Matthew Bates in the Hot Seat: A 5-Part Interview

Not since the Reformation has there been a challenge to the five solas as persistent and potentially persuasive as Matthew W. Bates’ third book, Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017). This book has generated a groundswell of controversy that continues to build as more theologians, pastors, and laypeople are exposed to Bates’ nuanced proposal.

Bates’ thesis, at once radical and obvious, is this: in the New Testament writings, the Greek word pistis, or “faith,” is better translated as “allegiance.” He does not intend for every instance of pistis in our Bibles to be retranslated, but for him, there are specific contexts, especially in Paul and the Gospels, in which the only reasonable rendering is “allegiance,” as in the kind of fidelity or loyalty that one would give to a king.

Since Jesus is now the reigning King of the Cosmos, the pistis of believers, directed to Jesus, can only legitimately be explained as the proper attitude of loyal subjects before their sovereign ruler.

Part 1: Salvation by Faith, or Allegiance Alone? Matthew Bates in the Hot Seat

Matt, it’s a great pleasure to have you as our first guest author on the relaunched Logos Academic Blog. Although we have done a few author interviews here in the past, this is our first of the “Hot Seat” series. I hope this doesn’t make you nervous, even though perhaps you should be.

Me… nervous? No, of course not. /breathes twenty-six times into a paper bag/ Feeling fine. I just like how brown bags smell. Golly it is warm in here. Could you open a window? Thanks. I’m grateful for the invitation. It’s an honor and a pleasure.

It strikes me as both commendably bold and yet disconcertingly dangerous that you have written a book that attempts to bridge the typically disparate spheres of everyday Christians and biblical scholars. Why didn’t you simply write this book for one or either audience, or perhaps begin with a technical monograph full of footnotes, and then follow up with a popular version of your thesis?

Salvation by Allegiance Alone is a book about the things that matter most—faith, the gospel, and salvation. So, from the get-go I was certain that this should be a book for scholars, students, pastors, and pew-sitters. However when I was writing I kept wondering, Can I deliver?

I feared that it would prove impossible to write for such a varied audience. Scholars do not want to wade through basic information that everyone in the field already knows. Packed prose and footnotes are preferred. Proposed advances should be modest within a carefully delimited scope.

Meanwhile the ordinary Christian wants nearly the opposite: personal stories illustrating the essentials, spritely prose, and practical advice. Footnotes are the kiss of death. Students and pastors form the middle ground but have unique interests and needs. When in doubt I kept the middle in mind.

Yet I recognized that in trying to make this book all things for all people, it would prove fully satisfying to no one. Despite the hazards, I jumped. As the Apostle Paul reminds us, it is not always a bad idea to seek to become all things to all people—especially for the sake of the gospel (1 Cor. 9:22-23).

As the final product has rolled off the press, I have felt emotionally overwhelmed. The quality and quantity of initial feedback has confirmed to me that it was worth the effort.

I am convinced that both church and academy need to rethink faith, the gospel, and salvation. I hope my book proves to be a thoughtful entry point.

In your introduction, you mention the nearly 10 years of development and composition of your proposal in Allegiance. Can you pinpoint a specific moment in time or period in your life that acted as the catalyst for the ideas you write about in the book, and what changes have occurred, for better or worse, in the issues that stimulated this work?

About half the creative energy for Allegiance came from material that I studied when I was an M.C.S. student at Regent College in 2001-2004. I read N. T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus, and quickly followed that up with Wright’s larger works, The New Testament and the People of God and Jesus and the Victory of God.

Wright helped me recognize the degree to which my ideas of faith, sin, repentance, works, “heaven,” the kingdom of God, and the like were constructed through sixteenth-century Protestant categories rather than first-century.

My PhD coursework and candidacy exams at Notre Dame gave me the opportunity to continue to learn more about Second Temple Judaism and the New Perspective on Paul. But this involved deepening rather than recalibrating.

A second breakthrough came when I was working on my PhD dissertation. My dissertation focused on Paul as an interpreter of Scripture. I performed spadework on several passages in which Paul gives the content of the gospel, especially Romans 1:2-4 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-5. I noticed how much the gospel centers on Jesus as a sovereign ruler.

At the same time I began to reflect on the comparative neglect of this motif in popular and academic descriptions of the gospel. But in terms of my writing, I couldn’t pursue the matter as I needed to finish my PhD study first. The dissertation was eventually published as The Hermeneutics of the Apostolic Proclamation (Baylor University Press, 2012).

Meanwhile my first book had opened up another fruitful area of inquiry. I had determined that the Apostle Paul used a technique to interpret the Old Testament known as “prosopological exegesis.” This technique was somewhat known among studies of early church Fathers, but biblical scholars had not ever (to the best of my knowledge) clearly identified its use in the New Testament.

This technique involves finding surprising speakers in the Old Testament, and I felt that it had underappreciated Trinitarian implications. So even though Allegiance was on my heart, I felt my second monograph needed to be The Birth of the Trinity (Oxford University Press, 2015).

After finishing The Birth I was free to pursue the topic that had first intrigued me as an M.C.S. student. Final pieces of my “allegiance alone” thesis were put into place as I conducted research and wrote. I’m sure I’ll have occasion to discuss some of the more important scholarly influences as our interview continues.

You are, by any account, an extremely busy academic. You have a family, you are active in your church, you teach a heavy class load each year, you manage your own interview podcast, you have a blog, and you have published and continue to publish articles in some of the top-tier peer-reviewed journals in the world. How do you approach the craft of research and writing with such a busy schedule, especially for a book that requires engagement with both popular Christianity and elite biblical scholarship?

My life is indeed overflowing. I’m very grateful! However, you short-changed me in your question. I don’t merely “have a family.” For I have six—yes, that’s right—six (!) children. Any time-management skills I possess are mostly owed to my wife, who is a saint. Literally.

Okay, I get a little credit, because I am usually at the office working by 6:15am when I could be sleeping. So I do get an early start. During the semester I teach several mornings a week, but my most productive writing time occurs early in the morning on the days when I teach only in the afternoon. Large swaths of my summer break have also been devoted to writing.

