Theology in the Raw - Are Catholics and Protestents Really that Different in their Understanding of Salvation? Dr. Matthew Bates

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

Matthew W. Bates (PhD, University of Notre Dame) is a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Lisle, Illinois. He is the author of Gospel Allegiance, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, and Why the Gospel?, which won a 2024 Christianity Today Book Award and was named the 2024 Resource of the Year by Outreach magazine, and Beyond the Salvation Wars, which forms the topic of our conversation. Bates also cofounded and cohosts the popular Bible and theology podcast OnScript.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology and the Rob. Our guest today is Dr. Matthew Bates, who has a PhD from the University of Notre Dame. He is a professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary in Illinois. He's the author of several books about the gospel. So, Gospel Allegiance, Salvation by Allegiance Alone, Why the Gospel, and his latest book is called Beyond the Salvation Wars. Bates also co-founded and co-hosts the popular Bible and theology podcast called On Script, which I would highly recommend you check it out. If you like theology and Ra, you will love On Script. We talked about it a little bit in this conversation. In this conversation with Matthew, we talk all about his latest book, Beyond salvation wars. And yeah, as always, Matt is a very, very thoughtful

and humble scholar. So really enjoyed having him back on the Elgin raw. So please welcome back to the show. The one and only Dr. Matthew Bates. Welcome back to the Elgin raw. Matthew, how are you doing this morning? Hey, Preston. It's so great to be with you. Is this number two, I think, right? I think this is the second time with you. Yeah. I do a lot of podcasts myself as a cohost, but also as a guest. So it is hard to keep track, but I think this is my, I know, I know we've done it once at least. So at least once. Yeah. Yeah. And I think I've been on yours once too. What your podcast is on script least once. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think I've been on yours once too. Your podcast is on script. Yeah. Yeah. It's similar to Theology in a Raw, right? I mean, it's maybe a little more academic. Not that I would say I have a mix, academics on academics, but yours is, is it pretty much like New Testament scholars?

We're a little more academic, definitely. And that's our kind of our core would be to do, you know, new books in the field that are academic books. We do some that are on the more pop level too, like they're kind of usually written by a scholar, but they popularize something. But yeah, I mean we do a lot of books that are Erdmans, Baker Academic, Oxford University Press kind of titles and interview authors. And we also have really spread wide the co-hosting duties, partly because we're all busy academics and it's hard to read everything in the field. And so this is sort of spread. I think we have seven co-hosts on our main on script channel and then we have an archaeology

channel as well and then a little on Hebrew poetry. So yeah, so between all that, I think we might have 12 people involved as co-hosts. Hebrew poetry. That's a niche. Brent Straughan does that. Yeah, he's a professor at Emory. Oh, right on. So you are one of those figures who has become, can I say, controversial without trying to

be controversial, which I sympathize with. People have referred to me as you're kind of a lightning rod. Like, what? What? Like, how is that a thing? I mean, I don't get that. But it just is what it is. Yeah, well, when you write things that sometimes people respond strongly to, then yeah, it's

not your intention. But yeah, you're certainly no stranger to controversy. And yeah, the book stirred up a little bit of that, but not tons, but there have been, from certain quarters, there have been some loud voices that are concerned with the project. From what I've read of your work on salvation, that's kind of like your thing, and that's kind of like your thing. I just, I don't, I see it as very biblical. You're a very close reader of the text. You have understood terms like gospel, salvation, kingdom, Messiah in its first century biblical context. You're extremely tied to the text of Scripture. Like you are, you know, you're a biblical scholar. So, I resonate

with that. And when I read your understanding of salvation, it makes very good first century New Testament sense to me. So, this is where, to me, it's like, yeah, this is pretty straightforward. Why don't we start with you, why don't you summarize your understanding of the gospel? And then we'll get into why that has not landed so well with certain people. What is the gospel? Sure. And just right before I answer that question, what is the gospel question? Yeah, I wonder if part of the reason you resonate with my work and it seems straightforward and sensible to you is you're a trained Bible scholar too. A lot of the attacks and concerns have come from

people who are outside that orb. People who are more like Reformation era scholars and who are tied to certain kinds of systematic understandings that emerged in the 16th century rather than the first century. And that's not universally true, but mostly true. Most of the people who have expressed concerns. And that is a familiar, unfortunately common tension in scholarship, in case people aren't aware, between systematic theologians versus biblical scholars. Biblical scholars are just looking closely at the text. This is going to sound pretentious, I don't mean it to be, but biblical scholars are looking at the text and trying hard not to force contemporary

or historical theological categories on the text, whereas theologians typically are working within those categories, right? Yeah, that's fair to say. And I like, it's pretentious, but you know, we're Bible scholars. We'll seize the high ground at least today. We appreciate our systematician friends and they do foundational work that we don't do. Sure. Questions like, what is divine revelation, for instance? Like, we just assume it in the biblical world, like, well, God's revealed himself, right? They have to answer those hard questions

about, well, how is it possible for God to... What does that even mean, right? To speak about God revealing. So, yeah, there's some friendly, sometimes battles between systematicians and Bible scholars, but I think we also recognize we need each other. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so what is the gospel? recognize we need each other. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so what is the gospel? What is the gospel? So yeah, in simplest terms, if I was to just give you

one sentence, I would say Jesus is the rescuing King. That's the gospel that, as our New Testament authors summarize the gospel, they're content just to say Jesus is the Christ. That's their shortest summaries they'll give, is Jesus is the Christ. And so I'm content with that too. I'm happy to say that's the gospel, Jesus is the Christ. We do have to press into what Christ

means, right? And even in speaking that way, we're kind of reminded of there being a problem that sometimes plagues this conversation. Sometimes people just see Jesus and Christ as synonymous, not recognizing that the term Christ, when Paul says in Christ, you have these great benefits or whatever it might be, not recognizing that Christ actually means King, that that's its main meaning, right? It's a Jewish King who would arise and have some universal significance

because of his role amidst the nations. So the gospel is that Jesus is the rescuing King. Now I add the rescuing part, partly because I do want to gesture toward the idea of something of the content of Jesus's kingship. And this would be in harmony with some of the things that we find in our statements about the gospel and scripture. When it says in 1 Corinthians 15, as Paul's defining the gospel, right, that the Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. I would do something to gesture toward the idea that Jesus has done something for us in the gospel that is rescuing. That could be understood in terms of atonement

models. It could be substitutionary ideas, which I do think are present there. But it could also be victorious ideas, which I think are even more prominent in the New Testament. When I say Jesus is the rescuing king, that could also imply that He's won the victory right over evil spiritual forces and over sin and death. So that's the really quick definition of the gospel. But the key point, right, is that it's royal. Now I could give, and I do give, a much more expanded version of that, but that's enough to get us going.

You say, this is on page four of your book, so you call it the gospel allegiance model as you're trying to bring together or at least take aspects of a more Catholic understanding of salvation and Protestant understanding and say there's aspects in both models that are really helpful and others that maybe are less helpful. And so, you describe your take as gospel allegiance. You say gospel allegiance model is, quote, we are saved not merely by trusting that God's saving promises for us are true in Jesus, but by bodily allegiance to Him as King. When I hear you emphasize this allegiance to Jesus as King, it just, it reminds me

of the Salvation Wars back in the 80s between John MacArthur and some professors, I believe, down at Dallas Seminary, the so-called like free gospel versus... St. Hodges. St. Hodges, yeah, yeah. Where MacArthur emphasized Jesus as Lord. You can't just Yeah, yeah. Where MacArthur emphasized Jesus as Lord, you can't just say Jesus is your savior, he is also your Lord. Is what you're saying vastly different than what MacArthur and his camp were trying to argue for? I mean, you're using different categories, very different arguments, you know? Sure. There's a relationship between those debates, but I would say that MacArthur broadly

lands within Calvinism, probably would be a fair statement. I mean, he may not identify as a five-pointer, but there's at least a couple of points there that are sticking up when you look at his theology. I think he's actually gravitated more and more in that direction as time has gone on. I think he's moved more into a Calvinist framework. When he was doing that work on the lordship of Jesus, I think there's no doubt, A, that MacArthur won that debate, like that the free grace movement was wrong, and demonstratively so. And I think that movement has faded out to almost non-existence at this point.

