Allegiance, Baptism, and the King Jesus Gospel with Matthew Bates - Episode 142

Carey Griffel: Welcome to Genesis Marks the Spot where we raided the ivory tower of Biblical theology without ransacking our faith. My name is Carey Griffel, and today I have a special treat for you. I have a conversation to share with you that I had with Dr. Matthew Bates, and I know that many of my listeners already know who he is.

[00:00:29] But for those who don't, I will give you a brief rundown of some of his work and why you ought to be excited about it.

[00:00:38] Dr. Bates has done a lot of work for us to help understand and situate what the gospel is. The gospel is something that is less expansive than we tend to think it is. At least that's what he is bringing us, is we're looking at what the actual term gospel is, what it does, what it was meant to do, and how the people of the first century were thinking about it.

[00:01:05] Now, that doesn't mean that it is not connected to the expansive work of Jesus 'cause it absolutely is, but like what I do here in this podcast, Dr. Bates is trying to really drill down into what this is specifically and what it means for us. Because if we can understand it in context, then that will help us understand Scripture. It will help us understand what Jesus did, why he came, and why all of that matters to us today.

[00:01:38] So let me first give you a brief rundown of Dr. Bates' major works and the things you should be looking for if you haven't read any of his work yet. So if you go look up his name on Amazon, you'll find a number of different titles.

[00:01:55] First of all, you'll find his older book, The Birth of the Trinity, Jesus, God, and Spirit in the New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of The Old Testament. Now, I'm not gonna say that that book doesn't intersect with his later work, because it totally does. But that book is less related to some of his later works.

[00:02:16] The first work that I read from Dr. Bates was his academic title, Salvation By Allegiance Alone. Now, I say it's academic because it definitely is. When you read an academic work, it's gonna be a little bit drier in writing. It's not gonna be targeted toward the average Christian. And it might have a little bit more repetition than you're used to reading, simply because an academic work is meant to defend a point, and so he's going to be bringing a whole lot of material to bear to show just how supported his arguments are. That is not the work I would recommend anyone starting with, but if you're comfortable with academic reading, then by all means go into that one.

[00:03:03] But really most of that is summed up in his book Gospel Allegiance, What Faith in Jesus Misses for Salvation in Christ. This book is very accessible to the average Christian. And that is the work that I would suggest you start with for Dr. Bates' work.

[00:03:21] A really good companion to that is his Short book, The Gospel Precisely, Surprisingly Good News about Jesus Christ the King. It is a very short book and it really gives the gospel precisely. It boils down all of the points so that we can understand them and then be able to share them.

[00:03:43] The next book that I would recommend is his book, Why the Gospel, Living the Good News of King Jesus With Purpose. This book is a little bit more on the practical end of things. I wouldn't say it's necessary to read to understand his work, but it's a really good companion to the Gospel Allegiance book.

[00:04:04] Now finally, the book that he has published this year in 2025 is Beyond the Salvation Wars, Why Both Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We are Saved. This book is a fire starter. I'm really surprised he had the ability to publish a book like this because it's fairly controversial.

[00:04:29] I kind of wish it wasn't. I don't think it should be. I think that the call to bring us together at the same table, to talk about these things and really look at them from the perspective of the first century is genuinely what we should all be striving for and working on. But it's very controversial in a lot of corners of Christianity. I think it's a very needed book, however, so I am really glad that Dr. Bates has written this book and given us something to talk about here.

[00:05:04] If you haven't read Dr. Bates's other works, I would suggest at least reading Gospel Allegiance first, but after you've read that one, you can dive right into Beyond the Salvation Wars and fully understand what he's talking about there.

[00:05:20] His latest book is really pretty core to some of the things that I'm doing myself as well in my biblical theology community and trying to bring together people within the realm of biblical theology. But I know I've rambled enough, so let's get to the conversation.

[00:05:39] Thank you so much for being here, Dr. Bates. I really appreciate your taking the time to talk to me today about your work and probably less introduce people to your work here in the podcast because a lot of my listeners are already familiar with you, but some of them will be new. And so I would like to take a little bit of time to talk about your background and why you're going the direction that you're going with all of your studies. And so Dr. Bates, please just tell us a little bit about yourself and your scholarly direction.

[00:06:12] Matthew Bates: Thanks so much for having me, Carey. It's a real pleasure.

[00:06:15] Yeah, so my background is as a New Testament scholar. That's by training more specifically. Um, and my story would be, probably one that's not too unusual for people who come from a more fundamentalist, you know, hyper conservative background. I'm a traditionally minded Christian, but, wouldn't necessarily identify with that background.

[00:06:37] Um, in terms of my current location in Christianity. and so yeah, as I came to a certain age in college where I was beginning to especially question things and to rethink things through, for some that's a really painful process. And for me it was more exhilarating and fun.

[00:06:54] I mean, there were some things that I realized that I had been taught growing up that weren't quite right, but I actually suspected that there might be some issues. and, uh, that didn't come as a deep surprise. Uh, and so it was when I was doing a physics degree actually at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, that I took a New Testament course that really changed my life.

[00:07:12] And it helped me to realize that although I had come from this background where Bible was highly emphasized, there was a very specific way of reading it that, really, tended to read the Bible just as a set of propositions that are almost timeless truths. And really you're just kind of connecting them into some sort of system, is really the goal.

[00:07:31] And it, as I was taking that New Testament course, it really helped me to realize like, no, these whole New Testament books have entire messages. The whole book has a message and that I haven't really been using the right framework in order to try to contextualize those propositions that we might find in Scripture.

[00:07:46] So that was thoughtful to me and really launched me on a journey that helped me to realize that learning Scripture would require my intellectual best. And I thought maybe that science was the only place where that happened in the world where people, you know, really if you were, really wanting truth and you were really wanting to go deep, that that's where you needed to go was the sciences.

[00:08:07] And the more I learned about the humanities, the more I realized that that's not true about science, that the humanities, have, maybe even more subtle thinking going on, and specifically like God's word. I found to be infinitely challenging in that way. Especially as I became aware of original languages and the need to begin to work on those, and I realized I could never exhaust, not even begin to exhaust all there is to learn about God's word.

[00:08:31] So that was humbling to me and good and launched me on a different trajectory. I went from Whitworth, then I worked for two years as an electrical engineer in Spokane, Washington, and then went to Regent College, did a biblical studies degree there, a master's in biblical studies. And then after Regent, was out of money.

[00:08:48] Um, and so my wife and I moved back close to my hometown. Well, it was really in my hometown and I, I did some forestry work, which my father's a forester, um, and, uh, did also some computer programming at that time a little bit, but then I fell back into another engineering job, tried that again for a while.

