A few months back I committed to doing an on-air debate on the issue of justification by faith alone. I thought I’d be debating a Lordship Salvation person, but I did not know who until two days ago.
I’ll be debating the author of Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King, Dr. Matthew Bates.
Bates argues that the Greek word pistis, translated as faith in the New Testament, means to be persuaded or convinced that something is true except when the context is dealing with justification and regeneration.
As I mentioned in a May 10, 2017 blog reviewing his book (https://faithalone.org/blog/salvation-by-allegiance-alone/), Bates writes:
With regard to eternal salvation, rather than speaking of belief, trust, or faith in Jesus, we should speak instead of fidelity to Jesus as cosmic Lord or allegiance to Jesus the king…Allegiance is the best macro-term available to us that can describe what God requires from us for eternal salvation…But we do not need to avoid the words “faith” and “belief” entirely. For example, they do carry the proper meaning in English for pistis with regard to confidence in Jesus’s [sic] healing power and control over nature; moreover, these terms are suitable when pistis is directed primarily toward facts that we are called mentally to affirm. Our Christian discourse need not shift in these contexts but only with regard to eternal salvation (p. 5, emphasis added).
Please pray for me and for this debate. If you have time, you can listen to it on live radio if you have a Moody Radio Station in your area. If not, you can listen online by typing in “Up for Debate Radio Program” in your browser. Or you can just click here (https://www.moodyradio.org/programs/up-for-debate/).
When you get to the Up for Debate home page, click on “June 3” (Below “What’s On Air”), then click on “Program Details + Audio,” and then click on “Listen.”
You can also call in with a question or comment when they get to that point in the program. The number is (877) 548-3675.
The time is 11:00 to Noon Central time. That’s Noon to 1:00 Eastern time.
