John Mark Hicks

PDF version of the Review available here.

Beyond the Salvation Wars: Why Both Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We Are Saved, authored by Matthew W. Bates, is a provocative contribution to the “salvation wars.” It not only explores common ground among disputants but also invites them to embrace a holistic perspective “beyond the salvation wars.” That perspective, according to Bates, grounds Christian soteriology more in the language and conceptual world of the text than in the historic technical language of Catholic and Protestant theological systems.

The salvation wars have been with us for a long time. We might say since the beginning (Galatians and Romans). We could also talk about Augustine and the Eastern church, Luther and Eck, Arminius and Gomarus, Wesley and Whitefield, and in recent history with John McArthur (Lordship Salvation) and Zane Hodges (Free Grace). They are probably not going away.

The Lordship Salvation controversy in the 1990s (sparked by John MacArthur, Jr.’s 1988 book The Gospel According to Jesus) was about the relationship between faith and works, between perseverance and assurance, and obedience and mental assent. There are similarities with Bates’s proposal, but the Lordship debate took place within the categories of Protestantism as Bates describes Protestants. The Lordship Salvation controversy illustrates the diversity of thought within Protestantism but also the vitality and passion that accompanies suggestions that works may play a role in our justification. Bates, in some ways, has renewed this discussion and pushed it forward by offering a model that steps outside of the conceptual frameworks of traditional Catholic and Protestant systems.

Basic Purpose

Bates’s proposed soteriology values insights from both Catholics and Protestants. At the same time, he calls those traditions back to their roots in the language of Scripture and to recognize Scripture’s social and historical setting within Second Temple Judaism. He applies the insights of the New Perspective on Paul as well as the Jewishness of early Christianity. Bates returns to the text of Scripture for language, concepts, and connections rather than privileging the dogmatics of Reformation era polemics.

For example, some, reading “righteousness” or “justification” (and corresponding verbs) through the lens of Protestant dogmatic theology, think it only or primarily refers to a past forensic event in the life of a believer. However, Paul does not use “righteousness” (δικαιοσύνη and its cognates) only in reference to past events. Protestant theology has always recognized that there is another aspect to soteriology (the practice of righteousness, as in progressive sanctification) even when justification is strictly defined as a punctiliar past act of God (also called definitive sanctification). Nevertheless, a careless reading of δικαιοσύνη constricts Paul’s use to a specific definition of justification rather than recognizing its range of meaning and its varied temporal senses.

In Beyond Salvation Wars, Bates proposes a third way. He does not reject Catholic and Protestant soteriology as devoid of gospel. On the contrary, he recognizes that Catholics and Protestants stand on solid common ground when it comes to the narration of the mighty acts of God to liberate us from sin and corruption. Both Catholics and Protestants affirm the gospel.

This third way—an allegiance model—intends to move “beyond” the divide of Catholic and Protestant to propose an alternative soteriological model. Bates recognizes that his model has both Catholic and Protestant elements, and it is this matrix that holds out the possibility that both Catholics and Protestants might recognize themselves to some extent in the allegiance model. He hopes this will facilitate a move toward greater unity grounded in careful attention to the language and argument of Scripture.

What is the Proposal?

The roots of his proposal are present in two previous books, Gospel Allegiance: What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ and Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King. To fully appreciate Beyond Salvation Wars, though it contains its own argument, one needs to pay attention to the function of the previous two books. This is especially true since those books themselves participate in the “salvation wars,” though Bates hoped they would somewhat clarify the struggle.

“[B]oth Catholics and Protestants have responded to the gospel in saving fashion” (256). They both affirm the fundamental saving acts of the gospel, and they both live out that gospel in ways that receive the benefits of the gospel. In other words, both believe and practice the faith that saves. This is a strong ecumenical point. The “salvation wars” between Catholics and Protestants are not about eternal destiny or the authenticity of God’s work in the hearts of these believers.

At the same time, according to Bates, both Catholics and Protestants miss the bigger picture which involves a more holistic soteriology. The gospel-allegiance model moves us toward that holism while embracing aspects of both Catholic and Protestant soteriology but also rejecting aspects of both.

To grasp Bates’s proposal, it is important to understand how he positions himself in relation to Protestant and Catholic soteriologies. Based on chapter ten, I have created the following chart. The language is Bates’s. I have only chosen eight elements from a larger list (the bullet points in the chapter), and I have correlated them (not Bates). The chart identifies the differences between the three models.

Protestant	Allegiance	Catholic
Faith is the sole instrumental means by which a person is justified.	What causes Holy Spirit union for an individual—justification’s precise instrument—is voluntary and repentant allegiance to King Jesus, and its premier form is a declared oath of fealty during a baptism.	Baptism alone is the instrumental cause by which we are justified.
Faith means personal interior trust that God’s promise of salvation through Jesus’ death and resurrection is true.	Saving faith is relational, outward-facing, embodied, and best understood as declared allegiance to the Christ.	Faith is two-part, consisting of essential dogma to be believed and the personal act of believing it.
The cross is the center of the gospel.	The gospel can be summarized: Jesus is the saving king.	Jesus’s merit is the basis of salvation.
Justification by faith is part of the gospel.	Jesus’s justification by his pistis is part of the gospel, since his allegiance in taking the path of the cross resulted in his resurrection proving that God justified him.	Imparted righteousness, involving brief baptismal contact followed by a separation in righteousness between the divine and the human, is the dominant metaphor for explaining how justification happens.
Good works are required within sanctification as evidence that justification has already transpired.	Justification and sanctification are not biblically distinct portions within a personalized order of salvation.	Each person must nurture and grow in justification by performing good deeds in cooperation with the Holy Spirit to receive final justification.
An individual is justified when Christ’s righteousness is imputed.	Justification by pistis includes works as an embodiment of allegiance but cannot require universally mandated works.	An individual is made righteous at baptism, but only to the extent that previous merit and present cooperative disposition allow.
Imputed righteousness means a person is legally reckoned as righteous and declared innocent in God’s sight even while that person remains a sinner.	A person is not justified when the Christ’s righteousness is imparted or imputed but when a person is incorporated into the Christ’s righteousness.	The formal cause of a person’s justification is not a perpetual sharing in God’s own or Christ’s own righteousness; rather, at baptism the Holy Spirit gives each person their own righteousness by renewing their mind.
A person’s justification is perpetually sourced in Christ’s righteousness as an external (alien) source.	In the past, present, and future, the individual who is justified perpetually shares in the righteousness of God through an externally sourced union with the righteous king and his body as intrinsically facilitated by the Holy Spirit.	After baptism a person’s righteousness (justification) is her or his own rather than perpetually sourced in God’s or Christ’s extrinsic righteousness.

Each tradition, we should remember, confesses the gospel story of the gracious God who redeems humanity through the incarnation, death, resurrection, and enthronement of Jesus the Messiah in the power of the Holy Spirit. Given Bates’s discussion, permit me to summarize the different models in this way.

• The Catholic model: God justifies through imparting righteousness at baptism which is nurtured and grown by the Holy Spirit through good works, by continued belief (including the dogma of the church), and by using the sacramental means of the church such that a person’s own righteousness constitutes or contributes to their final justification.

• The Protestant model: God justifies through the imputation of the Christ’s alien righteousness by the interior act of faith alone in Jesus as personal Savior independent of any embodied acts, and that justification is evidenced in good works (including baptism) in the process of sanctification, but those works neither contribute to one’s final standing before God nor are part of God’s essential criteria for final judgment.

• The Allegiance model: God justifies through a Spirit-facilitated corporate union with Christ’s own justification (righteousness) by a personal embodied allegiance to King Jesus ordinarily offered as a fealty oath at baptism and is sustained by good works as continued professions of loyalty, which are necessary for the ratification of justification at the final judgment.

There are multiple potential caveats with such wide-ranging categorizations. One is the inability (due to space) to nuance positions in the light of the diversity within each tradition. Bates makes a good faith attempt to highlight some, but it is an impossible task. So, we must read at the level of generalization and recognize that there are nuances that mitigate and even subvert some general characterizations for some within each tradition. For example, the function of “good works” in the Protestant tradition is quite varied and sometimes consistent with Bates’s own point.

Within the Protestant tradition, for example, the differences between Calvinists, Classic Arminians, Wesleyans, Mennonites, Restorationists, etc. are insufficiently noted. Wesleyans and perhaps even more so Restorationists are probably closer to the Allegiance model than the Protestant model in many respects (especially true since the Protestant model is largely Reformed). Even among Reformed Baptists there are significance differences about the sacramental meaning of baptism (e.g., for some it is not merely a good work, as I summarized it above). However, the broad sweep of the book means such deficits are practically unavoidable, and readers should keep the purpose of the book in mind without getting too frustrated by the missing nuances.

