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From Skeptic to Believer: R. Michael Allen’s Journey to Justification

In the new issue of Credo Magazine, “Justification: The Doctrine On Which the Church Stands or Falls,” we interviewed R. Michael Allen. In this interview, “From Skeptic to Believer,” he explains what justification has to do with the gospel and why it changed his life.  Allen is Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology at Knox Theological Seminary, and his new book is titled, Justification and the Gospel: Understanding the Contexts and Controversies.

Credo January 2014 Cover JPEGHere is the beginning of the interview to get you started:

Michael, have you always believed in justification by faith alone and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness? If not, what led you to embrace these doctrines in your own life?

No, though I was raised as a pastor’s kid in a family and church context where these truths were revered, the beginnings of my formal theological training in college led me away from affirming them. As I read deeply through modern studies of Paul and of his Jewish context, I increasingly came to think that his worry was not legalism and his message was not that of Luther. I was reading dozens of books and spending literally hundreds of hours studying these seemingly earth-shattering matters with gusto, and each book or hour seemed to mark my movement further away from the evangelical shape of my family’s confession. As I was sensing a call to ministry, this was an incredibly freighted issue for me. I more and more found myself called to read the Bible apart from or even against the history of the church’s reading: modern hermeneutics seemed intellectually essential if I was to study and then to teach with integrity. It was an exciting time, and, frankly, it was an iconoclastic approach to theological study.

Eventually, though, I discovered that “agreement is more exciting than disagreement,” as it has been said, and I found myself drawn back to the classic Protestant understanding of these matters. Part of this was spiritual: parents who prayed and discussed matters with me, friends who talked things through to the middle of the night, and pastors who modeled the ministry of the Reformational doctrine in compelling and faithful ways. I underwent a major shift in theological method: more and more I was convinced of the need to return to historical sources in the patristic, medieval, and early modern church to encounter teaching that I had dismissed, frankly, with little serious firsthand awareness. I began to immerse myself in the history of exegesis and in the story of the development of doctrine. In so doing I felt myself being led more deeply into scriptural teaching rather than being impeded from engaging it honestly. For me, then, returning to classic confessional teaching on justification went hand in hand with learning to read the Bible with the church.

Read the rest of this interview today:


To view the Magazine as a PDF {Click Here}

Justification: The Doctrine on which the Church Stands or Falls

While we could point to many different factors that led the sixteenth century Protestant Reformers to break from Rome, perhaps one that would be at the very top of the list is the doctrine of justification by faith alone. For Luther and Calvin, this doctrine is the very hinge on which the Christian religion turns. In part this is because sola fide is what sets Protestants apart. While every other religion puts something of man into the equation, Protestantism removes man’s works from the justification formula altogether. Therefore, the “sola” in sola fide makes all the difference in the world.

With over 2,000 years of church history in our rear view mirror, it appears that sola fide is a doctrine that comes under discussion in every generation. Our generation is no exception. Much dialogue continues over the New Perspective on Paul, Protestant and Catholic statements of agreement, and the relationship between justification and the Christian life. In this issue I am proud to welcome some of the finest thinkers on the subject in order to better understand what Scripture says about how sinners can be made right with a holy God.

Contributors include Thomas Schreiner, Michael Allen, Michael Horton, Philip Ryken, J.V. Fesko, Matthew Barrett, Korey Maas, Guy Waters, Brian Vickers, Fred Zaspel, and many others.

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