Since it is hard to squeeze in research between teaching and family, the secret for me is caring—deeply and passionately caring—about the topics that I choose to research. If I am not convinced that the topic utterly matters, I’ve found that I’ll never find the motivation. So I can usually tell if a future project is a good one by touching a thermometer to my heart.

As to how I approach the craft, I am an investigator. I don’t know the answer yet when I am writing, but I have caught the scent of something tantalizing. I need to figure out how and why these ideas fit together. Writing helps me ferret out the answers and to clarify them—for myself and hopefully for others too.

When approaching a topic, and even when writing certain portions, I ask myself, Why do I care about this? Why would anyone care about this? I’ve found this helps keep me from being a dreadful boor, if not to others, well, then, at least to myself!

Good research writing shares the mystery, has a plot, and tells an evidence-based story.

Your personal journey of faith is very interesting, beginning in a KJV-only church (which you speak about with great affection and felicity) to doing a PhD at Notre Dame and now teaching in a Roman Catholic university. You mention your ecumenical practice of praying the Hours every morning with fellow faculty (and students?). Prayer is an essential component of the Catholic scholarly tradition, and I’m curious to know how prayer functions in your vocation as a writer and scholar.

It would take too much time, and we’d probably need several counselors (just kidding… maybe…), if I were to tell my whole story. Suffice it to say that although my journey out of hyper-fundamentalism has involved intellectual and spiritual wrestling, much as with Jacob’s battle with the mysterious angel, I’ve never found God to have unduly withheld his blessing.

Some who have made this journey are bitter. I’m not. I am grateful that early in my life numerous folks cared enough to share about Jesus with me, even if some of the packaging surrounding those ideas was goofy. I learned to love Jesus and the Bible, even if the strong-anti-intellectualism and fear of science within fundamentalism was confusing. Taking a B.S. degree in physics helped me sort some of this out.

Meanwhile God provided me with the right mentors at the right time—faithful Christians who were serious scholars. Professors Roger Mohrlang and Jerry Sittser at Whitworth University, Professors Gordon Fee, Rikk Watts, and Iain Provan at Regent College, and Professors David Aune, Gary Anderson, and Brian Daley at Notre Dame. More could be mentioned, but these were especially important to my journey.

Today I have a heartfelt affection for the center of the Christian tradition. I still hold what is usually termed a “high view” of Scripture as God’s inspired Word, but I feel like I have made progress toward integrating that with other fields of inquiry.

I still have lots of questions, but unlike within fundamentalism, I see further learning as a delight rather than a nagging worry that the intellectual center might not hold. As a Protestant it has been very enriching to study and serve as a professor in a Catholic context, especially as the Catholic theological tradition has often excelled at holding together faith and reason.

As to my teaching and writing vocation—which is really just part of my larger attempt at being an ordinary Christian disciple—I try to pray each day. Sometimes this is private, sometimes corporate as I join students and faculty in praying the morning office liturgically.

Not going to lie to you and say that I am always on top of my prayer game. Striving to do better there and in all aspects of my service to Jesus the King. Hopefully it is two steps forward and only a step-and-a-half back.

The claims that you make in Allegiance are strong, yet they are obviously driven by a heart deeply concerned for the Western church. Do you hope that your book, and its identification of allegiance as the missing component of Christian life and experience, will be the impetus for a new reformation of sorts, perhaps even a counter reformation that brings Protestants and Roman Catholics closer to a point of reconciliation? If you had your way, what would this New Reformation look like, how long would it take to reset the parameters of Christianity and the global church, and upon what doctrinal and practical pillars would it stand?

A new Reformation? Wow, that sounds ambitious. And I can’t decide if it sounds terrifying or exhilarating as I contemplate all the perils and possibilities of what a new (or counter?) Reformation might look like today. And I do spout witticisms, engage in polemics, and drink beer, but not nearly as well or as much as would be necessary for me to play the role of a Luther!

But inasmuch as the Reformation fractured the church, yes, I dream that my book will stimulate unity. I think this dream of unity is something all the faithful have burned into their hearts. Jesus prayed for it, so we know that God desires his church to be one.

“One” does not necessarily entail a hierarchical unity under a single leadership structure—other possible modes of unity must be considered too—although I would contend that true unity must ultimately be visible to the world.

As our conversation unfolds over the next several sessions, I anticipate we’ll be able to speak more about what doctrinal and practical matters could help the church move in the right direction.

Part 2: Pistis as “Allegiance”?

Of the Reformation solas, only yours seems completely dependent upon human agency. All the rest are due to God’s agency, whether that be scriptura, gratia, doxa, fides (as a gift from God, Eph 2:8), or Christos. How would you respond to the criticism that your sixth sola fails to meet the standard of the others due to misplaced agency?

First, I am not arguing for a sixth sola, but primarily seeking to advocate for a truer understanding of sola fide (by faith alone). My exploration seeks to uphold the solas while seeking greater precision with respect to their true biblical boundaries. I do conclude that sola gratia (by grace alone) and soli Deo gloria (for the glory of God alone) need to be nuanced in particular ways in order to stay faithful to the biblical vision. This is because grace and boasting have both been misunderstood with regard to works (of Law). As far as I am aware, I am not seeking to add distinctive shades of meaning with regard to Christ alone or Scripture alone.

Second, in Salvation by Allegiance Alone I never state that pistis is solely dependent on human agency rather than God’s agency. In fact, quite the opposite:

Grace in the sense of God’s prior activity precedes ‘faith,’ for God first had to bring about the good news before it could be proclaimed and before allegiance to Jesus as Lord could be confessed (Rom. 10:9–14). Moreover, God is the creator, and every good gift comes from God (James 1:17), so we must affirm God as the ultimate source of ‘faith’ and all else. (p. 105)

What is being claimed is that faith, enabled by grace, is the only contribution that we make to our salvation. (p. 122)

So I do assert that in some sense the ability to render allegiance to Jesus the king is either due to God’s agency, or is at least a gift bequeathed to our libertarian agency in the wake of the Christ-event. Yet since Scripture puts far more emphasis on our agency with regard to pistis than God’s agency, throughout the book I frequently speak about our own human agency in giving pistis to Jesus the king. In so doing I am trying to give the same weight of emphasis that we find in Scripture. Yet I deliberately leave the nature of God’s agency with respect to our own underdetermined.

