Conservative Anabaptist communities today face tremendous pressure from progressive theology. As mainline Mennonite conferences have embraced positions incompatible with Scripture, faithful believers have sought solid ground. Many have turned to historical scholarship, early church fathers, contemporary scholars, seeking frameworks to defend biblical faith against liberal drift.
When progressives dismiss biblical authority, conservatives naturally look for credible voices who take Scripture seriously. When liberal theology erodes foundational doctrines, faithful believers want robust teaching that honors God’s Word while engaging intellectual challenges.
In seeking to resist progressive theology, many conservative Anabaptists have unknowingly adopted a scholarly framework that undermines the very scriptural authority they seek to defend. Books appearing on recommended reading lists of conservative organizations, teachers circulating in faithful communities, study materials used in Bible studies: many contain a subtle but powerful reinterpretation of the gospel that changes how we understand justification, atonement, and salvation itself.
This framework goes by various names in scholarly circles: the “New Perspective on Paul,” “covenantal nomism,” or “gospel as allegiance.” Most conservative Anabaptists have never heard these terms. Yet the ideas are spreading through their communities, often dressed in the language of “returning to early Christianity” or “understanding Paul’s original context.”
While conservative Anabaptists correctly recognize that faith must produce obedience and that cheap grace is unbiblical, the scholarly framework they’re adopting to articulate these truths distorts the gospel. Sorting through these competing frameworks requires returning repeatedly to Scripture itself, letting God’s Word speak plainly without the mediation of scholarly reconstruction. What follows is an examination of this hidden framework, how it works, why it appeals to conservative Anabaptists, and why, despite its sophisticated appearance, it must be recognized and rejected in favor of simple fidelity to Scripture alone. This is not an argument against obedience, church discipline, historic Christianity, or learning from the past. It is an argument about the limits of historical reconstruction as theological authority, especially within a tradition born from resistance to interpretation that requires worldly authority.
Understanding the Framework: Getting In vs. Staying In
In 1977, E.P. Sanders argued that first-century Judaism wasn’t legalistic works-righteousness.[^1] Jews understood themselves as already God’s covenant people by gracious election. The law maintained this status. Sanders called this “covenantal nomism”: election by God’s grace establishes the relationship, obedience maintains it.
Sanders articulated this pattern in eight points describing how ancient Judaism understood salvation: (1) God chose Israel by grace, not merit. (2) God gave the law to Israel as a gift and guide. (3) The law implies God’s promise to maintain Israel’s election. (4) The law requires obedience to maintain one’s standing within the elect community. (5) God rewards obedience and punishes transgression (6) The law provides means of atonement for failures and restoration when covenant members sin. (7) Atonement results in maintenance or reestablishment of the covenantal relationship when broken by disobedience. (8) All who maintain the covenant by obedience, atonement, and God’s continuing mercy belong to those who will be rewarded with final salvation.
If Sanders is right that Judaism wasn’t legalistic, then when Paul criticizes “works of the law” in his letters, he can’t be arguing against Jewish attempts to earn salvation through works. He must be arguing something else entirely.
This is where scholars like James D.G. Dunn and N.T. Wright took Sanders’ work and applied it to reading Paul.[^2] They argued that Paul’s critique of “works of the law” was not about legalism or works-righteousness at all. Instead, Paul was addressing Jewish exclusivism: the insistence that gentiles must adopt Jewish boundary markers (circumcision, food laws, Sabbath observance) to be full members of God’s people. According to this view, Paul wasn’t saying “you can’t earn salvation by works.” He was saying “gentiles don’t need to become Jewish to be included in God’s covenant people.”
