate conversation.
Do you have any, briefideas of what would be involved in extending it?
(46:12):
There?
You know, it'ssomething I do need to do more work on.
I do some, in my book, Salvationby Allegiance Alone,
where I talk about bearing the imageand, talk about,
the idea, actually, that, humans are made in
the idol of God was the way I titled the chapter,just to kind of shake people up a little bit.
But it's also true like thatthe word image and idol are synonyms.
(46:34):
And what it meansthen for an idol to be placed in the temple.
Right.
Was that it was imbued with, a spirit. Right.
And that then, that was feltto be a contact point between the divine
and the earthly as that personas that, that idol was imbued by the spirit.
And it's something similaris going on in our stories of creation. Right?
(46:55):
That Adam and Eve, when God breathed into themthe breath of life, they're imbued by his spirit
and there are idols in his temple Eden.
In a sense, they're they're images, right,that are that are the presence of God.
Which means a dynamic idea, especially in the NewTestament of imaging God out into creation.
So, eastern traditions have tended to front, image
theology, like very much right they’re into images.
(47:18):
And so I do think there's some connection pointsthere.
And then, the transformation of the imageis, is central
to salvation in the Eastso that we are becoming like King Jesus.
I think that insight is correct.
This has been called, traditionally in the East, Theosis.
I don't know if people like that termor don't like that.
I'm just giving you the traditional term,
some people don't like itbecause it means like becoming.
(47:40):
It could be understood, be becoming God. Right?
That's not the intent. In the East.
The intent is becoming like God, right?
As much as possible,becoming to bear his image fully, which I do think
is deeply, deeply biblical.
And I deal with these themes in salvationby Allegiance alone and in why the gospel?
I deal with it especially in connection withwith glory restoration in my book Why the Gospel?
(48:01):
So I have touched on these themes,but I truthfully, I haven't been in conversation
with eastern scholarship,so I really haven't read the East well.
Like or I mean, I've read some of the churchfathers, but I haven't really read contemporary
eastern, you know, kind of theologians,at least not in any significant way.
I've read a few,but not enough to be in conversation.
So there may be work to be done in that direction.
And I don't know what what I'll discover.
(48:22):
That's, that'll be fun.
Whenever I do get to explore that more.
Exactly. Very good.
Yeah. I think I'll make this one.
The last question,you close your book with advocating
for open communionas a practical step toward unity. And.
(48:43):
Yeah, if you could explain why
and maybe also relate that slightly to,
you know, the responsibilityput on the church in some cases
in the New Testament for excommunication?
Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts there.
yeah. It's one of the trickiest issues.
The issue of excommunication.
I don't know how much I can delve into that.
(49:03):
As it isa, Yeah, there's there's a lot to do with that.
Speaking about the, the open communion idea, is this is something
that is actually most Protestant traditionsdo practice in open communion.
Some do not.
And what I'm trying to, to signal towards
or gesture towardsis that we don't need to think about,
(49:27):
we don't need to think about unitypurely in terms of hierarchy.
Sometimes that's an obstacleor people think like, well, if we're united,
we have to be under the same systemof church governance.
I don't think that's true, actually.
I think we could have quite differentecclesial ecclesial structures.
Right.
And be in communion, if we indeed willwelcome one another at the Lord's Table.
(49:47):
Obviously there are major obstacles to that,right?
As, we have memorialist traditions versus,you know, transubstantiation
versus real presence traditions or,you know, Lutheran con substantiation.
If they'll accept that term.
We have all kinds of, of obstacles.
But the obstacles, quite honestly, are mostlyon, Catholic, Orthodox side.
(50:09):
It's they who won't have communion with us.
Actually, we welcome them to our table
and they will notthey will not actually, welcome us to their table.
I do hope that progress can be madein that direction.
I think that it's a mistaketo to seek unit perfect unity and dogma,
as a boundary for fellowship.
Like we in the long run.
(50:29):
I do hope we have a greater unity in ourin our teachings, right?
That eventually we will.
But, but essentially the Catholic Church would, anathematize those who don't affirm its dogma,
and would not welcome them to the communion tablewith some.
There's there's some movementtoward the east there.
And of course, that's real.
I don't want to I'm oversimplifying,but that's the sensibility.
(50:51):
So I would like to, like to see more, open table.
And yeah, this, of course, gets really trickywith excommunication issues.
If there's somebody who is grossly, sinning in a moral way that, or in some other way
that needs to be rebuked, right, and corrected per
the New Testament standards, we need to do that.
(51:13):
And, one of the great difficulties
is that, it's very hard to do that,
I think across denominationsand things like that.
Right.
Like if I excommunicate somebodyin my local congregation, they can just
walk down the street to a different one.
So, I do think that we have a lotof practical challenges
with excommunication for it to be, functioningin the way the New Testament describes.
(51:38):
Yeah.
Well, thanks a lot for joining me.
I've enjoyed this and
Well,thank you, Marlin. Yeah, I've enjoyed it, too.
both your work and.
Yeah.
The heart the heart for God's peoplethat shows up in your book.
So thank you. Well, I'm glad I.
That is certainly true.
I, I, I love the Lord, and I do hope thisthis work does some good for the church.
(52:04):
thank you for joining me for this conversationwith Professor Bates.
I hope you have found something helpfulas you think about the gospel of the Kingdom.
You may also be interested in an episodeI recorded a few months ago
about the Kingdom and Paul's gospel,where I trace
some of the influences, that helped methink about the gospel of the Kingdom,
(52:27):
including various gueststhat we've had on Anabaptist perspectives.
And youcan find that linked in the description below.
And I think that is one of the pastoral strengthsof this term is it's a deeply relational term
that, doesn't easily devolveinto kind of a mere works righteousness
or a mere legalism,where you're just, you know, like, okay,
like obedience to the Lord meansI do these x, y, z things.
So if I check them off,that means I'm obedient or loyal.
(00:21):
I think that part one up, one of the strengthsis the relational dimension of that.
Like that.
If I'm going to know what my king wants, I have to
be in relationship with this king continually,
and that, the king may call calldifferent people to different tasks in life.
(00:44):
Okay.
So please welcome to Anabaptist perspectives.
Matthew Bates.