And so what I am saying is related to that, but what was really missing, I think, in that older debate, well, there's a number of things, but an emphasis on Jesus's kingship and that faith means primarily that we trust in the Lord and His promises, but beyond that, that we give loyalty to a king. That was not something that was really emphasized within that kind of conversation. And so faith ended up, I think, in those earlier conversations,

again, with that kind of the confusing, like, well, on the one hand, faith is good and it's just trust, but it can't be works because of those works, then we're earning our salvation. And so we all know that's wrong. And so there was kind of a works our friend, works our foe kind of framework where, okay, they confirm our salvation, so we have to do them because Jesus is Lord, and should we love our Lord, and all of that, but maybe an imprecision around how, like, what exactly is the gospel, precisely,

what is grace, what is faith, what works, how do they all interface. So, I'm trying to add more precision to that conversation and whether I succeed or not will be up to my readers and critics to judge. And I would say, yeah, the MacArthur debates back then, they're still working within the kind of traditional systematic theological categories, whereas your work is deeply steeped in the first century Jewish context of the New Testament. So yeah, you might arrive at similar conclusions, but your arguments are very, very different. Can you expand on just what Ewan Galeon means in the first century? You've got a great, I love your, I think it's your second chapter where you talk about, oh, is it second chapter? Yeah, where you look at, like, how do we even determine what is the gospel? And you look at, okay, there's gospel summary statements in,

like, Romans 1, 2 to 4, 1 Corinthians 15, 3 to 5, and other passages, Mark 1. And then there's a gospel proclamation, like in the apostolic preaching throughout the Book of Acts. Can you open this up a little bit? How do we even determine what Eugenio means? Oh, okay. Yeah. So, two kinds of questions folded in there. One is a question of method, I think.

How do we determine what the gospel actually is? And then what is it, maybe, once we work through that method? So yeah, I did have a seven-pronged approach. Maybe the biblical number of seven in its perfection inspired me to choose. I don't know, but I ended up with seven ways that we control what the word gospel means in the first century. One would be, first of all, to just recognize that the word gospel was already being used by Christians, right? Sorry, before Christians came on the scene, it was a word that was used by pagans. It wasn't like an extremely

common word, but it was used. And that the word as it was used was used in a variety of ways. It could mean good news about a fish sale, for instance. I give an example, I cite a piece of literature where it's like, you know, there was, you know, good news in town. There's fish for sale, right? It could be something that is just as generic as that. Or it could also mean good news, for instance, that, you know, that our ambassador who was traveling to a foreign city won a theater competition and people bring back good news, like, hey, you know, our town has won honor, right, by this theater competition being won by our ambassador. And, but often it meant good news connected to royal proclamations especially, or to things that connected to empire-wide significance. So that it could be good news

of a military victory for your city over against another city or territory, or it could be good news that a new king has been born. And so, I cite ancient literature with all this. Now, we have to realize that now, early Christians, as they're using the word gospel, they were an outward-reaching movement. So, any language they used had to be understandable by people who were hearing them. They could redefine terms a bit, right? Like, they could have their own special meaning of Ewan Galleon, but their usage in order to be understood by other people had to have at least some overlap with how other people were using it. So that's one control is like, let's pay attention to how

other people were using this. Like how was this word used before Christians started using it? How was it used after Christians started using it? The second control is to actually look, and the most important is actually to look in the New Testament and say, like, does the New Testament tell us what the content of gospel is? Like, when we read the New Testament with care, what does Ewan Gellian mean? And so, I go through the key texts in the New Testament that do provide content around gospel. And when I do that, I end up with a 10-point gospel.

And this is partly when I also, like, pair it with content number three item, which was our method number three item, which was gospel proclamation patterns in the New Testament, which would be Acts, especially when the apostles go on and preach the gospel, what are they preaching? When I do that, I get a 10-point outline. And really, it's about the Father sending the Son to take on human flesh in the line of David. So, the incarnation and specifically the fulfillment of Davidic promises are emphasized. And then this Christ dies for our sins in accordance with the scripture. So, the idea that the King dies for his people, right, affirmed, right, and that this is for forgiveness. And then he's buried, right, which affirms the reality of his death, raised on the third day. And then he's seen by many

witnesses after being raised on the third day. And then he's seen by many witnesses after being raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. And then this part gets left out of the gospel. Often he's enthroned at the right hand of God. He ascends and is enthroned. That's actually a key part of the gospel that is neglected, I think, in a lot of gospel conversations. And that's where I think a lot of our problems stem from is a failure to see that enthronement is part of the gospel because that's when Jesus, who was in the process of becoming fully King, right, in his earthly life, that's where he becomes King in the full sense when he begins to rule at the right hand of God as the Son of God in power. And then finally, then the Father and the Son send the Holy Spirit to apply the benefits

of salvation to God's people. And then Jesus will come again as the ruler and the king to judge. So those are all the things that we find are said to be gospel more than once in the New Testament, in fact. So anyway, I have other things I look at. We have to look at other gospel texts that might give us a little bit of information. We have to pay attention to the way in which the gospels are titled gospels in the New Testament, we have to look at purpose statements about the Gospel, and I've written a whole different book about that called Why the Gospel. And then we have to also talk about how the Gospel is the power of God for salvation. All those are things that I think

we have to do when we're kind of come to affirm understanding what the Gospel actually is. And that's actually rooted in the, it's not used widely in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, but especially in the latter part of Isaiah 40 to 55, you see, I think, at least four occasions with the verb, yoingalizomai, is used. And it has that royal element, a proclamation, the good news, that Yahweh will return as King and rescue His people. And that royal element is intrinsic to that really important section. And in case, I think a lot of people know this, but for those who don't, like, if there's one text in the Old Testament that is central to Paul's understanding of the gospel, it is Isaiah 40 to 55. I mean, he's constantly drawing on it, and he constantly draws

on the gospel language there. And that really correlates with, as you said, the Greco-Roman use of Eugène Galléon as that royal element, a proclamation of a new Caesar, a victory of a new Caesar. Is it true that you see this Isaiahic? Isaiah's understanding of Eugène Galléon, Isaiah's understanding of Eugenia Paul's, you know, that he frequently draws on that. And then also the Greco-Roman context, like that seems significant to me. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And N.T. Wright, obviously, has been a major spokesperson for that approach, like seeing the proclamation in Isaiah that, you know, Yahweh reigns, right, is part of what

the kingdom of God is referring to in the New Testament, right, like that Jesus then is the one who is bringing that about, like He is Yahweh in the flesh, right, as He then is instituting the reign of God. And that's an unfolding process. So, I do think that Paul does draw on that Isaiah background. I think one of the obstacles to understanding the idea of Jesus's, God's kingship and Jesus's kingship is maybe a glib understanding of what it means

for Jesus to be the Messiah and a failure to grapple with the idea that it's a process, a historical process. That Jesus is like moving through a process by which he becomes king in his earthly life. So, on the one hand, we can say he's chosen before time began as the eternal king, as Paul would say, right? Like that the Christ, there's a sense in which he's chosen and advanced by God as the Christ, right? Then Jesus is the one who, like the Son of God, that then Jesus is the one who, like the Son of God, takes on human flesh in the person of Jesus, right? And that's a stage on the path