Applied to Christianity, the pattern becomes: God saves you by grace through faith in Christ. That’s “getting in” to the covenant community. But once you’re in, staying in requires faithful obedience. Yes, there’s forgiveness when you sin, but your salvation is maintained by your ongoing allegiance to Jesus as King. In this framework, salvation is not primarily about being declared righteous before God, but about being included in God’s covenant community through loyal obedience. This requires redefining key biblical words. The Greek word pistis, traditionally translated ‘faith’ or ‘trust,’ gets redefined as ‘allegiance’ or ‘loyalty.[^3] When pistis becomes ‘allegiance,’ salvation shifts from trusting Christ’s finished work to pledging loyalty demonstrated through obedient living.
This framework requires reinterpreting Christ’s death itself. When salvation becomes primarily about covenant inclusion rather than justification, the cross’s meaning necessarily shifts. Christ’s crucifixion becomes primarily a demonstration of covenant faithfulness, an example of love, or victory over evil powers. The framework may still use the phrase “Christ died for our sins,” but that phrase has been fundamentally redefined. “For our sins” no longer means “bearing the punishment our sins deserved” but rather “to establish the covenant that includes us” or “to show us the path of faithful obedience.” The blood of Christ becomes less about propitiation and more about demonstrating covenant love or defeating spiritual enemies.
This framework requires historical reconstruction to control Scripture interpretation. NPP scholars insist understanding Paul requires first reconstructing ancient Judaism through scholarly research, making Scripture’s meaning dependent on expert knowledge. This elevates historical scholarship to interpretive authority over Scripture’s plain reading. The Bible’s meaning becomes inaccessible to ordinary believers without scholarly mediation.
Why This Appeals to Conservative Anabaptists
This framework has powerful appeal for faithful Anabaptist believers, and understanding why helps us recognize how it spreads even among those committed to Scripture. Four factors drive its adoption.
First, the framework appears to validate the Anabaptist emphasis on obedience. We have always insisted that faith produces obedient living. We have rightly rejected the idea that someone can claim to have saving faith while showing no evidence of transformation. When scholars present a framework where “staying in” the covenant requires demonstrated obedience, it seems to provide intellectual support and scholarly validation for what we have always believed. It appears to solve the tension between Paul’s teaching that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works, and James’s teaching that faith without works is dead.
Second, the framework seems to defend against cheap grace. Conservative Anabaptists have watched evangelical churches fill with people who made decisions for Christ but show no evidence of regeneration. When this framework insists that allegiance must be demonstrated, that covenant membership involves more than a momentary decision, it sounds like the needed corrective.
Third, the framework emphasizes community over individualism in ways that resonate deeply with Anabaptist ecclesiology. By defining salvation primarily as inclusion in God’s covenant people rather than individual legal standing before God, this framework seems to align perfectly with Anabaptist convictions about the church. When scholars present justification as fundamentally about covenant membership rather than God’s declaration of righteousness, it sounds like recovering communal Christianity against American evangelical hyper-individualism.
Fourth, the framework comes with impressive scholarly credentials. When conservative Anabaptists face progressive theology’s intellectual arguments, this framework offers something powerfully attractive: sophisticated biblical scholarship that appears both academically credible and theologically sound. Respected scholars from prestigious institutions write learned books claiming to have discovered through historical research what the gospel really meant in its original context.
The Biblical Problems: What Gets Lost
When this framework is adopted, Christ’s death becomes less central, shifted from bearing the chastisement for our peace to demonstrating covenant faithfulness. When Scripture declares “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him” (Isaiah 53:5), it’s not speaking about covenant demonstration. Second, assurance becomes uncertain. If staying saved depends on maintained obedience, how faithful is faithful enough? The framework may point to forgiveness, but the structure remains. Salvation partly depends on my performance. This structure lacks any safeguard against categories of acceptable sin. The church confronted this error in the fifth century when Pelagius taught that humans could achieve righteousness through moral effort. Whatever the personality conflicts in that controversy, the theological judgment was sound. Humans are ‘dead in trespasses and sins’ (Ephesians 2:1), unable to save themselves. Grace must be God’s work from beginning to end, or it ceases to be grace. Without the safeguard that ‘He who has begun a good work in you will complete it’ (Philippians 1:6), the framework cannot explain apostasy biblically. When someone professes faith but produces no works, this doesn’t prove grace failed but reveals a state of apostasy. In apostasy, many fail to recognize they are actively rejecting grace. It is not grace rejecting them. Rather, it is a determination to please the flesh without regard to the power of a transformed life. Grace can intervene in a life, but it does not automatically override the desires that one tends and feeds. When Paul commands us to put those desires to death, this is not a task anyone can accomplish on their own—it requires the very grace being rejected. ‘They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us’ (1 John 2:19). The third casualty, perhaps most dangerous for Anabaptist communities, is the collapse of the “already but not yet” tension.