And we'll be talking about “Salvationby Allegiance Alone” and,
his ambitious latest book, “Beyond the SalvationWars”.
So, yes. Welcome, Matthew.
And if you would like to give.
Yeah, just a brief introduction to yourself.
That'd be great.
(01:05):
Thank you.
Yeah.
So, Matthew Bates, professor of New Testamentat Northern Seminary.
And that's a more recent gig for me.
I jumped over to northern just this fallafter teaching for 14 years at,
Quincy University, which is a CatholicFranciscan university in Illinois.
And, northern, alongside Nijay Gupta.
(01:26):
And, you might recognize Scott McKnight's name.
He was, in the position previously.
So, excited to be at northernas it's a better theological fit for me,
in terms of, my own, sensibilities.
Northern is a Baptist heritage school,by and large, trans denominational at this point.
I have seven children,and married to the lovely Sarah.
(01:48):
So, I'm busy with family life,but also busy writing as,
I've been, crafting a number of books
along, the, themes of gospel and salvation.
And then beyond that,I did work on early Trinitarian ism.
I wrote a book called The Birth of the Trinity,and then one on, Paul's, method of interpreting
(02:10):
scripture, with the terrible title,The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation.
So that was some of my early career work,that I've done.
But, yeah.
So, been now a professor of, scriptureor theology
for some 15 years, and love what I do.
So that's just the real quick, and,of course, I'm, a disciple of Jesus.
(02:31):
So that's that's pretty foundational.
I don't want to don't want to omit that.
So. Yeah. Thank you.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thank you.
And. Yeah,I was familiar with several people at northern.
So when I saw you were moving there,that also struck my interest.
No, the other books sound fascinating as well,
but we'll stick to the salvationand allegiance themes.
(02:55):
For this interview.
yeah, I found your workthrough listening to another podcast,
and it helped me put some pieces together,especially this theme, you know?
Okay. Salvation by allegiance alone.
That's a provocative title.
We're gonna have to get you to explain that.
But it helped put pieces together for mebecause, you know, growing up
(03:16):
in Anabaptist circles, I had access to teachers
who had good ways of talking about faith.
And what does it mean?
And, you know,it's a whole life, response to God.
But it also had
some of those same things that you identifiedwith where,
one of your books you talked about good work
seemed to play this role of friend and foe.
(03:40):
We're supposed to have them, but
we're ambivalentbecause there's this very great danger
is presented like, well, you gotta be very carefulthat you're not trusting in your works.
And it it could end up,you know, discouraging, serious effort.
And I had come across even thinkingthrough Hebrews and teaching that in Sunday
school was like, okay, faith here,but you can't separate faith. And,
(04:04):
you know, an active response to God's call.
But yeah, your ideas about
allegiance, combining
the beliefs and bodily action, that was,
very helpful as a term.
And it also helped methink about the importance of,
(04:25):
you know, confessingJesus as Lord, saying that publicly,
that kind of united that,with the idea of allegiance,
so maybe you could introduce
that, you know, that themewhich has been a big theme in your work.
And I especially like to know, like,how did you decide you're going to start
writing about it?
(04:47):
You came across, I mean, yeah, the ideaand how it became something.
Was your writing project.
Thank you. Yeah.
So this is part of my own story
I suppose as I was trying to sort these things outwas, I grew up not in Anabaptist circles,
but in kind of just Bible church, like,kind of non-denominational,
fundamentalistleaning kind of Bible church background.
(05:10):
And as part of that, as you mentioned,some of the concern within those circles
was that we trust inJesus and his accomplished work
for us, that we,we see him as the Savior and the Lord.
But we want to be careful with the Lord businessbecause we don't want
to, like, believethat we're saved by submitting to him as Lord.
We need to confess him as Lord.
But but we don't want to be confusedand think that we need to do any works, right?
(05:35):
Or else we might, fall afoulof the principle of justification by faith alone.
So, some confusing tension around that, that I,
you know, I was trying to sort out as,you know, as I grew up in those circles,
and I confess, I didn't find the, frameworksto be very satisfying.
But at the same time,I was interested in other things.
(05:56):
So I was studying physics and scienceand doing doing completely other things.
And, really,it was when I took a New Testament course
when I was in college that,my life was changed, through this course.
I was changed prior to that, but this course was,you know, if we were to talk to our
Wesleyan friends, maybe we would say, you know,as a sort of second act of grace or something
(06:17):
along those lines.
And so that was something that, as I spent
this intense time reading the New Testament,it was in January term intensive course.
So was this a three week course?
But but I did nothing but read a New Testament,
listen to a lecture on New Testament,think about eat, sleep, New Testament.
And that really, actuallykind of shook me up a bit as I
maybe realized I didn't know how to read the Biblevery well.
(06:39):
I thought I did, but I didn't really have any cluehow to read the Bible.
And then beyond that, it kind of just awakenedthe need for me to repent in my life
in a whole bunch of ways, as I was
kind of just really grapplingwith the New Testaments, clear call to obedience,
and to help me kind of moveout of the framework of cheap grace, perhaps,
and, you know, and to get involved in service,I got involved with,
(06:59):
you know, serving in the inner city,in an inner city ministry at that time.
And, so that was a real transitional pointin my life.
And,it helped me then to begin to take the Bible
seriously as a, as an intellectual projectto not just, as, something
that's like God's word that descends from on high,but is something that really would require
(07:20):
the best of my thinking
and the best of my historical thinking, learninghow to think in ancient categories
and how to bridge to modern,you know, through that, contemporary categories.
So anyway, eventually,I was working as an electrical engineer,
after college and eventually went to seminary.
And it was whileI was actually taking my first course in seminary,
(07:41):
we were given the opportunity to read any books
we wished out of, like a 50 book bibliography.
So the professors,it was actually a co-taught course.
They gave us like a list of 50 books.
They say you choose out of these 50,anyone you want to,
any ones you want to do, readand do a little mini reports on or whatever.
We had to do a little book reviews.
So as part of that, I chose N.T.
(08:04):
Wright’s “The Challenge of Jesus”.
And it was when I was reading that that I first
had the inklings of faithin a more allegiance, direction.
Right.
In that book recounts an episode where the Jewish
historian Josephus,is actually leading his people.