[00:09:03] Um, and, uh, after that, uh, went on to do the PhD at Notre Dame. So after Notre Dame, like did six years, uh, well five years of PhD there, and then a year of postdoc teaching at Notre Dame. Then after that I ended up at, Quincy University, where I was there for 14 years as professor of theology, but I was really teaching Bible was mostly my area. Church history a bit too.

[00:09:24] And then, after that, I got hired just last year at Northern Seminary, where, uh, Nijay Gupta teaches. Scott McKnight used to be there. And, um, and, uh, I'm, I'm taking over where Scott left off sort of at Northern Seminary, which is a Baptist heritage school. So it's, it's been a fantastic fit. So that's just a little bit of my background and where I'm at presently.

[00:09:45] Carey Griffel: Oh, that's fascinating because actually I started out the sciences myself and kind of got disillusioned, like, oh, this was supposed to be really truth-based and we're finding the real things, and I just quickly got disillusioned to the point where I'm like, this is not what I thought it was. So that's really interesting that we have that similarity there.

[00:10:07] Matthew Bates: Yeah, I hear you. For me, a real tipping point actually, like I, I was already somewhat disillusioned with science and had become enamored with, you know, the humanities, but I actually did my senior capstone project in physics on the discovery of the neutrino. And it made me realize just how much vested interest those who were voting on whether or not the neutrino had been discovered, actually had. Right. Um, and a very theory laden process that, um, they had built multi, you know, probably billion dollar facilities in order to detect and a lot of research money, hung on whether or not they were making progress is interesting to kind of think through some of that.

[00:10:41] Carey Griffel: Yeah, absolutely. So now you're into deep theology and biblical studies and everything and well, so my podcast, I call it a biblical theology podcast.

[00:10:53] So I'm really curious, what do you think of that phrase, biblical theology? How would you define it?

[00:11:01] Matthew Bates: Well, it's usually defined in opposition to systematic theology. And so systematic theology is really important and has its place, and I think it does its best work when it's dealing with foundational issues that the Bible just assumes.

[00:11:17] for instance, I think the Bible just assumes that God can speak, for instance. Okay. That would be a pretty big, um, a pretty big foundational thing that we find in the Bible. God speaks all kinds of things. Um, what does it mean for God to speak, right? Systematic theology is doing its best work when it's trying to explore that.

[00:11:33] Um, biblical theology would be different as it usually just assumes the Bible is true and is trying to put together the narrative. And of course it can sometimes be probing some of those issues of like, but it's usually doing, so within the Bible's own categories. It might say, what does it mean for God to speak? And it might look at all the different ways God speaks in the Bible and say like, okay, in light of that, here's our conclusion about what it means for God to speak.

[00:11:55] Systematic theology might go beyond that and like use philosophy for instance, to, to try to defend the idea that God could speak or do work in comparative religions and, and speak about a common human experience of hearing from God, even if we're hearing, um, indirectly or incorrectly in some religious tradition. Systematic theology might do that kind of work.

[00:12:15] So, systematic theology struggles, I think and stumbles when it tends to impose larger categories on like kind of overlays on the Bible and doesn't pay attention to the Bible's own narrative.

[00:12:26] And that's why I would consider myself more a biblical theologian. In terms of my emphasis, I really am trying to correctly pay careful attention to and respect the Bible's own systems and own categories.

[00:12:37] So if I was to define biblical theology, I would say that it pays attention to the overarching arc of the biblical story, and then within that tries to contextualize theologies so that, especially like for instance, my own work has especially recently been on Salvation Soteriology.

[00:12:53] So trying to pay attention, how does the Bible actually use categories like justification, sanctification, you know, and not just impose something that's an external system on it. Yeah. So that's, that's my quick on biblical theology.

[00:13:07] Carey Griffel: That's a great explanation. I really like that. So let's get into your emphasis here that you've been writing on.

[00:13:14] You've got several books out and your latest one is Beyond the Salvation Wars. And so you're talking about gospel allegiance, what we might call the King Jesus gospel. And when you first came out with your Salvation Allegiance book, it was back in the day for me anyway, and I read it and my husband read it, and we were deeply, deeply impacted.

[00:13:38] Of course, that's kind of more of a scholarly book, so I really appreciate all of the other work that you've put out to help articulate all of these ideas for people who don't want to read all of the footnotes necessarily, who don't want to see all of the repetitive ideas, like in scholarships, some of that repetitiveness is part and parcel of the work because you're really formulating your idea and showing the defense of it in that scholarly work.

[00:14:05] But your average person isn't gonna want to read all of that kind of material. So you have a whole lot of, just a range of books that are about this. Could you give us just a brief rundown of that so that we have that in our minds as in our conversation.

[00:14:20] Matthew Bates: Well, thanks, Carey. I appreciate that you and your husband were both impacted by Salvation by Allegiance Alone.

[00:14:26] And so are you looking for just an overview of the whole kind of model Yeah. So again, it's a thread that does run through most of my books. and the foundational idea is really a twofold idea. Um, and it was really the coming together of those two parts that for me launched the thesis. So you really kind of have to understand two parts. They're both simple, though, and so I think they're both pretty easy to grasp, but it's really the coming together that I think is powerful.

[00:14:52] So the first insight is that the gospel is royal in terms of its framework. That doesn't mean that it's all that it is, but it means that it's basic kind of housing is royal.

[00:15:04] And so when we see, you know, summaries and acts of the apostles teaching, you know, in Acts five where, you know, it says the apostles are going out gospeling, right? The, the, that Jesus is the Christ. Um, it's just an assertion of their gospel activity. Like it fundamentally was about the assertion that Jesus is the Messiah.

[00:15:21] He's the long expected Davidic king. Um, and so this, this idea that the gospel is royal is really important and it's sometimes missed because people quickly maybe assimilate the Christ title to just Jesus's name and just another alternative way of speaking about Jesus. But when we're aware that it's an honorific royal title that helps us to make sense of, of passages like one Corinthians 15, three, where it doesn't talk about Jesus dying for our sins. This talks about the Christ, right, dying first our sins. And it talks about him being buried and then raised on the third day.

[00:15:54] And so the Christ is the one who does these things. So paying more attention to how the gospel is royal was a big step for me and a lot of other people have written on this theme, including NT Wright, Scott McKnight, and if you want more work specific on the Kristos title, Matthew Novenson, has done some great work on that.

[00:16:11] Um, anyway, the second part of the thesis then is to recognize that the word faith can mean more than something just intellectual, and that it goes beyond trust or belief, which would be our common synonyms for faith. But that it also includes the allegiance idea and this demonstrably so in our texts so that, the term loyalty or allegiance is a translation that is sometimes the best translation for that word. Now, not always, and I'm not asserting that it always should be translated that way. Sometimes people misunderstand my project on that front.