Although a full discussion would take us too far afield (and beyond my real competency), in terms of philosophical theology, this discussion pertains to whether humans have libertarian free will or merely compatabilist free will. Libertarians stress that, although constrained by circumstances, humans are not controlled by circumstances, but can genuinely choose among multiple options, because God grants them primary causal agency as a gift. Meanwhile for compatibilists, humans freely choose what they desire, while all desires, circumstances, and hence choices are still absolutely controlled by God. Broadly speaking the vast majority of Christians (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Methodist-Wesleyan-Arminian) affirm libertarian free will, while a small but vocal minority, especially the Calvinist (Reformed) tradition, has favored compatabilism. Molinists nuance the libertarian free will position, claiming divine foreknowledge apart from divine foreordination is possible because God has foreknowledge of every possible future circumstance and choice, but this knowledge is not necessarily causal.

I do find it interesting that in some systems of theology God’s absolute sovereignty does not extend to God’s own self-life inasmuch as God is not allowed to self-limit his sovereignty over the human will. Those tempted to follow this theological trajectory would do well to ponder with great care the Incarnation. In taking on human flesh, the Son never ceases to be fully God, but he deliberately limits some of his divine prerogatives (e.g., omniscience, Matt 24:36) during his earthly sojourn for the sake of the plan of salvation.

So in the Incarnation we have a theological precedent in which it is certain that the triune God does self-limit for the sake of the saving plan. Should we be surprised, then, if God self-limits in other ways? Could it be that God who is absolutely sovereign exercises his sovereignty to self-limit his omni-causality, so that we might have libertarian free will to choose or reject the offer of salvation in Christ? If we had time and space, this could lead into a further dialogue about the extent of the bondage of the will and how exactly that bondage has been overcome through the Christ-event.

What is the difference between human allegiance to God, human allegiance to Jesus, and the allegiance that Jesus gives to God? On page 43, for example, you talk about Jesus’ allegiance to God the Father in explaining the difficult phrase, “from faith to faith” (Rom 1:17) but I’m interested to know what this says about the relationship of the Father to the Son, and thus our relationship to both members of the Trinity. In other words, if I give allegiance to Jesus, am I simultaneously giving allegiance to God the Father? And furthermore, how does my allegiance correspond to Jesus’ allegiance? Finally, what is the role of the Holy Spirit in all of this? Do we also give allegiance to him as God?

Salvation by Allegiance Alone doesn’t seek to defend traditional Christian ideas about the Trinity; it simply presupposes their truth. (For a fresh comprehensive treatment, see Fred Sanders, The Triune God; on the biblical origins, consider my The Birth of the Trinity.)

Within traditional Christian theology, there is a justly famous rule pertaining to the Trinity: opera trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt (“works of the Trinity directed toward the external world are indivisible”). This means that when the Scripture speaks of the Son healing or the Spirit indwelling, we can never suggest that the Father is not likewise equally involved in the action (see e.g., John 14:10-12).

Perhaps we should coin a similar rule with regard to individual Christians and the Trinity: fides ad personas trinitatis indivisa est (“allegiance directed toward the persons of the Trinity is indivisible”). That is, when we give loyalty to Jesus the king, because he is the flawless image of God the Father, we are simultaneously and indivisibly giving loyalty to the Father (“The one who confesses the Son also has the Father”; 1 John 2:23). And because the Spirit is the Spirit of the Father and the Son (e.g. Rom 8:9), loyalty to the Spirit entails loyalty to the Father and Son.

If this rule is accepted, then consider this corollary: to the degree that we have faulty ideas about the nature of the Father, Son, and Spirit, to that degree we are yielding our allegiance to some other thing.

Fortunately, however, as I explain in the book, we are not saved by our own perfect allegiance (pistis) any more than we are saved by our perfect “faith” as traditionally conceived. Who, after all, would argue that we must have perfect “trust” in Jesus’ saving power in order to be saved? Rather, we are saved by the perfect allegiance of Jesus the king.

Jesus’s allegiance, then, is different from ours because his was without fault. He makes up for our lack. Because Jesus is the atoning king, our imperfect allegiance (pistis) unites us to Jesus, so that we share in his perfect allegiance and righteousness.

Your proposal hinges upon a particular understanding of eschatology, which seems closely aligned with N.T. Wright’s view. In that eschatological paradigm, thanks to Jesus’ ascension he has been crowned King of the universe and currently reigns over all creation, seated at the right hand of the Father. But what if the eschatological paradigm changes? Does your thesis still work within an eschatological viewpoint where the enthronement of Jesus, or, at the very least, the extent of his rule, awaits his second coming or some other point in the future? In other words, what happens to allegiance if Jesus hasn’t (yet) completely fulfilled the Davidic promises?

Although I suppose it would be possible to speak of present loyalty to the purely future king, the strength of my proposal does depend largely on the reality of Jesus’s present kingship or lordship. However, to assert that this is a certain scholarly construct, or “Wright’s view,” is (to my mind) quite misleading. Jesus’s present kingly status is so clearly affirmed by Scripture that such a conclusion is nearly unshakeable.

Are there any New Testament scholars who would object to the idea that Jesus is presently reigning as the Lord or the Christ? If so, they had better re-read the New Testament. As Peter states in his Pentecost sermon, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ” (Acts 2:36). Or as Paul puts it, “For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25). Numerous other passages refer to Jesus’s present rule at the right hand of God (e.g., Acts 5:31; 7:55-56; Rom 8:34; Eph 1:20; Col 3:1; Heb 1:3; 1 Pet 3:22). Jesus is now reigning as the king, so we can give our allegiance to him, even if that present reign has yet-to-be-realized future dimensions. So, my proposal does not rest on a peculiar scholarly construct, but on straightforward, robust biblical evidence.