So Josephus is, a general of sorts in the waragainst the Romans.
(08:26):
Okay. and things aren't going well.
There's a lot of factionalism. Okay.
So he ends up having to to call some people
to repent and to be allegiannt to him.
And it uses the language of faith,like the it's the same word group,
like it's all it'sactually the adjectival title form of pistos.
It would be the word in Greek,but it's the same root.
(08:46):
Pistis pistueo,All of these are all related terms, right?
In Greek.
So whenever we talk about believing in Jesus,having faith in Jesus, the Pistueo word group,
and it's all interconnected, right, in Greek.
So that got me thinking, right?
Like what what is going on with this language of,
you know, of faith as allegiance?
And is there something more to that
(09:08):
that could be helpfulin, in thinking through Faith works issues?
So just kind ofjust like filed in the back of my mind.
So that's the first, part of the story.
I have moreI could say if you want to continue to probe,
but we'll see maybewhere you want to take us next.
Yeah.
I remember hearing N.T.
Wright mention that same one somewhereand that was clarifying.
I also noticed in, you know,your latest book you've added quite,
(09:31):
quite a few more sources, examples having to do
with emperors and, and so on.
I mean maybe just,
you know, unpackdirectly a little bit more of the,
you know, why use allegiance instead of faith and.
Yeah.
What that adds.
(09:53):
Yeah.
In truth, it's really justa continuation of the story I was telling.
So I'll maybe I'll answer that in storyform a bit.
As I continue to do, graduate work in the NewTestament, I went to University of Notre Dame,
where I was studying under a Lutheran scholar,surprisingly right as you think.
It's like a Catholic framework, which it is.
But, there's obviously a lot of different folks.
(10:15):
And I was writing on Paul'suse of the Old Testament.
And so as part of that,I was looking actually at an overall theory
of Pauline scriptural interpretation,like what we might call a Pauline hermeneutic.
And, Paul really binds together,
his hermeneutical statements with,
with, with statements about the Old Testamentand about his theory of interpretation.
(10:37):
It's all connected to the gospel.
So like some of our, our,our statements about like that
are clearer statementsabout the content of the gospel.
Romans 1:2-4, first Corinthians 15:3-5.
These passages, like in Romansone two through four, Paul talks about the gospel
being pre promised promise in advance, right.
And through the prophets.
(10:57):
And so as we're thinking about like
as I was thinking about that moreand I was reading first Corinthians 15, right.
Where it talks about, you know, Jesus diedfor our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
Like I was really forcedto do very close work on the gospel.
I was working on the gospel in, in detail.
And one of the convictions that emergedas I worked in detail on
(11:18):
it was that the gospel had mostly a royal shape.
That it's about the Christ.
It's about, that, that that term,the Christ, isn't an empty signifier.
We were so used to hearing it,we kind of just read right past it.
Right?
And we just kind of see itas an alternative way of saying, Jesus.
But that's not that's not actually correct.
Scholars who have really studied the term Christwould identify it as an honorific term.
(11:43):
And so, like honorifics in our society,some honorifics might be,
something like, doctor, like,
on the one hand, like, that's, there are a variety of technical
degrees, like, you could have a PhD or an MDor whatever it might be.
And and you've you've accomplished,you know, that degree.
But if someone chooses to refer to youas doctor so-and-so,
(12:05):
that's their way of honoring your accomplishment,right?
It's an honorific.
And so there were similar kinds of thingsin Jesus's world.
And, and so, yeah, one example would be
Judas Maccabee, like, was called The Hammeror this became a title.
Right. The Maccabeeactually means that it means the hammer.
And and similarly, you know, Caesar
(12:25):
Augustus like, whenever,he came to be, like, venerated.
Right.
By, the title of his real name is Octavian.
But by the title, Augustus like that,that's actually an honorific, the Augustus part.
We just use it todayand we almost think of it as his name some more.
A similar thing has happened with Jesus Christ.
Or we tend to think of Christ as,as a just an alternative way of saying Jesus.
(12:48):
But when we really dive into it,we find that it's actually a royal term,
and that it means the Jewish kingwho would arise, you know,
in connection with the promises of Davidand who who would have such an enormous importance
that the nations would, in one way or another,either stream to him, or he would lead them
through his law, or that there would bea variety of visions of this in the Old Testament.
(13:11):
But it's also an honorific title.
So coming to recognize, for instance,like that Paul
in first Corinthians 15 3 to 5when he defines the gospel right?
It's not about likeJesus's death is about the Christ.
Okay?
Now Jesus is the Christ, but we have to payattention to that specific use of language.
So recognizing that the gospel was royal,that really kind of brought together
(13:33):
the two things I was thinking about, like,like like faith as allegiance.
And on the other hand,what does it mean to respond to the gospel then?
It means to give loyalty to a king.
So it was really like,as those two kind of pieces of data
sort of spark togetherthat the full blown thesis of, of kind of gospel
allegianceor royal allegiance model, came to fruition.
(13:55):
And then, of course, I had to lookat a lot of evidence to see, is this true?
Like, is this a valid way of, of.
Yeah, I had to look at a lot of linguistic data.
So yes. Anyway, that's that's the basic.
Yeah. Very good.
And that idea of royalty also helped a lot.
You know, growing up,we talked a lot about the kingdom of God.
(14:15):
And the specific focus was oftenon, you know, the ethical teachings
of the sermon on the Mountand so on, which are really good.
But seeing that as, you know, the royal gospelhelp to connect pieces because often we felt
just a little bit of didn't know how to integrate,
(14:35):
you know, the teachings of the kingdomand then the statements about the Christ.
So that helped.
But speaking of the royal gospel,how would you put the gospel in one sentence?
Well, the quickest sentenceI would use if I was to just do
one sentence would be Jesus is the saving king,or Jesus is the rescuing king.
Jesus is the forgiving king
to some way of like I, I'mtrying to capture two ideas in that sentence.
(14:59):
Like on the one hand that he's the king.
All right, that's the basic gospel fact.Jesus is the Christ.
That's that's the most consistentsummary of the gospel in the New Testament.
Look like, what's the gospellike whenever our New Testament authors do it,
they're going to like, say, Jesus isthe Christ is going to be their breakfast summary.