toward Jesus becoming the Christ in the full sense, right? But that he's not there yet until he moves through this process of being acclaimed as the Christ and then actually dying on the cross, which is in a sense his enthronement, but then his installation at the right hand of God, sort of his official enthronement. So, I think when we see that that's the way in which God is beginning his heavenly rule on earth as in heaven, then we see that what's going on there is that Jesus is coming as the perfect

human who shows us what it means to bear the image of God and who shows us what it means to steward creation. He's the ruler, right? He's the one who shows us what it means to rule. And so, as he's installed at the right hand of God, now a human is ruling creation as God intended it from the beginning. So, Jesus's incarnation is actually essential to the gospel and essential to how God rules creation because now a human is ruling over

creation and there's an opportunity for more humans to join Jesus in correctly ruling creation as we gaze on His image and are transformed into it. So, that's all integral to the gospel, I think. And so, yeah, like Paul's drawing on that Isaiah language to talk about like how God's reign like is happening through the person of Jesus as he is now the fully human, fully divine King, right? But there's an opportunity for others to join into that and begin to rule creation correctly. I was going to say when you said process of becoming a king, I could hear some people say, well, that sounds, is that right?

Like that sounds a little problematic, but then when you explain it, it's crystal clear, right? I mean, it's even as bad, yeah, it's like overcoming in the desert, the wilderness, you know, in the way that Israel failed, Jesus succeeded in the baptism and then, yeah, a crucifix. Yeah, his baptism especially. Exactly. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, that's when he becomes the Christ, he's christened, right, with the Holy Spirit, right, that comes on him. So that, again, from a biblical standpoint, that seems indisputable. I mean, he's not king until the crucifixion and resurrection, right? Or he's not fully... I mean, he's king or he's not fully... How would you articulate that?

That's right. That he's the designated king or he's the appointed king, but that he hasn't assumed his full kingly office. Like he can do royal things because a king in waiting, like a prince, has some royal authority. But yes, that he's not fully the king yet. Certainly, he's not the Christ until he's baptized. He's chosen as the Christ, but he doesn't become it until he's christened with the Holy Spirit. That's what it means to be the Christ, it means to be smeared with holy fluid. That's when the Holy Spirit comes down upon him that he becomes the Christ within history. But even then, he doesn't rule, kind of like David, right? That's the analogy I always use is that, yeah, David is chosen to be the king.

And anointed. And he's chosen in advance and he's anointed, but he doesn't actually begin to rule yet until Saul dies. It's a similar kind of process for Jesus. What if two hours could change your life? What if just two hours is all it takes to realize that God might be calling you to something more? What if two hours could shift your perspective and maybe even your calling? That's exactly what's happened for hundreds of people who have attended Taste of Northern, a free, live classroom experience from Northern Seminary.

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Well, so I mean, people listening might be like, so where's the controversy? How could, yeah. Can you, can you tell us where have people criticized your explanation of all this? Yeah, so the controversy I think has, I can only speculate, right? I can't know why people are controversial sometimes. They don't share their, if they don't,

I don't know their motives, okay? I don't want to speculate too much about motives. In terms of any substantive critique, there seems to have been some concern in some quarters, especially about justification by faith and how it fits into this project. And so I'm quite clear in saying that I affirm justification by faith and even by faith alone if we understand what faith actually means in the New Testament. If we work hard to see that it's a relational term that involves not just our minds, but our bodies, that it's a big term that can mean many things, that it can mean trust, that it can mean belief, but it can also mean allegiance and that I argue that's the most natural meaning when we talk about

responding to the gospel, right, is an allegiance kind of understanding. So, anyway, all of that is kind of in the background there, a firm justification by faith. But I also say that that is more of a corporate idea. Okay. And that it's something that we as individuals come to participate in, but we come to participate in it through God's establishment of a saved group. So, my understanding of the gospel would be that the gospel isn't justification by faith, contrary to Luther. And that would be maybe kind of some of the controversy. And here, I would be in agreement with NT Wright and others who have said some more things, right? That justification by faith

is not the gospel. What is an obstacle to seeing justification by faith as the gospel is that Paul never says that it is. Paul doesn't say that. There's no place in his letters where he says justification by faith is the gospel or even part of it. He says things that are close to that. He closely relates justification by faith to the gospel. But I think a very careful reading of Romans and Galatians suggests that,

in fact, justification is a benefit of the gospel. And it's not the gospel itself, it's a benefit. And it's a benefit that Jesus has won as part of the gospel. We can say that Jesus has won forgiveness for sins, right, as part of the gospel. He's won justification as part of the gospel. That doesn't mean we personally actually get it, right, until we respond to the gospel on the condition of faith. So, faith is a condition. It's our response to the gospel, and once we respond to the gospel, then we receive the benefits of the gospel personally. The problem here is that some of the leaders of Gospel Coalition, John Piper in particular, he wrote a book called The Future of Justification and other work too. But as part of that, he said just

that the claim Jesus is King or Jesus is Lord is not good news apart from the personal receipt of justification by faith. And that's where some of the controversy has come about, right, is that it seems like Piper has said that the realization of justification by faith, the personal realization of it has to be part of the gospel or it's not good news. Like unless you, Preston Sprinkle, personally receive justification by faith, we can't call it good news. The problem is that's not how the New Testament uses the language. The New Testament uses the language to talk about corporate good news, regardless of whether

or not individuals have responded to it. It doesn't use that language in that restricted way. So, the gospel is good news for everybody and it's good news because there's the possibility that somebody might be justified by faith in the New Testament. It doesn't include their response of actual realized justification. So I think that's like, if you want to know like, what's the nub of the controversy, I think that's right at the heart of it. There's more that can be said there, but that's enough to maybe, at least from my vantage point, to understand something of the context. The claim would be you are smuggling in human works into the condition for justification. Would that be as concise of a summary of...

That would be the concern for some. They would see the way in which, yeah, the linguistic work that I've done around faith, maybe that it might smuggle in works. There would probably be some who are concerned that this is redefined sola fide as the Protestant reformers understood it, in which I would say to that, yes, that's true. The Protestant reformers misunderstood what faith meant when they were doing their good work on justification by faith. They recovered the true principle that we are justified by faith, but their understanding of faith was inaccurate in certain important ways. In particular, the way in which they juxtaposed that to works was a kind of universal juxtaposition

saying no, we're saved by faith, not by works, but they failed to nuance works in the terms of second temple Judaism and works of the law being different from works. That all was misnuanced, which gets us into the new perspective on Paul. And so, yes, all of that is at stake a bit. But I think that the larger issue to be 100% honest, Preston, I think is Calvinism. That's really like behind the scenes on all of this is that those who have raised questions about this model tend to be people who are deeply invested in systematic understandings that are determined by Calvinism.

And they see this work like, where for instance, faith is a condition, right? Like they seem to see like that conditional language might threaten kind of certain kinds of unconditional ideas, right, that are very prominent within Calvinism and might threaten a whole system that's called monergism, or the idea that God alone always acts, right, and that it smacks too much of synergism.

My own view is that we need to just follow scripture with the utmost care here, and that's what I'm trying to do in the project, is just to really to pay attention to scripture and let that dictate our theology. So to the degree I succeed or fail is an open question. So the criticism towards you is very similar to the, like, you know, 10, 15 years ago,

you had John Piper and NT Wright had this kind of back and forth. There's also people who are, again, are working from the categories of reform, systematic theological categories, that had problems with, I would say their understanding of the new perspective. I have a question mark whether they actually understood what the new perspective was trying to say. This is very similar. I mean, you're basically receiving the same kind of...