Nevertheless, the Catholic and Protestant models adequately and broadly represent two distinct streams. At the same time, Eastern Orthodoxy, though generally absent from the “salvation wars” in American Evangelicalism, would be a welcome addition to the discussion as its soteriology offers some unique perspectives. Some of those are more in line with the Allegiance model than either the Catholic or Protestant ones (especially in contrast to Reformed theologians). But one book cannot do everything, and so I do not fault it on this score.

Bates encourages us to embrace the Allegiance model as a move toward greater unity in the body of Christ. He suggests early Christianity (including the second century, e.g., Irenaeus’s On Apostolic Preaching or the substance of the Apostles’ Creed) reflects the ideas and practices of the Allegiance model more than the Catholic and Protestant. He also appeals to readers to organize, discuss, and promote the Allegiance model both in congregations and in parachurch networks (like Renew.org), as an alternative path for the church.

Affirmations of this Proposal

First, I appreciate the catholic (universal) identification of the gospel. This is important in two respects: (1) the gospel’s identity, and (2) the universal embrace of that gospel by all historic Christian traditions (especially Roman Catholic and Protestant). Regarding the former, Bates lists ten points (p. 38):

• preexisted as God the Son,
• was sent by the Father as promised,
• took on human flesh in fulfillment of God’s promises to David,
• died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures,
• was buried,
• was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures,
• appeared to many witnesses,
• is enthroned at the right hand of God as the ruling Christ,
• has sent the Holy Spirit to his people to effect his rule, and
• will come again as final judge to rule.

These ten items are universally embraced by historic Christian traditions. It is the core faith of the Great Tradition. This is not only common ground between Catholics and Protestants; it is the bond of unity itself. As Bates wrote (p. 48, emphasis his), “All major streams and Christian denominations agree about the actual biblical, apostolic gospel and hence are fully Christian.”

Second, I appreciate the distinction between the gospel itself and the human response to the gospel. The gospel is what God has done in the Messiah by the Spirit. God has inaugurated a new creation in the kingdom of Jesus the Messiah. God has established, through the faithfulness of Jesus and in the power of the Spirit, a justified corporate reality over which the Messiah reigns. When people respond, they are included in this kingdom—the corporate body of Christ. The gospel, then, is what God has done and continues to do in the Messiah by the power of the Spirit. Our response believes and obeys the gospel (or, we profess our oath of fealty to King Jesus and live consistent with it) but is not the gospel itself. For Reformed theologians, the response to gospel is a divine act as God regenerates people so that they irresistibly come to faith. Consequently, Reformed theologians object to this distinction since the gospel includes the divine act that creates faith in the hearts of individuals through God’s predetermined election. In his chapter on election, Bates rejects the Reformed understanding of unconditional individual election.

Third, it is helpful to remember the practical and theological role that the “sacramental system” plays in Catholic life. While there are positives to sacramentalism, the system is problematic. Institutionalized sacramentalism gets “front billing” (p. 51). Ecclesial sacramentalism, then, becomes the exclusive means by which the gospel is mediated. Bates critiques this in several ways since it functionally displaces, without erasing, the gospel.

Fourth, Bates correctly critiques the Protestant gospel model as too individualistic, unnecessarily truncated in its focus on the forgiveness of sins, and narrowly located in the cross such that personal justification by faith alone is the gospel itself. The Protestant model is fundamentally an atonement theology, primarily penal substitution. While the application of the gospel includes the forgiveness of sins (e.g., justification), the function of the gospel—according to Bates—is the proclamation that Jesus is King and reigns over the world to fill it with the glory of God. This means that reign of Jesus has social and liberating implications for both the ecclesial community and the world. Like the forgiveness of sins, social impact (as described in the Messiah’s mission in Luke 4) is one of the benefits of the gospel, though it is not the gospel itself.

Fifth, Bates advances a general Arminian soteriology though it is more Wesleyan (e.g., participatory sanctification) than Classic Arminian (e.g., total depravity). He pushes against Reformed soteriology in his opposition to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints and his emphasis on the conditionality of the gospel’s benefits though there is an unconditioned promise for all (universal potential). The “[p]erformance of the pistis action is the condition” (p. 77).

Sixth, Bates distinguishes between “works” and “works of the law” in Paul. This is an involved discussion (see Gospel Allegiance, chapter 6), but essentially Paul rejects the saving value of the covenantal works of the Mosaic law which functioned as boundary markers for the true people of God. At the same time, Paul expects believers to devote themselves to good works, affirms believers can actually practice righteousness, and recognizes they will be judged according to their works on the final day. I basically agree with the New Perspective Bates articulates, the necessity of good works in the life of the believer, and role works play in the final judgment. Bates stresses that these works are done by the power of the Spirit and through participation in the Christ’s body. They are not autonomous acts of obedience which secure their own righteousness. The believer is justified by the Christ’s faithfulness through inclusion in his corporate body.

Seventh, Bates advocates what Michael Bird has called “incorporated righteousness” in contrast to Catholic imparted or infused righteousness and a Protestant imputed righteousness. He hopes this is a move beyond the salvation wars in the sense that both Catholic and Protestant can recognize at least part of themselves in his language while at the same time embrace a broader model. Incorporated into Christ, we are righteous because the head of the body is righteous. This gift of righteousness involves a process of becoming righteous through the work of the Spirit (sanctification in Protestant terms).

Eighth, the move to past, present, and future soteriological categories rather than construing Paul’s language of justification, sanctification, and glorification as technical terms is a healthy one. The use of technical terms is shorthand, but we must recognize the shorthand for what it is and not permit their technical meaning to constrain the biblical text. Consequently, we recognize that δικαιοσύνη may refer to something past, present, or future in Paul. This is also true for holiness (ἁγιασμῷ) and its cognates. In fact, for over 20 years, I have used something like this chart.

Word-Group	Past	Present	Future
“Righteousness”	Rom 3:24; 5:1	Rom 6:13, 16-19	Gal 5:5; Rom 2:5-8
“Sanctification”	1 Cor 6:11	2 Cor 7:1	1 Thess 5:23
“Salvation”	Eph 2:5,8	2 Cor. 2:15	Rom 5:9, 10; 13:11
“Glory”		2 Cor 3:18	Rom 8:17, 30
“Set Free”	Rom 6:18,20; 8:2	Gal 5:13	Rom 8:21
The Spirit’s Work	Gal 3:2-5	Gal 5:22-25	1 Cor 15 “spiritual”

Ninth, there is much that resonates with my own faith tradition, the Stone-Campbell Movement or American Restoration Movement. These include: credobaptism, oath nature of baptism, baptism as part of the conversion narrative, the necessity of good works in terms of final justification, the emphasis on the basic “gospel facts” (as Alexander Campbell called them), the general Arminian approach (conditional individual inclusion in a corporate election, rejection of total depravity in its Calvinist form, and the possibility of losing authentic faith), faith prior to regeneration, the necessity of sanctification, the “works of the law” referring to the Mosaic covenant in distinction from works for which God created us (many commentaries argued this in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries), a restorationist impulse that seeks to ground the gospel and our response in the biblical text and early church, valuing biblical language in contrast to the language of systematicians, and the ecumenical function of a set of core or universal “gospel facts” (as the church seeks to maintain the unity of the body).

Tenth, to illustrate point nine in a specific way, in his essay “What Constitutes Acceptable Obedience?” (in Salvation from Sin [1913], 217) David Lipscomb reflects some of Bates’s emphases: “Baptism is an act of more sacred import than other acts of obedience. It is the act which first manifests and declares faith in Christ Jesus and that consecrates man to the service of God. It is a more sacred act, just as the oath of allegiance that a foreigner takes to a human government is more sacred than the ordinary observance of the laws of the land. To violate the laws of the land is a misdemeanor; to violate the oath of allegiance is treason to the government. While, then, baptism is a more sacred act of obedience, inasmuch as it is the consecrating act and that in which man obligates himself to a life of obedience to Christ, in which he passes out of self into Christ as a member of his body, still it is subject to the same rules as other service. The same conditions render it acceptable or unacceptable as affects other service. Baptism, to be acceptable, must be submitted to (1) from faith in Christ; (2) the person commanded to be baptized, the believing penitent, must be baptized, buried with Christ into death; (3) it must be done from a scriptural motive, with a scriptural design or end in view.”

