James 2:14-26

Justification by Faith and Works

14. though a man say he hath faith The section on which we now enter has been the battle-field of almost endless controversies. It led Luther in the boldness of a zeal not according to knowledge to speak of the whole Epistle with contempt. (Preface to German New Testament, 1522; but see J. C. Hare's Vindication of Luther, p. 215.) To him it was an "Epistle of Straw," (Epistola straminea,) to be classed with wood, hay, stubble, as compared with the teaching of St Paul, which it seemed to him to contradict. It led Bishop Bull to write his Harmonia Apostolicato prove the agreement of the two, by assuming, with many of the Fathers, that St James wrote to correct the false inferences which men had drawn from St Paul's doctrine, in itself and as taught by him a true doctrine, as to Justification. In dealing with the problem presented by a comparison of the teaching of the two writers, it is obviously necessary to start with what to the reader is an assumption, though to the writer it may be the conclusion of an inquiry, as to the aim and leading idea of the writer with whom we have to deal; and the notes that follow will accordingly be based on the hypothesis that the teaching of St James was not meant, as men have supposed who exaggerate the diversities of thought in the Apostolic age, to be antagonistic to that of St Paul, nor even to correct mistaken inferences from it, but was altogether independent, and probably prior in time, moving in its own groove, and taking its own line of thought. If this view, as a theory, solves all the phænomena, and throws light upon what would otherwise be obscure, it will be its own best vindication. At the close it may be well to take a brief survey of other modes of interpretation.

We must remember then, to start with, that St James is writing primarily to the Jews of the "dispersion." The disciples in Jerusalem and Judæa were under his personal guidance, and therefore were not in need of an Epistle. The faults which he reproves are pre-eminently the faults of the race. Men dwelling, as those Jews dwelt, in the midst of a heathen population, were tempted to trust for their salvation to their descent from Abraham (comp. Matthew 3:9) and to their maintaining the unity of the Godhead as against the Polytheism and idolatry of the nations. They repeated their Creed (known, from its first Hebrew word, as the Shemà), "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord" (Deuteronomy 6:4). It entered, as our Creed does, into the Morning and Evening Services of the Synagogue. It was uttered by the dying as a passport to the gates of Paradise. It was to this that they referred the words of Habakkuk that the just should live by faith (Habakkuk 2:4). St James saw, as the Baptist had seen before him, how destructive all this was of the reality of the spiritual life, and accordingly takes this as the next topic of his letter.

No emphasis is to be laid on "though a man say." The argument of St James assumes that the man has the faith which he professes. His contention is that faith is not enough by itself, that unless it pass into "works" it gives proof that it is ipso factodead; and the "works" of which he speaks are, as the next verse shews, emphatically, not ceremonial, nor ascetic, but those of an active benevolence.

can faith save him? The pronoun, and, in the Greek, the article prefixed to faith, are emphatic. "Can his faith save him, being such as he is?" There is no slight cast upon faith generally, though the kind of faith in the particular case is declared to be worthless.