Beyond The Salvation Wars Review Part 1

Matthew Bates's new book: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

In this post, you’ll find part 1 of 3 a fairly long review of Matthew Bates’s new book Beyond The Salvation Wars, graciously provided ahead of time by Brazos Press (go buy it!). It is well-written judicious, and substantive. In this book, Dr. Bates makes a foray into ecumenical efforts, providing a model of salvation—the gospel-allegiance model—which he offers as a way forward for Protestants and Catholics. While he is under no pretense that his book will be the final word on the issue, he nevertheless seeks to move the conversation forward. Among this book’s many strengths are the aim for precision, the clear definition of terms, and his heart for refining the theological treasures we have inherited from the past. However, I do not think he ultimately succeeds mainly because of the evident lack of engagement with classical Protestant sources. This will become evident, I think, as we review the strengths and weaknesses of each chapter. This review will be primarily critical, since his arguments falter in really serious ways, but I will try to show the strengths. Ultimately, I think students of justification and soteriology need to engage this book, because it gives a helpful framework (allegiance) while also showing the dire need for New Testament scholars to be more conversant with church history and systematic theology.

In Chapter 1, Bates stakes out the distinctive offer of his model in relation to classic Protestantism. Taking his cue from neo-Calvinist TGC theologians like John Piper, R.C. Sproul, and John MacArthur, Bates argues that Protestants believe that good works confirm faith and justification. On his model, however, good works are foundational to salvation—they are saving in their own right.[1] Protestants have emphasized individual atonement as the climax of the gospel, whereas Bates emphasizes enthronement; Protestants have defined saving faith as mental assent which produces good works, Bates sees it as embodied allegiance which defines a way of life.[2] Now, while he may capture many popular articulations of the gospel, the problem emerges when we remember the illness for which Bates is offering his book as medicine: the actual divisions between Protestants and Catholics. It is unfortunate, then, that he does not document the 16^th or 17^th century sources which would vindicate his reading of Protestantism. John owen, for instance, decidedly doesn’t see justifying faith as mental assent alone. He writes,

“Justifying faith consists in the heart's approbation of the way of justification and salvation of sinners by Jesus Christ, as proposed in the Gospel, as proceeding from the grace, wisdom, and love of God, with its acquiescence therein as to its own concern and condition.”[3]

In Chapters 14 and 15 of the Westminster Confession, faith very clearly includes a renunciation of living in sin, a commitment to obey Jesus in all things as Lord, and is a matter of the heart (one might say: the heart’s orientation). While Bates might critique it for drawing too sharp of a distinction between faith and works, the Confession nevertheless sees good works as an act of faith. If, as I suspect, this has scholastic underpinnings, good works are faith-in-act, or an embodiment of faith (just as acts which express a given virtue are acts of that virtue).

More significantly perhaps for the thesis of his book, Bates misstates his case when he says that good works in classical Protestantism only confirm justification. To be fair, he may well be right that this is true in Lutheranism. However, in classical Reformed theology and Anglican theology, this simply isn’t true. Good works are frequently spoken of as the way and means to the possession of eternal life. Contemporary scholarship has noted that John Calvin, no less, can speak of eternal life as a reward of good works.[4] Francis Turretin writes,

“This very thing is no less expressly delivered concerning future glory. Since good works relate to the end as means to an end (Jn. 3:5, 16; Mt. 5:8), as the “way” to the goal (Eph. 2:10; Phil. 3:14), as the “sowing” to the harvest (Gal. 6:7–8), as the “first-fruits” to the mass (Rom. 8:23), as labor to the reward (Mt. 20:1), and as the “contest” to the crown (2 Tim. 2:5; 4:8), it is evident that good works are of the highest and indispensable necessity for obtaining glory. This necessity is so great that glory cannot be reached without them (Heb. 12:14; Rev. 21:27).”[5][6]