Expansions of and Adjustments to the Proposal

In such a comprehensive work readers can imagine any number of threads Bates could have pursued. However, the gracious reader recognizes the limits within which every author works. We must read within the confines of the intended purposes of a book. Otherwise, there would be no end to our caveats.

At the same time, there are places where we might imagine the argument could be improved, where a point needs greater nuancing, or where the introduction of other language might better serve the author’s purpose. I offer four suggestions. None radically alter the substance of the project, however.

First, the ten points Bates suggests as the gospel are solid. Yet, they are strikingly Pauline (though not exclusively so). I think these ten points need some narrative expansion (also true of the Apostles’ Creed; cf. Moltmann’s suggestions). My expansion is not in the direction of the Protestant model (e.g., must include the justification by faith or the benefits of the gospel) but to a fuller narrative. I suggest three.

• The gospel includes a narrative about creation as well as redemption because redemption is (re)new creation. King Jesus is the image of God who rules just as God intended for humanity in the beginning. As participants in the kingdom of God, we benefit from the rule of Jesus and participate in his reign (seated with him in the heavenlies). The good news is that God’s goal in creation reaches its fulfillment in the (re)new creation with an enthroned King. Creation is where the Apostles’ Creed begins.
• While the second and third points in Bates’s list include a reference to promises, the gospel is proclaimed in the promise to Abraham. “All nations will be blessed is the gospel proclamation” (Galatians 3:8; p. 83).  I would like to see some reflection on what this might mean for the ten gospel facts, their expansion, or nuancing. We see this kind of expansion in the sermons in Acts (e.g., Acts 13:16-41). The lack of reference to Abraham or the story of Israel (except the promise to David) seems anemic to me.
• The gospel includes the narrative of Jesus’s ministry. There we see the purpose and effects of the anointed regent (not yet enthroned but acting in prospect)—what does the King do? What is the goal of the kingdom? What gospel promise is present in the royal activity of Jesus in his ministry? Indeed, attention to the kingdom ministry has something to say about Christus Victor (victory over death, disease, demons, chaos, sin, etc.). The preaching in Acts includes the ministry of Jesus in its rehearsal of the gospel story (Acts 2:22; 10:36-38). Moreover, the Gospels are themselves the narrative story (Mark 1:1). Some reflection on what this might mean for the ten gospel facts would be helpful. How might the ministry of Jesus further define the gospel and illuminate its meaning (as well as its benefits)?

Nevertheless, I affirm the ten points, though I expand them in terms of God as creator, the promises to Abraham, and the royal ministry of Jesus. For the purposes of this book, however, the ten points articulate a solid basis for the unity of the church in the proclamation of the gospel, the heralding of King Jesus.

Second, I appreciate the move by Bates to position himself between sacramental ex opere operato (Catholic) and the exclusion of the sacraments from any soteriological meaning (as the Protestant model typically claims). Bates is not anti-sacramental, but he is anti-ex opere operato. Neither is he opposed to attaching a soteriological meaning to baptism. He opposes the Catholic model because it gives no function to pistis (voluntary allegiance), and he opposes the Protestant model because it fails to recognize baptism as a participating means (though he does not use the traditional language of “means of grace”). The former is mandatory for salvation while the latter has no place for baptism in its conversion narrative. In general, I appreciate the middle ground Bates digs out for himself where he opposes both ex opere operato and sine qua non baptismal theologies.

Bates rightly emphasizes that baptism is a personalist and voluntary act of allegiance or loyalty. It is an act of discipleship. However, self-baptism is dubious but possible (how does that square with burial as a symbol for baptism?). Unbaptized apostles seems untenable to me. Jesus was baptized, and Jesus had a baptismal ministry, and it would be anomalous if the disciples themselves had not been baptized in the ministries of Jesus or John. At Pentecost they received the Spirit to complete their kingdom entrance through water and Spirit. And focusing on repentance as the key rather than faith, repentance, and baptism as a total conversion narrative with regard to the forgiveness of sins is problematic (that would involve a detailed discussion not suitable for this review).

Most importantly, I think baptism as means of grace is underplayed. In other words, what does God do when we consecrate our bodies (which Bates emphasizes) in this loyalty oath (the original meaning of sacramentum)? Is baptism a means of grace or a mystery (another meaning of sacramentum)? I call attention to only two points, though much more could be said. (1) One must account for the baptismal means (instrumental) language in the New Testament. Sacramental realism takes the language of “baptized into (εἰς) Christ” and “buried with him by (διὰ) baptism” as performative so that we are raised with him to walk a new life (Romans 6:3-4) through allegiance/faith (Colossians 2:12, also containing a participle of means). There is also means language in Titus 3:5: God saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit (ἔσωσεν ἡμᾶς διὰ λουτροῦ παλιγγενεσίας καὶ ἀνακαινώσεως πνεύματος ἁγίου). Second, the language of justification is connected to baptism. This is true in Galatians 3:26-27 (children of God by pistis “because [γὰρ] as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ”), Titus 3:5-7 (“saved us…having been justified”), and Romans 6:3-7 (baptized into his death. . . the one who died has been justified [ἀποθανὼν δεδικαίωται] from sin).To be fair, Bates does not ignore these texts and argues that baptism is never linked to justification as an instrument of that benefit.

My point is this. Though Bates rightly recognizes a “yes and no” answer to the question of whether baptism is saving, I would have liked to see more sacramental realism in the “yes” part while also affirming the “no” aspect (e.g., it is not ex opere operato and the case of Cornelius illustrates that baptism is not a sine qua non). I think we can affirm baptism as a means of grace that participates in pistis—the two can go together. And Bates does link them. At the same time, I suggest a fuller exploration of whether God actually does something gracious through baptism as we bodily profess our allegiance to King Jesus. I think this is the ordinary means by which God washes away sins and bestows forgiveness. At the same time, Bates and I agree that baptism is part of the conversion narrative as penitent persons embrace Jesus as King in an embodied public act of discipleship, which in that context is ordinarily, as Bates describes it, “regenerative” (p. 137).

Third, Bates consciously works in Western categories as he dialogues with Catholic and Protestant models. That is ambitious in and of itself. So, my next suggestion is offered in prospect; it is not a critique. While Bates occasionally uses the language of “participation,” I think it would help his case to embrace that language more and make it integral to his argument. He appreciates Michael Gorman’s emphases, and Gorman has introduced many to the language of the East, including becoming, participation, and theosis.

This would be particularly helpful when thinking about sanctification, transformation, or the present pursuit of righteousness. It would also have significance for the final goal of God’s redemptive work and the reign of Jesus. As we live within the incorporated righteousness of Jesus the Messiah grounded in his faithfulness by which he became King, we participate in the righteousness of God and become partakers of God’s righteousness through communion with the Father, Son, and Spirit. I suspect Bates has no problem with that sort of language. I only suggest it become more integral to his argument. We respond to God’s gracious gift of King Jesus by committing ourselves to his kingdom through an oath of allegiance by which we are incorporated into the kingdom of God wherein we participate in the life of God in holiness, righteousness, and liberation (or redemption). By the power of the indwelling Spirit we participate in the communion of God whose life empowers our own and increasingly conforms us to the likeness of God (theosis).

Fourth, while I recognize that the book expounds a King Jesus model, I wonder where the priestly Jesus fits into this picture (priests are also anointed). It seems the priestly dimension is highlighted in descriptions of Protestant atonement theology but not in the Allegiance model. Bates does affirm, of course, that Jesus is high priest (p. 34). However, unless I missed it, Bates does not provide any guidance in how to think about the priestly role of Jesus. He does not focus on atonement theology per se or atonement models (except Protestant penal substitution). “Christ died for our sins” is part of the gospel everyone believes, though there are a range of opinions on what that means. So, I am curious: how does the priestly role of Jesus fit into the Allegiance model?

Conclusion

What is the contribution of Beyond Salvation Wars to the salvation wars? I will name three.

• It highlights the soteriological unity of the various models in their affirmation of the gospel narrative. This is one way to move beyond the salvation wars, that is, through recognizing a deeper unity grounded in the mighty acts of God.
• It maps out an alternative beyond Catholic institutionalized sacramentalism and individualistic Protestant justification by personal trust alone. The Allegiance model affirms incorporated righteousness embraced through a voluntary baptismal oath of loyalty by a penitent believer.
• It grounds discipleship in allegiance to King Jesus where obedience to the King (“good works”), by the grace of the Holy Spirit, receives soteriological meaning. This stresses both the significance and necessity of discipleship.

