David Capes
For those of us who don’t have kings and monarchs, is it harder for us to grapple with that? Because in the United States we have a President every four years or maybe eight years! They come and go and they don’t stick around. Even in Britain, where you do have a king, they’re not permanent. They don’t stick around So is it harder for us, just because of our political models in the United States, to grab hold of that?
Matthew Bates
I think so. I think on the one hand, we can intellectually get it, but I think we can’t get the existential or the holistic ways in which that would pervade every aspect of life, if we were ruled by a monarch. Where loyalty or disloyalty would be matters of life or death for us. We can, on the one hand, enter into that framework, because we’ve seen lots of stories and movies, and we can try to do so. I think we can intellectually get it, but we can’t get it in a deep, personal way. It’s very hard for us to get. The book is focused on that, but then, also working on a whole bunch of terms. I just talked about gospel and faith, but also working beyond that, the model wants to deal with grace, glory, justification, language and all
these terms that are part of the way in which we talk about salvation. I realize that grace has been understood that way throughout church history. Here’s one way in which it’s been understood that might be a productive way, within church history, to focus on. For instance, grace is multi-faceted, but to focus on it primarily as the Christ event itself. The seeing grace as the gift of the gospel. When Christ comes, that is the premier grace. He comes to us when we’re in desperate need as humanity, collectively working on some of those ideas. When we bring them all together, that’s when I think a new model might emerge. It’s not saying that Catholics and Protestants have gotten things entirely wrong. But wanting to make a productive path forward for the future of the church.
David Capes
One of the terms you use to describe that allegiance here is bodily allegiance. Would you unpack that a little bit for us. What do you mean by bodily allegiance?
Matthew Bates
When we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord. That would be a way in which we’re making a allegiance declaration right to our King. And we see this in passages like Galatians 2:20. “For I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives within me. The life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God.” That’s a passage where Paul says, the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith. We see that it’s something bodily.
I think that research has shown this. Some very recent research in New Testament scholarship has corrected older, existential ideas around faith that were very prominent for a long season. Faith was mostly about personally trusting the promises, and that existential idea around that. We’ve corrected that to show that faith was a virtue and that faith was externalized and relational. I think of especially the work of Theresa Morgan, Peter Oakes, New Testament scholars like that who have done work on faith as more relational and externalized.
This is a correction that is still being mobilized in scholarship, and I’m trying to capitalize on that. Showing, indeed, from our sources, we do see that faith is something that is not disembodied, but bodily. We’re not saying it doesn’t have a mental component or an interiority. That just wasn’t the main thrust in antiquity. It was not the mental idea of believing. It’s there, and we find that attested. But it’s not the main thrust behind the pistis [Greek, often translated ‘faith’] word group.
David Capes
I like that passage in Romans 12, one, where Paul tells us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice. That is what our true worship really is. There’s a place on page nine that got my attention and where I said an “ouch”. “I suppose Jesus is indeed worthy, but we have more pressing concerns. Can you believe what Khloe Kardashian just posted on Instagram. Can Patrick Mahomes orchestrate another comeback win?” Then the very last, “what’s on Netflix tonight?”
And then you say, we declare our passion for the gospel, but then we wear out our couch cushions. That’s what our bodies are doing, wearing out the couch cushions. I can see the real bodily and the importance of this kind of bodily connection here. One of the things that you talk about in the book is the kind of the relationship of the cross for Protestants. Particularly reading Paul. The cross is the be-all-and-end-all in the Gospel allegiance model, where does the cross fit in?
Matthew Bates
Exactly. It’s certainly a key part of the gospel, as Jesus died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. And obviously, we preach Christ crucified, but we don’t want to forget the Christ part with that. We preach the king crucified. We don’t just preach the cross. And I think there’s been a tendency to think when Paul says, we preach Christ crucified, that Christ is just a name. We can’t lose that royal framework. The cross is obviously of utmost importance as we do want to think about various models of atonement.
I probably can’t get into atonement theory here, but along with a great many other scholars, I would want to say that we have many models of the Atonement. We don’t have any that are mandated in the sense that the church is dogmatized around them, or anything like that. They tend to be more fluid metaphors of victory and of substitutionary atonement. We have, of course, the moral exemplar model where Jesus atones partly by paving the way and showing us the example of what it means to live a righteous life. And I think that’s actually more important than some people realize. Sometimes people are allergic to that view, because they feel first of all, we need to get justified by faith. Only then can we follow Jesus’ example.
But they tend to forget that Jesus becomes the Christ through a process. We’re not putting our faith in just any Christ. We’re putting our faith in a Christ who lived out a certain kind of allegiant life himself. We can’t help when we express our faith toward King Jesus, we can’t help but be influenced by his moral model, because we see that it pleased God. Jesus pursued a life of loyalty himself, and God then justified him and raised him from the dead. So, our own justification is bound up with his moral exemplar and our life of discipleship is connected. All of these different ways of thinking about the atonement, I think are important.
The cross is certainly still a key part of the gospel. But I would also say that maybe the dramatic center of the story is Jesus’s death for our sins. But I do think when we pay careful attention to the New Testament, a lot of climactic energy in the presentation of the gospel connects to his enthronement as he’s then installed at the right hand of God. When we make the cross the be all and end all of the gospel, we lose other key things, including incarnation that’s central to the Gospel. Including Jesus’s resurrection from the dead, that’s actually mentioned as gospel more often than the cross, in terms of New Testament texts. And then the enthronement of Jesus, which is presupposed every time we call him the Christ. It means that he has now attained the kingship. It’s the gospel that it’s just a framework into which the whole gospel is placed in the New Testament.
David Capes
And the ascension teaches us that he is seated at the right hand of God, from which he does reign. Scott Hafeman was recently at our library, and he taught a course for us on Paul. He kept making the case, and a lot of people were pushing back, that the heart of the gospel is that “our God reigns.” Our God reigns. He was pushing that, from the Isaiah passage that that is the crux of the gospel. That now our God is reigning, and Jesus is seated at the right hand.
There are so many good parts to this book. I wish we had more time. It’s a great book to read, not only because Matt discusses the theories and ideas of atonement. But there are so many different elements, like election, baptism, sacraments and those kinds of things. Which very often created a wall of separation between Protestants and Catholics from being able to have that conversation. And I love your impression that unity is not only achievable, but also almost inevitable. I love that side of it as well. Matthew Bates, thanks for being with us today here on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.”
Matthew Bates
Thank you, David.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