The Pre-Pentecost Error: Expecting the Kingdom Now
Before Pentecost, apostles asked: “Lord, will You at this time restore the kingdom?” (Acts 1:6). Jesus corrected them: “You shall be witnesses” (Acts 1:7-8). At Pentecost they learned the “already but not yet” tension: Christ reigns, but enemies remain (1 Corinthians 15:25-26). Even the 1963 Mennonite Confession maintained this.[^4]
The framework collapses this tension. But here’s the critical problem: it never defines what “kingdom ethics” requires. It is convenient to assume ‘kingdom ethics’ means the Sermon on the Mount: peacemaking, loving enemies, nonresistance. These align with Anabaptist convictions, making the framework seem safe. But notice what it avoids defining: where does it stand on Paul’s teaching about modest dress (1 Corinthians 11)? Family order (Ephesians 5)? Separation from worldly conformity (Romans 12:1-2)? Church discipline (1 Corinthians 5)?
The framework claims to recover community but provides no basis for the congregational discernment and church discipline that characterize biblical community. Without clear gospel content to disciple toward, church discipline becomes arbitrary tradition rather than loving correction toward Christ’s standard.
The framework’s silence on these matters has practical effect. By speaking of ‘allegiance to King Jesus’ without defining specific applications, the framework can appeal broadly across traditions without addressing issues that establish differences between them. The framework speaks of “allegiance to King Jesus” but leaves these terms essentially undefined.
For conservative Anabaptists, this vagueness is problematic. When ‘kingdom ethics’ remains undefined, communities fill in the definition from their tradition: modest dress, nonconformity, separated living, ordered families. But the framework provides no basis for these specifics beyond ‘justice,’ ‘peace,’ ‘faithfulness’: terms broad enough to encompass many definitions.
Over time, distinctives erode because they have no foundation within the framework. When the next generation asks why we practice these things, the framework offers only “demonstrate allegiance”, which progressives also claim without these practices.
The progression is logical: (1) If allegiance means demonstrating kingdom ethics, (2) and kingdom ethics mean pursuing justice and peace in society, (3) then faithful Christians must work to reduce societal injustice. (4) But this requires engaging governmental structures. (5) Therefore, allegiance requires political activism.
This is the pre-Pentecost error in modern form. NPP advocates don’t use “earthly kingdom” language, but the result is the same.
Two Kingdoms: The Foundation of Anabaptist Eschatology
To understand why the NPP framework’s realized eschatology is dangerous for Anabaptist communities specifically, we must understand the historic Anabaptist two-kingdom distinction and how it differs from both the apostles’ pre-Pentecost expectations and modern inaugurated eschatology.
Historic Anabaptist theology, reaching back to the Swiss Brethren and articulated in the Schleitheim Confession, maintained a sharp distinction between two kingdoms fundamentally different in nature, governance, and method:
The Kingdom of Christ:
- Entered through new birth and regeneration
- Governed solely by Christ’s Word and the Spirit
- Characterized by suffering love, self-giving service, and radical nonresistance
- Advanced through witness, proclamation, and faithful suffering
- Operates entirely by spiritual means
- Membership consists of those who have been born again.
The Kingdoms of This World:
- Established and maintained by God’s providence for temporal order
- Governed by human law and exercised through civil authority
- Maintained by the sword, coercion, and force
- Characterized by self-protection, retribution, and power
- Operate through natural and physical means
- Membership consists of all people within a territory.
