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Whom God Has Made Clean: A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Acts 10:9–15
Do the dietary commandments of the Old Testament still apply to believers today? Peter’s vision in Acts 10:9–15 is frequently cited as evidence that they do not. In the vision, Peter sees a sheet descending from heaven, filled with animals considered unclean, and hears a voice instructing him to “rise, kill, and eat.” When he resists, the voice replies, “What God has made clean, do not call common.” At first glance, this seems to suggest the dietary commandments have been revoked. But is that really what this passage is teaching?
In Whom God Has Made A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Acts 10:9-15, R. M. Bailey invites readers to take a closer look at Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Challenging popular interpretations, Bailey contends that the passage is not about nullifying God’s commandments, but about welcoming Gentiles into the Messianic community. Scholarly yet accessible, Whom God Has Made Clean offers a thoughtful pronomian reading of this key passage.
In Whom God Has Made A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Acts 10:9-15, R. M. Bailey invites readers to take a closer look at Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Challenging popular interpretations, Bailey contends that the passage is not about nullifying God’s commandments, but about welcoming Gentiles into the Messianic community. Scholarly yet accessible, Whom God Has Made Clean offers a thoughtful pronomian reading of this key passage.
136 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 7, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
August 5, 2025
In Leviticus 11, God told the Israelites what animals they could and could not eat. Among these prohibited, “unclean” meats were pork, shrimp, and catfish. Most Christians believe that this rule was abolished in the New Testament. Ask them where, and at least nine out of ten will respond with Peter’s vision in Acts 10. Inform them that verses 28, 34, and 35 of that chapter makes it clear that the vision was a metaphor of the artificial division between Jew and Gentile (cf. Galatians 2:28), and they will say something along the lines of “The vision was declaring the end of two distinctions - one between Jews and Gentiles, and the other between clean and unclean meats.” Is this true? Was Peter’s vision addressing two theological issues, or just one? R.M. Bailey explains his answer to this question in his new book, Whom God Has Made Clean: A Pronomian Pocket Guide to Acts 10:9-15.
Bailey argues that we should read Acts 10 contextually, i.e. the way its original readers would have read it. His book leaves no stone unturned analyzing how animals were used as symbols in both the Old Testament and ancient Jewish literature like 1 Enoch. Ultimately, its well-supported conclusion is that Peter’s vision had nothing to do with literal food consumption and everything to do with cross-ethnic human association. Like all the other Pronomian Pocket Guide books, it is much more comprehensive than its size might indicate, being 141 pages long but containing 146 sources in his bibliography. This is both good and bad for the reader. It is good in the sense that it shows Bailey as not only having done his homework but also having spent a tremendous amount of time doing so, something that would certainly be admired by any theologian. As for its flaws, that requires its own paragraph.
Whom God Has Made Clean is more academic than its three predecessors, and it is significantly harder to read as well. Its author has studied everything a curious Christian might like to know about Acts 10, and he documents and gives his scholarly input on all of it. As a result, his book is a tedious read, and some details of it are unnecessary and really end up not helping its thesis as much as they provoke questions unrelated to the subject.
(For example, Bailey speculates on page 69 that the unknown voice in Peter’s vision was that of Jesus Christ. He bases this on the similarity between Peter’s words in Acts 10:14 and Ezekiel’s in Ezekiel 4:14; Peter calls the voice “Lord” rather than “Lord God,” a difference that suggests to Bailey that Ezekiel was conversing with the Father in contrast to Peter who was with the Son. On pages 71-72, the book uses this presumption to observe a potential “trinitarian dynamic” in Acts 10. However, this begs the question of whether Christ’s disciples referred to Him as God. If they didn’t, then an Arian could theoretically make the argument that they saw Him as Lord – a requirement for salvation according to Romans 10:9 – but not God. I mention this because Bailey seems to have put forward some potential evidence against the doctrine of the Trinity without even realizing it. Whoops.)
In conclusion, I recommend Whom God Has Made Clean to all long-time intellectual pronomians. However, I do not recommend it to anyone else due to its overanalytical writing style. Read it if you have lots of time on your hands.
Bailey argues that we should read Acts 10 contextually, i.e. the way its original readers would have read it. His book leaves no stone unturned analyzing how animals were used as symbols in both the Old Testament and ancient Jewish literature like 1 Enoch. Ultimately, its well-supported conclusion is that Peter’s vision had nothing to do with literal food consumption and everything to do with cross-ethnic human association. Like all the other Pronomian Pocket Guide books, it is much more comprehensive than its size might indicate, being 141 pages long but containing 146 sources in his bibliography. This is both good and bad for the reader. It is good in the sense that it shows Bailey as not only having done his homework but also having spent a tremendous amount of time doing so, something that would certainly be admired by any theologian. As for its flaws, that requires its own paragraph.
Whom God Has Made Clean is more academic than its three predecessors, and it is significantly harder to read as well. Its author has studied everything a curious Christian might like to know about Acts 10, and he documents and gives his scholarly input on all of it. As a result, his book is a tedious read, and some details of it are unnecessary and really end up not helping its thesis as much as they provoke questions unrelated to the subject.
(For example, Bailey speculates on page 69 that the unknown voice in Peter’s vision was that of Jesus Christ. He bases this on the similarity between Peter’s words in Acts 10:14 and Ezekiel’s in Ezekiel 4:14; Peter calls the voice “Lord” rather than “Lord God,” a difference that suggests to Bailey that Ezekiel was conversing with the Father in contrast to Peter who was with the Son. On pages 71-72, the book uses this presumption to observe a potential “trinitarian dynamic” in Acts 10. However, this begs the question of whether Christ’s disciples referred to Him as God. If they didn’t, then an Arian could theoretically make the argument that they saw Him as Lord – a requirement for salvation according to Romans 10:9 – but not God. I mention this because Bailey seems to have put forward some potential evidence against the doctrine of the Trinity without even realizing it. Whoops.)
In conclusion, I recommend Whom God Has Made Clean to all long-time intellectual pronomians. However, I do not recommend it to anyone else due to its overanalytical writing style. Read it if you have lots of time on your hands.
December 26, 2025
In this short and accessible book, Bailey offers a helpful reexamination of a classic antinomian prooftext, expositing it's essentially pronomian nature. While I do maintain a kind of the "dual focus" interpretation that the author denies, I think he offers many excellent considerations.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews