Interview: Joshua Ensley

The first of many interviews I will conducted with pronomian authors and brethren.

In embarking on a pro-Torah hermeneutic, one of the authors I came across was Joshua Ensley, whose online articles and video teachings were a blessing to me in shaping my understanding of the Torah. His webpage on pronomianism is an excellent starting point, as is the First Pronomian Statement he was instrumental in launching. Since those days, Ensley has gone on to pioneer a pronomian Discord group, write and edit books, and be called by יהוה to be a pastor. I recently reconnected with Ensley and decided to interview my brother in Messiah.

Dr. Szumskyj: It's great to reconnect with you Ps. Ensley. For those unfamiliar with you or your works, would you be so kind as to give the readers a snapshot of your background?

Ps. Ensley: My name is Joshua Ensley and I am from Chatsworth, GA. I grew up in a small town to conservative, Christian parents and we attended church every week from the time I was eight years old until I left for college. I went off to college as a baseball player hoping that one day I could forget about school and be a professional athlete. A couple of injuries later, I realized that was not going to happen. In December 2014, I graduated from Shorter University with a B.A. in Biblical Theology & Philosophy.

Since graduating college, much has changed. I am a high school construction teacher and I’ve been married to the love of my life, Krista, since November 2017 and we have three children: Augustine Phillip Ensley, born March 2023, Remington Ensley & Sawyer Ensley in heaven. I am a founding member of both Pronomian Publishing & Ensley Tech Solutions and serve as the senior pastor of Logos Church of Chatsworth. My ministry specialties include the Greek and Hebrew languages, expository preaching of the Bible, and answering philosophical objections to Christianity and the Bible.

Dr. Szumskyj: How did you come to salvifically know יהוה?

Ps. Ensley: My parents were very young when I was born and neither were Christians. About the time I was eight years old, my father began taking my family to a local Southern Baptist church where he was born again soon after. I had a false conversion around that same time and was baptized, but I was truly born again in October 2010 at 19 years old through the preaching of the Gospel into my wicked and sinful heart.

Dr. Szumskyj: At what point did you come to embrace a pro-Torah hermeneutic?

Ps. Ensley: My pro-Torah (what I like to call pronomian) hermeneutic began essentially immediately upon my conversion. I was dating a girl at the time and her family was a part of a local Hebrew Roots congregation. I began asking questions to her father about the Torah and why their practice was so different from mine. I began attending the congregation but determined quite soon it was problematic in many ways—Arianism, legalism, and a general hostility to Christianity, as they viewed themselves as non-Christian.

As I was visiting this congregation, I was also in university studying for the pastorate. So as I was being trained in systematic theology in university, I was comparing that with what I was hearing at the local Hebrew Roots congregation. However, though the congregation had its many heretical flaws, I grew ever-more convinced of their pro-Torah disposition and strengthened that view as I progressed through my undergraduate degree. When I graduated with my B.A. in Biblical Theology & Philosophy in 2014, I had a rather strong pronomian position and was regularly defending it in my work.

Dr. Szumskyj: If you don't mind me asking, how did your wife react to your pronomian shift in theology?

Ps. Ensley: I met Krista in 2016, so she never saw the shift, as it took place years before we met. However, she was a born-again Christian within one of the charismatic traditions and was more than willing to hear my defense of my pronomian theology. She asked questions and talked with me through it with no noticeable resistance. Once I had sufficiently answered her questions, she accepted the position and has been a Pronomian alongside me since.

Dr. Szumskyj: One of your earliest articles, one that helped shape my dissertation, contended that Pronomian Christianity upholds the appointed festivals, circumcision, and kashrut. How have you found living out these doctrines and teaching them to others? Have your views on these changed over the years?

Ps. Ensley: It is wonderful to hear that some of my work has helped shape your excellent dissertation.

As I wrote in that article, I believe that Pronomian Christianity—Christianity which embraces the pronomian hermeneutic—necessarily upholds the appointed festivals, circumcision, and dietary commandments within God’s Law because the pronomian hermeneutic upholds all of God’s Law. In my upcoming book Pronomianism: Stated and Defended, I offer this definition for pronomianism:

Pronomianism is a theological position affirming the ongoing validity, authority, and applicability of all God’s commandments as revealed in Scripture, grounded in a Protestant commitment to sola scriptura. Rooted in the conviction that God’s Law reflects his unchanging nature, pronomianism asserts that every divine command carries inherent moral, ethical, and spiritual significance for the Christian life. It further rejects the notion that the fulfillment of a commandment by Christ renders it obsolete, emphasizing instead that fulfillment deepens its meaning and application.