They give I think it is importantto qualify that to describe
what kind of king he is like,that he's a king who brings rescue in some way.
(15:20):
And so that would obviously be trying to highlightstatements like in first Corinthians 15 three
through five where it talks about, like him dyingfor our sins in accordance with the scriptures
or things like that, like that in in that action,like he's, he's in some way rescuing.
But it also would link to other modelsof atonement, right.
Of him winning the victory over death and oversin and over evil spiritual powers.
(15:41):
So it kind of connects to the the CristusVictor model or could be connected in that way.
So I think that's a helpful way of starting,you know, in terms of just giving the most brief
definition of the gospel we can,because it really does like accomplish
like the rescuing or healing dimensionof the gospel, but also like his kingship.
And. Yeah, it goes beyond one sentencea little bit.
(16:04):
You've also done quite a bit of work onwhat is the basic
content of the Bible as,Do you mean the content of the gospel?
Yeah, Yeah. The basic content of the gospel.
Yeah.
So it does go beyond the idea of Jesusjust being the Christ.
Obviously we want to fill that out with a largernarrative and I think it's important to recognize
it is a narrative. It does take a story shape.
And the easiest way to rememberit is to remember that the story shape
(16:26):
is kind of a V shaped pattern, right?
That it's, and that insight is not new to me.
Lots of people have described this trajectory,right?
Where,
if you wanted to break it into three stages,you could maybe talk about the incarnation, you
could talk about the crucifixion, and you couldtalk about the resurrection unto enthronement.
Right. Like that.
That would be a way of kind of like
getting the three parts like he,Jesus begins and glory alongside the father.
(16:47):
Right.And then he's dispatched on a divine mission.
So the father sends the sonto take on human flesh,
and does so in a very specific promise,fulfilling way into the line of David.
So the incarnation is, is central
to the gospel, and it often gets neglected.
It will often in our church traditionsaffirm the gospel,
of course, affirm the incarnation, of course,but we don't.
(17:10):
We often don't see it as part of the gospel.
We'll tend to focus on the cross,which is indeed part of the gospel.
Right?
But, if we miss the incarnation,we begin to miss the logic of the gospel,
which is that Jesus is taking on human fleshnot just to die for our sins,
but also to become the ideal ruler
so that we, and also the ideal human,so we can see what it means to be fully human,
(17:33):
and also
so that once he's crucified and raised to reign,there is a human who's now ruling the cosmos.
Jesus is like taking on human flesh.
And so now, like, cosmos is receiving
the proper image bearing that it was designedto receive, as humans are made
in God's image in order to to bear his imagecorrectly into creation, it's an active idea,
(17:55):
that isn't happening until,
at least in the full sense,until we have the model human, the model king
who then begins to do this,and then we then can get united into that rule,
by our own transformationinto the image of Christ.
So, anyway, yeah, the full gospel involves,obviously the idea that the father sent the son
(18:15):
to take on human flesh, then he dies for our sins,and according to the scriptures, he's
buried, which is really talking about thethe reality of his death.
Right.
And then he's raised on the third day, accordance with the scriptures,
and then he's seen like he'she's witnessed or people see him.
And then after that, then we get the partthat I think gets gets neglected also like
incarnation gets neglected, but enthronementright then he's raised at the right hand
(18:36):
of the father where he begins to rule,and then the father and the son send the spirit.
And then there will be a final judgment.
So the sending of the spirit, right, is kind oflike connect the Trinitarian pieces to the,
the Gospels about the father
who sins the son so that the father and the sonthen can send the spirit.
Yeah. Thank you.
That's very helpful.
(18:57):
So you've talked a lot about baptism
and brought in practices of baptism.
In talking about this as allegiance.
And you describe.
Kind of the pledge
accompanying baptism, as an oath of allegiance.
And I'm curious about that from a couple angles.
(19:21):
One is just a little bit of the details,
like,you know, what's our historical evidence for that?
Do we know much about the specifics of,
you know, what the person is saying,as they're baptized?
And then also,
again, with my Anabaptist sensitivities,
(19:41):
we've had lots of controversies, over,
you know, the things that Jesus saidabout not using oaths and so on.
And so maybe a little bit on the angle,how is the baptismal oath different than the,
you know, when James says, don't swear by anything
or Jesus says, don't use an oath.
(20:03):
to answer your first question and then about likekind of the historical evidence for oaths,
actually the term sacrament term rightmeans oath that we,
we get, you know, the sevenfold sacramentsin certain traditions, right.
Like are connected to, originally to the oath
kind of idea that is, is part of all this.
So in terms of the,
(20:25):
the oath language, specificallyin the New Testament, around baptism,
we would see, for instance, that in First Peterwhere Peter talks about it being a pledge,
that your baptism is a pledge of your goodconscience, toward God,
which I would think would also involvetoward the Christ in God.
We also see it just in the idea
(20:46):
of calling upon the name of the Lord like that,that calling upon Jesus's name in baptism.
The name part like it suggests, like his authoritative position,
like those who have done studies of name languagelike the name above, every name
and all that kind of stuff. Right?
The name part, has to do with reputationand authority,
especially with Jesus's reputation and authorityin the cosmic realm that he is.
(21:10):
He's the highest authority overall.
Principalities and powers.
And so calling upon his namethen, would be our recognition
that he is the supreme power,to whom you owe your allegiance.
So that language,
you can try to trace it back into the OldTestament, but calling upon the name of Yahweh
in the Old Testament of the Lord, right,is also an oath practice.
(21:32):
In in, in certain contexts in the Old Testament.
So, so we see evidence in that direction,and then we see evidence
from early church history, like peoplelike Tertullian who mention, right, that,
that as part of the baptism,that you made a pledge.
So we, we do see evidence from it
that this continued into early Christian history.
(21:55):
So that's the basic evidence, for,there's also a really interesting one.
And this Allen Street,is, Caesar in the sacrament.
His book, helped me clarify.
I was aware of the idea of oathas your allegiance, as an oath.
But he he foregrounded some of this, and, well,I, I don't know, I'd have to dig up the reference,
but there's a reference in acts22 where it talks about Paul,
(22:18):
baptizing, himself, probably like,
to call upon thatand calling upon the name of the Lord.