He also writes,

““The will to give salvation as a crown and reward to believers presupposes faith and perseverance in the person to be saved (who, without them, could not be saved), but not in God who saves (as if His will depended upon the foresight of such faith, when this very faith arises from that decree). Therefore, justice demands that the reward should not be given until after obedience…God has prepared a kingdom in the heavens for those who love Him (1 Cor. 2:9), so that love is the condition preceding possession…Election in the Scriptures is not only referred to the means (namely, faith and holiness, as that hypothesis asserts), but also to the end—namely, salvation itself and eternal life (cf. 2 Thess. 2:13; 2 Tim. 1:9; Rom. 6:23, and elsewhere).”[7]

Gisbertus Voetius (1589-1676), influential at the Synod of Dordt, argues,

“From our part (so that we may conclude with a brief word), let them straightforwardly deny all the opposing antitheses also: 1. The sole meritorious cause of obtained salvation is made through the perfect obedience of Christ. 2. The application of this in this life is by: the internal instrument, solely faith, which we rest in Christ, and the external instrument being the word of God and the sacraments. 3. Of consummated salvation, after this life, our good works are of the possession and fruition of consummated salvation (which right and title we held in this life through faith) a cause without which (causam sine qua non), or a necessary condition, or a secondary cause, or medium, not indeed in themselves or from their dignity, but by the gracious favor of God, or by the accidental grace of God in Christ.”[8]

The Scottish Anglican bishop William Forbes, in agreement, wrote,

“For every medium with respect to the end proposed, and every way with respect to the goal whereunto it leads, obtains, in the practice or actual use of things, the nature of a cause, as cannot but be evident to everyone.”[9]

Forbes cites Calvin, Bucer, Alsted, Piscator, and Zanchi in defense of calling works a cause of eternal life.[10] Indeed, for Forbes (as for the aforementioned writers), eternal life itself can be rightly called the reward of good works. He writes,

“Certainly works, even the best of them, do not merit properly and of condignity, (i. e. do not equal by their own value) even the lowest degree of heavenly glory, much less the very heavenly glory in itself and life eternal; yet it cannot be denied, that on account of God's gratuitous promise even eternal life itself, and not merely more exalted degrees in it, is rendered to good works.”[11]

Much more could be said here,[12] but Bates significantly understates the role of good works at least when it comes to Reformed theology (which features centrally, it seems, in his critique) and Anglicanism. The famous adage “grace is glory began, glory is grace consummated” in Turretin refers to the fact that good works were considered the growth of glory in the soul which eventuates in eternal life. While, to be fair to Bates, this has been lost on many modern Reformed commentators, it is abundantly attested in the classic sources.

This hamstrings his initial critiques of Roman Catholicism as well. Although his emphasis on the kingship of Jesus and the proclamation of Jesus’s enthronement is certainly welcome in Chapter 2, and he is right to note the lack of a formal definition of “the gospel” in many Roman Catholic sources (save the catechism), he is simply wrong in his claim in Chapter 3 that the sacramental system of Rome has eclipsed the gospel (although he acknowledges that the gospel is proclaimed, but just renamed).[13] For the sacrifice presented on the altar is considered to be a participation in the eternal sacrifice of Christ offered at the right hand of the Father (e.g. a participation in that which Christ does as the Kingly Priest).[14]

Further, in Chapter 3, while Bates is adamant that justification by faith alone is not a part of the gospel, but its effect or benefit, he perplexingly admits that it “includes a promise that a person can be justified upon faith.”[15] This, to my lights, is fatal to his critique of Piper and others who claim justification is part of the gospel. For when they claim justification is part of the gospel, they seem to mean exactly what Bates says: that the gospel includes the promise that a person can be justified by faith. No one that I’m aware of has claimed that justification by faith is part of the gospel in the sense that one proclaims to a person that they are justified already by faith (unless, I suppose, you are Karl Barth). Furthermore, his critique of Roman Catholicism simply falls short as well. Bates argues that Galatians condemns imposing a written rule-based system by which one comes to be accepted before God. Accordingly, he writes,