Working within this framework, it should be no surprise that consistent pronomian Christians affirm the commandments concerning festivals, circumcision, and food. Personally, applying the pronomian hermeneutic in my Christian life has been spiritually nourishing in many ways. First, the overall sanctification process is enriched because, by God’s grace, I am being molded in the practice of my Messiah more than if I were to neglect these commandments. Second, there is a window that opens up through which we can see more of God when we obey his Law in totality rather than fractionally. In celebrating the festivals, my practice bears witness to me that God has intervened in history in ways that I otherwise would not know. In circumcising my son, I am reminded that though I am his earthly father, he is dedicated to the Lord for his purposes. And in abstaining from foods that God forbids, I am reminded that my body is not my own, but that God has fashioned it for me and that I must maintain it according to his design.

As a Pronomian pastor, I am blessed to be able to teach and catechise the members of my flock in these practices which then enhance their Christian journeys. I see fruit growing in them that I have not seen elsewhere and I believe, as I stated earlier, that their sanctification process by way of the totality of God’s Law is able to produce more than if they were to cast off large portions of God’s Law as most Christians do.

Dr. Szumskyj: You were involved in the formation of the First Pronomian Statement. How did that take place?

Ps. Ensley: The First Pronomain Statement (FPS) was one of the four large goals that I began developing around 2020. The four goals were the First Pronomian Statement, Pronomian Publishing, the Pronomian Christianity Discord server, and Logos Church—the first official Pronomian Christianity church plant.

I had recently read and signed the Nashville Statement, which aimed to state and affirm the orthodox, historical Christian view on marriage and sexuality. I found that approach to be effective and so I sought to draft and publish a similar statement affirming core pronomian Christian doctrines as a way to distinguish an emerging pronomian movement from the Hebrew Roots Movement and Messianic Judaism. On April 24, 2022, I sat down to finalize the FPS and published it later that evening. The statement contains ten brief articles with an affirm and deny clause for each one. Topics range from the canon to the nature of God to the Sabbath to the nature of marriage. Though I had editorial input as I worked to publish the FPS, I was its sole author and all of the intended meanings behind the articles of the statement are exclusively mine.

The main objective I sought to achieve with the FPS was communion among those who held the same beliefs and did not have a banner under which they could identify. The world of pronomianism was undefined and there was little to unify individuals and churches, so I sought to remedy that problem. Essentially, I created a standard to define Pronomian Christianity and invited any and all who agree with that standard to come alongside me under it in communion.

It is important to note that I use “Pronomian” (with a capital P) to refer specifically to the theological movement defined by the FPS—what I call Pronomian Christianity. This is distinct from the more general use of “pronomian” (lowercase p), which is used by many to refer to a pro-Torah or Law-affirming hermeneutic. Not all who hold to a pronomian hermeneutic affirm the ten articles of the FPS, and therefore not all are part of the Pronomian Christianity movement.

Dr. Szumskyj: Years on, what are your thoughts on the statement?

Ps. Ensley: The statement was published just over three years ago now, and I continue to believe it is an effective and unifying document. The FPS provides a foundation not only for a shared pronomian hermeneutic, but also for deeper communion among individuals and churches. While the movement currently lacks an ecclesiastical structure—and I’m not sure that one is necessary—the FPS offers the potential for one or more denominations to emerge over time.

My personal hope is that the FPS can serve as a sort of “conference-level” statement—broad enough to allow for variation in secondary doctrines and practices while still maintaining theological cohesion. For example, the statement does not address baptism, which leaves room for a spectrum of practices among signers. My own church, for instance, holds to a Calvinistic sacramentology and practices credobaptism, but there is nothing in the FPS that would prevent someone from holding to a Zwinglian or Lutheran view on the sacraments.

As I mentioned earlier, one goal of the FPS was to distinguish Pronomian Christians from the Hebrew Roots Movement and Messianic Judaism. I believe the FPS accomplishes this by refuting the most common heresies of the Hebrew Roots Movement and affirming that those who sign are indeed Christians, not Messianic Jews—though I believe that Messianic Jews are by definition Christians, the Union of Messianic Jewish Congregations (UMJC) and the Messianic Jewish Alliance of America (MJAA) do not affirm such.