What would you say to the criticism that your focus on allegiance will lead to an overemphasis on one aspect of soteriology to the exclusion of a more comprehensive understanding? What about salvation by participation alone? or adoption alone? or inheritance alone? Or, more controversially, by works alone? Aren’t all of these facets, centered on and derived from the Christ-event, just as important as the others? Or is “allegiance” a meta-category that incorporates them all?

An exclusive focus on allegiance would certainly be wrongheaded and would fail to do justice to the numerous rich metaphors surrounding salvation. I think (hope?) that I am sufficiently clear about this in the book itself. For example, I stress that we must take seriously justification, redemption, adoption, washing, clothing, regeneration, and other metaphors (p. 165). I also discuss the centrality of participation (or union) extensively in Ch. 8. All of these metaphors connect to the Christ-event.

Yet, although they are all equally indispensable for a full portrait of salvation, they are not all equally central to the portrait. Let me use an analogy: if we did not understand that Jesus was our friend (e.g., John 15:15), we would lack a complete understanding of how we relate to Jesus. But this motif receives only minor emphasis in Scripture in comparison with Jesus as the royal Messiah. Not to understand that Jesus is a friend is a deficiency, but not to recognize him as the Christ is a radical deficiency, because of the centrality of this metaphor. Similarly I would say that if we don’t recognize that pistis involves allegiance, our understanding is seriously deficient, because pistis is so central to soteriology.

I do think allegiance is an especially helpful meta-category because of its integrative force. It is able to explain how vital topics such as messianic kingship, servanthood, the law of Christ, Spirit-empowered obedience, trust, proper belief, works, Jesus’s saving activity, the kingdom of God, justification, and the righteousness of God interlock. Yet, the allegiance metaphor itself does not naturally suggest adoption into God’s family, or the like. It is not that allegiance has no bearing on adoption, but we must coordinate multiple metaphors if we are to understand our salvation fully.

Part 3: Defending “Allegiance Alone”

You make the statement that “in the Gospels Jesus is described as proclaiming the good news that he would be seated at the right hand of God as the cosmic king or universal lord.” (72) Why is this news, that Jesus would be King, better news than, “believe in Jesus and you will be saved from your sins/God’s wrath/hell?”

It doesn’t matter which is “better,” only which truly describes the meaning of the word euangelion (“gospel”; “good news”) in the Bible and the first-century world. We can’t make decisions about what “good news” means on the basis of our feelings about what sort of “news” would be better for us. The meaning of first-century words must be determined by first-century usages.

John Piper seems to have fallen into this trap in his The Future of Justification. Piper criticizes N. T. Wright’s view of the gospel because it excludes justification by faith and focuses on Jesus’ kingship, saying, “The announcement that Jesus is the Messiah, the imperial Lord of the universe, is not good news, but is an absolutely terrifying message to a sinner who has spent all his life ignoring or blaspheming the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and is therefore guilty of treason and liable to execution” (p. 86).

The problem with Piper’s analysis is twofold. First, Piper is allowing systematic concerns about what would be better for us to override first-century meanings. The word euangelion (‘gospel’) was used in the wider Greco-Roman world to refer to the glad tidings associated with imperial rule with little regard as to whether the new emperor would rule well or poorly (see esp. the famous Priene Inscription of 9 BC and Josephus B.J. 4.618, 4.656; texts can conveniently be accessed here). When a first-century inhabitant of the Greco-Roman empire heard Paul say euangelion, he or she did not think, “Well, if euangelion is not referring to good news of my own personal final salvation from sins, then Paul has misapplied the word euangelion, because my sins condemn me.” Rather, the person heard a royal announcement focused on Jesus’ installation as Lord at the right hand of God.

Second, and this is an enormously important point, there is no clear biblical evidence that a sinner’s “justification by faith [pistis]” is part of the content of the gospel. Anyone who doubts this should study the word euangelion in Paul’s Letters with care. This error is present not just in John Piper’s work, but also in much popular teaching on the gospel (e.g., R. C. Sproul, John MacArthur, Thomas Schreiner). Judgments otherwise primarily involve dubious extrapolations regarding why Paul felt the Galatian false-teachers were compromising the gospel.

A closer inspection of Scripture leads to the conclusion that pistis is not part of the gospel but the required response to the gospel and that only Jesus’ justification (as evidenced by his resurrection) is part of the gospel, properly speaking. Our own justification is not part of the gospel proper when we look at what the Bible says about the gospel with precision in the same way that Jesus’ justification is part of the gospel. We are indeed justified by pistis, but this does not mean “justification by pistis” is part of the content of gospel. I give the evidence, esp. in Chs. 2 and 8 of Salvation by Allegiance Alone.

A simplistic equation of justification by faith with the gospel has caused much confusion in the church, leading to a “Romans Road” style of gospel presentation that focuses on the cross, but excludes the incarnation, resurrection, and most vitally, the enthronement of Jesus as the royal Christ. Then pistis gets aimed at the atonement (“trust in Jesus’ forgiving power not your works”) instead of at the atonement and the enthronement (“give allegiance to Jesus the atoning king and the Spirit will empower you to do good works in him”).  

So in the end it is best to say that the premise of this question involves a false either/or. We do not need to choose between a gospel that Jesus is king and a gospel that Jesus has saved us from sins/wrath/hell. We can and must have both. Jesus has become the atoning king.

There can be no doubt that a primary target for your thesis is the “me”-centered paradigm of salvation. But what does your thesis have to say to the opposite, the universal Gospel where all people will be saved regardless of their faith, due to the overwhelming love of God? And the bigger question is this: do you really think that “salvation by allegiance alone” can suffice as a panacea for numerous errors in contemporary views of soteriology? 