“Sacraments in general can be celebrated as helpful for the Christian life when their performative terms are not made mandatory for salvation. The traditional Catholic position is that the sacraments are absolutely mandatory, but as noted above, Lumen Gentium has undermined this position by affirming that other Christian communions are somehow really “joined with us in the Holy Spirit” (§15). In what follows I will criticize the mandatory position, with the understanding that there is tension in Catholic dogma over this issue presently. To the degree that it requires specific regulations of sacramental performance for everyone for salvation, the Catholic position wrongly and very dangerously asserts that the one true church can successfully be defined by something other than gospel allegiance and the Spirit….While expressing “faith” as essential, Catholics have universally binding mandates that everyone must perform or risk damnation. If it is to be a faithful servant of God’s word per its own standard, the Catholic Church should reconsider its current dogmas, testing whether they deny the only-one-body result of the gospel as described in Galatians. In my view, Catholic dogma wrongly suggests that the community of the justified (and any individuals therein) must be marked out by things other than Spirit-led allegiance to the king in at least four ways: penance, holy days, acceptance of the whole dogma, and baptism.”[16]

His critique here falls really, really short however. Bates himself is willing to say that Baptism is a required external act which is “en-coded” on the pages of Scripture. For Roman Catholics, the penitential system is not something “additional” to allegiance to Christ but is a concrete expression of it. Holy days and acceptance of the whole dogma fall into the category of allegiance to Christ via expressing allegiance to the church, which is the body of Christ and (in her authoritative expressions) the voice of Christ in the world. One comes to accept various developed dogmas, so it is claimed, because one is moving with the church, and in this way moving with the work of Christ in developing the ecclesial mind of his body to further participate in his own mind.[17]
In Chapter 5, Bates develops his critique of the notion that Baptism is necessary to salvation, affirming that infant Baptism is unwise. While he concedes that it is saving in the sense that it is part of one’s overarching salvation, which is characterized by allegiance, it is not to be regarded as in any sense the instrument of justification, forgiveness, etcetera.[18] His argument is familiar to those of us who have changed our minds from credobaptism to paedobaptism: the thief on the cross (frankly, it is discouraging to see this argument by a scholar of his caliber), the absence of any explicit mention of infants, and the allegedly consistent pairing of one’s profession of allegiance and Baptism. What is most frustrating about this chapter, I suppose, is that the allegiance framework Bates helpfully sketches in his book should actually point him towards paedobaptism. For instance, he rightly notes that allegiance can work by orienting a household towards a king. If a household head or household heads said they were serving a new king, that changes the orientation of the collective. Okay, but then why wouldn’t that apply to infants? Because, he claims, they can’t even consent to sharing this orientation. But of course, this is plainly wrong. Acts 2:38-39 says the promise is for “you and for your children and all who are far off” of receiving the Holy Spirit in Baptism after quoting Joel 2. Why is that significant? Because the promise of Joel 2 comes after Joel 2:15, in which even nursing infants are gathered in the assembly. In other words, the allegiant collective characterized by repentance, upon whom the Lord pours his Spirit, includes infants.

Once we piece things together from this Jewish perspective of faith, things make more sense. While Bates helpfully refutes the Presbyterian argument that “Baptism replaces circumcision”, he does not attend to the fact that circumcision exemplified a way of thinking about covenantal allegiance. That is, circumcising one’s male children was a way of saying “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” It was a seal of righteousness had by faith, per Romans 4. Why? Because infants shared in the “pistis” of their believing heads. When Israel goes through the waters of the Red Sea, they bring infants—and so the collective which includes infants is counted as allegiant. In Luke 18:15-17, Jesus does not merely use infants as a kind of example for faith. Rather, he tells his disciples to not hinder them because to them belong the kingdom of God. That is inheritance language—the sort found in Paul’s epistles to characterize the inheritance or the promise given to Abraham belonging to the Messiah’s people. It would be odd if Jesus said “to such belong the kingdom of God” but excluded them as heirs of the kingdom. It is in this context that they are exemplars for faith; the kingdom belongs to them, so don’t exclude them, and in fact learn from them the nature of faith.
Bates tries to argue his case from church history. After all, Tertullian is the first explicit mention we have of infant baptism, and he rejects it, right? Doesn’t he say it’s better to wait until after one has received instruction? Not exactly. Here is the infamous chapter (Chapter 18 of On Baptism):