Overall, I believe the FPS is actively achieving the goals which I set out for it to achieve, though incrementally, and I continue to do my part in achieving those goals through networking with other signers of the statement, inviting them to visit or relocate to our church, and endorsing the ministries and churches who sign the statement on the official Pronomian.org website.

Dr. Szumskyj: You went on to write the Reformed Pronomian Confession of Faith. What was your intention in pioneering this?

Ps. Ensley: The Reformed Pronomian Confession of Faith (RPCF) was my attempt to go beyond the doctrinal distinctives of the FPS in longform confession format. I am a reformed Pronomian Christian who has a high regard for the historical reformed confessions, so I drew much influence from both the Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF) and the 1689 London Baptist Confession of Faith (LBC).

The RPCF serves a different purpose than the FPS and was written with distinct goals in mind. As I mentioned earlier, the FPS is rather brief and does not address all areas of doctrine, so it is not sufficient to stand alone as a church’s only document of stated beliefs. The RPCF is an exhaustive confession of faith spanning 34 chapters in which all of the confessed doctrine of Logos Church is found. At present, Logos Church is the only Pronomian church under the banner of the FPS that affirms the RPCF, though other churches may one day adopt it as their confessional standard. As it stands right now, there are only three churches under the FPS banner, and Logos is the only reformed church among them, so it would not make sense for either of the other two churches to affirm it unless they make significant doctrinal shifts. While the RPCF is explicitly reformed, it may serve as a resource or reference point for other Pronomian churches seeking to articulate fuller doctrinal commitments beyond the scope of the FPS.

Dr. Szumskyj: Regarding pronomianism, do you maintain that it is a movement (or potential denomination) or a means of interpreting the Scriptures?

Ps. Ensley: This is an excellent question and one that I have been asking myself almost daily since I decided to publish the FPS. As I mentioned earlier, I published the FPS with the direct intent in launching the Pronomian Christianity movement, though I, along with many others, already held pronomian convictions before the FPS existed. However, to answer this properly, we must first define what it means to be a movement.

A movement is more than a set of shared ideas or beliefs. It is a cohesive body of people, bound by a common set of principles, vocabulary, and goals, who consciously identify themselves as part of a collective effort. In a theological context, a movement is typically born when a group of Christians unite under a distinct confessional identity or doctrinal cause, often in contrast to surrounding theological errors or denominational confusion.

By this definition, being pronomian (lowercase) is simply a hermeneutical conviction: namely, that God’s Law (the Torah) remains authoritative and binding for all people at all times. But being Pronomian (capitalized) signals alignment with a defined movement launched by the FPS. The FPS created theological boundaries, defined key doctrinal affirmations, and invited others into visible and public communion based on those affirmations. That is what gave birth to the Pronomian Christianity movement—not just a shared belief in the Torah, but a shared confession of faith built upon it.

Now, this raises another frequently asked question: Can someone be pronomian but not a Christian? I would argue no.

To be pronomian in any meaningful, biblical sense is to submit to the full revelation of God’s authority—culminating in the Lordship of Jesus the Messiah, to whom the Law ultimately points (Romans 10:4; John 5:46). Any so-called “pro-Law” hermeneutic that rejects Christ fundamentally fails to uphold the greatest commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and might” (Deut. 6:5). Rabbinic Judaism, while affirming the Torah in form, denies its ultimate fulfillment and rejects the One to whom the Law points (John 5:46). Therefore, such systems are not truly pronomian.

In short, I think there is both a pro-Law hermeneutic and a naturally-emerging movement. The term pronomian is a hermeneutic that affirms the abiding authority of God’s Law, Pronomian is a confessional movement defined by the FPS, and only those who confess Jesus as Lord—that is, true Christians—can meaningfully be either pronomian or Pronomian.

Dr. Szumskyj: What are your concerns and hopes for the future of pronomianism, according to your position?

Ps. Ensley: As I mentioned above, I believe that pronomianism is exclusively Christian, and so my hope is that my Christian brethren of all streams will eventually accept the pronomian position.