I appreciate Bates’s work. Reading the book is informative, thought-provoking, and direct (no beating around the bush). Bates has provided an alternative way to affirm broadly Arminian and Anabaptist values within a New Perspective reading strategy. He seeks to take the text seriously and read it carefully without the constraints of systematic categories (particularly in the wake of Reformation polemics). His Allegiance model reframes the discussion of soteriology from primarily atonement theology (cross and penal substitution) for saving individuals to the enthronement of King Jesus whose faithfulness produced a corporate reality in which those who swear allegiance to the King may participate and receive all its benefits. I find this helpful.

Perhaps it will not create much unity—the Catholic and Protestant models are well-entrenched. But it does offer a way to think about soteriology that is consistent with the basic facts of the gospel narrative and helpfully reflects on what God has done in King Jesus for our sakes through the Holy Spirit. It is a strong Trinitarian soteriology that invites us to participate in the life of God in the kingdom of God under the reign of King Jesus.

The first three are digital audio productions, but the last two are human readers.

Searching for the Pattern is now available on audiobooks at Amazon. Click here.

Women Serving God is also now available on audiobooks at Amazon. Click here.

Muscle and a Shovel: A Review is also now available on audiobooks at Amazon. Click here.

Two other books have been available in audio: Anchors for the Soul and Around the Bible in 80 Days.

Book Recommendations by John Mark Hicks

I have been doing a lot of reading in this area for years and much more recently. In fact, the first week in October I finished the definitive history of the October 1974 war between Israel and Egypt in the south, and between Syria and Israel in the north. The book was Abraham Rabinovich, The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East (Penguin Random House, 2017).

If you have an additional suggestions, as this is certainly not an exhaustive list or even necessarily the best books on the topic, feel free to add another or more in the comments.

 General Historical Introduction up to 2019.

Dov Waxman, The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: What Everyone Needs to Know (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). Intentionally balanced and as about as objective as one can achieve.

Scholarly History of Palestine up to 2022.

Ilan Pappe, A History of Modern Palestine, 3^rd edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022). Engages scholarly literature, details the history of Palestine, critiques both Palestinian and Israeli narratives, and provides critical assessment of key historical events and peacemaking attempts.

Contemporary Reflection on “Land” in Current Theological/Political Context.

Walter Brueggemann, Chosen? Reading the Bible amid the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2015). Drawing on both Israeli and Palestinian peace advocates, he critiques both “promised land” ideology and violence in the land, particularly focused on the militarization of the state of Israel. He discourages the use of the Bible as a direct support for the state of Israel and their inheritance as belonging to that state “forever.”

From the Jewish Perspective.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor (San Francisco: Harper, 2018). This Israeli author uses personal experience, history, and ethnic identity to describe what it is like to live in Israel. Often empathizing with Palestinians, he defends the need for a morally responsible and democratic state as a Jewish homeland in the Middle East.

Palestinian Perspective on Reading the Bible.

Mirei Raheb, Faith in the Empire: The Bible Through Palestinian Eyes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2014). If you want to understand how Palestinian Christians see the conflict in the light of the Bible, this is probably the best book. He seeks peace from the conflict.

History of Zionist Settlement in Palestine.

Rashid Khalidi, Hundred Year’s War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917-2017 (Picador Paper, 2021). Written from a Palestinian perspective, this book tells the story of Zionist settlement enabled by 20th century Western empires. It recognizes the mistakes by both Palestinians and Jewish settlers. It is a dispute about land, not religion or ethnicity.

Biblical Theology of Land in the Light of Jesus.

1. Gary M. Burge, Jesus and the Land: The New Testament Challenge to “Holy Land” Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2010). He denies that Christian Zionism is consistent with New Testament biblical theology. The promises that belong to Abraham belong to all those who trust in the Jewish Messiah, Jesus.
2. O. Palmer Robertson, Israel of God: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow (Philipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 2000).  He argues that Abrahamic promise is fulfilled through the Messiah in the Church, who is the Israel of God (Gentiles grafted into Israel), and, consequently, the state of Israel has no perpetual claim to the land they inhabit.
3. Darrell L. Bock and Mitch Glaser, eds., The People, the Land, and the Future of Israel: Israel and the Jewish People in the Plan of God (Grand Rapids: Kregel Publications, 2014). Multi-author work which covers the major concerns of those who propose Israel still has a future in the land, perhaps including the state of Israel, and, at the same time, seeking peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I have now read the sixth of twelve books suggested by FB friends. This one was recommended by Clayton Homewood.  This is my summary.

Marcus Peter Johnson, One with Christ: An Evangelical Theology of Salvation (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2013).

Salvation, according to historic Christianity, is our personal union with the living Christ, our inclusion in the person of Christ. “Christ is our salvation,” and “our union with the living Christ is,” Johnson writes, “what it means to be saved.” Johnson provides a solid and helpful defense of this approach to soteriology. Historically, this is not a new position, of course. Early patristic writers stand in this tradition along with Calvin, and I affirm it myself.

“The mysterious reality of our union with Jesus Christ,” he writes, “by which he dwells in us and we in him, is so utterly essential to the gospel that to obscure it inevitably leads to the obscuring of the gospel itself.” This obfuscation happens when, among other things, one (1) identifies the “benefits” of Christ’s work as abstract or forensic (“depersonalized”) gifts, (2) understands salvation individualistically, and (3) divorces soteriology from the church and its sacraments. This corrective emphasizes a personal, organic, and participatory soteriology that understands any legal or forensic aspects of salvation as secondary, an effect of union with Christ.

The personal mutual indwelling of the living Son in us and we in the Son is the source of a healthy understanding of the meaning of salvation. This mystical union is the source of all the benefits God shares with us through the living Christ. This mystery is inexplicable, but it is a reality we apprehend and describe through the story of God in Christ and we also experience in the power of the Spirit. In other words, Johnson has much in common with the Eastern Orthodox notion of theosis (participating in the life of God) which is also part of Catholic and Protestant traditions in some authors (e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, etc.).

After defining union with Christ and its role in the history of theology, Johnson interprets the meaning of justification, sanctification, adoption, preservation, and glorification through this lens. These are inseparable benefits and gifts that come to us, he argues, because we are united with Christ.

At this point, I offer one caution. The book’s subtitle should perhaps read “Reformed” (i.e., Calvinist) rather than “Evangelical” (i.e., which would include non-Reformed theologians and believers). He mostly cites Reformed sources, though he occasionally utilizes authors from other traditions. His interpretation of the various dimensions of salvation are consistently Reformed. Indeed, Johnson represents a healthy form of Reformed theology that corrects some of the distortions of Reformed theology often found in contemporary advocates of Calvinism. In this way, he follows—for example—Torrance more than Piper or Grudem.

I think the major contribution of the book is not only reorienting evangelical (particularly Reformed) theology toward union with Christ as the central claim about salvation but also his incorporation of church and sacrament in this understanding of union with Christ. “Salvation is a communal reality,” and there is a sense in which there is no salvation outside of the church because we are all joined to each other through our union with Christ. This community celebrates and participates in this union through the sacraments, including the preaching of gospel and enactment of the gospel through baptism and the Lord’s supper.

In the two chapters on church and sacraments, Johnson provides a healthy and bold return to early Reformed (especially Calvin) tenets. Because the church actually participates in the incarnate, crucified, resurrected, and glorified Christ, it is the body of Christ. This is no figure of speech but an actual mystical union with Christ. It is no simile but real. He writes, since “it is an actual union with the incarnate person of Christ, who has a body—then we have reason to” affirm that “Paul’s body language is similarly realistic,” that is, it explains or points to a “reality.” The church is ”truly and actually” the body of Christ.

The importance of this point should not be undervalued. Cyril of Alexandria reminds us of its significance (quoted by Johnson): “So it is that the church is body of Christ, and we are its members. For since we are all united to Christ through this sacred body having received that one indivisible body into our own, our members are not our own but his.” The nature of our unity in the body is mystical because it is through our union with Christ. While the church continually seeks to embody that unity in visible forms, it often fails because we still live in the present age. Nevertheless, we are already united in Christ even as the church continually seeks communal sanctification. As disciples of Jesus, we seek to express this real mystical union with Christ and each other through visible and concrete means, though the process of sanctification continues and thus the visible unity is often flawed in its expression.