This distinction was not theoretical but practical. The Schleitheim Confession stated it clearly: “The sword is ordained of God outside the perfection of Christ… Within the perfection of Christ, however, only the ban is used for a warning and for the excommunication of the one who has sinned.”[^5] This was a significant change from the use of worldly authority and even this statement was proven to be an authority that the church did not handle well and eventually caused the fracturing of the Anabaptist movement.
The implications were revolutionary:
First, believers submit to earthly governmental authorities as Romans 13 requires but do not attempt to control, reform, or Christianize those earthly kingdoms through political engagement or social activism. The Christian’s relationship to civil government is one of submission and prayer, not participation and transformation.
Second, the church’s mission is entirely spiritual: proclaiming the gospel, calling people to repentance and new birth, discipling believers in obedience to Christ, maintaining church discipline, and bearing faithful witness even through suffering. The church does not have a mandate or means to transform society, reform government, or establish kingdom values in the world through any form of activism.
Third, and crucially, this two-kingdom theology meant that Anabaptists expected to suffer in this present age. They did not anticipate building, establishing, or demonstrating the kingdom through their corporate faithfulness. Rather, they understood that as citizens of heaven living in a fallen world, they would face persecution, marginalization, and hostility. Suffering was not a problem to be solved but the expected experience of following a crucified King in a world that crucified Him.
The 1527 Schleitheim Confession described believers as “sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter,” echoing Romans 8:36. This was not pessimism but realism grounded in Jesus’ own warnings: “If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). The kingdom would be consummated at Christ’s return, not gradually established through Christian influence in the present age.
This understanding created what might be called “eschatological separation”: a clear distinction between this present evil age (under the dominion of sin, death, and fallen powers) and the age to come (when Christ returns to establish perfect righteousness and justice). Believers live in this age but belong to the next. We are sojourners, pilgrims, aliens—present in the world but not attempting to make it our home or establish Christ’s reign within its fallen structures.
The contrast with modern inaugurated eschatology is significant. While “already/not yet” theology rightly recognizes that the kingdom has been inaugurated through Christ’s death and resurrection, it can subtly shift the focus from awaiting kingdom consummation to demonstrating kingdom presence. When combined with the NPP framework’s emphasis on “demonstrating kingdom ethics” and “establishing kingdom values,” this creates pressure toward kingdom-building rather than kingdom-witnessing.
The covenantal nomism framework’s emphasis on Christians “demonstrating kingdom ethics” and “establishing kingdom values in society now” effectively collapses the two-kingdom distinction. It makes the church’s mission include transforming earthly social and political structures: precisely what the two-kingdom theology was designed to prevent.[^8]
The danger becomes concrete: when “allegiance to King Jesus” means “demonstrating kingdom living,” and kingdom living includes “pursuing justice and peace in society,” the logical conclusion is that faithful Christians must engage governmental and social structures to reduce injustice and establish kingdom values. This transforms the church’s mission from spiritual witness to social transformation, from proclamation to activism, from suffering service to political engagement.
The early Anabaptists recognized this danger. Conrad Grebel wrote to Thomas Müntzer warning against attempting to establish God’s kingdom through any form of force or coercion, even when the goal seemed righteous: “The gospel and its adherents are not to be protected by the sword, nor are they thus to protect themselves.”[^6] This was written to a fellow reformer who believed Christians should use available means—including violent revolution if necessary—to establish God’s righteous order.
But the two-kingdom distinction also guards against non-violent attempts to Christianize society. The issue is not merely the means (violent versus peaceful) but the mission itself. Believers are not called to transform earthly kingdoms into expressions of Christ’s kingdom, whether through violence, legislation, activism, or any other means. We are called to live as faithful witnesses within earthly kingdoms while awaiting the kingdom that comes from heaven.