It is. Yes. It is a very similar criticism and concern. So yes, it's the new piece that I've added or maybe the new wrinkles that I've added. Arguably, maybe, I don't want this to sound arrogant or to come off in the wrong way, but perhaps my work is more systematic than some previous work on this topic in a way that's tying together everything that makes it a more cohesively credible threat to the Calvinist system. Okay. Like I'm doing work on like what is the gospel?

What is faith? What is grace? What are works? What are works of the law? What's different? Like what are the implications for baptism, for regeneration, for the ordo salutis, like within Calvinist theology, right, or other theologies, right? And I'm walking through those categories and doing my best to apply the analytical tool of biblical scholarship to deconstruct some of the parts, I think,

that are traditional dogma that don't have good scriptural warrant. And I think that I'm pulling on a lot of different pieces in small ways saying, okay, the Reformation era understood gospel, but not quite right. There's a little bit of some nuance that we need to add. Faith, not quite right. Grace, not quite right. Works, not quite right. And the whole thing, when you begin to add up like every single thing, like you could find support in the tradition. Well, there are people who talk about faith, how I talk about it. There are people who talk about grace, how I've talked about it, right? People talk about gospel, how I've talked about it. But like maybe the way in which it's all being systematized is a more cohesive alternative

to Calvinist theology, especially, than has been on offer. And I don't want that to come off wrong because that may not be true. But that could be the perception in some parts. The way I'm hearing you talk about Calvinism makes me think you don't identify as a Calvinist. Would that be accurate or do you not like those categories? Yeah, that would be accurate to say, but I would also say that I don't identify particularly as an Arminian. I think what I'm doing doesn't fit within those boxes perfectly.

That there is genuinely some of these terms I'm using, I'm using in ways that neither Calvin nor Arminius nor scholarship from that era used these terms. We have to turn the clock forward and say, like, hey, we've learned in the last 500 years through the tools of very careful biblical scholarship, like we have learned what these words mean with greater precision,

and we don't want to like work in those old categories. We want to try to put together the system correctly from the ground up, from what the apostles taught. So that's the attempt. And of course, the reformers were trying to do that too. The claim is that we've learned some things. We have new documents, for instance, like we have the Dead Sea Scrolls, but we even have stuff like the Apostolic Fathers. Most of the reformers did not have access to the Apostolic Fathers, nor did they have access to Justin Martyr, or the earliest reformers did. Luther didn't, for instance. Calvin have access to Justin Martyr, the earliest reformers did. Luther did, for instance. Calvin, really, had access to it. Wait, yeah. I mean, Justin Martyr was second

century. We were recently... Yeah, the manuscripts were not published. Actually, the Council of Trent in its opening sessions, when they decreed on justification, they did not have access to Justin Martyr yet, not in a published form. It was published four years after that. It was published during the middle of the Council of Trent. So they'd actually already decreed on justification when we got access to Justin. And there's evidence in Justin, for instance, that would point strongly in favor of some of my conclusions

of the Gospel allegiance model. Yeah, that connected to some of the things I talk about about faith as voluntary commitment that's within a baptismal oath of declaration and some things like that. So yeah, trying to capitalize on newer understandings that genuinely just were not available in this era. Interesting. Oh, wow. I did not realize. I did realize it five minutes ago when I read your section on that in the book. I didn't realize it five minutes ago when I read your section on that in the book. You have a whole section on more recent documents that have been discovered and the scrolls.

Our understanding of first century Judaism in the last hundred years has grown exponentially because we've discovered so many Jewish documents. Even some of the early fathers like Irenaeus is on the apostolic preaching, the Didache, these are newer documents. And they have something to say to these issues. The Didache talks about baptism, for instance, and talks about there being the necessity of a fast before baptism and a period of instruction. So this suggests, again, it was for adults.

It suggests that this was not for infants. And this would be like one of many pieces of data that we like have to take into account, but genuinely was not available during this time. Interesting. So of the critical reviews of your book, I haven't actually read any of them, but I did read about one that was posted in the Gospel Coalition. It didn't seem very favorable at all. But then I also saw other people, not you, but other people responding to that review saying, this is not an accurate summary of your book at all. Can you give us some insight into that exchange there? Yeah. So, yeah, the Gospel Coalition offered a review.

It was a very negative review. I think the title of the review was something like, don't buy into this revisionist gospel. So that's about as negative as it gets. That's in the title? It is the title of the review. I would invite anyone who wishes to go ahead and read my chapter two on what I call the

more explicit gospel and compare that to the Gospel Coalition's review article and you tell me which one is following the biblical gospel more carefully. I invite listeners toward that challenge. But it was a very unshareable review in my judgment. But even beyond that, it was just flat out inaccurate. It makes a number of claims about what I say that are not actually supported by my book, and it actually doesn't really even review my book. So yes, fact checkers did come along, and there have been at least two reviews that have fact checked the original review and said, actually, paragraph

by paragraph, you walk through this review and it is wrong. It just flat out misdescribes my book. In fact, often doesn't describe my book. It's describing a vague response to my whole project, but not even the content of this book, of Beyond the Salvation Wars. It's definitely written from a systematic dogmatic perspective and not, it doesn't engage the biblical arguments at all.

It just tries to walk around. You might even get the impression that my book is not even a book of biblical scholarship. All right. It doesn't really operate on that level of review. So, you can check it out for yourself as you wish. But yeah, there's conversation going on. Have you responded to the review or do you have any plans on responding or even reaching out to TGC? I did respond on Twitter to TGC, just kind of like saying, hey, this review seems aggressive,

like what's going on here with this review and had a little pushback to TGC with it. But I don't want to speculate overly much about motives. As I'm trying to read the tone of the review, I can't help but wonder if TGC as a whole organization is, I think it leans in a very Calvinist direction. And quite honestly, I'm concerned that that might move in a more sectarian direction, like that there can be a tendency within some circles of Calvinism to say that Calvinism is

the gospel or that if you've... But the problem is I think the Calvinist articulation, especially by people like Piper, whenever they actually insert personal justification by faith into the gospel, that's actually adding something to the gospel that's not there. That's dangerous. And that concerns me, right? Whenever that's added to the gospel, when it's not clearly gospel according to the New Testament, you end up drawing the lines in the wrong place. And that's really what chapter four of my book is about, is about saying that's actually, let's read Galatians with care and let's see what Paul's actual concern is. And I think that when we do so, we can better understand how justification by faith fits into this conversation. It's a true doctrine. But to say that personal...realize personal justification by faith, to say that's

part of the gospel, I think is actually an addition to the gospel that ends up damaging ecumenical efforts. Because I think that once we clarify what the gospel is, we'll discover that Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox agree about the biblical apostolic gospel. It's just that there's a Protestant tendency to add some small things to the gospel. On the Catholic end, there's a tendency to really repackage the gospel in terms of the sacramental system. Catholics teach the gospel through the catechism, but it becomes mediated in overbearing ways through the sacraments that end up causing ecumenical problems as well. Anyway, the project is trying to help position everyone

to rethink some of these categories and to aim toward the truth. Do you, I wonder if, I just didn't hear you talk. I wonder, do people accuse you of prioritizing ecumenical unity more than theological accuracy? I'm not saying that. I'm just, I'm trying to play the mind of, Yeah. I would only say the only people who accuse that of... The only time I get that

accusation are people who haven't read me, truthfully. I mean, I think, I mean, I honestly, I think that some people will worry that that's the motivation, but I don't think people who read me usually say that. I think they, like, what I do is so deeply rooted in scripture and in early sources, I think it's hard to say that like, I'm just trying to like give a one size fits all solution. I'm really trying to work through problems with truth in view. I think people who read me get that sense. At least that's my impression. Well, I would say a hundred percent. Yeah. And from what, again, from what I've read of you, you are very passionate about understanding the gospel in its first century New Testament context. And once we do that, then that does open up some interesting ecumenical dialogues. But I don't get