[00:16:44] The claim is that in certain contexts that it should be translated that way and that it's probably the best overarching metaphor we can use to talk about how it is that we should respond to the gospel. So really, if you realize the gospel's royal, that it's about Jesus as the king, that he's the Christ, then how do we respond to a king? We respond with loyalty. So when the Bible talks about faith in Jesus, we don't want to evacuate loyalty from the meaning.

[00:17:10] Carey Griffel: Fantastic. That really changed a lot of how I was reading scripture when I started seeing that and that being articulated. So one of the ways that we can help to understand what something is, is by understanding what something is not.

[00:17:25] So I'm really curious how you would disambiguate, if you would, at all, seeing the differences between these three things. Your articulation of gospel allegiance. And then say John MacArthur's discussion about lordship salvation. And then Michael Heiser's concept of believing loyalty. How much crossover is there between those and how much difference do you see?

[00:17:56] Matthew Bates: Yeah, so with John MacArthur, um, who has recently passed. So, we honor his work and Michael Heiser as well. And so when we think about these previous articulations, the, the Lordship salvation idea of MacArthur is very similar to what I, I'm claiming with regard to an allegiance framework.

[00:18:15] But MacArthur didn't really press an allegiance kind of understanding of faith. He really did press the idea that Jesus is Lord. And that's inescapable to our understanding of the gospel. But then after that, he sort of folded his project into reformed frameworks and into Calvinistic frameworks that he used to try to explain then how do we then talk about the faith works relationship.

[00:18:40] Uh, he tended toward a model to say like that, okay, first you have faith. and that's an intellectual thing. Um, and that's the root. And then secondarily, once faith is in place, well then God can regenerate you in such a way that then you can produce good works, through the help of the Holy Spirit.

[00:18:56] And so that then works are the fruit and that never the two should meet. They're like oil and water. In fact, he says in one place in the very first book he wrote on this, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, I think was the name of the title. And so he actually summarized, his understanding of faith and I think he even used phrases along the lines of faithfulness or loyalty.

[00:19:16] But then he didn't really get much mileage out of that. He kind of turned away from that, even though he glossed it that way in one place. He kind of doesn't ever develop those kinds of ways of systematizing. So the distinction that I would be wanting to make is that, that's a slight misunderstanding of faith, but a very important one, that faith is relational and externalized, rather than just purely interior.

[00:19:38] So that's to overgeneralize. There are times in which faith is more of an interior idea, but for the most part, when ancients were thinking about what does faith mean, they didn't have in mind something like going on just mentally. They had in mind something that was relational and externalized. And so it means it related to something else, other people, the gods, toward objects that were part of the external world in some way or another and so that related to them. And then the externalization, right? It's outside the mind, right?

[00:20:06] So it's often understood as a virtue, like, you find on gravestones, for instance that, you know, maybe, Amia piste, like Amia was faithful, right? Like she lived a life of fidelity would be what's intended. And probably in that context, it intends especially her faithfulness to her husband, right? And that her husband was celebrating that by putting it on her grave that she was a faithful woman. But you can see there was a virtue as it was being constructed in those kind of ways.

[00:20:30] So MacArthur just doesn't really do much with, um, that externalized, sort of relational idea. So a better way of putting together the data, as far as I'm concerned, would be not to see it so much as faith, as sort of the root and works But really that faith was misunderstood from the beginning in that dichotomy and that faith involves deeds, faith involves doing. Faith involves our bodies. Faith involves a bodily externalization from the ground up. So it can't just be a root- fruit idea, it has to be from the ground up. And I think that some of our confusion overall, this has to do with how we systematize Paul and, and works versus works of law and all that.

[00:21:08] So now, jumping to Michael I really do like his phrase believing loyalty. I think that he's trying to get to the idea that there is something, um, mental going on with faith. My one hesitation with the phrase believing loyalty would be that it seems to suggest that the believing part was what the ancients thought was most important first.

[00:21:29] Like, you had to believe certain things and then loyalty was kind of connected to it. And so that the mental kind of comes first. And I don't think they necessarily thought that way. I don't think that it was a believing loyalty.

[00:21:40] I think the believing part was presupposed. I mean, it was a believing loyalty, but that would just put the accent on the right place at times, right. the believing part was like kind of the mental furniture that was presupposed, that was then what caused them to live out the loyalty. So I'll be very much in strong agreement with articulation. The believing loyalty is true. But you know, we're all trying to come up with shorthands that get at the idea.

[00:22:04] And, you know, I'm sure there are problems with the shorthand allegiance, right? It misses something too. But the believing loyalty, the concern would be that it might put the accent too much on kind of a mental first idea.

[00:22:15] So let me just also point your readers to Theresa Morgan's book, Roman Faith in Christian Faith, which I rely on quite a bit in my own work on faith that really, gives the evidence for this external relational business.

[00:22:27] Carey Griffel: Awesome. Thank you for that. That's really, really helpful. And I think that helps to kind of navigate all of these really similar articulations, but there's differences and when we see the differences, we can kind of look at those and decide where they fit into the actual biblical framework or not. Now as far as like things that you might be missing, for instance, one thing that I've seen brought out is how does the King Jesus gospel kind of a idea, how does that mesh with other conceptions of what Jesus came to do?

[00:23:01] You know, people talk about gospel in certain ways, and you get into a lot of this in your recent book. So I would point people to that first and foremost. But how would you see that the gospel allegiance model meshing with things like holiness, priesthood, God, wanting to come dwell with us, Jesus as our high priest, all of those things are they just separate, they're not really part of a precise gospel, and that's just one aspect, or how would you articulate that and frame that?

[00:23:34] Matthew Bates: Yeah. Thank you. Um, I try to be as exact as I can in articulating the gospel. And I really try to just draw the language from Scripture in as precise a way as I'm able. So in presenting my definition of the gospel in various books, I end up with an overall framework that Jesus is the king, right?

[00:23:52] And then below that kind of 10 points that summarize the fleshing out of what it means for him to be the king. And it's a narrative. It's a story about how Jesus became the king. So he was sent by God the Father, to take on human flesh in the line of David fulfilling the promises God made to David, he died for our sins in accordance with the Scripture. He was buried. He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. He was seen by witnesses who testified to who he was. And then, he's enthroned at the right hand of God, the Father, as the Son of God in power. And I think that's an important horizon that's often missed. So is the incarnation when we think about the gospel. And then, finally the Father and Son send the Holy Spirit, to apply the benefits of salvation to God's people. And then Jesus will come again as the king and the judge. That's the sort of the 10 point outline that I flesh out in my various books.

