Matthew 7:21 says 'Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father,' while Acts 2:21 (quoting Joel) says 'everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved' -- an apparent contradiction over whether calling on the Lord's name is sufficient for salvation.

This dissolves on close reading of both contexts. Matt 7:21 is not a general statement about 'calling on the Lord' as such; it targets false professors who say 'Lord, Lord' as empty verbal allegiance without corresponding obedience -- the following verses describe people who prophesied and performed mighty works in Jesus's name yet are rejected as 'workers of lawlessness' whom Jesus 'never knew' (v.22-23). Jesus's point is that mere utterance is not equivalent to genuine calling on the Lord in the covenantal sense. Acts 2:21's 'calling on the name of the Lord' (epikaleo, quoting Joel 2:32), read against its own fuller NT development in Rom 10:9-13 ('if you confess with your mouth... and believe in your heart... you will be saved'), likewise denotes real, believing, life-orienting appeal to God, not bare utterance. Rightly read, the two texts converge: authentic calling (which by biblical definition includes genuine trust producing obedience) saves; false, merely verbal 'calling,' Matt 7:21's specific target, does not. The texts address different questions -- what does NOT count as real calling, versus that real calling does save -- not a logical clash over the same predicate. The objection equivocates on 'calling on the Lord' as bare verbal formula versus its full covenantal sense of believing appeal.

Scripture consistently presents saving faith as never merely notional or verbal but a whole-person trust that produces the fruit of obedience (James 2:14-26; Eph 2:8-10, 'created for good works' following salvation by grace through faith) -- Matt 7:21 and Acts 2:21/Rom 10:13 are two sides of a single coherent NT doctrine of faith, not competing soteriologies.