What must people do to be saved? For half a millennium two main Christian views in the West have stood opposed: Protestant championship of “faith alone,” and Catholic insistence on faith embodied in doing God's will with the help of God's actual grace (i.e., bringing about concrete actions of ours). New Testament specialist Matthew Bates thinks he sees a way to synthesize these views. When Christianity began, he argues, faith meant allegiance to the living Christ who is now exalted to God's throne, an allegiance that comprised affirming the truth about Christ, committing oneself to him, and obeying him. For the sake of effective mission, the church today needs to recover this rich sense of faith.
Bates is well situated to draw from both sides of the divide, having a solid conservative-evangelical education (Whitworth University, Regent College), a doctorate from Notre Dame, and a faculty position at a Catholic university (Quincy). He pitches his appeal broadly to theologians and also to the wider church.
To establish “allegiance” as the most adequate English synonym for the word pistis (“faith, belief, trust,” according to the standard lexicons of classical and NT Greek), Bates engages in both word study and biblical theology. A core chapter (4, “Faith as Allegiance”) highlights passages from Greco-Roman literature where “allegiance” fits best, and in these passages he has a strong case. Few would demur to Bates’ eloquent contention that the apostolic gospel was a larger narrative centering on Jesus’ ascension and present reign—not just on Jesus’ atoning death and rising from the dead—than we often hear in contemporary evangelization (chapters 2–3 and 9); and that the great goal of God's redemptive program is a renovated human community raised to somatic glory in a new creation, conformed to God's image represented iconically by Christ (chapters 6–7). These latter points ride waves in current New Testament scholarship, especially those stirred by N. T. Wright, the author most frequently listed in Bates’ bibliography. For pistis directed to a living Lord and taking part in cosmic transformation, “allegiance” may well be a preferable “macro” or “overarching” translation (5, 78).
Nevertheless Bates’ exegesis in places (especially in chapters 5, “Questions about Allegiance Alone,” and 8, “Justification and Allegiance Alone”) renders aspects of his proposal debatable. An example is his lexicography. Of course he is fully aware that the sense of a lexeme in one context does not necessarily carry over into others (78). Does the word “allegiance,” then, clarify—or does it obscure—verses where Paul sets works and pistis over against each other, as he does in Romans 4:5 or 9:32? Is this works-pistis antithesis really between two kinds of deeds (those “performed apart from the new creation” versus those “performed as allegiance to Jesus”), as Bates suggests (121)? Can the ungodly indeed produce allegiance to Jesus resulting in justification (Rom 4:5)? Or is Paul's contrast in fact the familiar difference between moral exertion of sinners, which a righteous God cannot justify, and sinners’ accession in what God has done for them, which they could never do for themselves?
Again, does Habakkuk 2:4, a key text for Paul (quoted in Gal 3:11 and Rom 1:17), truly mean that people are saved by their “faithfulness” (Hebrew ʾemunah), as Bates urges (42)? The prophet's original situation involved an apparent delay in the fulfillment of God's visionary promise, calling for steadfast faith while waiting (one sense of ʾemunah).
Bates may enhance the reception of his proposal by delimiting it more carefully. Could it be that faith-as-allegiance (including obedience to God through actual grace) does characterize Christian discipleship in the present age from regeneration to Last Judgment, whereas faith-as-letting-God-act-on-our-behalf from beginning to end (excluding any contribution of ours) defines the comprehensive sphere of absolute grace within which alone allegiance can come about? After all, that too is a way to incorporate both perspectives from the historic debate.
Bates’ main thesis is important, and this book should be in libraries, classrooms, and pastors’ studies, even though some will hesitate to concur with some of the author's points.