[00:24:40] Yeah, so to think then about how do broader themes integrate, like becomes the question. And, on the one hand, we wanna be careful and not make the gospel like the whole biblical story. It's not the story of the Tower of Babel or of you know, those things may be part of the biblical story that the gospel brings to a climax or fulfills.

[00:24:58] But I think we get too far afield when we kind of make the gospel, like the whole story of the Bible or something like that. It's not really how the Bible defines the gospel, right? It defines it as the fulfillment of the kingdom of God as Jesus has now become the king. And that's something quite specific within the story.

[00:25:14] So, we wanna be careful though not to articulate the gospel in such a way that it precludes these other important theological motifs. And the way that I try to frame it and think about this is just as a matter of emphasis that when we think about what's the most important, gospel fact, it's that Jesus became the king.

[00:25:34] And then within that, we have the cross, the resurrection, we have the incarnation, we've got the internal, we've got a bunch of other things too. And, in becoming King, he also takes up the office of high priest. Now, when the Bible speaks about the gospel, it doesn't tend to emphasize that.

[00:25:47] It doesn't tend to say like, you know, Jesus has become the high priest. It doesn't tend to say that, or Jesus' body is now the new temple, or, you know, or anything like that, right? We don't really have that language when the gospel's described. So I, I think that out of respect to how the Bible prefers to articulate it, I try to put the accent in what I think where the Bible puts it.

[00:26:07] But of course, we would wanna affirm that as Jesus is enthroned at the right hand of God as the king. Well, he also assumes the priestly office. And that the presentation as part of his resurrection of his life giving blood in the Heavenly Sanctuary, is important for understanding how atonement works, for instance.

[00:26:23] And so we begin to fold in theories of atonement and say that these are really closely connected to the gospel because how does the mechanism, he died for our sins actually work? Right? We can begin to think about, okay, well, theories of atonement might need to be at least articulated as connected closely to the gospel.

[00:26:40] I can probably get into this more, but the way I prefer to do it is to, to kind of fold some of that in, is to talk about the benefits of the gospel gives to the church and the ways in which we access the benefits and to make some distinctions between that and the gospel proper. So that might be helpful, at least framework for people to consider.

[00:26:58] Carey Griffel: So that seems to get into your concept and your articulation and you're navigating this difficult route in your latest book about justification because we have the Protestants on one side, we have Catholics on the other side, and we have a range in between as well. And so you're trying to kind of navigate those paths and come to some interesting conclusions.

[00:27:20] So can you talk a little bit about what you say about justification and how you would describe that because it seems to be like that benefit thing.

[00:27:29] Matthew Bates: Maybe the foundational concept would be to recognize that justification traditionally in Protestant theology has been closely related to the righteousness of God, like traditionally at least. And so that was actually Luther's gateway sort of discovery as he was reading Romans he came to the conviction that the righteousness of God, was not something that was just about God bringing condemnation on sinners, because of his character, that's what he must do as a just God. But it's a passive righteousness. One that we can receive, was Luther's claim. And he said when he saw that he felt like the gates of heaven had opened up for him, whenever he came to that discovery, that the righteousness of God is something that we actually, as believers can possess.

[00:28:09] So this is connected closely then to theology of justification traditionally in Protestantism. And so when we read, I think that passage, Romans one 16 17, with really a lot of care, we notice that Paul doesn't actually call the righteousness of God, justification, he doesn't actually call it the gospel. He says something very closely related to that.

[00:28:33] And I'm gonna just go ahead and read Romans one, 16 through 17. He says, For I'm not ashamed of the gospel, it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who does the Pistons action, whatever this faith action might be to the Jew first and also to the Greek, for in it, meaning in the gospel, if you're tracking it in Greek, uh, it has to be a reference to the gospel. Therefore, in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed by faith for faith, as it is written, the one who is righteous through faith shall live.

[00:29:02] So, in this Romans one 16th through 17th, Paul doesn't actually say the righteousness of God is the gospel. He says it's revealed in the gospel. And I think that that small difference, it opens up some avenues for making sense of theologies of justification, or at least, for rethinking some traditional categories. And, what I would propose is that justification is very closely related to the gospel and that the righteousness of God is indeed a benefit we can enjoy.

[00:29:32] But it's not identical to the gospel. It's a benefit that comes whenever we respond to the gospel. So it's revealed in the gospel in the sense that it's universally available to everyone. Everyone can get justification as long as they perform the pistis action, which is the condition. And then when that happens, then they receive the benefit of justification whenever the Holy Spirit applies the work of salvation to their lives.

[00:29:54] So that justification then, is something that then, is a benefit that flows from the gospel. So that's, I guess how I position my project a little bit now. probably to get into that more, we need to talk about some Protestant, Catholic traditional conceptions and how this differs slightly from all of that, but I'll let you ask another question and take the interview wherever you want to take it.

[00:30:16] Carey Griffel: Well, okay, so it seems to me actually that this whole idea of justification, and righteousness is connected pretty directly to holiness, to the priesthood. And so maybe Jesus', action as our high priest.

[00:30:31] And so it seems like this might be kind of that intersection that we might find how the gospel and the high priesthood can be connected. Like, not that we need to figure it out in some systematic way and find the mechanism and all of that, but there's obviously some connection here where we have justification, we have righteousness that is in the realm of the priesthood and holiness and all of that.

[00:30:57] And here Paul is talking about it in relationship to the gospel in some way. And so I, it seems like you're honing in on the precise language here is quite helpful to see that it's not a one-to-one, it's not the gospel, but it is associated with the gospel. Do you think that's kind of helpful for people to see it that way?

[00:31:18] Matthew Bates: I think if we were to inspect Romans 3 21 through 26 and talk about how Paul, probably his theology probably relates to Hebrews I would see those as closely related as clearly Hebrews is written within the Pauline orb, based on who's greeted at the end of Hebrews, we know that there were at least some, overlap between the Pauline mission and whoever wrote Hebrews.

[00:31:37] So yeah, I do think that there is an understanding that, one way of putting it together is that Jesus is, the righteous one. So whenever it says the righteous one by faith will live, like Jesus is the one who lived a righteous life.

[00:31:49] And so God did what was appropriate for the righteous one. He vindicated him and his vindication was his resurrection from the dead. So now he lives forever more. So when it says the righteous one by faith will live, it's talking in the first instance about Jesus, but secondarily also us like that we then, like whenever we undertake the same action as the Christ, in and through his help, right? We also are the righteous ones who live through his atoning sacrifice. So I do think it does relate closely to the atonement, and to the mention of the hilasterion, for instance in Romans 3 25.