Union with Christ also entails that the sacraments have a realistic meaning. Water, bread, and wine “refer to, and bring us to participate in, the reality to which they point, namely, Jesus Christ.” In other words, the sacraments are not bare or empty signs but effective signs that provide a means of grace by which we participate in the reality of Christ himself. Thus, “God employs visible, created, physical means to save us and bless us,” and this is true only because Christ is the foundational sacrament (incarnated in the flesh) and the Spirit effectively uses creation to distribute grace. Thus, as Johnson writes, “Christ is the sacramental presence of God mediated to us (through faith, by the power of the Holy Spirit) in Word and sacrament.” This is a renewal of historic Reformed (in the Calvin tradition rather than the Zwingli one) understanding of the sacraments. Alexander Campbell himself was an heir of this Calvinian tradition (he even approvingly quotes Calvin on baptism, for example; cf. “Calvin on Baptism,” Millennial Harbinger 4 [November 1833], 543-47, ending the article with this statement: “We leave it to the good sense of the reader, whether John Calvin ought not to be called a Campbellite as well as the Apostle Peter”). Indeed, in the visible church and its sacraments, we concretely and visibly participate in Christ through our union wit Christ.

This particular summary near the end of the book provides a helpful perspective which permeates this book:  “The union [with Christ] does not exist merely in our minds or wills, it is not merely a legal or moral union, and neither is it a mere mental assent to the saving word of Christ in the past. It is, rather, a union with the present, living Lord Jesus Christ in the fullness of his saving person, and it occurs through (without being reduced to) faith and by the power of the Holy Spirit. This means, of course, that in order to save us, Christ must have been really, personally present to us. He, in his own person, gathered us into himself so that we might enjoy all the benefits he secured for us.”

One book advocates a soft complementarian reading of Scripture and the other an egalitarian reading of Scripture. The general editor of the former is Renèe Webb Sproles. It is entitled Male & Female: A Biblical Look at Gender (published by Renew.org). The author of the other is Philip B. Payne. It is entitled The Bible vs. Biblical Womanhood: How God’s Word Consistently Affirms Gender Equality (published by Zondervan). Sproles is the Director of Cultural Engagement for Renew.org. Payne is Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary Northwest.

Male & Female is more comprehensive in purpose than Payne’s book. Sproles had previously written a compact book entitled On Gender. The new book expands that brief work, though it is not dependent on it or intended as an update or revision of it. With this book, Sproles edits an anthology that addresses questions of gender identity, cultural movements (like LGBTQ+), and transgenderism as well as the common questions related to the husband/wife in the home and male/female in the church. As the general editor, Sproles authors several chapters but is most often in dialogue with others. Her editorship manages the contributions of a dozen or so people. It is a multi-author work, but focused on the importance of gender identity, gender differences, and gender roles within the biblical story. This cannot, Sproles writes, be left to the “category of opinion” because “[w]hat Scripture says about creation, sin, and salvation point to very important secondary truths that were once taken for granted” (p. 17).

In essence, as I read it, the book is an exposition and defense of the Renew Network’s “formal statement on gender” which seeks a path between  “ineffective traditionalism” and “culturally dominated progressivism” (p. 26). Renew’s statement on gender is provided twice in the book, once at the beginning (p. 27) and once at the end (p. 339). This inclusio confirms the book’s main interest to defend, explain, and elaborate Renew’s self-styled “soft complementarian” position.

We believe both men and women were created by God to equally reflect, in gendered ways, the nature and character of God in the world. In marriage, husbands and wives are to submit to one another, yet there are gender-specific expressions: husbands model themselves in relationship with their wives after Jesus’s sacrificial love for the church; and wives model themselves in relationship with their husbands after the church’s willingness to follow Jesus. In the church, men and women serve as partners in the use of their gifts in ministry, while seeking to uphold New Testament norms, which teach that the lead teacher/preacher role in the gathered church and the elder/overseer role are for qualified men. The vision of the Bible is an equal partnership of men and women in creation, in marriage, in salvation, in the gifts of the Spirit and in the mission of the church but exercised in ways that honor gender as described in the Bible.

Payne focuses on the differences between evangelical complementarianism and evangelical egalitarianism as he walks through the various biblical texts as an exegete and theological interpreter. Payne, who has authored numerous books, academic journal articles, and blogs on this topic, offers this book as an exegetical journey for a general audience. He intends to “explain how the text of Scripture itself affirms gender equality” (p. xiv). This book, he says, “simplifies [his] 511-page book on this topic, Man and Woman, One in Christ” (p. xv).

Payne finds these three ultimate emphases in the biblical story (p. xiii):

• the Holy Spirit gifts all believers for ministry
• the oneness of the body of Christ (the church) and the priesthood of all believers
• the humility, service, and mutual submission required of all believers

Male & Female

Sproles’ Male & Female expands a series of blog posts Renew published in 2021. You can see a list of those posts that interacted with my own book as well as my responses to each blog at this page. You can see all of Renew’s blogs “On Gender and the Bible” here. My blog responses contain my critique of Renew’s soft complementarianism. I will not repeat those points here; interested readers can read the blogs for themselves. The original blog posts often interacted with my book Women Serving God.However, this published edition of the blogs, while sometimes explicitly interacting with my book, do not focus there. Rather, the essays seek to make a case for their understanding through an exposition of Scripture without sustained explicit dialogue with an interlocutor or opposing viewpoints.

The one exception to the above characterization is the book’s chapter on 1 Timothy 2:8-15. The book, like the blog, is heavily focused on my own work on 1 Timothy 2 in Women Serving God. I was disappointed to discover the book essentially reproduced the original blog without directly interacting with my response to Renew’s blog (for an hour-long oral presentation of my view of 1 Timothy 2:8-15, click here), though the book expands the blog in some respects (more is said on 1 Timothy 2:15, for example). The book repeats the same mischaracterizations and misdirections that I corrected in my blog, and it does not acknowledge the many points of agreement between Renew and myself about this text which I emphasized in my blog. Readers can judge for themselves without me repeating the points here. I would direct readers to a couple other blogs on 1 Timothy 2:8-15 that would more fully explain my critique of soft complementarian interpretations of that text, raise questions about its difficulty (including its complicated nature), and specifically 1 Timothy 2:11-12.

I will, however, offer two examples of the sort of mishandling of what I wrote by the Renew blog and reproduced in this book. For example, Dr. Richard Oster suggests if the problematic women in Ephesus were idolaters, Paul would have spoken to them like he does idolaters in his Corinthian letters. He also thinks I have depicted them rather harshly as “the most sinister, evil women in the Ephesian church” (p. 135). Paul would not, Rick says, “be so kind to the women in 1 Timothy who . . . are participants in idolatry, sexual immorality, and (pagan) mythology” (p. 129). In response, Paul is talking to Timothy and it is unnecessary to use the rhetoric in Corinthians to make his point as a persuasive technique. But, more importantly, Paul tells us that “some [of these women] have already strayed after Satan” (1 Timothy 5:15). That sounds pretty serious to me.

Another example is the claim that I make “much of [the Artemis] cult in interpreting 1 Timothy 2:8-15” (p. 127). Actually, I only suggest an Artemis background as a possible historical reconstruction. I do not depend on it. My understanding is that Paul is dealing with deceived women, but I don’t know what the exact background to that deception is. It could have something to do with Artemis in terms of their dress, habits, and function in the worship of Artemis. I don’t know. For example, I write (p. 177) that “These women, deceived by false teachers, needed to learn and submit to the gospel rather than promote pagan myths and practices learned from the Artemis temple, Greco-Roman cults, and/or proto-Gnostic teachers.” I’m non-commital to the backdrop or historical reconstruction (I offer three suggestions in the italics above) because we simply can’t know what that is. But we do know some women were deceived as they are imitating Eve who was deceived. Though the book (and blog) quote a paragraph from my book as evidence of my Artemis projection, the previous paragraph had other suggestions, and the paragraph quoted simply uses Artemis as an example. It does not claim this is the fact. Perhaps I did not communicate that very well, but that was my intent based on the research of Hoag (you can see something of his claims here). Moreover, the assessment that 1 Timothy 2:12 is not a universal, timeless rule does not depend on which historical reconstruction is the correct one. Rather, the letter itself provides the evidence of false teaching, women captured by such teaching, and women promoting such teaching by words and actions.

Those are only two examples. If you read my blog response to Renew’s original blog, you will see other examples and my responses.

Male & Female includes those original blogs (or a version of them) with the addition of some other essays (a total of 16 chapters) with a concluding summary by Sproles and Bobby Harrington (essentially the last blog in the series at Renew.org on “Gender and the Bible”). The additional essays are devoted to the cultural environment and issues surrounding gender identity and sexual morality. Some first appeared in some form on Renew’s blog.