And, that language there seems to speak of oath.
Probably in context.
Anyway, thereI think is good strong evidence for this idea.
And it connects also to Greco-Roman realitieswhere, troops would,
(22:38):
would swear their loyalty to Caesar'sor to generals
or to a whole bunch of different kind of like,yeah, it connects to the Greco-Roman world
more broadly and makes sense both withinthe Jewish world, the Greco-Roman world.
Anyway, so back to your, your, your
your second question, which was, about, you know, kind of tension
(22:59):
over that within Anabaptist circles about oaths,I don't that's a great question.
And I don't have a ready answer.
I would say that, we first of all,just need to deal with a historical reality,
which would be that, it does seem that early
Christians did use oath of allegiance to Jesusand that this was considered
(23:20):
part of what, what was saving, right?
Calling upon the name of the Lord.
And in that way. Right.
Confessing him with the mouth, was a form of,
I do remember that word is the homologeo.
it is a, it's a word that intends public confession,
for instance,when we have, that in Romans, you know,
(23:41):
in Romans ten 9 to 10 where it talks about,
you know, that, if you confess with your mouth,Jesus is Lord.
And so, yeah, I think we have to on the one hand,
just say that's just how early Christians operatedso they didn't feel the tensions.
We feel.
my hunch would be that that it'sprobably a slightly different register
(24:02):
that whenever,there's a concern with especially oaths,
in the New Testament that it has to doespecially with vows and with, making vows
toward God to fulfill certain kinds of promisesthat you don't have control over.
Like those are contingencies, right?
If I if I in ancient Israel,I was to swear to offer a lamb to the Lord
or something like that, right?
(24:23):
Like I, I don't have the absolute abilityto fulfill that vow.
Right.
I, I may find that I actually, you know, ascircumstances unfold don’t have a lamb to offer.
Even though I had intended thateven though I'd even vowed it.
And in so doing, if I swear, you know, by the Lordhimself that I'm going to fulfill that vow, I.
If I if I don't fulfill that vow, subsequently,I bring the Lord into disrepute.
(24:46):
So like, it's it's a it's a concernwith slandering the name of the Lord.
Right.
If I, so I think it has to doespecially with the legal sphere
and with maybe with, undertaking of vows, would be a lot of the concern around some of that.
And so that when we're swearing our loyaltyto King
Jesus, of course, there is the same concernthat we may deny the Lord someday.
(25:09):
And, and in so doing, we may bring the Lord'sname and offering into disrepute.
And you'll noticethe author of Hebrews is concerned about that,
that, those who and and Peter as well
like that, those who have, started on the path.
Right. Following Jesus.
If they turn back,then they are actually, bringing the Lord's,
(25:30):
sacrifice and offering into disrepute.
Yeah.
I think that's helpful.
And, I mean, one thing I thought about is
if I'm going to make a commitment to youabout something, whatever it might be.
And then I were to invokean oath on that, I'd be saying,
(25:50):
you know,
basically inviting God to judge meif I don't fulfill this thing
for you.
But if I'm talking to God and committing myself
to God, it's all, well,there's automatically it's to God to start with.
So it's automatically
kind of in that oath thing in the sense of
(26:10):
God will judge me if I'm not loyal.
Yeah.
Thanks for those comments.
And again, to come
from a different a different angle.
Especially where you highlight,
you know, faith as allegiance,submitting to the royal king,
(26:32):
that involves bodily things and so on.
And yeah, I've really appreciatedyour emphasis on allegiance.
You know, the circles I've been familiar with,they tend to talk about obedience,
which, closely relates.
But one of the critiques we get,and I think sometimes it's, it's justifiable.
(26:52):
Other times it's not necessarily is that,
you know, we're replacing the.
Replacing a focus on God's action with moralism
or we think kind of a flat moralismor we have kind of our.
You know, our code,the obedience becomes kind of stylized.
Here's the list of thingsthat we expect to qualify as obedience.
(27:15):
And we think, okay, we're demonstrating our faithbecause we're we're checking some of these boxes.
And I feel that critique.
I feel it sometimes from, you know, more Calvinist
friends are like,no, this is about the glory of God or whatever.
I mean, they emphasize obedience toif they're proper Calvinists.
You know, but I feel that
(27:38):
I don't like their way of answering the question.
But yeah, I'm curious if you thought about thatin terms of a kind of a pastoral risk
where we're always talking aboutallegiance and it leads to.
I don't know the wrong kind of human focus.
sure.
I think that's actually one of the strengthsof the allegiance model.
Is that I think it gives biblical languagethat is true.
(27:59):
Like that.
I do think that, the word pistis in Greek,faith means many things.
But one thing it can mean incontext is allegiance.
And I think when we're talkingabout responding to the royal gospel,
that's the best way of summarizing.
I mean, sometimes it means other,sometimes it just means trust
Sometimes it means beliefs, it's a big word, right?
But, I do think as a way of summarizing, it'san accurate way of summarizing to say allegiance.
(28:21):
And I think that is one of the pastoral strengthsof this term is it's a deeply relational term
that, doesn't easily devolveinto kind of a mere works righteousness
or a mere legalism,where you're just, you know, like, okay,
like obedience to the Lord meansI do these x, y, z things.
So if I check them off,that means I'm obedient or loyal.
(28:42):
I think that part one up, one of the strengthsis the relational dimension of that.
Like that.
If I'm going to know what my king wants, I have to
be in relationship with this king continually,
and that, the king may call calldifferent people to different tasks in life.
It could be that, for instance, if,if I was an apostle to, the Jews, like
(29:07):
Paul was right that God might call me to live,
a a law, obedient life,
in ways that other people might identifyas legalistic.
God might call me to keep a kosher tableso that I could be
a good apostle to those Jews.
Do am I saved by keeping a kosher table?
No. Does it risk confusion? Yes. Right.
(29:29):
But nevertheless like to be to be allegianceto the king
might demand that I live a law obedient.
It would always demand thatI fulfill the intent of the law.
But it might demand that I live a awhat other people might perceive
as a legalistic, kind of life.
But also, what if I was called to be an apostleto the Gentiles?
(29:50):
Right.