[00:32:23] So, we can understand that in a variety of ways, but certainly, I would understand it as involving Jesus himself as the sacrifice and his blood as being presented in the Holy of Holies, the heavenly reality of which the earthly sanctuary was a copy. And that this is the mechanism for our atonement and so that it is connected to his cross shaped action and his resurrection life, and his eternal priesthood as he's now an indestructible priest, right, in terms of his vindication and his righteousness and his life. So all these things I think, are interrelated and are, yeah, part of how we put together a system.

[00:32:57] Carey Griffel: Let me just go ahead and give a quote from your latest book. This one really struck me. You say that Jesus' "cross shaped, sacrificial love brings relief for the poor, the unhealthy and the oppressed as a sign that the king's cross and resurrection life is now at work." That is on page 70 for anyone who wants to go look it up in your book.

[00:33:20] That really struck me very deeply. It's a beautiful articulation of something that I think is very deep and really it kind of helps us to see this connection between what Jesus did and how we can help live that out in the church as the church is described, as the body of Christ.

[00:33:40] And, I am fully on board with your articulation of the gospel and how you're talking about these benefits. But at the same time, it does seem like these benefits were seen before Jesus' death as well. So how would we articulate that in this idea of Jesus' work being the cross, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, all of these things are involved in it, and yet we are still seeing the benefits or the presentation of it before he did those specific actions.

[00:34:13] So how would you see that?

[00:34:15] Matthew Bates: Yeah. So are you saying like, for instance, a benefit of the gospel and the cross is forgiveness of for instance, but that it wasn't as if there was no forgiveness of sins for the Old Testament people of God? Well a passage that does seem to help us here is the passage that we were just discussing.

[00:34:30] Um, Romans, the Romans three, passage. Romans three 20. Picking up in the middle of the kinda the unit is 3 21 through 26. I'm in 3 24, they're justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption, which is in Christ Jesus. And this is the part, whom God put forward as, here my translation says expiation, but is hill loston in the Greek, by his blood to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness. And this is the part that's interesting here, because in his divine forbearance, he had passed over former sins.

[00:35:02] So, that God was a righteous God and that he was allowing sin, to be heaped up for a time. In his patience passing them over for a while, but then we would see them landing on Jesus at the I think we would want to say that the Old Testament system anticipates, Jesus' death in some way.

[00:35:22] Now, a lot being written around this right now, and a lot of discussion about how atonement works, Andrew Rillera's book is being much discussed. Penal substitutionary atonement, much debated, um, and all of that. And, you know, I'm still sorting that out myself. There's lots to think through. Um, I certainly see substitutionary atonement as inescapable.

[00:35:39] What we mean by penal I think is, you know, what is a penalty and all of that. Um, I think that, I see more slippage around that category. But, anyway, no matter how you put together the data here, I think that we would want to say that there was some sense in which God, uh, was passing over sins, and that it's connected to Jesus's, work as the that this atoning action, um, connects to it.

[00:36:04] Carey Griffel: Could we dig a little bit into what you see as the substitutionary idea? One of my current projects right now that I, I have many, but one of them is that I'm looking at the umbrella of substitutionary ideas in Scripture. And we talked a little bit before we were recording about frame semantics, and that's part of my project here.

[00:36:26] So what I'm doing is I'm looking at the different concept, like any concept that we could possibly say is substitutionary in our articulation of that, I'm looking at those passages trying to formulate how those are actually framed in Scripture and presented, because you can use a really wide umbrella for the idea of substitution.

[00:36:47] It can be participatory, it can be a part of ritual, it can be a, you're taking one thing and then replacing it entirely with another thing. And so there's a whole range of things that you could use the same term for technically, but they really aren't the same thing, or at least they have different ways of, crossover.

[00:37:09] Like, would you actually see substitution as in taking something out and putting something in, in the sense that, the thing that's being taken out has nothing to do anymore really within that, rather than being participatory?

[00:37:24] Matthew Bates: Sure. If I am hearing some, what you're saying is echoing a lot of Rillera's work where he really wants to push for representation as different from substitution and wanting to say, okay, Jesus, a representative, but not a pure substitute in the sense of, you know, completely swapping out a role.

[00:37:41] This is tricky ground and I'm probably not prepared to do a whole lot, you know, as this is not my area of expertise. Um, and I haven't written on substitution per se. I will say, I mean, there are passages like Romans eight, three, right, that I think are ones that we would, we would have to wrestle with.

[00:37:57] And of course we have a very famous passage in one Peter, you know, that references the suffering servant. That is certainly one that is a challenge in terms of thinking through penal substitutionary atonement.

[00:38:06] Romans eight, three, for God has done what the law weakened by the flesh could not do. Sending his own Son, and this is a really curious phrase, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. Uh, in Greek, it is in ho Sarco. Sar. So he sends his Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. What does that mean to be in the likeness of sinful flesh? It seems to Jesus really had flesh, right?

[00:38:33] But if he's in the likeness of sinful flesh, he has to be in some way bearing our sin on his flesh, right? Otherwise you're denying that he actually had flesh. So this in likeness of sinful flesh is interesting. And then you have the phrase, and for sin after that, or concerning sin, sometimes that's, translated as concerning a sin offering because hamartias can mean that in the Septuagint.

[00:38:56] So the normal meaning of hamartia is sin, but it can also mean as a sin offering, as part of, Leviticus and some other passages in, in the Septuagint. And then he says, and he condemned sin in the flesh. All right, so when it says he condemned sin in the flesh, where's that happening if it's not on Jesus's flesh, right?

[00:39:13] He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the just requirements the law might be fulfilled in us. So that would be a passage where there seems to be some substitutionary dimensions, right? Where it says in the likeness of sinful flesh, and then he condemns sin in the flesh. If you don't think that's on Jesus's actual flesh, it seems like you've almost moved into a gnostic view.

[00:39:32] So that those would be the kind of passages that I think we really need to wrestle with. And, there's a current trend to move away from penal, substitutionary atonement, when I think we have to be careful, that we don't move into a kind of gnostic framework that doesn't at least treat these texts seriously.

[00:39:48] I don't know what a penal means, right? That's like, that's again, anytime someone wants to talk about penal substitutionary atonement, you've gotta have like a half hour conversation about, okay, who's law. Who's the penalty being paid to? Who does it go to, is it based on a legal system?

[00:40:00] I mean, you can go on and on and on, right? But these are the kinds of passages that I think are, um, a challenge, for those who are wanting to depart from that language.

[00:40:10] Carey Griffel: And well, and that's why I think that there's a deeper conversation to be had here. I really love Rillera's articulation and what he's bringing out. There's actually a really wide range of ideas that could be substitutionary. You have like the divine warrior, you have the champion, you have the covenant keeper idea and the patriarch.

[00:40:31] All of those are in some form substitutionary or representative, and yet they're not all the same either. So I, I think it's a deep conversation. So I really appreciate your, just throwing out some thoughts there about that.

