Journal: Westminster Theological Journal
Volume: WTJ 85:2 (Fall 2023)
Article: “Contend For The Faith”: The Structure Of Jude And The Scope Of “Contending”
Author: Nicholas J. Moore

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“Contend For The Faith”: The Structure Of Jude And The Scope Of “Contending”

Nicholas J. Moore

Nicholas J. Moore is Warden and Lecturer in New Testament at Cranmer Hall, Durham University.

The phrase “contend for the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3) is often cited to urge Christians to defend and promote the deposit of faith. In his 1983 Word Biblical Commentary, Richard Bauckham related this command to “contend” to the positive injunctions in Jude 20–23, and not to the condemnation of the ungodly intruders in Jude 5–19; his position has been widely but not universally followed. This article offers an alternative structural proposal, that Jude 17–19 should be considered an “overlapping segment,” which both concludes the denunciation of the opponents and also introduces the letter’s exhortations. On this basis, Bauckham’s structural proposal can be modified and, accordingly, the command “to contend” should be understood to encompass not only the positive commands of Jude 20–23, but also careful exegetical work including, where necessary, in the service of denouncing the ungodly.

I. Introduction

The command “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints” (Jude 3) is frequently cited in the contemporary church to urge Christians to remain committed to and actively promote the deposit of faith. So, for example, evangelical scholars Andreas Köstenberger and Michael Kruger introduce their book The Heresy of Orthodoxy with the hope that it will contribute to “a defense of the ‘faith once for all delivered to the saints’ in our generation.”1 In the Anglican Communion, the conservative Gafcon movement often alludes to this phrase, as, for example, in the Letter to the Churches from the 2018 Gafcon Assembly, which includes the line: “We give thanks for the godly courage of our Gafcon Primates in contending for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.”2 In an earlier example, the phrase

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was used to denote advancing the basic tenets of Pentecostalism: William Wallace Simpson was a Christian and Missionary Alliance worker in China, who in the early twentieth century began speaking in tongues and “felt the Lord tell him to ‘earnestly contend for the faith once delivered to the saints,’” ...