My thesis suggests that those who are fundamentally disloyal to Jesus, apart from repentance, will be condemned at the final judgment and excluded from the presence of God. Some of the greatest theologians in church history have been universalists or have at least left themselves open to the ultimate reconciliation of all things (e.g., Origen and Karl Barth). I feel the press of the logic behind this position—God’s unrelenting love applied eternally—yet I find myself unable to follow this logic in light of the biblical evidence suggesting the wicked will be judged and definitively shut out from God’s presence. (See p. 111, 125 for my exact statements).

As to your bigger question, Can the allegiance-alone proposal solve all our soteriological errors? No. I am sure the proposal isn’t perfect. Like all other perfections, a perfect systemization of salvation will need to await the final consummation. I do hope that it can bring the church closer to the truth.

How do you envision this message of “allegiance alone” diffusing throughout the church? And what will be the marks of a healthy church that ascribes to allegiance alone in our modern world?

How can the message of allegiance alone permeate the church? I think all true Christians already have an intuitive sense that allegiance to Jesus as king is not merely optional. That is, they have this sense unless they have been brainwashed to think otherwise by false teaching (e.g., the “free grace” movement)—and even then I think some Christians are just theologically confused about how behavior fits into salvation while they retain a tacit notion of the necessity of allegiance.

With regard to shifting pistis language from “belief,” “faith,” and “trust,” to my preferred term “allegiance,” such endeavors can only start small and grow—one disciple telling other disciples. Hopefully Bible translators will begin to consider how to better convey the allegiance nuance that is embedded in the pistis word-group too. There’s one thing of which I am certain: the single best thing you can do is to spread the word yourself by buying copies of Salvation by Allegiance Alone for your pastor and all your friends (wink).

Yet, let’s temper any overly rosy optimism. Even if my allegiance proposal proves sound and is proclaimed widely, it would be naïve to think that it would receive universal support. Disagreement (born of witting and unwitting sin) and division will remain present in the church. Another way of saying this is to affirm that our allegiance will remain imperfect in implementing allegiance alone even if the proposal is true. The fundamentally allegiant invisible church does not correspond directly to the visible church (including denominational structures).

You state that “the gospel climaxes with the enthronement of Jesus as the cosmic king, the Lord of heaven and earth,” but this is only the 7th step in an 8-part narrative. How would you answer the charge that your thesis fails if the narrative actually climaxes elsewhere, either at the resurrection (step 6) or the parousia (step 8) or somewhere else? Certainly, if we place the zenith of the gospel at another point, faith may indeed mean something other than allegiance. In step 6 (resurrection), faith is belief in a supernatural fait accompli of God. In step 8 (parousia), faith is hope in the consummation of God’s promises. Why is step 7 so important?

At the heart of my book is the claim that nearly all popular presentations of the gospel (in the church, in popular literature, and even in scholarship) wrongly exclude Jesus’ enthronement and rule at the right hand of God as part of the gospel proper. They include the cross and resurrection, but not Jesus’ ascension and kingly reign, which is actually the climax of the gospel. Jesus’ kingly rule is extra, beyond the gospel rather than internal to it, that is, if it is mentioned at all. When this error is corrected, we begin to see that pistis in relationship to the gospel includes enacted allegiance to Jesus as the ruling Messiah.

My allegiance proposal argues that the concept of allegiance is best subdivided into three components: (1) mental affirmation that the gospel of Jesus the atoning king is true, (2) professed fealty to Jesus as that king, and (3), embodied or enacted loyalty to Jesus as that king. (See my pp. 92-100 for fuller discussion). My thesis differs from traditional proposals about “faith” primarily with regard to its claim that pistis with regard to Jesus the royal Messiah includes obedience to him as king, since it was not disembodied (as mental “trust”), but was embodied and enacted (see, e.g., “the obedience of pistis” in Romans 1:5 and 16:26).

There is firm evidence that pistis was not primarily conceptualized as an interior disposition in the first-century world of the New Testament, but as exterior, and as relationally enacted (see Teresa Morgan, Roman Faith and Christian Faith [Oxford University Press, 2015]). This also demanded that I show that grace does not preclude but rather requires obedience (on which, see John Barclay, Paul and the Gift [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2015]).

Accordingly I don’t think it could be claimed that my thesis fails if the climax of the gospel lies elsewhere. It could be said that my thesis fails if (1) the gospel does not at all include Jesus as the king, or, (2) pistis does not at all involve an embodied commitment of loyalty to Jesus as the king as a response to the gospel.

If the zenith of the gospel is “Jesus died for our sins” or “he was raised from the dead,” then nevertheless “Jesus is Lord” is still a portion of the gospel to which we must respond with pistis. Where we identify the climax is important, but not non-negotiable with regard to my thesis.  

You often take the terms “loyalty” and “fidelity” as synonymous with “allegiance,” in particular the discussion of NT-era writings such as 3 Maccabees and Greek Esther, and Josephus (pp. 79-80).  But doesn’t “allegiance” refer to a stronger sense of devotion than these other two terms? What was required for one to be in allegiance with a king or despot in the NT era, and can we really take these three examples you give as corresponding in kind with Paul’s use of the term? In other words, would the three Jewish authors you mention consider pistis to Yahweh (i.e., Jesus, as you argue) to be anything like the pistis given to mortal human rulers? That seems a hard case to make, given the different contexts of usage. So are we really comparing similar contexts, or is Paul operating on a different plane entirely?

To my mind there is not an appreciable difference in English between allegiance, loyalty, and fidelity, so I would not agree that allegiance has an appreciably stronger sense of devotion. At least my own use of these terms doesn’t intend any such distinctions.  

As to what was required in order for one to be in allegiance to a king during this era, that is an interesting avenue for further research. Clearly it involved bodily loyalty to his person, as well as obedience to his personal word and his officially promulgated law.

With regard to the use of pistis in the wider Greco-Roman world, yes, we should accept these examples from Josephus and the like as valid. Our NT authors used language that could communicate to the outside world and thus involved shared meanings. I don’t understand why this is a hard case to make in the least. These Jewish authors all use pistis language to describe matters of loyalty or allegiance to another human, but this need not preclude the use of this same language to express loyalty to God. This merely introduces a false either/or.