[00:40:45] Matthew Bates: Yeah, I'm just riffing a little bit and I would say, I've almost finished Rillera's book. I think I have a little tiny bit I haven't finished for some reason as I got called away by other duties. But, I really liked his section on the Old Testament, by and large. I had a couple issues with it. it was kind of theory laden in some places where he said, well, this is, the sacrifices to announce that it's actually not a death.

[00:41:04] And some things like that, that were kind of theory laden, but overall really remarkable. Good work drawing, especially on Jacob Milgram, you know, for, his Old Testament stuff. His application, the New Testament. there were a number of places I flagged where I was like, I'm not convinced. And Romans eight, three being one of them that I just mentioned, that I'm not convinced by his exegesis there. So, larger conversations still to be had.

[00:41:26] Carey Griffel: Yeah. Well, I enjoy it. I know a lot of other people do, and I think that's part of what you're also doing in your new book is you are throwing out things so that we can have those conversations and we can actually meet together in discussion. Because if we don't do that, we're not gonna get anywhere in any of this.

[00:41:42] Matthew Bates: Yeah.

[00:41:44] Carey Griffel: Okay. So one of my other questions that I'd like to hear you talk a little bit more about is the intersection of the individual and the corporate body in all of your ideas that you have regarding allegiance. Can you kind of describe how the individual fits into the corporate idea and all of that kind of thing?

[00:42:03] Matthew Bates: Yeah. Thank you. So one of the things I'm urgent to press in the book, um, and I think you're picking up on this, is that corporate categories have a primacy and that individual salvation flows through corporate categories and that individual salvation is real. It's not to deny that it is or something along those lines, but like when God first justifies, a human in terms of in Christ, right? It's done as a group process, like it's done at Pentecost as God pours the Holy Spirit out on a group of people and they then enjoy Holy Spirit union.

[00:42:37] And I think that it's indisputable that Holy Spirit union is simultaneous with justification, in terms of putting together biblical theology so that if somebody is united with the Holy Spirit, then they're justified.

[00:42:48] So when we begin to unpack, then, how that works individually, it's, it's always the case that there is a prior group that you're becoming part of when you're justified. So if Carey Griffel becomes justified, well It's, she's actually joining a body of people that are already justified before her, she's joining the church.

[00:43:07] And so I think that it's important to pay attention to that, and it helps us to avoid some mistakes in our soteriology and how we're putting together all the pieces. So whenever it talks about, for instance, I would distinguish between the gospel proper and the benefits that we receive. And, this is part of as my book has been controversial, some of the controversy has been around, this language, as it was articulated previously in gospel allegiance re-articulated now trying to clarify and advance the conversation.

[00:43:36] But John Piper had written a book where he quite vigorously attacked the idea that, that Jesus' king could be good news on its own. Right? It's just terrifying word is kind of what he says. Because unless you kind of first get justified, then you're not right with God. And so then that the idea of a King Jesus gospel, apart from personal justification is just frightening.

[00:43:55] To which I would say that that's just not how that word was used. The word gospel was used to announce good news in general for an empire, for a corporate group. The concern wasn't with individual outcomes and articulating a gospel. So the good news was more like collective good news, good news for the world because everyone has the possibility of being justified.

[00:44:14] That in and of itself is good news. You don't have to actually have received it for it to be good news yet. it's good news that it's even available would be another way of putting it. And so I do think that once then we respond to the gospel, by giving our loyalty to King Jesus. and that's normally done through baptism, right?

[00:44:30] As we, swear our loyalty to him, then we receive the Holy Spirit and we enter into the justified community that already existed before us. So I try to articulate some of all that. In the book with some care. And so the way that I would put it would be that, that Jesus has objectively won justification for the church.

[00:44:50] So justification already exists for the church. It's been won through his actions on the cross and resurrection and throne and all that. But my participation in it is not part of the gospel proper. That's just a potentiality, like my receipt of justification, then, is not part of the proclaimed message.

[00:45:08] The proclaimed message is Jesus died for our sins. Right? That's part of that we can say Jesus has justified, whoever happens to be justified, uh, would be another way of putting it right. Um, and that then we respond to that through giving our loyalty. And then we, we receive the benefit of justification personally and individually.

[00:45:24] So the benefits of the gospel end up applying to us, but it's through a corporate kind of mechanism. So trying to articulate all that, is an important part of, of the book.

[00:45:34] Carey Griffel: Okay. So just really briefly, how do you see baptism as playing that part in this corporate reality and individual reality? Because you kind of go an individual direction with baptism.

[00:45:47] Matthew Bates: I do.

[00:45:49] Carey Griffel: That confuses me to be quite honest with you.

[00:45:52]

[00:45:52] Matthew Bates: Yeah.

[00:45:52]

[00:45:53] Carey Griffel: So if it's part of this corporate reality, then how do we justify going to the point of baptism is purely individual and purely an element of individual allegiance.

[00:46:05] Part of what I'm thinking here is that if it's a sign of allegiance and it's a sign of being in community, then how do we see children? Are children not part of the believing allegiant community? How do we see their raising as being disciples if baptism precedes discipleship? If that's kind of how we should be seeing this?

[00:46:27]

[00:46:27] Matthew Bates: Yeah, so I do think we need to reckon very seriously with the voluntary nature of baptism, and that's just simply to follow the evidence. There's no evidence for infant baptism before the early third century. That's we find first evidence of anyone mentioning infant baptism and Tertullian opposes it and speaks in such a way that suggests that he saw it as an innovation.

[00:46:47] So I think we have every reason to think that it was not the apostolic practice. Now, part of the strength of volunteerism is that this was something that was part of Second Temple Jewish culture and culture around immersion. Because baptisms were happening before Jesus.

[00:47:02] And to mention two of them, one would be the Dead Sea Scrolls community, which was a purely voluntary community. You joined it, you made a profession that you wanted to join the community. You had to live by a certain rule of life for a number of years, and then you were admitted fully into the community. There sort of graded levels of membership, but as a purely voluntary society. And as part of that society, they actually immersed themselves once a day before their common meal.

[00:47:26] And the thing that's fascinating about it is it wasn't to cleanse their s They actually had already repented before joining the community, and that was mandatory. And their repentance was felt to make their souls clean in such a way that their entrance into the water actually made the water pure.

[00:47:42] So like the idea is that their pure bodies are entering into the water and the water is contracting holiness from them. So then the water can be used for other purposes and is like a holy pool of water. But it's the people's purity, their cleanliness, their repentance that actually made it pure. But that's all voluntary.