the sense. I mean, you explicitly deny that in the book, but I mean, people can say, well, you're just saying that you really are have this deep concern for ecumenism that's shaping your reading of the text. But just in reading you, I don't get that feel at all. Yeah. Well, I have a concern for ecumenical work. I think every Christian should, right? I mean, Jesus prays for the Church. I mean, this is just, I mean, to be a disciple of Jesus means to be concerned with ecumenism. I think though, I hope, and I don't want to speak in an arrogant or a way that is superistic or something, but I do think that people who read me don't get that impression that it's all just about trying

to find a one size fits all solution that doesn't really kind of have the truth in view. So, this book, we've talked about your understanding of the gospel. The main point of this book is, you know, Beyond the Salvation Wars is on showing how the Catholics and Protestants, neither one has fully captured the gospel and there can, the gospel is a legion, so we you've articulated it rooted in scripture does create or does open up some kind of fresh avenues for ecumenical dialogue. Can you, first of all, you're pretty optimistic

that Catholics and Protestants can actually come to closer agreement than has ever happened. I mean, people have literally killed each other as you talk about the book. I shouldn't laugh. I mean, it's horrible, but I mean, people have literally killed each other as you talk about the book. I shouldn't laugh. I mean, it's horrible. But I mean, it's shocking that people were, Christians are killing other Christians because they didn't agree with their understanding of salvation. And you're saying that if we actually go back to the text, revisit what the Bible is actually saying about the gospel, Catholics

and Protestants are actually not as far apart as has been previously assumed. That's pretty ambitious. Yeah, it is. Well, that's the big ecumenical piece in the book would be to say that actually once we clarify what the gospel is with scripture and with the apostolic witness, that we actually agree about the gospel and that despite rhetoric on both sides that the gospel is these 10 events. Like who among the TGC or among mainline Protestant denominations or Catholics or Orthodox would deny that the Father sent the Son to take on human flesh, fulfilling the promises made to David. Like that list of 10 things that I gave earlier, right? That He then died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. He was buried, that He was raised, that He's now enthroned, that He list of ten things that I gave earlier, right? That he then, you know, died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.

He was buried, that he was raised, that he's now enthroned, that he will come again, that he sent the spirit. All these things are things we agree about. The problem is whenever we insert things that aren't gospel into the gospel, like, right, if we say, no, really, the gospel is all about my realized person's justification by faith, then if that's actually not what scripture says, the scripture nuances that differently and that if the good news is actually that Jesus has died for our sins to provide justification, and that's a benefit of the gospel that I personally receive when the Holy Spirit applies the benefits of salvation to me, that's quite different from saying that it's

actually the centerpiece of the gospel and that if you disagree, you're actually communicated, right? That's a different kind of claim. And then, yeah, and so I think Catholics, Protestants, Orthodox, all actually agree about the gospel. That is the big kind of ecumenical claim that we can make progress then around that centerpiece, but we also need to recognize that our gospel language has been a little imprecise and if we add precision, that moves us the ball forward in an ecumenical direction.

Now, the concern on the other side is that certainly this book is not gonna heal all Protestant Catholic differences, right? This is about making some steps in terms of our soteriology, saying that, okay, with regard to the issue that caused the Protestant Reformation in the first place, which had to do especially with justification, like how does justification happen? This book offers a possible way forward to remodel justification

language, not using Protestant categories of imputed righteousness, which is the favored category among Protestants, or Catholic ideas of imparted righteousness but incorporated righteousness, which I think is a more biblical model. But I think it actually captures Protestant and Catholic concerns on both sides and deals with some of the fundamental objections that both sides had toward one another as part of the early phases of the Reformation. So trying to deal with that piece, realizing there's lots of other problematic pieces that need to be dealt with eventually for us to move toward unity. What are some main misunderstandings that Protestants have about Catholic soteriology?

Because yeah, I mean, we grew up thinking like Catholics, it's all about works, you just work your way to heaven, whatever. The number one misunderstanding, I would say, would be the idea that works are somehow understood apart from grace within Catholicism. Catholics don't believe in grace. They deny grace alone. They just believe you do these works so you can go to heaven. That's a horrible caricature of Catholicism. In fact, the very first canon, which are like kind of authoritative summarizing statements at the end of a decree, like for the Council of Trent, like as they issued their decree on justification, they had the canons like at the end of the decree, the very first canon like says that anyone who denies grace like in this way as a framework for understanding

like is anathematized, they're cursed and cut off from Christ. So we see that they were of utmost concern to try to help people to see that this is all within an economy of grace. So, misunderstanding the Catholic economy of grace and how the sacramental system fits into it, I would say, is the most common misunderstanding. That doesn't mean that Catholics are constructing grace correctly, Catholics are constructing grace correctly, right, in every way with the way that they articulate that economy. But to not suggest that... To misunderstand that Catholics see it within an economy of grace and have their systematic

way of understanding the sacraments within the economy of grace, I'd say that is the most common process of misunderstanding. Yeah, this is on page 16. You quote the Council of Trent, which you referenced, and it says this, if this is from the Catholic Council of Trent, okay, the Catholic kind of like statement on what they believe, if anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his own natural powers or through the teaching of the law without divine grace through Jesus

Christ, let them be anathema, let them be cursed." That sounds pretty, almost Protestant now. People could, yeah, I think they're defining grace differently, they're defining faith differently. They're not separating faith. They're smuggling in obedience into the concept of faith, which was the accusations you might get. Once you say faith is allegiance, well, that's some kind of human behavior, and then justification is not based on grace through faith alone.

Yeah. Well, we have to reckon very seriously with what the Greek word pistis means. Whenever Paul speaks about justification by faith, does he exclude bodily behavior entirely or not is an important question. And here I'm not working alone. I'm working with excellent studies by other scholars. Teresa Morgan, her book, Roman Faith and Christian Faith, probably the definitive work on faith. Peter Oakes, who's done excellent work on faith and many others like Nijay Gupta's book, Roman faith and Christian faith, probably the definitive work on faith. Peter Oakes, who's done excellent work on faith and many others, like DJ Gupta's book, Paul and the language of faith. Everyone agrees that faith is something that involves bodily activity, right? That it's not something that is purely mental. So, I'm not here like out on a limb. And I give lots of examples in earlier books where faith clearly means allegiance from

relevant literature. And I give examples from the New Testament where it means something along the lines of allegiance. So, yeah, it has to do with, yeah, that key question, right? Did the reformers, when they were carving out the doctrine of justification by faith over against works, did they understand faith correctly? Right, that's part of the key question. And again, the critique doesn't sound substantively different than the critiques lobbed at John MacArthur back in the 80s. That once you say, acknowledging Jesus as Lord is a necessary component of salvation, well, that involves

behavior, right? And so you're smuggling works into the concept of faith. I mean, it's almost, I mean, again, different, different arguments, different categories, but the counter, the critique is almost the same, seems like. Yeah, it's a similar kind of thing. And I, yeah, I would say that the main difference would be how all that is fleshed out in nitty gritty detail in terms of creating a model.

Like the way in which, yeah, like MacArthur's categories for how he's defining gospel, for instance, how he's defining works, like how he's defining grace would be different from what you would find in my project. And my project would be drawing on contemporary biblical scholarship, especially John Barclay's work on grace, a new perspective on Paul's work on works of the law, and including some very recent scholarship that has strongly vindicated that. I don't know if you've encountered Matthew Thomas's book, but he shows that as the phrase works and works of the law were used in the second century by the apostolic fathers, by Justin Martyr, that they clearly understand works and works of the law to be ceremonial laws. These are not generalized human obedience kinds of things.