This is where the Münster revolt becomes relevant as historical proof, not rhetorical warning. The danger of collapsed eschatology is not theoretical. The 1534-1535 Münster revolt stands as historical warning of what happens when Anabaptists abandon the two-kingdom distinction. When leaders Jan Matthijs and Jan van Leiden attempted to establish God’s kingdom on earth through human effort, it produced lasting shame upon Anabaptism. The Schleitheim Confession and subsequent Anabaptist theology developed two-kingdom distinctions and radical nonresistance precisely as safeguards against repeating Münster’s errors.
Suffering is essential to understanding the kingdom rightly. “In the world you will have tribulation” (John 16:33). “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom” (Acts 14:22). “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example” (1 Peter 2:21). We follow a crucified King who explicitly told His followers they would face the same hostility He faced.
The framework can’t make sense of suffering’s centrality because it’s lost the eschatological tension. When you expect to build the kingdom now, when “demonstrating kingdom ethics” becomes the measure of faithfulness, suffering becomes a problem to solve rather than a calling to embrace. But Scripture presents suffering as the normal Christian experience in this age, the badge of authentic discipleship, the means by which we participate in Christ’s sufferings and bear faithful witness to His different kind of kingdom.
The two-kingdom distinction protects this understanding. It explains why believers suffer (we live in fallen kingdoms while belonging to Christ’s kingdom), it clarifies our mission (witness and proclamation, not transformation and reformation), and it directs our hope (not to gradual kingdom establishment but to sudden kingdom consummation at Christ’s return).
How This Framework Infiltrates Conservative Communities
The framework rarely announces itself. Books emphasizing “allegiance to Jesus” circulate using biblical language but containing covenantal nomism underneath. These works speak of King Jesus, loyalty, obedience, kingdom living—but beneath the orthodox vocabulary lies the structure: getting in by grace, staying in by demonstrated allegiance.
The most effective entry point is through early church fathers, appearing to be a return to historical faith. But the fathers become interpretive tools controlled by the same scholarly apparatus that produced NPP. When readers encounter edited patristic collections, they’re reading fathers filtered through modern scholarly selection emphasizing themes that support covenantal nomism. The fathers didn’t write systematic theologies addressing Reformation questions about justification. Modern scholars fill those gaps. Conservative Anabaptists, having elevated fathers to interpretive authority rivaling Scripture, accept the reconstruction as ancient truth rather than modern theory. The framework enters in patristic garments cut by contemporary tailors.
It spreads through teachers and study materials. When a pastor finds allegiance language compelling and incorporates it into sermons, the congregation absorbs the framework as biblical interpretation rather than theological reconstruction.
The framework finds fertile soil in reactions against easy believism. The problem of cheap grace is real. When this framework promises to address it by insisting staying saved requires demonstrated faithfulness, the emotional appeal is enormous. What gets missed: the solution shifts the gospel from Christ’s finished work providing total salvation to Christ’s initiating work requiring our maintained obedience.
Conrad Grebel’s Alternative: Scripture Interprets Scripture
Conrad Grebel’s 1524 letter established a principle: “That which is not taught by clear instruction and example we shall regard as forbidden.”[^7] This was radical trust in Scripture’s clarity. Where God’s Word clearly taught something, believe and obey it. Where silent, human innovation was presumption.
When Müntzer introduced innovations based on scholarly reasoning about early Christianity, Grebel responded with Scripture alone. Not with appeals to church fathers or historical reconstruction. With biblical texts and the conviction that biblical silence was as authoritative as biblical speech.
Grebel’s method was Scripture interpreting Scripture: understanding Paul through the Gospels, Old Testament, and whole canonical context. When Paul wrote about justification in Romans, Grebel understood him in light of what the four Gospels say about Christ’s death, what the Old Testament teaches about righteousness and sacrifice, what the whole canonical revelation discloses about God’s character and His way of salvation. The canonical context controlled interpretation. This produced martyrs confident in a gospel understood directly from Scripture. The covenantal nomism method produces uncertainty about maintained allegiance and dependence on scholarly mediation.