“But those whose office it is know that baptism is not to be administered rashly. "Give to everyone who begs you" has a reference of its own, pertaining especially to almsgiving. On the contrary, this precept is rather to be considered carefully: "Give not the holy thing to the dogs, nor cast your pearls before swine" (Matthew 7:6), and "Lay not hands easily on any; share not other men's sins." If Philip so easily baptized the chamberlain, let us reflect that a manifest and conspicuous evidence that the Lord deemed him worthy had been interposed (Acts 8:26-40). The Spirit had enjoined Philip to proceed to that road; the eunuch himself, too, was not found idle nor suddenly seized with an eager desire to be baptized. Rather, after going up to the temple for prayer and being intently engaged with the divine Scripture, he was thus suitably discovered—one to whom God had, unasked, sent an apostle, whom the Spirit again bade adjoin himself to the chamberlain’s chariot. The Scripture he was reading aligned opportunely with his faith; Philip, being requested, sat beside him; the Lord was pointed out; faith did not linger; water required no waiting; the work was completed, and the apostle was snatched away. But Paul too was, in fact, "speedily" baptized, for Simon, his host, quickly recognized him as an appointed vessel of election. God's approbation sends sure premonitory tokens before it; every petition may both deceive and be deceived. And so, depending on the circumstances, disposition, and even age of each individual, delaying baptism is preferable—principally, however, in the case of little children. For why is it necessary—if baptism itself is not so necessary—that the sponsors should likewise be thrust into danger? They, by reason of mortality, may fail to fulfill their promises and may be disappointed by the development of an evil disposition in those for whom they stood. The Lord indeed says, "Forbid them not to come unto me." Let them come, then, while they are growing up; let them come while they are learning—while they are learning where to come; let them become Christians when they have become able to know Christ. Why should the innocent period of life hasten to the remission of sins? More caution is exercised in worldly matters; one who is not trusted with earthly substance is nevertheless trusted with the divine! Let them know how to ask for salvation, that you may at least seem to have given to one who asks. For no less cause must the unwedded also be deferred—those in whom the ground of temptation is prepared, whether in such as have never been wedded due to their maturity, or in the widowed due to their freedom—until they either marry or else become more fully strengthened for continence. If any understand the weighty import of baptism, they will fear its reception more than its delay: sound faith is secure of salvation.”

Tertullian, rigorist that he was, argued that infants should be delayed from Baptism just like the unwedded should. For Baptism “hastens one from the innocence of life to the remission of sins.” In other words, he argues infants should be excluded precisely because Baptism puts one in a state of obtaining the remission of sins. Why shouldn’t one delay giving it, then, until that state is less likely to be lost? That is his argument. So on the contrary, this shows that Tertullian believed that through Baptism one hastens to the state of obtaining the remission of sins—even if the “one” in question is a little one. On the other hand, none of us would accept his reasoning for delaying Baptism (which he extends to the unwedded, who are likely to sin because of sexual passion). Hence, why should we accept it in the case of delaying Baptism for infants?

There are two key texts from the fathers I’m surprised Bates did not treat: texts from Irenaeus, and texts from St. Cyprian. Irenaeus in Fragments of Lost Writings chapter 34 explicitly tells us that we are regenerated through “sacred water” (Baptism). He also writes,

“Thus there are as many schemes of redemption as there are teachers of these mystical opinions. And when we come to refute them, we shall show in its fitting-place, that this class of men have been instigated by Satan to a denial of that baptism which is regeneration to God, and thus to a renunciation of the whole [Christian ] faith.” Against Heresies, I.21.1

Okay, but that he thought Baptism regenerates doesn’t mean he thinks infants should be baptized, right? Well, let’s pair this together with what he says about infants:

“He [Jesus] came to save all through himself; all, I say, who through him are reborn in God: infants, and children, and youths, and old men. Therefore he passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, sanctifying infants; a child for children, sanctifying those who are of that age . . . [so that] he might be the perfect teacher in all things, perfect not only in respect to the setting forth of truth, perfect also in respect to relative age” (Against Heresies 2:22:4 [A.D. 189]).