Then, such strictures may not apply to meand may actually harm my allegiance, my mission.
Right.
To be allegiance to the King for one person,
could be quite different from the other,especially with these matters that are,
what we might consider Adiaphora Like thatare matters of indifference, right?
As the New Testament puts it.
those things aren't matters of indifferencein terms of our obedience to the King.
(30:13):
If we're attuned to to his voice. Right.
It may be actually a matter of of moral failure.
If I was to if I was calledto be an apostle to the Jews, and I shirked that
right by not actually being allegiance,and being lazy about it,
then then I'm actually in disloyalty to my king.
So I do think it helps, actually,with some of these,
(30:36):
these challenges, these pastoral challengesthat we have faced.
And it's not just the Anabaptistsacross the tradition, especially with the
you choose the Protestant tradition.
There has been a struggle with how do we handlethe idea that we need to actually be obedient
to the Lord with questions about works,righteousness and questions about legalism?
Yeah.
So part of the response I hear there is,
(31:00):
is actually personalizing it
and saying not only is this about,
you know what we might call basic righteousness.
Like don't commit adultery.
But also these things that are specific callings
to an individual and it's all wrappedin that allegiance to the King.
(31:20):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, we can think of even moral scenarios like,you know, a Robin Hood
like scenario where, you know,they're in the face of gross injustice.
You know, by the state like that,that it would be actually,
you know, allegiance to the kingto to work on behalf of the poor.
You know, even if that was illegal,it could be, that could be a calling.
Right?
That is an Allegiant calling to the kingthat we have to navigate with our, like,
(31:44):
other kinds of loyalties and statementsin the New Testament where we're called to,
you know, to submit to the state.
But our higher loyalty to Jesus.
Right.
Like, might give us a frameworkfor thinking about civil disobedience.
I do think it's a helpful term.
And, you know, regardless of whether it's helpfulor not, it's true, which I think is,
is the more important.
(32:06):
It's the more it is pastorally useful.
But maybe I at least my conviction is it'spastorally useful because it's in fact true.
So, anyway, that's a little biton the pastoral implications of allegiance.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So, your most recent book, which just came out,
(32:28):
not too long before we're recording this,
Preordered and got the copy called
Beyond the Salvation Wars. And.
I don't know if you didn'twant to step into enough hot button issues before.
You sure did.
With this book.
(32:48):
But you're bold enough
to suggest that the gospel allegiance model,
really gives some tools for,
for thinking, well, and
hopefully moving past some of the disputes
between Protestants and Catholics.
Yeah. Introduce us to a little.
(33:08):
Introduce us to that a little bit.
Yeah.
So, beyond the Salvation Wars,it was a deliberate strategy in publishing,
this material to a degree that I wantedto, have kind of a core model,
where I talked about the central,maybe the central and most
central issues, in this whole conversation,which is what is the gospel?
(33:30):
What is faith?
What is grace? What are works?
And I really deal with those.
In, the first book that you mentioned, salvation
my allegiance alone, but even more in a secondbook that followed that up called Gospel
Allegiance, where I really get into,some more disputed issues.
I do more work on faith, more work on, works
and works of the law, but especially on grace,which I hadn't really treated yet.
(33:53):
I have a whole chapter on that.
So I wanted to kind of securethe foundations of that.
Those kind of core issues,as those are often matters of debate.
And then I wanted to apply it.
See, like, how useful is this to maybe solving, some other longstanding
controversial issues in the church or not solving,but contributing at least to the conversation.
Right. Baptism. How is that saving? Is it right?
(34:17):
Questions about regeneration.
Does that happen?
Like before we can even give faith as, the reformed position
would tend to say, or simultaneous withor is that more a human decision?
Right. How does that work?
Like how like how do we how does that coordinate
with God's grace to larger questions?
And so, yeah, this book, the second bookis dealing with more controversial topics.
(34:41):
And the idea was partly that I would be
I was hoping that the, that, core modelwould get some consensus around it.
And people say this is true,
or if it wasn't, then there would be opportunityto correct untruths there.
And then apply it to these,these more, controversial issues.
So it's creating some good conversation,
(35:01):
so far and,getting a really strong response to it.
There's been, some very strongly positive responses
and maybe predictably,those who are wed to a Calvinist framework.
The Gospel Coalition, for instance,I had a quite honestly, a very inaccurate review,
as they just don'teven get the facts right in the review at all.
(35:24):
It's it's highly misleading
review, but also a quite uncharitable reviewin my judgment.
But it is, it is creating some waves.
Yeah.
So one piece of that,
book was you said you wanted to.
I think you said use the word like re aim.
The Protestant critique of, you know,
(35:47):
Roman Catholic, doctrines of salvation
and by saying, re aim,
I took you to say, you know, there was
something very much right about the Protestantinstinct to,
to critiquethis and something that needed to be critiqued.
But, The classic Protestant wayof framing that in terms of how they think
(36:09):
about justification by faithand what our works of law and so on are.
Misconstruing it a little bit and
re aim.
So yeah, but just elaborate on that a little bit.
Yeah. You're right.
So, you know,part of the project is to, to ask,
both Catholics and Protestantsto rethink how we're talking about salvation.
(36:33):
And the claim isn't here that we, like, like,both groups are totally wrong, or that anything
I'm saying doesn't have some sort of footprintin the tradition somewhere.
I want to be careful.
Like the this is, like, perceived
as some sort of like, you know, out of outfrom left field novel project.
It's more of like a careful reading,hopefully, of,
the Apostolic Witness of what the New Testamentand the early Christians, said about
(36:56):
how we're saved and to, to ask Protestants
and Catholics to consider some of their most,
careful ways of articulatingthat could be more nuanced.
I guess, and that there are waysto get even closer to the truth.
So there's a very much a, a continually reformingkind of project, for the church.
(37:18):
And it's really got a long termaim of unity for the church.
I realize in the short termit may just cause more squabbling.
But in the long run,I do hope that it, is something that will be,
a model that doesn't solveall the Catholic Protestant problems.
But does offer maybe, a truer path forward,
(37:38):
in some very carefully nuanced ways.
So, yeah, it does as part of the book.
It does walkthrough, issues of justification by faith
and one of the problemswithin Protestant Protestantism.