The structure of the book places the discussion of complementarianism and egalitarianism in the framework of the culture war over gender identity and sexual morality. This sets up the appearance (perhaps the claim?) that a move toward egalitarianism regarding marriage and the church is a move toward (perhaps even logical entailment?) the embrace of cultural movements like LGBTQ+ and transgenderism.

While I think it is important and valuable to talk about those movements, I don’t think they are at the heart of the disagreement between complementarianism and egalitarianism. Nor is the hermeneutic the same among those committed to biblical theology. Consequently, that mix functions more like a red herring in relation to the complementarian-egalitarian discussion. It is mixing oranges and apples.

Male & Female affirms a form of gender essentialism where the differences between male and female entail different roles or functions in the home and church. I understand why gender identity is part of the point in this book on the topic of male and female and why it is important to address those questions. It intends to be comprehensive in terms of a theology of gender. Those topics need to be addressed, and it makes sense that the comprehensiveness intended by this book would address them. It appears to me that Renew is suggesting egalitarianism leads to the embrace of transgender ideology because egalitarianism represents a departure from and a breakdown of biblical gender differentiation. However, I don’t see the deep connection between those questions and the evangelical discussion between complementarians and egalitarians.

After reading the book, I am concerned that the kind of gender essentialism advocated in this book is problematic and has unintended consequences. It so strongly speaks of male authority, men taking on the function/role of Jesus, and women submitting to men like the church submits to Jesus that it is ultimately a hard complementarianism that allows women to speak in some spaces (including the assembly) as long as they are bounded by the male authority structure of lead teacher/preacher or elder/overseer. The “soft” dimension depends on where one draws the line for women speaking or not speaking, teaching or not teaching, what gifts they can use and where they can use them.

This version of complementarianism has the same problem all complementarians face (whether “hard or soft”). Where does one draw the line of authority as a boundary in terms of the practice of the church and home? Having grown up in congregations that practiced a hard complementarianism, we still had those debates (may a women teach an adult Bible class, may a women teach baptized twelve year old males, may girls pick up attendance cards, etc.). As the book notes, not all Renew Network churches have the same understanding of where that line lies. Some permit a women to preach in the gathered assembly while others reject this and only allow women in the “pulpit” for special topics or expertise as long as they are interviewed or accompanied by the lead minister or an elder (p. 141). Male authority in Male & Female must bound or give permission for the exercise of gifts by women in the assembly. And then some gifts (like teaching) are not permitted in the assembly at all, especially what moderns call “preaching.”

I do, however, appreciate the strong emphasis on transcending traditional practices that exclude women as well as the emphasis on mutual submission in marriage (even though the man is the authority figure in the relationship). I appreciate the call for husbands to be like Jesus and love their wives the way Jesus loved the church. I appreciate the call for a Jesus-like servant leadership. There is much to honor in this regard from the authors in Male & Female. Nevertheless, the sense that men are Jesus in their homes, and women are the followers of their husband’s authority creates, it seems to me, a problematic application of Ephesians 5 that lays the groundwork (unintended, to be sure) for abusive authoritarianism in marriage (and the church by extension).

Payne

If you have read Payne’s major work Man and Woman, One in Christ, there are only a few surprises in this new, popular version of his academic work. One significant development is the chapter where he argues that Titus 2:1-8 addresses church elders, including women. The word presbytidas in Titus 3:2 is the word used to forbid the appointment of women officers (female elders) at the Council of Laodicea in 363-364 C.E. Canon 11 says, “Presbytides, as they are called, or female presidents, are not to be appointed in the Church.” I think this is a helpful chapter.

While I am not convinced by his advocacy that 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 is an interpolation by an ancient scribe who moved a marginal notation into the text at an early period, he does offer some interesting evidence in a couple of appendices. They are worth consideration and should not be ignored. He also continues his advocacy of hair as the covering in 1 Corinthians rather than some kind of external covering. He may be right, though I am unconvinced. Nevertheless, the context he offers is important: hair—whether up or down, covered or uncovered—was a strong emotive cultural fixture in the Greco-Roman world. Uncovered hair or let-down hair signaled sexual availability (thus, married women were covered) or at least was broadly understood in that way. I think 1 Corinthians 11 and the covering (whatever it is) is about sexual propriety rather than male authority.

Payne concludes with “ten biblical principles that entail gender equality”:

• male and female are equally created in God’s image
• male and female equally received the creation mandate and blessing
• redeemed men and women are equally “in Christ”
• church leadership as service
• mutual submission in the church and home
• the oneness of the body of Christ
• the priesthood of all believers
• the Spirit gifts all believers
• liberty in Christ
• in Christ, male and female are equal

I recommend Payne’s work, with a few caveats, as a good popular presentation of his academic work. It deserves a careful reading as coming from an accomplished scholar who has written about this topic for decades and has engaged his critics at every turn.

My sympathies lie with Payne, though I have never called myself an egalitarian. Yet, fairness—at least in my context—demands that I read both. And I have.

Two books. Tolle Lege! Caveat Lector!

J. M. R. Tillard, Flesh of the Church, Flesh of Christ: At the Source the Ecclesiology of Communion, trans. Madeleine Beaumount (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 2001).

I have now read the fourth of twelve books suggested by FB friends. This one was recommended by Reece LaBlanc. This is my summary; and this one is very difficult to briefly summarize for my FB friends. This book is no gentle flow down the stream; it is a torrent rapid of theological engagement through Scripture, historical theology, and theological reflection.

This book is not for the theologically faint-of-heart. It is a thoroughgoing theological reflection on the centrality of the Eucharist (Lord’s Supper) as the sacramental event that constitutes, at its most basic level, the church as church. It is a theological case for the conviction that the Eucharist is no mere addendum to the Christian life and community but is very spiritual reality into which we are grafted. The flesh of Christ and the flesh of the Church are united, and the Eucharist is not only an expression of that union but the source of the reality of the communion.

As I said, this is not exercise in the beginning or even intermediate theology. Rather, through reading Augustine carefully as a foundational thinker for the West and reading Cyril of Alexandria and John Chrysostom as theologians for the East, Tillard finds a common theme, though sometimes abandoned in the West and in danger of being jettisoned in the West (even in the Roman Catholic Church). When the Eucharist is displaced as an enriching but dispensable practice (as has happened among many Protestant traditions in the West), Tillard argues we substitute the ecclesiology of communion for individualistic experiences of relationship with Jesus. Ultimately, the church—lacking its primary expression of communion itself—becomes as irrelevant and dispensable as the Eucharist. “Where is the communion?,” Tillard asks.

For Tillard, and the patristic writers he unpacks, communion is not a byproduct of individual relationships with God as God has collected all the individuals into a general fold bound together by cords of good feelings toward each other and a common subjective faith in God.  Rather, communion is the reality of the union of the flesh of Christ with the flesh of the Church—it is the mystical union of Christ and the Church in the Spirit. The Eucharist—where we receive the body and blood of the Lord—connects us to our own embodied lives in the midst of the gathered church (flesh and blood, concrete people). Shared Eucharist is shared communion, but not in a mere cognitive sense but in a deeply mystical and relational sense such that we commune with God and with each other.

The church is not, Tillard argues, the “sum or the juxtaposition of ‘justified’ individuals.” Nor can we reduce the church “a vast system of human solidarity.” On the contrary, the union is not mere solidarity, or justification (our sins are forgiven as individuals), or assembly in the same building. It is, in fact, the reality effected by the Spirit that unites the flesh of Christ and the flesh of the Church. Ecclesiology (the very nature of the church) is a Spiritual reality expressed and resourced by the concrete eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ. It is communion; it is concretely experienced at the Eucharist table. This communion is “the knot” that ties everything together by the Spirit who unites God and humanity in Christ.

So, the enfleshed community (the concrete, visible church), through the Spirit and in Christ, communes with the transcendent, holy God and Father who has embraced humanity in its poverty. The flesh of Christ did not live for itself but for the sake of others, and the Eucharist in which we participate calls us (indeed, forms us and constitutes us) as people who will also sacrifice ourselves in agape love. The Eucharist is both a constitutive moment whereby we experience this profound union and, at the same time, a moment where we are formed by the work of the Spirit to become bread for the world, sacrificially giving ourselves for each other and the world just as Christ gave himself for us.