Remember, Irenaeus taught that one is reborn to God through Baptism. And yet, Christ came so that infants would be reborn to God. What is the clear implication? That Christ came so that infants would be reborn to God through Baptism, since that is where regeneration definitively happens.

Furthermore, St. Cyprian clearly argues that infants should be baptized. He is unambiguous. He seems to have corrected a presbyter who argued that infants should not be baptized until after the 8^th day to respect circumcision; however, he argues that they are admissible immediately in Letter 58. It is notable that the dispute isn’t over whether infants should be baptized, but whether they should be admitted only after the eighth day. Cyprian, who gathers with 66 others to represent the voice of the church of Carthage, argues for the acceptability of baptizing newborns. And of course, Origen seems to think that the tradition was handed down by the apostles. While these pieces of data are not in themselves decisive, they fit very well with the considerations I’ve argued for above.

Finally, Bates says that Baptism is not the instrument of justification because Cornelius had the Spirit prior to Baptism, or the thief on the cross, etcetera. On this basis, he disputes Rome’s claim that it is necessary to salvation. But this is where, again, his lack of engagement with the sources hamstrings the “medicine” he seeks to offer. The fact is that no tradition, in claiming the necessity of Baptism, has ever claimed that all who failed to be physically Baptized were damned. This isn’t even true of Rome. The Catechism of the Catholic Church §1258 says,

“The Church has always held the firm conviction that those who suffer death for the sake of the faith without having received Baptism are baptized by their death for and with Christ. This Baptism of blood, like the desire for Baptism, brings about the fruits of Baptism without being a sacrament.”

Here, they are drawing on St. Thomas Aquinas in ST. III.q68.a2. The Roman church has never understood Tridentine theology to exclude Baptism of desire or Baptism of blood, as is evident in the Catechism. While Bates seems to be aware of Baptism of desire on page 127, he doesn’t seem to see how this undermines his examples. These “baptisms” are such that one receives the grace offered in the sacrament apart from the sacrament, which is the ordinary means of conferring and sealing this grace. This explains why the thief on the cross or those like him—since the thief on the cross died prior to the institution of baptism anyway—could be saved without being baptized. God still gives the grace given in Baptism, and in this way no one was ever saved without Baptism (e.g. the grace that Baptism now embodies, since obviously the Roman church thinks Abraham was saved). This defense is entirely unproblematic to Anglicans and Lutherans who hold to the ordinary necessity of Baptism to salvation. Now, Bates could quibble with calling this a “necessity” of Baptism, and okay—but then he needs to know what was meant by the terms before critiquing them. And as a scholar of tremendous gifting and caliber, he really ought to know better.

Surprisingly, I didn’t see Bates interact with Romans 6 at all, to my knowledge. Romans 6:1-6 straightforwadly affirms that “as many of we who were baptized into Christ were baptized into his death” (a somewhat clunky translation of my own).[19] But St. Paul straightforwardly says that as many as “we” who were baptized are baptized into the death of Christ; this grounds his confident exhortation to new life in Christ throughout the chapter. So how do we fit this together with what Peter says in 1 Peter 3? After all, doesn’t Peter affirm that the waters themselves don’t save us? Well, again, as Bates should know, most of us don’t think that the waters of Baptism themselves—the materiality as such—saves us. Martin Luther puts it like this in his Small Catechism:

“Certainly not just water, but the word of God in and with the water does these things, along with the faith which trusts this word of God in the water. For without God’s word the water is plain water and no Baptism. But with the word of God it is a Baptism, that is, a life-giving water, rich in grace, and a washing of the new birth in the Holy Spirit, as St. Paul says in Titus, chapter three: “He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that, having been justified by His grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life. This is a trustworthy saying.” (Titus 3:5–8)”