[00:48:01] Second, then we move to John the Baptist, which is a purely voluntary action too. He's calling people out to the Jordan River to come and be baptized. Um, and so you have to volunteer to come out there. And so we see this as a voluntary baptism too. And then we know that Jesus actually takes over and his disciples take over John the Baptist's ministry.

[00:48:18] So we have like some really strong kind of prima fascia evidence in favor of a volunteerism in connection with baptism. Beyond that, there were voluntary societies all over the Greco-Roman world. So although we're dealing with a society that values the collective, and we would wanna say God's action is directed toward humanity collectively, there still has to be a, a process of individual engagement.

[00:48:40] Like you still have to personally make your confession of loyalty to Jesus in order to, enter into the Holy Spirit community. And so we just don't see any evidence of anyone who has Holy Spirit union that doesn't do so on the basis of, of a kind of what I call in the book a personalist, um, response to Jesus.

[00:48:57] And by that I'm trying to say, okay, like personal means something maybe different in our modern western culture than it might've meant in their culture. I would say it's personalist because we have examples in Acts, for instance, where Luke seems like he's at pains to say, you know, and the head of the household gave faith to Jesus and was baptized and all the members of his household too also gave faith.

[00:49:16] Like, it's kind of clear that it wasn't the head of the household led the way and it would've been strange for a member of the household maybe to rebel against the head of the household, but they still had their own personalist dimension. And it seems like Luke wants to emphasize the retention of that.

[00:49:31] It's just me trying to follow the historical evidence, in favor of, of a volunt terrorist, understanding of baptism in the early church. There's also an example in the book of Simon Magus, right? Who also is part of a group baptism, but he doesn't personally repent. And so the Holy Spirit falls on the rest of the group, but does not fall upon him.

[00:49:50] And so again, this shows that even in the midst of a collective, we have a collective group, everyone believed. He believed too, it said, but he didn't repent. And because he didn't repent, like then the Holy Spirit was denied to him. Everyone else received the Holy Spirit. And then of course, he very famously offers to buy it.

[00:50:04] So again, this shows the retention of a personal volunteerist's kind of dimension, even within corporate categories. It's really me, just as a historian, I think trying to follow the data where it takes us.

[00:50:15]

[00:50:16] Carey Griffel: Right. So I mean, this is kind of pure guesswork then. How do you think that the children of the community would be seen as being part of the community?

[00:50:27] Matthew Bates: We do have one passage that helps us just a little bit with this, uh, an interesting passage. I was actually just reading this, by happenstance. I was doing my Greek reading this morning and I was just reading this, the Greek text this morning. And this is first Corinthians, chapter seven.

[00:50:41] And so it says if any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him for the unbelieving husband is consecrated. Uh, and it actually says in the Greek text in his wife. And the unbelieving wife is consecrated in her husband. Otherwise, and this is the interesting part, your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.

[00:51:01] It's an interesting statement and it seems to suggest that, um, that just as, when a husband and wife come together, they're one body, right? Um, and that there's a dimension of consecration. It doesn't say these people are saved. But they're in some way devoted to the Lord's purposes. They're set apart for the Lord in some way, through their union with their husband or their wife.

[00:51:21] And it suggests the children are meshed within that too. Uh, when it says, you know, that otherwise the children would be unclean or that's a synonym for saying like consecrated or holy, right? The clean unclean boundary is, is kind of synonymous idea there. So anyway, it seems to suggest, but when Paul says, but as it is, they're holy, it seems to suggest maybe through their family bond, until they're of an age, to give their own loyalty, there's a sense in which they're consecrated or set apart from the Lord's purposes. It doesn't mean they're saved, but there's some sort of, something, right. uh, ill-defined. And you're right, we do have to speculate a little.

[00:51:58] Um, but in some way, it seems like that they are, given a special place in the Lord. I would also look at just evidence, beyond this, from the early fathers. Our earliest fathers believed the children were innocent and they did not hold to, the Augustinian understanding that comes much later of inherited guilt.

[00:52:16] So they would see children as being in an innocent phase of life. And this is explicit actually in discussions of baptism with Justin Martyr and especially with Tertullian, where he says they don't need to. Why hasten to give them what they don't need. That they're in an innocent phase of life. So they don't need to be baptized yet.

[00:52:33]

[00:52:33] Carey Griffel: So what you just said really resonates with my ideas of how corporate relationships would be kind of articulated, especially in a context where you would have like a king and you would have families who would be dedicating themselves to that king and proclaiming their allegiance, and presumably the head of the household would be representative of their whole household.

[00:52:59] People could then go and do what they wanted and they could be kicked out of the household or whatever happened there. So yeah, I think that's really helpful.

[00:53:08] Matthew Bates: Thank you.

[00:53:09] Carey Griffel: Let's go ahead and wrap up our discussion. Is there anything else in particular you'd like to touch on today in our conversation? Or let's go ahead and point people to where they can find you as well?

[00:53:21] Matthew Bates: Yeah. Um, nothing particular that I would've hoped to get to that I didn't. I can just give a couple hints as to some of the other things that are discussed in the book, that we didn't cover. I get in much more deeply to kind of Catholic Protestant models of justification. We talked about justification initially.

[00:53:40] I kind of gave you some hints, as to how I would understand the righteousness of God being revealed in the gospel, but not being identical to the gospel. I work that all out with a model that I call incorporated righteousness. That is a way of, on the one hand, tipping the cap to some Protestant articulations. The classic one would be called imputed righteousness, saying that's not quite right. That's not how the Bible talks about it, but it kind of has the right sensibility. It's aiming toward incorporated righteousness, I think. But it unfortunately kind of clouds the issue by suggesting a certain kind of mechanism of exchange that is not necessarily what the Bible wants to emphasize specifically with righteousness at least.

[00:54:18] And then, Catholic ideas of infused righteousness. I go walk through Trent, which would be authoritative Catholic teaching on this. Talk about the five causes of justification within Catholic theology and about how they then, bring out a model called imparted righteousness, where it's, um, not Christ righteousness that's seen, but it's your own righteousness provided through Christ's merit. Talk about limitations and problems with that Catholic model.

[00:54:41] So I'm hoping that, the incorporated righteousness model can be a path forward for a Catholic Protestant conversation.

[00:54:48] So a lot of the energy in the book is really trying to say we actually agree about the gospel once it's clarified through Scripture. contrary to many different theological articulations on both sides of the aisle, that we really actually do share the gospel in common. But we can maybe move beyond the salvation wars by recognizing that on the one hand and then slightly remodeling our main metaphor for justification on the other hand.

[00:55:11] And beyond that, I talk about, things like, baptism, a whole chapter on that, get into ancient Jewish baptisms and how that interfaces with your early Christian articulations.