Moreover, if our Jewish NT authors—Matthew, Mark, Paul, Peter, and James—have become convinced that Jesus is not merely a human king, but the divine-human king, why would it be in the least bit difficult for them to give pistis to Jesus? Is he not infinitely more worthy of pistis in this case, not less?

Part 4: Abraham’s “Allegiance” to King Jesus

A pressing question came to mind reading your fourth chapter, “Faith as Allegiance”: was Abraham justified by allegiance? If not, then what is Paul attempting in Romans 4, a passage that showcases Abraham’s pistis and prefaces the statement in Rom 5:1 that “we have been justified by pistis.” Did Abraham demonstrate allegiance to King Jesus? Is there any correspondence between Abraham’s pistis (however defined) and the pistis of believers, if the object of that pistis, and the very meaning of pistis itself, is different for Abraham and for believers since the Christ event?

Abraham-related questions are frequently asked by those who are most closely interrogating my allegiance thesis. Rightly so, and I treat the question of Abraham in Salvation by Allegiance Alone (p. 89-99), so I cannot rehearse my entire answer. But I think what follows sharpens and goes beyond what I say there in helpful ways.

Abraham is Paul’s parade example of pistis. Yet, I wonder if those prone to skepticism have come sufficiently to grips with the degree to which Abraham’s pistis is not defined abstractly (“faith” in God’s promises in general), but by the gospel.

And this gospel is emphatically not that Abraham was justified by trusting in “justification by faith” and so we are justified in this fashion too. We are indeed “justified by pistis,” but this is not how Paul (or the New Testament elsewhere) defines the gospel.

The gospel is a narrative about Jesus that climaxes with his enthronement as the royal Messiah. Recognizing this helps us make better sense of pistis with respect to Abraham.

In assessing my proposal it is imperative to recognize that pistis as allegiance does not exclude trust, but includes it. Allegiance and trust are not mutually exclusive categories. Abraham was justified by trusting in God’s promise, but this was not a generic trusting in God’s promise. It was, as Paul stresses, a trusting in the gospel of Jesus the king as it had been announced in advance to Abraham.

Here’s the key verse: “The Scripture foresaw that God would justify the Gentiles by pistis and announced the gospel in advance to Abraham, ‘All nations will be blessed through you.’” (Gal 3:8). Here Paul focuses on what he elsewhere describes as the purpose of the gospel, to bring about the “obedience of pistis” of the nations (Rom 1:5, 16:26; cf. 15:15-18).

Abraham was not justified by trusting in “justification by faith” (as this is not the gospel for Paul), but by trusting in the gospel of Jesus the king, to the degree that had been revealed to him. The gospel would result in the blessing of all nations.

What is this blessing of all nations? It is that the nations are in the process of coming under the banner of Jesus the king as they yield allegiance to him and are integrated into the Holy Spirit’s community (Gal 3:14).

Paul also details this in Romans 4:16-25, showing that Abraham’s pistis was really a trust in the gospel of the Jesus the king (see Rom 4:25; for Paul, Jesus’ justification/resurrection is the prelude to the enthronement—cf. Rom 1:4).

In particular for Abraham this involved a trusting that God could bring life (Isaac; corresponding to Jesus and to the resurrection) from death (Sarah’s lifeless womb; corresponding to the virgin’s womb and to the tomb) through a singular offspring (Rom 4:17-18; cf. Gal 3:16), so that through this singular “seed,” the blessing to the nations could be delivered—all of which has happened in and through the royal Christ, as the Holy Spirit has now been given to the nations (cf. Gal 3:14).

So, yes, there is a correspondence in pistis between Abraham and present day Christians, because the same gospel is ultimately in view with regard to the crediting of righteousness.

Jesus’s kingship over the nations as announced in the gospel, and for which the gospel was largely purposed, is the blessing to the nations promised to Abraham.

Did Abraham demonstrate allegiance to King Jesus? Yes and no.

Yes inasmuch as he was allegiant to the God (ultimately triune: Father, Son, and Spirit) who promised to bless the world through the death and resurrection of a future seed, Jesus the king. (You may want to review the rule expressed in part II of this interview— fides ad personas trinitatis indivisa est).

No inasmuch as the second person of the Trinity had not yet become the human king, nor ascended to the right hand. Moreover, fully saving pistis had not yet been revealed in the Old Testament era, as that was only to come in the Christ (Gal 3:23-25), and Jesus’s death for sins would then cover previously committed sins (Rom 3:25).

In sum, Abraham gave allegiance to God by trusting God’s promises that anticipated Jesus the king, and Abraham embodied this trusting loyalty to God (at his initial call and over his lifetime). The content of these promises anticipated the Christ-event, including Jesus’s death for sins, resurrection, and vindication as king, and his rule over the nations—as the nations respond to Jesus with an obedience of pistis.

Thus, Abraham’s pistis resulted in righteousness being credited to him precisely because it was a response to the gospel of Jesus the king. The same is true for us (for this logic, see especially Rom 4:23-25). For Abraham this pistis involved an allegiance to the promising-making triune God and the unfolding of the gospel of Jesus the atoning king that was inchoate in the promise.

The important point is that Abraham wasn’t declared righteous because he had an abstract and objectless “faith” in God in general or because he believed in “justification by faith,” but because his trusting allegiance to God was directed toward the promised gospel, that all nations would be blessed in and through his future offspring’s kingly rule.

Teresa Morgan’s recent book, Roman Faith and Christian Faith: Pistis and Fides in the Early Roman Empire and Early Churches (OUP, 2015), is perhaps the most significant and comprehensive study of pistis published in our lifetime. You reference her work a few times in your book. However, I’m not sure if she would agree with your thesis. In fact, her study comes to different conclusions regarding the meaning of pistis at the time of the writing of the NT. For her, as you perhaps aware, pistis ultimately has the connotation of “trust.” How might you respond to Morgan if she were to challenge your thesis on the grounds that it doesn’t sufficiently account for the expansive data available from the many Jewish and Graeco-Roman sources?