Okay, but what do we do with Cornelius? He was given the Holy Spirit prior to Baptism in Acts 10. Doesn’t that show that Baptism is not regenerating? Here is another case where Bates gives a helpful sketch of an allegiance framework, but then does not apply it (or see how genuinely continuous this is with older classical Reformation thought—the sort that he claims to critique). Justification is a continual reality for Lutherans, Anglicans, and even most of the scholastic Reformed orthodox.[20] That is to say that if justification is that act in which God reckons the sinner as having a title to eternal life (to use the language of the Reformed orthodox), which includes the forgiveness of sins (since sinners do not have such a title), then God justifies by continually regarding the justified person as an heir and thus continually forgiving sin. Regeneration is also a continual reality. Calvin writes,

“Both of these blessings we obtain through union with Christ. If we have true fellowship in His death, our old self is crucified by His power, and the body of sin becomes dead, so that the corruption of our original nature is never again in full vigor (Rom. 6:5–6). Likewise, if we partake in His resurrection, we are raised to newness of life, conforming us to the righteousness of God. In one word, then, by repentance, I understand regeneration—the sole aim of which is to restore in us the image of God, which was sullied and nearly effaced by Adam’s transgression. So the Apostle teaches when he says, “We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Again, “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds” and “Put ye on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Again, “Put ye on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him.”

Accordingly, through the blessing of Christ, we are renewed by that regeneration into the righteousness of God, from which we had fallen through Adam, the Lord being pleased in this manner to restore the integrity of all whom He appoints to the inheritance of life. This renewal, however, is not accomplished in a moment, a day, or even a year; rather, through uninterrupted—sometimes slow—progress, God abolishes the remnants of carnal corruption in His elect, cleanses them from pollution, and consecrates them as His temples, restoring all their inclinations to true purity. Thus, throughout their whole lives, they practice repentance and understand that death alone brings an end to this warfare.”[21]

So here, Calvin doesn’t fit into the “regeneration precedes faith” formula which Bates erroneously attributes to the Reformed tradition as such. And indeed, as Calvin sees repentance as an effect of faith, one can actually discern an agreement between Bates and Calvin. However, Bates, I think, would critique Calvin for separating repentance from faith and relegating it to a fruit—and I think Bates would be right on this score.
In any case, how does this help us think about Baptism? Baptism regenerates in the economy of continual regeneration, justification, and union with Christ. That is, even if a given person has been united to Christ prior to their Baptism, Baptism is where God does visibly what is already doing invisibly: engrafting the person into Christ, regenerating them by the Spirit, justifying them for Christ’s sake, and further effecting their deification. Baptism is the decisive place where God regenerates a person, however, because it is visible and objective. I can always look back to my Baptism and find there the visible place where God united me to Christ. And even if I did not take up my Baptismal promise and lost it at some point (as Bates points out is possible—more on this in part 3), I can always look back to Baptism as the place where God claimed me, and live into and from God’s claim on me (thus taking back the claim God made on me). Thus, it is not a problem if Cornelius was filled with the Spirit prior to his Baptism; that does not prevent us in the slightest from saying he was definitively, objectively, and visibly justified, regenerated, and forgiven in holy Baptism.

Okay, so let’s wrap this part up. Bates’s framework of allegiance is, overall, pretty helpful. Allegiance is a fundamental characterization of the overall orientation of our lives towards Jesus the King. It is instantiated in (not merely productive of) obedience. However, I think Bates would have done better to reclaim (rather than set his model over and against) the old Protestant notion, held to from Protestantism’s catholic heritage, that faith is not merely an internal affection but a habitus or a virtue. The language of virtue, it seems to me, does precisely what Bates wishes to do with allegiance. And yet, he rightly points out that allegiance can be communal. In the older language, we can speak of faith as characterizing group entities, insofar as faith (or allegiance) is the habitus which structures the life of the group.