We've seen strong vindication of the basic results of the new perspective on Paul from many different angles. I think it's truthfully, still the old perspective on Paul has its defenders and the new perspective is a big thing. We want to be nuanced about it all, but the basic results of the new perspective on Paul, I think, are going to stand the test of time. Hey, friends, I want to offer you a free course by Professor N.T. Wright called Simply Good News, which is an exploration of Jesus' gospel as powerful, life-changing news. Okay, so let's move beyond the truncated picture of Jesus' message and examine what the gospel is really all about. And with Easter just around the corner, what better time to really dig deeply into the meaning of the Christian message.

To get access to this free course, just click on the link in the show notes. That's the easiest way to do it. It'll take you right to the free course. Or if you don't want to click on the show notes or don't know what show notes are, you can visit admirato.org. That's A-D-M-I-R-A-T-O.org. Scroll down, find the course, Simply Good News by NT Wright, and enter the coupon code PRESTON, okay, at checkout. AdmireAuto has over 30 courses

on a range of biblical and theological topics, all of which include video lectures, robust curriculum designed to help everyone discover the possibilities of engaging theology wherever you're at in your faith journey. So take advantage of this free course, Simply Good News by N.C. Wright, and also check out the many other engaging courses at admireauto.org. Okay, let's unpack that a little bit because I know people, I think most people listening probably have heard of the idea of new perspective on Paul.

Probably a minority have a good understanding of what it is or probably a lot have just heard new perspective on Paul bad. I don't know why, but I heard it's kind of like not good. Yeah. Let's unpack that a little bit, especially as it pertains to the works of the law. And for our audience, I think it's the starting point is what you hinted at is that there is no such thing as the new perspective on Paul.

There are new perspectives on Paul. Some of the big names early on, EP Sanders, James Dunn, NT Wright, they disagree. Especially Dunn and Wright have as many disagreements as agreements within it. The one point that they would agree is, which you've said, is that when Paul speaks negatively about works of the law, he is not referring, certainly not referring to Christian obedience, that we're not justified by obedience, we're justified by

grace through faith in contrast to obedience. That is not the framework that Paul's working with him. The phrase, Ergonomu, works in the law, refers specifically to certain Jewish ceremonial practices, which can... Sorry, I'm answering my own question. I should let you talk. I'm getting excited. You're rolling. This was 10 years of my life back in the late 2000s. And I haven't read anything in the last 10, 15 years on it, but this was part of my dissertation.

So yeah, in the context of how works of the laws used both outside and inside the New Testament, it is referring more specifically to aspects of Jewish ceremonial practices, which were, I mean, one of the underlying points Paul is making is that, to put it maybe over, maybe to oversimplify it, is that Gentiles don't need to become Jewish in order to become saved. So anyway, I'll pass the ball back to you.

Why is that significant for understanding Paul's understanding of salvation? Yeah. I mean, part of the significance is that, yeah, Paul, whenever he uses the phrase works of law, is not speaking about the effort to do any good deed or something along those lines, right? Paul says again and again, and so there's a whole rest of the New Testament that will be judged on the basis of our works.

And so we have to think carefully, like, well, what are works in general and how do they relate specifically to works of law? And so as we kind of do the outworking of all of that careful scholarship, I think it does vindicate the new perspective on Paul, that when Paul uses the phrase works and works of law, that he's not talking about generalized human deeds

most of the time when he's speaking about it negatively in contrast to faith. And you can even prove that Paul sometimes abbreviates works as works of the law. I give evidence for this in gospel allegiance, but even more substantive evidence is given by James Dunn in his big work on Paul's theology where he proves that this is the case. And so this raises really important questions for how we interpret when Paul juxtaposes faith and works. If Paul's real target isn't any general human deed, but his works of law, then that changes

the whole conversation. And so I think your summary that you already gave was tracking in the right direction. And so this really helps us rethink economies kind of economies of grace in connection to all this, right? That Jews believe they were saved by race, by grace, right? That they were born into the covenant family and that works were done more as covenant maintenance as E.P. Sanders very famously argued.

And there are a number of things Sanders gets wrong, but I think he gets that part right. So then this helps us to think about maybe the gospel is grace, but it's grace because it's given to all humanity when we're in a dead condition. That really the fundamental grace is the gift of the gospel itself. And then we are open to respond to that with faith, which is allegiance to the king. We give allegiance to the king in response to the grace, which is the gift of the gospel. And that this whole works to the law thing is to a certain degree confused the conversation. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Let the reader note that I'm actually critical of the new perspective. I entered my PhD almost like thinking I would defend it.

Like during the last part of my seminary days, I was kind of turned on to that. I was like, oh my gosh, this is revolutionary and this seems right. And then as I started to read deeper, I'm like, I think there are aspects though that I disagree with. So my whole dissertation was largely critical

of aspects of the new perspective while acknowledging they brought a lot of helpful... I mean, it's almost impossible. It's hard to deny that Paul's justification language is steeped in his concerns around Gentile Jew unity in Christ. I mean, whenever it pops up, it's in the midst of a long argument about why Gentiles don't need to become Jewish, become Christians, you know. I do think there is more of an emphasis, and you know, I may or may not agree on this, more of an emphasis on divine agency and salvation in Paul than what we see in first century Judaism. That's

the summary of my dissertation. Like, you would never see when Paul says God justifies the ungodly in Romans 4. You see the opposite in even Qumran, which is heavy emphasis on grace, Dead Sea Scrolls. You have explicit statements where God does not justify the ungodly. That would be outrageous. So I do think that Paul, drawing on Ezekiel 37 and other passages, does emphasize human depravity and divide agency more than you see in Judaism, while I still definitely acknowledge that the whole Lutheran understanding of Judaism is just climbing your way to heaven through works of righteousness. That's inaccurate as well. Yeah. The new perspective on Paul is diverse and I critique aspects of it too in my Gospel allegiance book. So it's not like an uncritical embracing of, I do think some of the central results of the new perspective probably will stand the test of time.

But some of the, when you get into the weeds, like our works of the law, it's simply social boundary markers, for instance. I would say, no, they're not, right? Like there are still works that need to be performed. So some of those things are part of the new perspective that I think are wrong. It's a big conversation. I do agree that God's agency is emphasized probably more in salvation, is emphasized more in the New Testament than in other sources. But I think it's sometimes that conversation gets bent in the wrong direction. I think it's God's agency is emphasized especially in the gift of the gospel itself. And I think sometimes what ends up happening is God's agency gets pressed into every aspect of that, of the salvation process in ways that are problematic.

And that grace is almost positioned like a fluid that is somehow present that's like doing things, right? And I don't think that's actually how the New Testament describes it. It's actually closer to medieval ideas about grace. We get into created ideas of grace versus uncreated ideas of grace that are connected to scholastic conversations with Thomas Aquinas and with other people. But that's a big conversation that we can't fully get into. All right. We've got some questions here from people listening in. I posted this conversation live in the Patreon account. So, we've got some questions coming in here. This comes from J. Shaw, Dr. Bates, great conversation. I appreciate your prior work, Salvation by

Allegiance Alone and Gospel Allegiance. I look forward to reading this book. When time allows, I am behind... Oh, he's just... This is not a question actually. He's just like saying he's a fan. I'm behind on my own script, but we'll be there. Oh, but... Oh, he does have a question. But will there be an episode with Irving Shabl... Shabl... Shablatsom. He wants Shablatsom. He wants Shablatsom. We have a Shablatsom. I've never heard of this person. Yeah.