And speaking as a Protestant here, in my judgment, is that, from the very beginning,
Protestantism sort of baked into its DNAthat justification by faith
(38:03):
is the heartbeat of the gospel, and by thatit was intended personal justification by faith.
Luther is like, like worriedthat God is angry about his sins.
He's trying to offer penance, right?
And he finds relief when he realizes thatthe righteousness that God gives is a gift, right?
And that he's justified by faithand by faith alone.
And this for him, is the the definitive good news.
(38:26):
The problem is,when we look at Scripture with with
I think was really a careful, fine tuned comblike look with great care.
Scripture never says that justified personaljustification by faith is part of the gospel.
That that's just not how the Gospel is defined,
the Gospel is a royal narrativeabout what Jesus has done.
It's not about like what we get out of the gospel
(38:47):
other than like it's about whatJesus has accomplished for the group.
Like Jesus accomplished various things for thewhoever happens to be part of his people, right?
He has accomplished forgiveness.
He he has provided the means for justification.
But the idea that we personally get itas part of the gospel,
I don't think actually is part of the gospelwhen we read with care.
So my project on the one handaffirms the Protestant,
(39:10):
the insight that justification by faithis a true doctrine.
That is true.
We are justified by faith.
And I think what if we speak trulyabout how the Bible defines faith?
We could even say faith alone if we if we.
By that we mean somethingthat's more like holistic, like something bodily
or like allegiance.
Right.
But, but at the same time, we could say thatjustification is a benefit
(39:30):
that comes from the gospel, and that it's actually not part of the gospel.
So it's partly about rearranging our,our categories of salvation
so that we can be even more exactingso that we can say that it's true.
Justification by faith is a true doctrine,but that doesn't mean it's part of the gospel.
It means that it's, it's connected to the gospel,through benefit
and through response to the gospel.
(39:51):
But isn't exactly the gospel itself.
Yeah.
Well. And I do want to affirm.
You said it's not intended to be novelin the sense of it wasn't there before and
Yeah.
The things you're sayingdefinitely have that footprint.
I mean, I think I find you doingvery good work to put them together and,
and fill in details and so on.
(40:14):
I think depending on someone'stheological background,
they're going to feel completely novel.
But again, I,
I very much see it as, as building on things,putting pieces together in ways that are,
for at least for me, have been very helpful.
And yeah, while we're talking about, the Protestant critique
(40:37):
and then maybe in termshow you critique Protestantism a little bit,
you argued for a distinctionbetween imputed righteousness, which is the way
kind of classically Protestants have talked about
Jesus.
Righteousness is imputed to the believer
and argued for something different,slightly different,
(41:00):
which you term incorporated righteousness.
Yeah.
So, Really, I'm trying to.
Yeah.
Discuss, different models of how righteousness
is felt to be possessedby the individual believer.
On the one hand, Catholics have favored ideasof what we might call imparted righteousness.
Or secondarily, they might talk about thatas infused righteousness.
(41:24):
And I won't try to get into that right now,because you kind of asked more about imputation.
Protestants have tended to favorideas of imputed righteousness,
which usually, especiallywithin the reformed tradition, for instance,
have involve the ideas of Jesusbeing the righteous one,
that his active obedienceis credited to our account.
In terms of how salvation happens.
(41:46):
So the idea is, I'm not righteous,but I need some righteousness.
Well, how do I get it?
Well, it's actually Jesus's own righteousnessthat then is credited to my account,
and then I am found to be righteous.
And so the problem with imputed righteousness
from a biblical standpointis that it's not how Scripture describes it.
Scripture doesn't say that Jesus's righteousnessgets credited to my account anywhere.
(42:10):
It says, instead that faith is creditedfor righteousness, which is quite different.
Right. That faith is credited for righteousness.
And so whenever we, we
kind of dive into that a little bit, I think thatwhen we see that, that allegiance is,
is the kind of the core idea thereand might help us to see, like,
why is it that we get right with the Kingwhenever we give allegiance to him?
(42:33):
It's because all the benefitsthat attend the gospel become ours.
Whenever we give our loyalty to King Jesus. Right?
That faith is credited for righteousnessbecause we are
we are in right standing with the King.
Whenever we we, we turn away from our previousloyalties and we pledge loyalty to him.
So a better way of modeling,
I argue, that's more carefullyattends to Scripture would be incorporated.
(42:57):
Righteousness,and incorporated righteousness would affirm
that, indeed, we do share in Jesus'srighteousness, but it's not through
the metaphor of like, kind of likeus having a bankrupt personal account, like we're
we're lacking righteousness in Jesus righteousnesskind of getting applied to that account.
But that, that which, which kind of presupposesa certain kind of merit framework
(43:20):
that seems like it's not prominent in Paul,that the
that was, that was accepted by both Catholics andProtestants during the time of the Reformation.
They were both invested in a merit frameworklike that.
I have a certain lack in my account.
I need that that lack taken care of.
And it it invites us to think moreabout corporate metaphors.
(43:40):
That it was more often that like, for instance,
whole peoples were enslavedand that they were ransomed, right?
And that they were then purchasedas a kind of corporate like transaction,
and that then move them into a new reality,
and that it wasn't so much about personal debtbondage or things along those lines.
So, incorporated righteousness fronts, the idea
(44:02):
that there already exists a righteous kingand a righteous body.
Before I come on the scene.
Like what I'm looking for salvationas an individual today, right?
Jesus has already actually provided itlike he's already died, right?
He's already created a justified body,which is this church.
And that what it means then,
to join that justified body meansthat I declare my allegiance to King Jesus.
(44:24):
And then the benefits of Jesus's kingshipthen, are applied to my case.
As I am united to that body,I become part of that body
that is, the justified body.
So we're being incorporated into his benefits
would be the best way, I think, of putting thisfrom a scriptural standpoint.
(44:44):
So there's some, I think, some advantagesto thinking about it that way.
And it's not that these ideas are I'm drawingespecially on Michael Byrd's work on incorporated
righteousness and a lot of other peoplewho have done work on participatory frameworks.
This is something that would be in linewith a lot of that.
But I think that even within those participatoryframeworks, often the,
(45:06):
the idea is especially on individual salvationrather than on corporate salvation first,
and then the individual, like kind of linking into that corporate salvation.