However, his lack of thorough engagement with Reformation and Roman Catholic deeply hamstrings his ability to offer this book as an effective medicine. His precision takes a hit because, seemingly, he is not deeply familiar with the debates he seeks to wade into. Furthermore, his critiques of Baptismal regeneration and infant Baptism simply do not work, and ironically these beliefs fit better within the allegiance model than his own denial of them.

Okay, stay tuned for parts 2 and 3!

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[1] Matthew W. Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars: Why Both Protestants and Catholics Must Reimagine How We Are Saved (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Brazos Press, 2025), 22.

[2] Bates, 20–23.

[3] John Owen, The Doctrine of Justification by Faith (Coventry: Luckman and Suffield, 1797), 42.

[4] Kevin P. Emmert, John Calvin and the Righteousness of Works, Reformed Historical Theology, volume 67 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2021).

[5]Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans. George Giger and James Dennison, vol. 2 (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992) XVII.III.XII.

[7] Turretin IV.XI.XXXIV

[8] Ex parte nostrorum est (ut verbo absolvamus) quod oppositis antithesibus omnia illa directe negent et: 1. Salutis impetratae solam causam meritoriam faciant, perfectam obedientiam Christi. 2. Applicata autem in hac vita instrumentalem internam, solam fidem, qua in Christum recumbimus, instrumentalem externam verbum Dei et sacramenta. 3. Consummata salutis, post hanc vitam, seu possessionis et fruitionis consummatae salutis (cuius jus et titulum habuimus in hac vita per fidem) causam sine qua non, seu conditionem necessariam, seu causam secundariam, seu medium, nostra bona opera, non quidem in se aut ex sua dignitate, sed per Dei dignationem, seu per accidens gratiae Dei in Christo.” Gisbertus Voetius, Selectarum Disputationum Theologicarum, Pars Secunda (Utretcht: Johannem Wasberge, 1655), 728.

[9] William Forbes, Considerationes Modestae et Pacificae Controversarium De Justificatione, Purgatorio, Invocatione Snactorum, Chirsto Mediatore, et Eucharistia, vol. 1 (Aberdeen: W. Bennett, 1850), 311.

[10] Forbes 1:311-315

[11] Forbes 1:445

[12]See Thomas H. McCall, Caleb T. Friedeman, and Matt T. Friedeman, The Doctrine of Good Works: Reclaiming a Neglected Protestant Teaching, 1st ed (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2023). While Bates acknowledges this on page 91, he seems to miss the significance. He argues that his construal adds nuance by construing faith as bodily. But since the Reformers didn’t disagree that faith was a virtue (disagreeing that the virtuousness or value of faith itself is what justifies), they agreed it was a bodily habitus (that’s what a virtue is in a soul-body composite).

[13] Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars, 50–53.

[14] Brett Salkeld, Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2019).

[15] Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars, 65.

[16] Bates 95

[17] Bates disappointingly uses the perpetual virginity and the immaculate conception as test cases. He makes the incredibly tired argument that Matthew teaches that Mary had sex with Jospeh because Matthew says that Mary did not know Joseph “until” she gave birth to Jesus. But εως in Greek need not function this way. Εως, per BDAG, can also be used to denote “as long as” or “while” (Matt. 25:10). It doesn’t indicate that the relevant activity in question necessarily ceased. For instance, in Matthew 28:18-19, Jesus says he is with the disciples “to the end of the age”. That doesn’t mean that he ceases to be with them after. This is why even John Calvin acknowledged this argument as bunk.

[18] Bates, Beyond the Salvation Wars, 107.

[19] ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν εἰς Χριστὸν* °Ἰησοῦν, εἰς τὸν θάνατον αὐτοῦ ἐβαπτίσθημεν

[20] One finds this, for instance, in William Ames, John Owen, Samuel Rutherford, Herman Witsius, just to name a few.

[21] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. John McNeill, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960) III.III.9.