Well, on April Fool's Day, you'll have to listen in to On Script if you want some Shablatsom. So let's see. I don't know. Are they critical of your work? I just, you would just have to listen in. I don't think anybody can summarize what Shablats some's up to really a biblical scholar. I mean he is oh Just I mean, I can't believe you haven't heard of him Preston

No It's a he shows up on April Fool's Day for a reason. Let's put it that way So now you peeked by even that's all you're gonna give me give me to tune in? That's all I'm going to give you. Yeah. Is this a real person or is it like? It's the I can't answer that question. It's part of our on script tradition. So you would have to check it out.

And April Fool's up. You can look back in the archives and check out a Shablatsom episode if you're interested. The first time we did one, though, we got outrageous responses to it. So, yeah. Okay. All right. All right. I'm excited now. All right. Next question. For those of us coming from a reform background, what books, in addition to your own, would you recommend to get a better understanding of faith and works in their original context? Yeah. So, for faith, Nijai Gupta's Paul and the Language of Faith, Teresa Morgan, Roman

Faith and Christian Faith, Peter Oakes' Galatians Commentary. For gospel, besides my work, Scott McKnight's King Jesus Gospel, N.T. Wright, Michael Gorman's myriad of books on the apostle Paul, these would all be helpful. Let's see, on grace, obviously, I've already mentioned John Barclay's work, Paul and the Gift. Beyond that, David De Silva's work in honor, patronage, kinship, purity, where he walks through kind of like helping people

better understand Greco-Roman patronage and how grace was extended, but that created tentacles of obligation. Grace begets the need to respond to grace or the grace has been spurned. So, seeing that grace has to operate within frameworks of obligation in our New Testament world. in our New Testament world. So, and then works or works of the law, Matthew Thomas's book on the reception of Paul in the second century is really important. Beyond that, that's just, I mentioned that partly

because it's a newer book, but there's been so much work done on the new perspective on Paul. And, you know, I think that in general, I do think that that work will be vindicated. Not that there isn't nuance, but yeah. Yeah. John Barclay, I didn't actually read.

I read his earlier articles when he was working on that book. So I didn't read the actual final product, but John Barclay, top three New Testament scholars of our day, I mean, at least, right? And he spent years and years researching First Century Understanding of Grace. And so that, yeah, that is... That's a fine book. Yeah. We ask people on Onscript, what's the most important book in the last 50 years? Usually we get EP Sanders. We have a lot of people who say Paul and the Gift. John Barclay's book, Paul and the Gift, is the most important book of the last 50 years. Does he have a shorter version, a less...

He does. Yeah. Paul and the Power of Grace is the shorter one. How would you incorporate the ascension into a gospel proclamation setting where it is often overlooked? Yeah, so I think that we can do it very easily by simply, whenever we're presenting the gospel, fronting Jesus's kingship. So when we're sharing the gospel with people, I think that we don't necessarily start by saying, Jesus is king. Like, that's not necessarily like the way we start.

It's certainly the central message we wanna communicate. But most of the time we were working with some sort of perceived like lack of wholeness, whether that's in creation, whether that's in somebody's own life, whatever it might be, that there's some sort of like sin issue or there's some sort of blemish or some tarnish that needs restoration.

So I think that one of the ways we can work on Jesus's kingship is by using that as the theme that helps people to understand how restoration is happening. So that if that's personal, if somebody has a sin problem in their life, I mean, one of the things you might talk about is that in your own experience, that you've experienced, you know, brokenness and you've caused people harm and that you regret this. And that when you discovered that Jesus was king and that like that what you had been doing was actually taking authority of your own life rather than submitting to Jesus's kingship, then you began to discover rescue through like trying to live out Jesus's life. That He forgave your sins as the king, but also He provided you a whole new pattern of life that's a life under His authority and that part of the rescue operation is learning

to live under His authority as rescuing. So, I would kind of frame it that way. If you're just wanting to do a straight up presentation of the content of the gospel, I think that's easily enough done. You can just make sure you just get the ascension sort of tacked in there into the middle of the presentation, right? And you say, like, hey, this is really important to the gospel. And you can show people evidence from scripture where Paul talks about the Christ, right, as part of the gospel, or talks about the Son of God in power in Romans when he talks about the gospel.

Okay, this one's really important here. What is your favorite soup? Favorite soup? You know, I actually am a soup lover. And I am too. I actually am a soup lover. And my favorite probably to eat that is not healthy would be a potato soup that is got a bunch of bacon in it. And it's really good. And it's a home recipe.

It's a potato bacon soup. That's probably my favorite flavor wise. And it's really good with some cheddar cheese on the side and some crackers with it. That's a heavy bacon and potatoes. Yeah, but yeah, I really like also a slightly healthier one that is actually a sausage and kale one with white beans in it. That's a sausage and kale. But what you do is you chop up the kale like really fine and you just dump tons of it in the soup. So you're eating all this kale. So how bad could it be? Right? All right. So I got to chime in here because I'm a Hyakka-y soup every single. I love soup because I love flavor, rich, savory, spicy. I love anything with any soup with like a red color, like just a red flavor tomato-y.

But my top two favorite soups are both Thai soups, Tom Kha Kha coconut based. The only problem with this one though is it's got a lot of a really good Tom Kha Kha has a lot like a really heavy coconut, which is very high in calories. So back when I had a metabolism, I would eat it by the truckloads. And now a small bowl and I'm full for like half a day. So Tom Yum is a more brothy based Thai soup that I've been going to Tom Yum more

because it's just lighter and it still has an amazing flavor to it. So, yeah. But just a good rich tomato soup with like fresh, fresh. I'm not, I don't, I actually don't like raw tomatoes, but anything else else is tomato base. I'm a huge fan. So like a freshly ground sauteed tomato soup.

Oh, maybe throw some bacon and potatoes in there. All right. Last, let's see. Last question. Um, this is a, there's a long preface to this. I'm going to, this comes from Tom. I'm going to try to see, I can't really summarize it. It's too, Tom, you got to get a short in your question here. The question is, how should I be spawned when Christians in different

churches are protesting the model and slandering it? I guess maybe he's thinking of like, yeah, let's just say different understandings of the gospel. Well, we always try to respond to all sorts of things in a Christ-like way and we do it imperfectly. I wish I did these things perfectly too. I do think that Christ does model in these, there's a variety of models in the New Testament, but I think the probably our best model from the Sermon on the Mount would be like kind of a creative passive resistance that's semi-active. I only use the term passive resistance, but to turn the other cheek obviously was, I think is also a way of shaming the accuser and allowing them to continue to do the wrong.

But if they continue to do the wrong, they're just increasing the shame. So, I think that we allow ourselves to be slandered whenever people are speaking wrongly about us by calling out that as slander in some way, showing that, in fact, you are hitting me and I'm going to allow you to hit me again, but don't you realize that's what you're doing. And so I think that's hard to do. I tried to push back a little bit on Twitter in a creative resistance way. I don't know if I got the tone exactly right. But I don't think that it means that we just take abuse without like trying to figure out how to help the abuser see that they are acting in a shameful way. I think that's the goal, is to help them to, it gives them the chance to repent, right?

If they're heaping abuse on. So I don't know that there's a one-size-fits-all solution to that. In particular, with church battles like that, a lot just depends on the local context and who's, like, is there a productive path forward for your ministry? How do you, like like affect reconciliation with people? There's so many questions that you have to kind of be dealt with on an individual level. That's just all I can do is offer general wisdom.