I do not know what Morgan would make of my thesis. Her book was published around the time I was finishing my first draft, so when I saw it announced, I was very anxious to read it. Fortunately in reading it, I felt that her work largely complemented my own, even if she does not stress allegiance per se with regard to salvation.

However, because her work appeared near the completion of my first draft, I was unable to build on her results as much as I might have otherwise. (For an overview of Morgan’s book, see the review at the Gospel Coalition.)

To my mind, to say that her conclusions are different than mine is true but misleading. For my thesis does not deny that “trust” and relationality is at the center of the pistis word group; it affirms the centrality of “trust.”

The vital point is that I follow Morgan’s lead in contending that in the Graeco-Roman world “trust” was not understood primarily in cognitive or psychological terms, but as embodied activity. That is, I agree with Morgan that the focus of pistis was not predominately interior, but exterior.

So, as I see it, my study does not contradict Morgan’s results, but rather seeks to build on them. Her study goes far beyond mine by illustrating how pistis (and fides) functioned across the vast and complex social, political, and economic Graeco-Roman world that is pertinent to the study of the New Testament. I did not attempt to paint as richly or broadly since my book was not exclusively on pistis, but rather on salvation theory writ large.

My emphasis on allegiance with respect to the gospel of Jesus as king is not developed by Morgan, so it is my own contribution. It is a contextual argument.

My preference for “allegiance” springs from the conviction that the proclaimed gospel centered on Jesus the royal messiah, and this suggests that the “allegiance” portion of the range of meaning of pistis is in play in some crucial New Testament texts pertaining to salvation.

Yet I am convinced, with Morgan, that pistis was predominately an enacted and embodied relational term in the New Testament era. So it is extremely unlikely that Paul felt that pistis was something that was ultimately in tension with or contradictory to embodied activity (i.e., good works as a general category). Paul’s complaint with works (of Law) lies elsewhere, as I explain in Ch. 5.

You make an interesting statement on page 94 regarding your feelings about many Christians’ inability throughout church history to articulate the eight stages of the gospel, as you present them in your book. Would you say that this is more of a problem today, when there is such a lack of catechesis, a lack of solid preaching, and a lack of doctrinally-rich worship music in the Western church in general? How will allegiance alone address this deficiency?

I want to make it absolutely clear that I do not think that Christians down through the ages have been bereft of the gospel or have not experienced salvation—as if God’s saving plan was off-track until that blessed moment when Salvation by Allegiance Alone was published.

Yet a great number of righteous men and women down through the ages would not have been able to articulate the eight elements of the gospel as I lay them out in this book.

I affirm that all these people tacitly accepted the eight stages and lived in light of the Christ narrative articulated therein, including an allegiance to Jesus as king.

I claim that many knew the gospel intuitively because it was the mental furniture that they inhabited, even if they couldn’t name or describe all the pieces of furniture. We can be confident that they found final salvation in the Christ.

Inability to articulate the gospel is more of a problem today than in the past. For the past 1600 years those raised in Western Civilization were given the gospel as a mental framework through cultural diffusion. Not everyone accepted the gospel, but its claims permeated daily life and colored everyone’s perception of reality. In our postmodern world this is no longer true.

How can allegiance alone help? We are in an era where we deliberately need to name and situate the furniture. The eight-element articulation of the gospel makes the gospel explicit. Also, there has been confusion over the gospel, with many mixing it up with “justification by faith” or “salvation by grace not works,” or reducing it to a forgiveness transaction.

With regard to the gospel, Jesus’s kingship has been forgotten and neglected, and even when it has been remembered, it has largely been considered an isolated fact external to the gospel rather than internal to it.

Allegiance alone helps the church recognize that “Jesus is king” is not only part of the good news, it is the climax of the good news—and that Jesus deserves our unswerving allegiance.

Part 5: 7 Marks of an Allegiance-Centered Church

You speak fondly of your ecumenical approach to Christianity, which is in itself a commendable thing, but what are the implications of your thesis of allegiance for the relationship between divergent traditions of the church, in particular Catholics and Protestants? To be specific, some may wonder whether one can give allegiance to both Jesus (and God) and to Mary, the Queen of Heaven. Are there thus varying degrees of allegiance you would encourage, such as the different levels of veneration in the Catholic tradition (dulia, hyperdulia, latria)?

A person certainly can give primary allegiance to Jesus as king, and secondary allegiance to Mary as Queen of Heaven. I have many Catholic friends who do this very thing. Whether this is a good idea or connects to the truth is another question altogether.

Although I accept the communion of saints, meaning I believe that the church extends beyond the earthly realm into heaven glory, it is unclear that the saints who are in heavenly glory can assist earthly saints (scriptural judgments otherwise usually involve a faulty interpretation of Hebrews 12:1). And even if (and it is a big if) they can assist us, there is no apostolic warrant for seeing Mary as immaculately conceived (i.e., born without a sin nature) or an essential mediatrix. These ideas are not part of the genuine apostolic deposit at all, but only emerged later.

So when official Catholic dogma makes Mary part of the essential chain of mediation, this is in conflict with Scripture’s claim to Christ’s sole mediation (“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus”—1 Timothy 2:5). Even if it is claimed that Mary’s mediation is derivative from Christ’s and is within Christ’s, to the degree it is deemed she is always present within Christ’s mediation, this still compromises the sole.

I loved my time at Notre Dame and consider it an honor to serve as a professor at a Catholic university. I am ecumenically minded, believing that what unites Protestants and Catholics is far, far more important than what divides us. I regard the Roman Catholic Church as a tremendous storehouse of wisdom and truth.

If I were a pastor, I would be happy to welcome a Catholic into a communion service at my church, since Catholics baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, proclaim the gospel, affirm the Apostles’ Creed as the true story of the cosmos (that is, they treat the gospel as a norm), and do not wantonly flout Christian standards of morality. (If you do not believe Catholics proclaim the gospel, then you don’t understand the gospel—and I’d especially urge you to take up the challenge to read Salvation by Allegiance Alone).