Nonresistance Versus Pacifism
The framework’s realized eschatology transforms nonresistance into political pacifism. Nonresistance is passive submission to evil while trusting God (Matthew 5:39). Early Anabaptists: “True Christians are sheep for the slaughter.”[^9] Pacifism is active pursuit of peace through political engagement: lobbying, voting, protesting to bring kingdom values now.
Jesus: “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight” (John 18:36). Not fight nonviolently, but not fight at all. The framework, emphasizing demonstrating kingdom ethics now, leads from nonresistance to pacifism. Scripture maintains the tension: Christ reigns, enemies remain (1 Corinthians 15:25). We witness through suffering, not establish through activism.
What Scripture Actually Teaches
When we set aside scholarly frameworks and sophisticated reconstructions to read Scripture directly, what emerges is clarity that the covenantal nomism approach systematically obscures.
On justification, Paul declares with unmistakable clarity: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Not “having been included in the covenant community by maintained allegiance,” but “justified”, declared righteous in God’s sight by faith alone. “Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him” (Romans 5:9).
On faith and works, Paul explains: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works” (Ephesians 2:8-10). Saved by grace through faith, then created for good works. Works don’t maintain our salvation; they demonstrate it. We don’t stay saved by obedience; we prove we are saved by our obedience. James makes the same point: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:26). Dead faith isn’t real faith. Genuine saving faith inevitably produces transformation and devoted obedience to Christ. This transformation is the fruit of justification, not the means of maintaining it—the evidence of new birth, not the basis of it.
On Christ’s death, Scripture speaks with stark, repeated clarity about what was accomplished for us. Peter writes: “He Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Not “demonstrated covenant faithfulness” but “bore our sins.” Isaiah prophesied it centuries earlier: “The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). The chastisement we deserved fell on Him. “God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). Christ bore the price for sin so we might become righteous. The writer of Hebrews explains: “Without shedding of blood there is no remission” (Hebrews 9:22). Christ’s blood wasn’t shed to demonstrate covenant love but to provide remission for sin.
On assurance and perseverance, Scripture distinguishes clearly between God’s work and ours. Paul writes: “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). God completes what He begins. Jesus declares: ‘My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand’ (John 10:27-28).
On nonresistance, Jesus commands simply: “Do not resist an evil person” (Matthew 5:39). Not “resist nonviolently through political means,” but “do not resist.” Suffer. Submit to injustice. Trust God’s sovereignty. Await Christ’s return to establish perfect justice.
These truths require no scholarly mediation or complex reconstruction of ancient contexts. They are clear to anyone reading Scripture plainly, comparing Scripture with Scripture, trusting God’s Word to be sufficiently clear for His people. The martyrs understood them directly from reading God’s Word. So can we. These works are produced only through Christ’s suffering work.
Conclusion
Anabaptist martyrs died for a gospel understood directly from Scripture. The covenantal nomism framework redefines orthodoxy rather than preserving it. Getting in by grace, staying in by obedience. Justification as covenant inclusion rather than God’s declaration. Faith as allegiance rather than trust in Christ’s work on the cross. Christ’s death as example rather than full atonement without which God’s perfect wrath abides upon all who remain in unbelief.[^10] These are fundamental gospel redefinitions.
Conservative Anabaptist organizations must examine reading lists honestly. Books promoting this framework teach a different gospel than what sustained our forefathers. A church built on scholarly reconstruction cannot withstand persecution. A church requiring expert mediation cannot produce believers willing to die for what Scripture clearly teaches.
The Anabaptist martyrs chose Scripture alone, trusting God’s Word above human wisdom, scholarly sophistication, and pressure to adopt complex theological systems. Their choice is now ours. A framework spreading through conservative Anabaptist communities fundamentally redefines the gospel using orthodox language. The choice must be made. Scripture alone stood sufficient for the martyrs. Will it stand sufficient for us?