The church is supposed to be community of unceasing mutual love. As we dwell in the love of God through the Eucharist, so the Eucharist fills us with love so that we might become the reality in which we participate. The mutual indwelling experience in the Eucharist renews the mission of the church as “the healing of the body of wounded humanity.” The Eucharist not only testifies to this and renews it, but it is most fundamentally union with God in the flesh of Christ by the Spirit of God. The Eucharist, then, is a concrete source of life for the community that constitutes the community in the Spirit through the flesh of Christ.

Tillard is pushing against the dangers of Western emphases on individualism as well as reducing the meaning of assembly to listening to the word preached.  The West tends “to see the church as a society of baptized persons held together by obedience to the word, rather than as the communion united by the eucharistic body.” While the East has always been faithful to this vision of the Eucharist, the West has struggled to maintain it. According to Tillard and the East, there is “an unbreakable bond between church, Holy Spirit, and Eucharist.”

The nature of the communion that “defines the church” is this union between enfleshed members of the body of Christ communion (participating, sharing in) the flesh of Christ by the Spirit of God. In this we, we are one in the Spirit as a church, and the church experiences, renews, and instantiates this union most profoundly and concretely when at the Eucharist together. This, indeed, is a liberating moment as the grace of Christ’s own sacrifice frees us from our own selfishness so that we might become Christ to the world itself. And we do this not as individuals but as the body of Christ—a community in communion with God through Christ in the Spirit.

Perhaps, at bottom, the point is that ecclesiology is not fundamentally about voluntary congregationalism or loose bonds of shared commitments (even creeds). Rather, it is a profound union of the flesh of the church with the flesh of Christ in the Spirit through God’s gift of the Eucharist. It is a relational ontology—a participation, a mutual indwelling, a shared life—made possible by the flesh of Christ. It is not so much about how we, who are members of the body, make unity a reality but rather how the Spirit has united the flesh of the church with the flesh of Christ as a gift of God. And the Eucharist embodies that union—with God in Christ by the Spirit and with each other. That constitutes the communion of the church.

I opened myself to the challenge of reading 12 books in 2023 chosen by my Facebook friends. One friend suggested Thomas Fleming’s “A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War”. This is the third of twelve—I’m shooting for one a month.

The title comes from James Buchanan, the fifteenth President of the United States (1857-1861). As Civil War “loomed on the horizon,” he called it—on several occasions—the result of “an incurable disease in the public mind.” The public, influenced by media, extreme politicians, and leading influencers, had been infected to such an extent that polarized and antagonist views had been absorbed by the general public. This disease was the result of hostile, polarizing, and bigoted public discourse.

Fleming argues that radical abolitionists on the one hand and radical enslavers on the other used the long history of antagonism and suspicion between New England the deep South to acerbate and poison political discourse within the nation. The radical abolitionists used those prejudices to demonize enslavers in the worst possible light, and the most extreme abolitionists employed violence (for example, John Brown). Radical enslavers defended enslavement of Africans on the ground of their inferiority, white supremacy (this country was made for white people), and their own sense of benevolence (something like, we are helping black people by civilizing and christianizing them).

These two poles, riding on the waves of North-South economic, social, and political sectionalism, drove the nation into a Civil War that cost it close to one million deaths (that is, one out of every 31 people died in the 1860s from this War or its effects).

This disease in the public mind, which hindered or prevented civil discourse and potential political solutions that might have led to freedom for enslaved people, carries significant weight. A disease infected the public mind because of polarizing rants and discourse designed to engender hate and ultimately violence.

Southerners feared a race war, and thus it was best to keep Africans enslaved. The South had witnessed the liberation of slaves in the West Indies by Britain and heard the horror stories of massacres in the islands. This fear drove southern polarization.

Northerners feared the extension of slavery into the territories, and literature (like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) stoked hatred for slavery by casting it in the worst possible light. Northern hatred of southern slavery led to violence as seemingly the only solution to the problem.

Fleming suggests that this polarization and its fears left no space for a gradual elimination of slavery in the South as had happened in New England and the Middle States (Pennsylvania, New York, etc.) as well as in other countries around the world. The United States was one of the few nations that fought a civil war to end slavery. Ultimately, there were only two choices: the continuance of slavery or war.

Fleming seems to lay most of the blame on radical abolitionists, and he describes southern enslavers in a more understanding light than typical. It comes across as if the abolitionists were irrational, filled with hate, and would not listen to reason while southerners were not given a fair chance to seek other solutions. The North, Fleming suggests, pushed the nation into war when southerners were not receptive to abolitionists demands to abolish slavery immediately.

This is not a “new understanding,” despite the title of the book. While it has merit in many respects, I don’t find it fully convincing. The hero of his book is Abraham Lincoln who, Fleming argues, hoped for a gradualism that would eliminate slavery through compensated emancipation even though he believed the institution was evil. Lincoln sought compromise but fought a war to save the union by which enslaved peoples were liberated.

I think Fleming underplays the evil and reality of enslaved peoples. He treats it with almost a soft hand though he calls it deplorable. I also am not so sure gradualism was really an option for the future of the country—perhaps 100 years later maybe. The Civil Rights movement in the 1960s as well as the history of Reconstruction and Jim Crow in the South suggest the bigotries and animus toward black people was not going to disappear through gradualism. When the war ended slavery, other forms of slavery arose, including Jim Crow laws, sharecropping, redlining, and even now mass incarceration. Was there any real hope that gradualism would work? It was voted down, for example, during constitutional conventions in antebellum Tennessee and Virginia (border states that resisted secession until Lincoln called up 75,000 volunteer troops in response to the formation and actions of the Confederacy).

Nevertheless, I think the notion that a “disease in the public mind” is an excellent point. It is a complicated situation with lots of intersecting hostility, suspicion, and hatred between sections of the United States. Fleming’s book is worth reading, and while he offers lots of helpful perspectives to moderate some perspectives, I don’t think he offers a comprehensive understanding but illuminates one of the complicating factors that led to Civil War.

Though published ten years ago, it speaks to our contemporary situation. Hostile, polarizing, and bigoted discourse—a few calling for national divorce, succession, or even violence—characterize our present political and cultural situation.  The public mind is poisoned by social media influencers, radical politicians, and extreme media.

As a disciple of Jesus, I invite us to practice love, prayer, and acts of kindness for our enemies as we also bear witness to the truths embedded in the Christian narrative.

You are free to comment (though I will delete offensive or extraneous comments), but I have no interest in arguing for or against Fleming’s thesis in the comments. Be kind and share your ideas (if you wish) with love and in a mutual search for understanding.

I accepted the challenge to read 12 books suggested by my friends on Facebook.

I have read the first of 12 books recommended by Facebook friends. The first was recommended by Bruce Bates: Tim Keller, *Forgive: Why Should I and How Can I*. This is my brief summary.

At bottom, we ought to forgive because God has forgiven us in Christ, and we pursue forgiveness by letting go of the right to revenge (whether physical, emotional, or relational vindictiveness such as ill will) as a form of voluntary suffering that imitates Jesus. Forgiveness is costly.

Forgiveness requires a sense of spiritual poverty or humility as in “there but for the grace of God go I.” It also requires a sense of spiritual wealth and assurance in the grace of God. To know the grace of God means the love of God flows through us toward others.

The pursuit of forgiveness, however, neither diminishes the harm done nor fails to name that harm. The authentic act of forgiveness names the evil, speaks the truth, and honors what is right. This may hinder reconciliation because it demands the offender own the evil done rather than excusing it and continuing in it.

Keller stresses that divine forgiveness is the payment of our debt through the penal substitution of Christ (though I don’t think penal substitution is necessarily an essential point–but the cross is). It is undeserved. It is free. But it is costly to the giver of this forgiveness. This is the *vertical* dimension of forgiveness: we are forgiven by God. This forgiveness is the resource out of which we forgive.

The second dimension of forgiveness is *internal*. By the power of the Spirit (Keller could have been more emphatic about the Spirit though the point is there), we are enabled to deal with feelings of personal vengeance, unbounded rage, and personal vendettas (including cutting words, gossip, etc.). Forgiven, we internally let go of hatred, rage, and payback. When God’s forgiveness is experienced deep in our hearts, we are enabled to move through our feelings—though the process is difficult and painful—toward a forgiveness that takes our hands off the other person’s throat.

The third dimension is *horizontal*. Since we have been forgiven by God and our hearts begin to experience divine healing, we don’t give up the goal of a reconciled and restored relationship. Sometimes it is not possible because there is an unwillingness to name the evil, repent of it, and change behaviors. Reconciliation is not cheap.