But I am not welcome to take communion in a Catholic Church. This saddens me, even though I am convinced that there are some significant untruths within the Roman Catholicism—falsehoods which must be unmasked and resisted. Regarding salvation theory, for instance, while I argue that Catholic infused righteousness can be accepted with qualifications, the Catholic view of imparted righteousness (defined at Trent) must be protested until it is rescinded.

Yet I think traditional Protestant articulations of imputed righteousness also need to be reframed. N. T. Wright has argued the same, but I don’t think Wright’s equation of “the righteousness of God” with the “covenant faithfulness of God” withstands careful scrutiny. In conversation especially with Michael Bird, I have my own proposal about the best way forward for both Protestants and Catholics in my Ch. 8.

Final Christian unity can and will happen only on the basis of the full truth in the eschaton. In the meantime we should not settle for a cheap unity, but nor should we feel that perfect unity in salvation theory is required for basic communion. Unity need not be hierarchical or structural, but does need to be visible, such as sharing at the Lord’s table.

As if your thesis wasn’t controversial enough for some in terms of soteriology/justification, you are bold enough to offer a revised understanding of the image of God. You rename the image as the idol of God as a means to emphasize the biblical teaching of transformation. This is surely a needed emphasis in the church today, as in all ages. However, there are two major concerns that come to mind reading this chapter. First, can we really say that Jesus as Lord is equivalent to calling him Yahweh, and then in the same breath refer to him as the “ultimate” idol of God? Would any early Christian even dare to call Jesus as idol, or themselves idols, when the explicit teaching throughout both Testaments is that idols are the antithesis of anything truly divine? Second, I question your correlation of ancient perceptions of idols as being imbued with divinity and Jesus as the most fully divine idol/image. Is transformation, then, for Christians, a matter of being more fully imbued with divinity?

In Hebrew “image” (tselem) “likeness” (demuth) and “idol” (pesel) are synonyms. Your implied claim that “idol” and “image” don’t mean the same thing is mostly an English language argument. If your point is in English that they don’t mean the same thing because idol is negative and image positive, then I accept that you are mostly correct (although we do use idol positively—e.g., if I were to say, “you are my idol”). If you think this is a valid critique, then so be it. But in Hebrew “idol” and “image” frequently intend the very same referent, so they cannot be tidily separated into good/bad in this manner. (For evidence see my p. 148 n. 2).

And I think we will both agree that the scriptural context must determine valid translation of Hebrew terms into English. I have made an argument in context that “idol” is a valid translation in Genesis because the creation scene describes God’s crafting of a temple and God’s placement of an idol in that temple. If God has no problem placing idols (Adam and Eve) in the temple of creation, why would it be invalid for me to point out what is happening?

If you think I have read the temple as creation context incorrectly, or if you doubt that idols were regarded as imbued with divine breath in the ancient Near East, then you’ll need to deal with the arguments of John Walton (and others) to the contrary. (See, e.g., Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One).

Why did I substitute “idol” if “image” works equally well? It is a teaching moment. We need to disrupt prior patterns of thought and bring a fresh angle (in valid ways) in order to teach effectively. The use of idol rather than image helps us recognize that image of God theology is connected to the placement of an idol in a temple.

Creation is God’s temple, and he places his idols in it—although the idols become marred through sin. Holistic salvation involves a restoration from our defacement, so that we can serve as the true idols of God.

Your lists of questions at the end of every chapter are refreshing, especially for a work that is attempting to bridge the scholar/layperson divide. If you had to pick one question as the most significant, out of all the questions for thought in your book, which one would you want to stick with your readers long afterwards?

Can I pick two, one theological and one for personal application?

From Chapter 8, “Justification and Allegiance Alone”:

What does the resurrection of the Messiah have to do with our justification? What do we learn through this about the meaning of the interconnection between Jesus the king’s righteousness and the meaning of “the righteousness of God”?

This question brings much of the book together theologically. If the reader can successfully answer this question, not using the definitions of “faith,” “grace,” “justification,” “righteousness,” and “the righteousness of God” given by traditional systematic theologies, but instead using the first-century categories described in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, then the book has largely accomplished its purpose.

And an application question from chapter 5, “Questions about Allegiance Alone”:

In considering the necessity of embodied allegiance (enacted loyalty) for salvation, do you think in the past you have been underconcerned or overconcerned with the necessity of obeying Jesus for eternal life? How has that impacted your past journey with God? What kind of concern should you maintain in the future?

This is a very practical question for the individual and for the church as a whole, helping to stimulate creativity about how to foster greater allegiance to Jesus the king.

What will be the marks of a healthy church that ascribes to allegiance alone in our modern world?

Above all a healthy church will focus on proclaiming the actual gospel (not the skewed Romans Road articulation), while recognizing that the gospel climaxes with the triumphant words, Jesus is Lord, or, Jesus is the Christ-king. It will of course recognize this Jesus is not merely the king, but the atoning king.

It will embody allegiance to Jesus the king by living out the kingdom directives given in the Sermon on the Mount and elsewhere.

It will acknowledge that discipleship is the one and only path to salvation, because discipleship is an enactment of pistis to Jesus the ruling Messiah. In other words, it will embrace a gospel culture rather than a salvation culture (on the difference, see Scot McKnight, The King Jesus Gospel).

It will be incarnational, missional, prayerful, and always pockmarked by the horrible beauty of the cross-resurrection sequence. We will begin ruling with the king now by bearing the image of God effectively, exercising appropriate self-emptying dominion over creation in service to the King of kings.

The gospel will be explicitly proclaimed and lived out in the life of individual church members and corporate gatherings.

The Spirit will be present and the Spirit’s gifts operative.

The triune God will be encountered in transformative worship.

Is this your final word on salvation by allegiance alone? Or have you planned more scholarly monographs and or popular books that either build upon or further substantiate your arguments in Salvation by Allegiance Alone?

Stay tuned! Thanks, Tavis, for the great “hot seat” discussion. I’ve enjoyed it. I hope your readers have too.