And I'm really trying to front
that idea of a, of there alreadybeing a justified body that we then connect to.
So one of the
heartbeats that comes pretty strongly throughyour book
(45:28):
is the sense that
Christians should be
demonstrating unity
much better than we are,
you know, where are united in, in Jesus.
But we have
fractures among ourselves.
So I just want to raise
(45:49):
just a couple questions, related to that here.
At the end, One, you mentioned in the book that
if you were go beyond Catholics and Protestantsand talks about Eastern Orthodoxy,
that would be an entirely separate conversation.
Do you have any, briefideas of what would be involved in extending it?
(46:12):
There?
You know, it'ssomething I do need to do more work on.
I do some, in my book, Salvationby Allegiance Alone,
where I talk about bearing the imageand, talk about,
the idea, actually, that, humans are made in
the idol of God was the way I titled the chapter,just to kind of shake people up a little bit.
But it's also true like thatthe word image and idol are synonyms.
(46:34):
And what it meansthen for an idol to be placed in the temple.
Right.
Was that it was imbued with, a spirit. Right.
And that then, that was feltto be a contact point between the divine
and the earthly as that personas that, that idol was imbued by the spirit.
And it's something similaris going on in our stories of creation. Right?
(46:55):
That Adam and Eve, when God breathed into themthe breath of life, they're imbued by his spirit
and there are idols in his temple Eden.
In a sense, they're they're images, right,that are that are the presence of God.
Which means a dynamic idea, especially in the NewTestament of imaging God out into creation.
So, eastern traditions have tended to front, image
theology, like very much right they’re into images.
(47:18):
And so I do think there's some connection pointsthere.
And then, the transformation of the imageis, is central
to salvation in the Eastso that we are becoming like King Jesus.
I think that insight is correct.
This has been called, traditionally in the East, Theosis.
I don't know if people like that termor don't like that.
I'm just giving you the traditional term,
some people don't like itbecause it means like becoming.
(47:40):
It could be understood, be becoming God. Right?
That's not the intent. In the East.
The intent is becoming like God, right?
As much as possible,becoming to bear his image fully, which I do think
is deeply, deeply biblical.
And I deal with these themes in salvationby Allegiance alone and in why the gospel?
I deal with it especially in connection withwith glory restoration in my book Why the Gospel?
(48:01):
So I have touched on these themes,but I truthfully, I haven't been in conversation
with eastern scholarship,so I really haven't read the East well.
Like or I mean, I've read some of the churchfathers, but I haven't really read contemporary
eastern, you know, kind of theologians,at least not in any significant way.
I've read a few,but not enough to be in conversation.
So there may be work to be done in that direction.
And I don't know what what I'll discover.
(48:22):
That's, that'll be fun.
Whenever I do get to explore that more.
Exactly. Very good.
Yeah. I think I'll make this one.
The last question,you close your book with advocating
for open communionas a practical step toward unity. And.
(48:43):
Yeah, if you could explain why
and maybe also relate that slightly to,
you know, the responsibilityput on the church in some cases
in the New Testament for excommunication?
Yeah. I'd love to hear your thoughts there.
yeah. It's one of the trickiest issues.
The issue of excommunication.
I don't know how much I can delve into that.
(49:03):
As it isa, Yeah, there's there's a lot to do with that.
Speaking about the, the open communion idea, is this is something
that is actually most Protestant traditionsdo practice in open communion.
Some do not.
And what I'm trying to, to signal towards
or gesture towardsis that we don't need to think about,
(49:27):
we don't need to think about unitypurely in terms of hierarchy.
Sometimes that's an obstacleor people think like, well, if we're united,
we have to be under the same systemof church governance.
I don't think that's true, actually.
I think we could have quite differentecclesial ecclesial structures.
Right.
And be in communion, if we indeed willwelcome one another at the Lord's Table.
(49:47):
Obviously there are major obstacles to that,right?
As, we have memorialist traditions versus,you know, transubstantiation
versus real presence traditions or,you know, Lutheran con substantiation.
If they'll accept that term.
We have all kinds of, of obstacles.
But the obstacles, quite honestly, are mostlyon, Catholic, Orthodox side.
(50:09):
It's they who won't have communion with us.
Actually, we welcome them to our table
and they will notthey will not actually, welcome us to their table.
I do hope that progress can be madein that direction.
I think that it's a mistaketo to seek unit perfect unity and dogma,
as a boundary for fellowship.
Like we in the long run.
(50:29):
I do hope we have a greater unity in ourin our teachings, right?
That eventually we will.
But, but essentially the Catholic Church would, anathematize those who don't affirm its dogma,
and would not welcome them to the communion tablewith some.
There's there's some movementtoward the east there.
And of course, that's real.
I don't want to I'm oversimplifying,but that's the sensibility.
(50:51):
So I would like to, like to see more, open table.
And yeah, this, of course, gets really trickywith excommunication issues.
If there's somebody who is grossly, sinning in a moral way that, or in some other way
that needs to be rebuked, right, and corrected per
the New Testament standards, we need to do that.
(51:13):
And, one of the great difficulties
is that, it's very hard to do that,
I think across denominationsand things like that.
Right.
Like if I excommunicate somebodyin my local congregation, they can just
walk down the street to a different one.
So, I do think that we have a lotof practical challenges
with excommunication for it to be, functioningin the way the New Testament describes.
(51:38):
Yeah.
Well, thanks a lot for joining me.
I've enjoyed this and
Well,thank you, Marlin. Yeah, I've enjoyed it, too.
both your work and.
Yeah.
The heart the heart for God's peoplethat shows up in your book.
So thank you. Well, I'm glad I.
That is certainly true.
I, I, I love the Lord, and I do hope thisthis work does some good for the church.
(52:04):
thank you for joining me for this conversationwith Professor Bates.
I hope you have found something helpfulas you think about the gospel of the Kingdom.
You may also be interested in an episodeI recorded a few months ago
about the Kingdom and Paul's gospel,where I trace
some of the influences, that helped methink about the gospel of the Kingdom,
(52:27):
including various gueststhat we've had on Anabaptist perspectives.
And youcan find that linked in the description below.
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