Concerning the pronomian hermeneutic, I hope that the pronomian scholarship being produced by myself and others like you can help shift the Church’s view on God’s Law to our side. I contributed to your upcoming book of essays defending pronomianism, and I believe it will have a positive impact on the Church’s view in regards to God’s Law. I am continuing to write and publish books, sermons, and blogs stating and defending pronomian theology, alongside many others, and I believe these regularly-published works will prove to be beneficial to the sanctification of the Church.

Concerning the Pronomian Christianity movement, I hope it continues to grow and strengthen bonds between members for the sake of planting and cultivating pronomian communities. My greatest desire for the movement is the planting of local pronomian churches. There are hundreds of signers of the FPS who do not have a home church in which to be discipled, and I hope the networking efforts of the movement can solve that problem. One of the missions I have as the pastor of Logos Church is to train pastors to serve with me in our local body, but also to train up other men who are willing to relocate and pastor church plants outside of our area.

Dr. Szumskyj: Which authors have had a profound impact on your life and ministry?

Ps. Ensley: Some of the most impactful authors in my life are C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Tim Keller, Greg Bahnsen, and John Calvin.

I grew up reading the fantasy novels of Lewis and Tolkien and regularly read through them even at my current age. I love the mythology behind Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia and Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth. I actually am one of the “weird” people who absolutely loves the Silmarillion! These books had such an impact on shaping my young mind. Beyond Lewis’ fantasy works, I thoroughly enjoy his academic works, such as The Abolition of Man, Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and The Great Divorce. These books helped shape my early theology as a Christian.

I was assigned Tim Keller’s The Reason for God in my first college religious philosophy class and it had a great impact on me. I believe it was the book which most revealed to me that Christianity is not a religion of blind faith, but that the Christian faith is an academically-informed faith.

Greg Bahnsen helped shape my views on pronomianism, theonomy, apologetics, and eschatology more than any other author. His book By This Standard: The Authority of God’s Law Today reinforced my pronomianism and led me to believe that the logical end to pronomianism is theonomy. I interact much with this book in my forthcoming book Pronomianism: Stated and Defended. I also thoroughly love Bahnsen’s Presuppositional Apologetics: Stated and Defended. It was the critical work which convinced me to leave behind classical apologetics and to affirm fully the position of presuppositional apologetics. It is also the inspiration for the title of my upcoming book Pronomianism: Stated and Defended.

Finally, I must say that John Calvin has impacted my life and ministry greatly. As the great theologian of the Reformation, Calvin’s sermons, commentaries, and books on theology are a wealth of knowledge. I regularly consult with his exegetical commentaries when writing my expository sermons, and I make it a point to consult his systematic theology Institutes of the Christian Religion first when studying a particular theological topic.

Dr. Szumskyj: When did you aspire to become a pastor and receive the call from YHWH? How did the church start and where are you on the pastoral journey?

Ps. Ensley: I aspired to be a pastor almost immediately after my conversion. My father serves as an associate pastor and teacher at the church where I was born again at 19, and many in that church had encouraged me to consider ministry from a young age even before I came to faith. So even as an unregenerate young man, I was open to the idea of pastoral work someday.

I’ve always been a “type A” leader, and leading has come naturally to me for as long as I can remember. But after my conversion, everything changed: I didn’t just want to lead—I wanted to serve. I didn’t just admire the role of pastor—I revered it. Once I truly loved God instead of hating him, my eyes were opened to the beauty and weight of the pastoral office. I came to believe that faithful shepherding is one of the highest forms of leadership in the world, and my respect for it grew immensely.

The church I now pastor is the third church I have pastored, but the first where I am the senior pastor. In 2020, as I was planning to launch the Pronomian movement, one of my goals was to plant a robust Pronomian church. After examining all church options in my area, I concluded that there was no place I felt comfortable submitting my family, so I set forth to plant Logos. In December 2022, I completed all of the legal requirements in my state and officially incorporated the church. I began planning the liturgical calendar that we still use today and had a grand opening on June 3, 2023. I currently am the only pastor, though we are structured for presbyterian polity. I am working with a man in the church to train him for the pastorate in hopes that we can be multi-pastor soon.