The frustrating thing about these is they so often don't include thoughtful, curious, include thoughtful, curious, biblically centered conversations. Like it's just kind of labels, assumptions, accusations. I remember years ago when I was teaching at Eternity Bible College in Southern California, we were assigning NT Wright Books, oh, the horror. And, you know, we were, then people started accusing us of being new perspective without even, oh, the horror. And, you know, we were, then people started accusing us of being new perspective without even again, understanding what that even means. So we, I remember meeting with some concerned pastors and me and some professors, you know, were very eager to the, Hey, what are your concerns? We want to be really clear with what we believe. And, and we might assign books that we don't totally agree with, we want to get people to think. And ultimately, we want people to be textually centered. And so,

I'll never forget this, I'm going to get a second year teaching. And I was all excited. I brought my Greek New Testament. Here's some guys concerned about Diakosune and Ergonomou and the literary context of Romans 321 to 425. And I was like, get my Bible on, like, this will be great. You know, like we can refine each other's understanding. And these guys show up with like no Bible, you know? And I'm there with that Greek text open, like, all right, let's, not debate. I hate debates. I was like, let's, here's my understanding of, you know, 328, 29, and how it leads into Paul's, you know, argument with Abraham in

4, you know, 1 to 2525. What's your understanding? Because here's how I'm reading it. And then they looked at us like dumbfounded, like, why do you have a Bible? It was so fresh. And it was just these labels, but you can't be teaching heresy. I'm like, well, no, we're not. But let's talk about why we don't think we are and why you think we are. Well, no, we're not. But let's talk about why we don't think we are and why you think we are. Well, we're Protestants and we believe in justification by faith. I'm like, yeah, can we get back to the text? Let's look at what that even means.

I don't know. It's just so hard to get textually centered conversation around some of these issues. I'm sure you face this all the time. Totally. That was one of the things, I mean, apart from just being, I felt that the TGC review was a bit slanderous in terms of the degree of misrepresentation, to be honest. But, and I think it discredits the gospel, which is harmful and it hurts me personally and all that. But I think that the thing that was most telling to me in the entire review is that it didn't

engage a single scriptural argument. Like my book is all about how the Bible interprets things, didn't deal with a single one of those things in the review. It just completely talked around it like as if the Bible wasn't the center of the conversation. It's sort of like, yeah, it just worked on a kind of a larger systematic framework of like, we all know that these theologies are bad or whatever, and then misrepresented what it actually even said in my judgment. Wow, that's sad. Well, I hope there's a...

But the Bible, yeah, the missing Bible, right? The part that stuck out to me in the TGC review is like, isn't this actually a conversation about how we understand specific texts? Yeah. Well, I hope there's a further conversation there because I think TGC does good work and they've got good things going on. It's one thing if they disagree and if it's a critical review, but if it's just completely unfair, it doesn't represent you well, it doesn't engage in the tax. I mean, goodness, we're Protestants, we're taxually centered. That's not good. So I

hope there's a follow-up to... Oh, I hope so too. Yeah. And TGC is a broad umbrella. I realize the reviewer that they chose, who knows why they chose this reviewer and chose to platform the review too. But yeah, it could have been a very different reviewer at TGC. And I realized, yeah, it's a big institution. What if I brought him on the podcast, whoever it was, and brought you back on to have a conversation? Would you bet for that? I don't know. Maybe.

Again, I don't like debates. But yeah, I don't know. I would have to think about that. I wouldn't want to debate, but just like, hey, which? Yeah. I don't. Yeah. Sorry to put you on the spot.

We can talk offline. No, it's OK. We can think that through in chat, I mean, about it more, as you wish. One more question I wanted to ask you. Are you familiar with Andrew Rolera's work, The Lamb of the Free? Have you read it?

I have read about half of it at this point. Do you like it, disagree with it, agree with parts, others not? Or what's your thought on it? Definitely disagree with parts, agree strongly with parts. But yeah, I'm not really ready to talk about it in terms of any kind of like, I don't have like my notes in front of me and some of it I read it in a more cursory fashion, but I'm looking forward to doing a deeper dive on parts of it. Some of his work obviously on the Old Testament, you know, background to atonement is flawlessly done and interesting and good. Other parts,

I had some questions, but certainly he's doing some helpful work in correcting misunderstandings of how atonement works and how the whole sacrificial system, what it was about, drawing largely on Jacob Milgram's work. I do have some questions about how he applies that to some New Testament texts and maybe substitution versus representation kind of frameworks. I think we need to be very careful with thinking through that or treating them as either ors. I would like to do some careful work there before I respond. Yeah, that's good. He's a former student of mine, one of, if not the best student I've ever had. The guy is brilliant. This is back in his Bible college days.

And I haven't kept up with them, but I've had a few people saying, you need to have him on and talk about this book. And I was like, well, it's one of those things I probably should read it first, because it is controversial. I don't mean that negatively at all. I mean, but it's, I feel like I should be more familiar

with his book before I have it on. The only problem is I just don't have time to read it in the near future. It's a very strong critique of penal substitutionary atonement. And of course we have to be careful what we mean by all those words, right? If we're going to have a rigorous conversation about like, what do we actually mean by penal? What do we mean by substitution? What do we mean by atonement? And yeah, so that's really the thrust of his book is a direct critique of that. Yeah, I haven't finished it myself yet in process, but yeah, it's definitely causing conversations to both.

Oh, good. And worth engaging. I understand and probably resonate with the critiques of kind of a certain modern, individualized understanding of penal substitution. But I would love to see a counter-argument to the idea that Jesus, on a more covenantal framework, that Israel was called to obey the law, not perfectly, but obey the law. And if they didn't obey, curses of the covenant would rain down as punishment. And then Jesus took on the curses of the law as the new Israel, the new Adam, and exhausted those punishments. So, in that sense, Jesus is the covenantal substitute for the covenantal curses.

That's a kind of penal substitution, right? That seems pretty clear to me that that's... Maybe I'm missing something. I mean him bearing the curses on his body seems to be... Yeah, those are critical issues that Rolera has to deal with. He of course has his solutions. I don't want to speculate too much about how he's doing it because I just haven't read him attentively enough. I'm going to be, I'm doing a course on Pauline soteriology actually at Northern this quarter, and we're going to read one of his chapters.

So I'm looking forward to, I added that to the Biblio, even though I haven't had a chance to read it with care yet, probably to give me the excuse to read it with Kerr and talk about it with my students. So yeah, I'm looking forward to diving in more deeply into his proposal. I do think it's generating a lot of conversation. Yeah, good, good. Hey, thanks for being on Theology of the World. Really appreciate it.

Again, the book is Beyond the Salvation Wars, Why Both Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We Are Saved. I have a pre-release copy here. It is out, right? Again, the book is Beyond the Salvation Wars, why both Protestants and Catholics must reimagine how we are saved. It is, I have a pre-release copy here. It is out, right? Obviously because it's- Yeah, it is out. Yep, it's out. Awesome, cool.

Well, hey, thanks for meeting us. I'm Theel Joran again. Really appreciate you and your work. Hey, thanks, Preston. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network. Hey friends, Rachel Grohl here from the Hearing Jesus podcast. Do you ever wonder if you're truly hearing from God? Are you tired of trying to figure it all out on your own? The Hearing Jesus podcast is here to help you

live out your faith every single day. And together, we will break down these walls by digging deeply into God's word in a way that you can really understand it. If this sounds like the kind of journey you want to go on, please join us on the Hearing Jesus podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hi, I'm Haven, and as long as I can remember, I have had different curiosities and thoughts and ideas that I like to explore, usually with a girlfriend over a matcha latte.

But then when I had kids, I just didn't have the same time that I did before for the one-on-ones that I crave. So I started Haven the Podcast. It's a safe space for curiosity and conversation. And we talk about everything from relationships to parenting to friendships to even your view of yourself and we don't have answers or solutions but I think the power is actually in the questions. So I'd love for you to join me, Haven the podcast.