[00:55:20] And then I have a chapter on election, and regeneration. So like these controversial topics of like, did God choose us before time began? How does that interface with salvation? Do we need to be regenerated before we can give faith or is the Bible's articulation different? What about once Saved, always Saved? I have chapters on all of those kinds of questions.

[00:55:40] So that's part of the book as well. Those are some things that if those who are interested in specifically wanting to kind of continue to work out their understanding of salvation, I would invite you to critically engage, my work there.

[00:55:52] Where can you find me? Um, probably Facebook is like where I'm more active than anywhere else. Twitter or whatever it's called now, X I'm on, very rarely, but do occasionally do something there. and so those are my public profiles. I have a personal webpage as well, Matthew w bates.com, where you can find, you know, resources connected to my work or whatever.

[00:56:12] And, um, in theory, I think you can contact me through email there, but I, I think actually wasn't working this last month, so I need to get my web guy to fix that for me. Um, anyway, those are the main ways then.

[00:56:22] Carey Griffel: And you do podcasting yourself as well.

[00:56:26] Matthew Bates: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah. Um, yeah, the On Script podcast, which I've been doing since 2016, which is hard to believe.

[00:56:32] But, uh, yeah, and that's, uh, a whole team of us, uh, do that. I'm one of the co-founders of the podcast, and I still co-host, um, a number of episodes, especially with New Testament titles. So if you're interested, it's, it's a more scholarly podcast, I would say on the spectrum of podcasts out there, we tend to interview other scholars and, we ourselves are all professors who co-host on the podcast. So we like to do more scholarly things as a whole.

[00:56:56] Carey Griffel: It's a great one to listen to. So I will be putting all kinds of links in the show notes and, all of that kind of thing. I really encourage everyone to go pick up some of Dr. Bates' work and have a look at it. It's really been an insightful thing that has helped my own faith grow and my own biblical understanding grow, I think.

[00:57:17] I love the direction you're going with all of your work, even though I'm sure it's a bit stressful because it's now fairly controversial with your latest book and everything. I do have to ask, have you gotten any kind of like feedback from Catholics in particular about your book?

[00:57:34] Matthew Bates: Not yet.

[00:57:35] Um, I did for the very first one that I wrote in this sequence. Salvation by Alone had a number of Catholic reviews and largely favorable ish. Um, but, Catholics who tend to be favorable toward it, would tend to be on the more, for lack of a better word, liberal end of the spectrum, because they're not afraid to question Catholic dogma.

[00:57:53] Those who are the more traditionally minded Catholics are gonna say like, well, this is, these are interesting ideas, but this is not my job to decide these things these are the jobs of the, this is the job of the bishops to decide these things. So those who are more, uh, conservative might be more hesitant because I'm critical of the Catholic church, to weigh in, especially favorably. They would tend to be hesitant if, especially if they agree with it, they might be like, I better not say anything because, this contradicts Catholic dogma and I would be a Protestant if I agree.

[00:58:20] Carey Griffel: Ah, that's a little bit unfortunate because I do want to have more conversations and cross the aisle because I personally, think that there's so much that we can learn from the other side and from other ideas.

[00:58:33] Matthew Bates: Yeah, me too. No, I've had lots of rich conversations with Catholics down through the ages as I did my training at Notre Dame, you know, for PhD, and then taught at a Catholic university for 14 years. So, I've had lots of good conversations down through the years, but specifically for this book, I haven't had much reaction yet from Catholics.

[00:58:50] Carey Griffel: Well, it's still fairly new, too, so I'm sure there will be more that will come.

[00:58:55] Matthew Bates: Yeah, it is.

[00:58:57] Carey Griffel: Well, thank you again, Dr. Bates, for this conversation. I really appreciate your coming on and having all this discussion with me.

[00:59:04] Matthew Bates: Thanks, Carey.

[00:59:05] Carey Griffel: Alright. Again, a big thank you to Dr. Bates for joining me in this conversation. I hope you guys really enjoyed it. I think this is going to be a really good launch back into the trajectory of baptism for us here in the podcast. I genuinely think biblical theology is a bridge to help us come together in a lot of ideas, and I think baptism is kind of one of those really hot button topics that is important to look at. And there's a lot more that we should understand about it no matter what we think of it now.

[00:59:40] Of course, there's a lot of different ideas in different traditions about baptism and our ideas there connect to our conceptions and understanding of sacrament and salvation in general. Of course, we all have really strong recommendations and opinions here when it comes to all of these ideas. As well, we should. These are important things for the Christian. They're important things for our Christian life. They're important things for eternal life.

[01:00:12] What I'm going to do in the following episodes is look at themes that seem to collide in our sacraments of communion and baptism. I'll primarily be looking first at water, but we'll also be looking at themes of spirit.

[01:00:27] I'm less interested in finding a way that we might come together in structuring everything that we're all going to agree on, but I do want to open the conversation up.

[01:00:38] Because what I think really needs to happen is that we all need to add our 2 cents into it. I genuinely think each tradition has something valuable that everyone else needs to listen to. Yes, even Protestants have something to say here.

[01:00:54] I am very interested in the narrative function of both the text as well as our historical traditions, because I think that God is a God of working in history with real people in real situations, and I think we should take that seriously.

[01:01:12] Too often we argue because we want to be right. But each of us should acknowledge that we're going to be wrong somewhere along the lines. We should all be interested in finding out where we're wrong. And we should be interested in humble listening to others because that will help us find those spots.

[01:01:32] I hope we can all come together in more conversation. And that is of course why I formed my biblical theology community, and I welcome you all there. It's called On This Rock. You can find it@onthisrock.com. Of course, you have to put hyphens in between those words, but it should be easy to find. I'll put the link in the show notes.

[01:01:56] And look, I know that it's really easy to feel despondent about the disconnect and fragmentation of the community of Christ. But I think that God is active and working in the world today, and I think we're seeing it in so many places in various types of ways. And I think it should surprise us to see what God is doing.

[01:02:19] But at any rate, I am grateful for Dr. Bates and his work in promoting all of these ideas in trying to get us to meet together. And of course, Dr. Bates is not the only one in biblical scholarship currently working to do things like this. So I look forward to introducing other people who are also doing similar things, and I look forward to having more conversations with more people.

[01:02:43] That's what I'm trying to promote. And I have no idea what any of that will end up looking like. But I am genuinely, seriously excited about it and I look forward to seeing how it all ends up playing out, whatever that ends up being.

[01:02:59] At any rate, I will stop rambling. I'll wrap up the episode, and thank you guys for listening. Thank you guys for sharing these episodes with other people who might also enjoy them. Let's open up the conversation. Let's come together at the table and talk more.

[01:03:17] But that is it for this week. I wish you all a blessed week and we will see you later.