Logos Church is a small but growing community and we are expanding the kingdom by God’s grace. We recently raised our goal of $3,000 to send to End Abortion Now with the goal of abolishing abortion in our land. Our focuses are training disciples, evangelizing the lost, and building Christian community in our area. Through our covenant renewal worship liturgy, we are called by God to assemble weekly on the Sabbath, to confess our sins before him, to be assured of our pardon, to be consecrated by His holy Law, to feast at His table, and to be commissioned back out into the world. This structure serves as a way to energize and revitalize us as New Covenant members for the work of bringing the Kingdom of God to and through our land.

Dr. Szumskyj: How have local churches reacted to a pronomian church?

Ps. Ensley: Logos Church just celebrated its two-year anniversary this past Sabbath, so we’re still relatively new in our area. That said, I’ve lived here all of my life. I now live in my grandparents’ former home, right next door to the house where my parents raised me. Ours is a small town in a rural county of about 41,000 people, and I’ve been a high school athlete, teacher, and coach here for the past 18 years—so most people know me personally, and many are aware that I’m a Pronomian. Those who know I’m a pastor also tend to realize that Logos Church holds to Pronomian doctrine.

As of this writing, and to my knowledge, no church in our county has formally anathematized me or Logos Church. There are around 75 churches in the county, and I personally know most of the pastors. Every pastor I know is willing to share communion with me and my flock, so I have no reason to believe we’ve been labeled a cult or been cut off from broader Christian fellowship—at least not locally.

Dr. Szumskyj: What led you to write A Pocket Guide to the Doctrine of the Trinity? Why is Trinitarianism such an important doctrine in the Christian faith?

Ps. Ensley: Back in 2020, while pursuing the pronomian goals I mentioned earlier, I was pastoring alongside two other men in a Messianic church plant. I had been invited to join the team and begin the eldership qualification process, and I accepted the offer without thoroughly examining the theological positions of the other leaders. As it turns out, both of them held to a binitarian view—affirming the Father and the Son but denying that the Holy Spirit is a personal member of the triune Godhead. They believed the Spirit was merely an impersonal force.

Once I recognized this, I grew increasingly uneasy about continuing in pastoral leadership alongside them. I realized I needed to take a firm stand on the biblical doctrine of the Trinity. Around the same time, I was working with my friend David Wilber to launch Pronomian Publishing, and he encouraged me to write and publish a short defense of orthodox Trinitarian theology as our first book.

Beyond the immediate doctrinal concerns in that local church, I was also aware that Trinitarianism is frequently dismissed or distorted within Messianic and Hebrew Roots circles. Since I was beginning to define and promote a distinctly Pronomian Christian movement, I saw the need to establish a clear and accessible defense of the Trinity as foundational to the movement’s identity. A Pocket Guide to the Doctrine of the Trinity was written to meet that need.

Dr. Szumskyj: Are you currently writing any other books?

Ps. Ensley: Yes. In March 2023, I finalized the manuscript of a short treatise titled Cosmic Anarchy: A Pronomian Pocket Guide to the Biblical Concept of Sin, which is expected to be released later this year. This is a distinctly Pronomian work that defends the thesis that sin is defined as the transgression of God’s Law (1 John 3:4). But more than that, the book makes the case that “God’s Law” refers to the whole of his Law—not merely select parts that some traditions have labeled as “moral” while discarding the rest as “civil” or “ceremonial.” The goal is to challenge that arbitrary tripartite division and affirm the enduring unity and authority of God’s commands. The book is concise—approximately 13,000 words—and written for laypeople, much like my earlier pocket guide on Trinitarianism. I hope it will serve as an accessible and clarifying resource for anyone wrestling with the biblical definition of sin in a confused theological landscape.

Beyond Cosmic Anarchy, I am currently working on a much larger project titled Pronomianism: Stated and Defended—a titled influenced by Dr. Greg Bahnsen’s work. This is intended to be my magnum opus—a comprehensive articulation and defense of Pronomian theology. While many Christians are sympathetic to aspects of Torah observance, few have seen a fully developed, systematic presentation of how Pronomianism coheres with the gospel, Christian theology, and the life of the Church. I aim to provide that. The book will likely exceed 150,000 words and will engage with a wide range of subjects: the unity of Scripture, the Law and the gospel, historical theology, covenantal continuity, the words of Jesus, the writings of Paul, and rebuttals to common antinomian objections. My hope is that it will advance the conversation significantly and offer a robust theological foundation for the Pronomian movement in years to come.