However, reconciliation is not necessary to experience the vertical and internal dimensions of forgiveness. We can experience healing without reconciliation, but reconciliation is nevertheless an important part of walking in love toward others, including our enemies.

I recommend this book. It is accessible and theologically credible. It addresses numerous aspects of a complicated, messy, and problematic topic. It will help you think through, practice, and embrace forgiveness as a major Christian virtue (including self-forgiveness as well as the forgiveness of others).

Kyle Spears introduces the interview with this description: Is there a New Testament blueprint that marks who the true church is? Is there a pattern of New Testament culture that we are to imitate or is there more to the story? Every congregation wants to align themselves with the New Testament examples seen in scripture, but have we missed the story of God in the process? John Mark Hicks is a notable scholar in the Restoration Movement and joins the discussion as we discuss his book “Searching for the Pattern”.

I thank Renée Sproles for taking the time and energy to write a brief notice of my recent book Women Serving God. Her review appeared in the July 2021 issue of the Christian Chronicle. I appreciate her attentive effort to summarize and raise questions about it. I welcome such engagement.

I appreciate Renée’s sensitivity to the difficulties of a “no participation” (traditional) view. She recognizes that the restrictions found in many traditional churches are inconsistent with New Testament practices, and those practices have been personally frustrating to her. I share her commitment to a “way of doing church that honors God and embraces revealed freedoms.”

Many other women have found traditional practices frustrating as well. Women Serving God contains essays by Claire Davidson Frederick, Jantrice Johnson, Lauren Smelser White, and Bethany Joy Moore. They not only offer their own theological perspectives but share their own stories about growing up in churches of Christ.

At the same time, I think there are some insufficiently nuanced statements in the review. I do recognize an economy of words was necessary for such a brief piece where she intends to fairly express what insights the book has as well as her dissatisfaction with its conclusion. Understandably, she abbreviates points in order to meet the word limit she was given. Her task was a difficult one as brevity always is. I have more space in my blog response than she did in her published article. That, I hope, tempers my own remarks.

Nevertheless, I take this opportunity to respond to a few points, though neither her review nor my response can substitute for reading the book as well as her book entitled On Gender or the dialogue between Renew and myself through multiple blogs.

I will begin with her final paragraph. Her final question is: “what would our churches look like if we submitted to God’s revealed Word, taking advantage of our freedoms, and submitting to its boundaries?” I answer: it would look great!

I affirm the question and its sentiment. That is the purpose of my book: to identify the freedoms and boundaries in order to submit to the teaching of God’s word. I fear her question might insinuate that I am not interested in that agenda, but I trust Sproles recognizes that I, too, seek the same goal.

She is exactly correct that much of the problem lies within us as we presuppose certain perspectives about gender or patriarchy. That is why I wrote the book. I want to submit to God’s word just as much as Sproles does. We share this common interest and goal.

We both recognize that commands and instructions are embedded in occasional documents that address culturally situated contexts. For example, the command to greet one another with a holy kiss–a command that occurs more often than any seeming restrictions of women in the biblical text–is culturally embedded. This does not mean that culturally embedded commands are inherently relative. Rather, the commands address the readers in those contexts because they arose from a theology grounded in God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. They are not simply cultural, though they are articulated within a culture. They are expressions of theological values rooted in God’s own life and identity, and they reveal the will of God. We read Scripture in order to listen to God’s voice and learn God’s will. The question is: how do we identify those values and apply them in our contemporary contexts? The search is not for “nuggets” (I never use that word in my book) but a pattern of divine activity that calls us to participate in the mission of God.

Paul says, “man is the head of woman.” I affirm that. The question is, what does Paul mean? What is the meaning of his metaphorical use of “head”? Whatever it means, Paul affirms women who pray and prophesy in the assembly as long as their own heads are covered. I offer a brief opinion as to what Paul might mean (which should not be reduced to a simple “source” understanding, though that is shorthand for a range of perspectives), but I neither stress it nor make an argument based on the meaning of “head.” This is not a major concern of mine in this book because whatever headship means, it does not delimit woman from audibly and visibly participating in the assembly, according to 1 Corinthians 11:2-16. Sproles and I agree that Paul authorizes women to audibly and visibly pray and prophesy in the worshipping assemblies of Corinth.

It is perplexing that Sproles believes the restrictive texts are more facil than difficult given the history of their interpretation. Indeed, the “limited participation” view has a wide diversity within its own advocates. Some believe women may lead worship (or singing), prayer, read Scripture, offer testimonies in a worshipping assembly, share the pulpit with a male leader in the assembly, or offer communion talks from the pulpit as well as teach Bible classes that include men. Others oppose some, if not most, of these practices. Sproles affirms some kind of “limited participation” perspective, though I am not sure where she draws the line on some of these practices. She does believe only men are to do the authoritative teaching in the assembly (and in other spaces?).

Ironically, the defense and practice of “limited participation” only emerged with any significance in the 19th century (by the earliest women itinerant preachers, in fact), and the interpretations of the restrictive texts that permitted this were not widely promoted until the late 20th century (particularly through authors like Grudem, Piper, and the Council of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood). The interpretations offered for “limited participation” are new interpretations. They are neither ancient nor traditional. In other words, few understood these texts as permitting “limited participation” in a worshipping assembly until the last 150 years or so. Perhaps outside pressures influenced and moved people to create a new interpretation that is now called “soft complementarianism.” That highlights the difficulty in understanding these texts, whether or not limited participation is correct. I don’t think, however, the “limited participation” view is the best understanding of 1 Timothy 2:12.

These texts, particularly 1 Timothy 2:12, have been used to forbid women from voting in political elections, teaching in higher education, sitting on boards, voting in church business meetings, teaching eleven year old baptized males, teaching the Bible to any men under any circumstance, leading their husbands in prayer, baptizing men, eight year old girls from addressing a group of several men (including their fathers), pre-adolescent girls from picking up attendance cards, making announcements, or offering testimonies in the assembly, etc. I could continue this list if I wanted to use the space (some lists have over 100 items). Such applications indicate these texts have never been simple. The interpretations have been widely debated over the last 100 years unless one wants to return to a “no participation” view where, historically, women were not even permitted to sing in public worshipping assemblies during most of the Medieval period.

1 Timothy 2:8-15 is a difficult text. 1 Timothy 2:12 has at least twelve different possible interpretations, and Paul’s rationale in 1 Timothy 2:13-15 has at least six different possible interpretations. Even Renew’s article on 1 Timothy characterizes their understanding of the text as one which “likely means that women should not be in a teaching role” (my emphasis). “Likely” reflects some uncertainty or at least credible doubt, and this accentuates its difficulty.

Sproles asks, “How can Galatians 3:28…be a seed text to overturn male-female distinctions in the worship since Paul, who proudly co-ministered with women, writes to Timothy in a later letter affirming gender distinctions, even grounding them in creation order?” In response, I would say, because 1 Timothy 2 does not mean what Sproles thinks it means, and Paul is not grounding his thought in a hierarchical creation order. I answer her question in the book. One may not agree with my interpretation, but the answer to Sproles’s question is fairly straightforward: Paul does not mean what Sproles thinks he means.

Moreover, I never describe Galatians 3:28 as a “seed text” as my own view, though I did use it once in reference to a broad view of “full participation” when outlining three major positions at the beginning of the book. For myself and in my argument, however, I do not claim Galatians 3:28 is a seed text. Rather, it is consistent with Paul’s theology throughout his writings and applied to varied situations. Paul calls women to fully utilize their gifts within the assembly and the church, which expresses their status as co-heirs with men, just as the enslaved are called to fully utilize their gifts as co-heirs with free peoples with the faith community.

If Genesis 1 teaches a shared vocation and identity, and Genesis 2 teaches complementarity with differentiation without hierarchy, then servant leadership is mutual. Paul affirms this mutuality rather than excluding women from participation in the assembly (1 Corinthians 11:11-12). Godly male leadership is present across the testaments and so is godly female leadership (Miriam led the congregation in worship, Deborah judged Israel, Huldah proclaimed the word of the Lord to the king’s representatives and the High Priest, and Esther instituted a new festival and commanded Israel to keep it).

I do appreciate that one can read my book and be left unsatisfied. I understand that. I do not expect everyone to agree. Everyone will have to do their own assessment after reading the book for themselves.

I wrote the book to begin a discussion. One of its first fruits has been the dialogue between myself and Renew. I think it has been a healthy discussion, and I invite everyone to read it.

Thanks for your review, Renée. I appreciate your commitment to the word of God and your desire to submit to it.

May God give disciples of Jesus peace, wisdom, and discernment.