James 2:26

For as the body without the spirit is dead Some MSS. omit the conjunction, but the evidence for retaining it preponderates. The reasoning seems to refer Rahab's justification by works to the wider law that faith without works is dead (as in James 2:17) and therefore cannot justify. Our usual mode of thought would lead us to speak of works, the outward visible acts, as the body, and of faith as the spirit or vivifying principle. From St James's standpoint, however, faith "by itself" was simply the assent of the intellect to a dogma or series of dogmas, and this seemed to him to be "dead" until it was vitalised by love shewing itself in act. St Paul reproves the deadness of mere morality, St James that of mere orthodoxy. St James, it will be noted, adopts the simple division of man's nature into "body and spirit," rather than St Paul's more philosophical trichotomy of "body, soul and spirit." 1 Thessalonians 5:23. Comp. note on ch. James 3:13.

faith without works] More literally, faith apart from works.

ON THE TEACHING OF ST PAUL AND ST JAMES

The view which has been given in the notes seems to the writer clear and coherent in itself, consistent with what we know as to the relations between the two Apostles, and involving less violence of interpretation than any other hypothesis. Two other views have, however, been maintained with arguments more or less plausible, and it will be well to notice them briefly.

(1) There is the position assumed by some of the bolder critics of the French and German Schools, that there was a real antagonism in the Apostolic Church, not only between the Judaizing teachers and St Paul, but between that Apostle and the three, Peter, James, and John, to whom the Church of the Circumcision looked as its natural leaders. On this assumption, the writer of the Acts of the Apostles strives to gloss over the divergence of the two parties, and to represent an unreal unity. The messages to the Seven Churches are "a cry of passionate hate against St Paul and his followers" (Renan, St Paul, p. 367). When St James says, "Wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead," he is probably pointing at St Paul himself. From the point of view of those who hold this theory it is, perhaps, a small thing that it is inconsistent with the belief that the teaching of St James and of St Paul had, as its source, the inspiration of the Eternal Spirit, who, though working in many different ways and with wide diversity of gifts, is yet the Spirit of the Truth which is essentially one. But on simply historical grounds the theory is, it is believed, untenable. St Paul himself acknowledges that after he had privately laid before them the sum and substance of the Gospel as he preached it, James, Cephas, and John gave to him the right hands of fellowship (Galatians 2:9). James appears as giving a public sanction to that Gospel at the Council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:13-21). Long after the Judaizing teachers had been doing their worst for years, the "right hand of fellowship" is still held out by the one teacher to the other (Acts 21:17-25). The question whether this hypothesis is as satisfactory an explanation of the facts with which it deals, as that which I have here given, I am content to leave to the judgment of the reader.

(2) The other theory has at least the merit of accepting the teaching of each of the two writers as in itself inspired and true. It assumes that St James wrote after St Paul, and aimed at correcting inferences that had been wrongly drawn from his doctrine, that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law. How to reconcile their statements on this assumption is a problem which has been variously solved. (a) It has been said that St Paul speaks of man's justification before God, St James of the proof of that justification before the eyes of men; but of this there is not a shadow of proof in the language of either writer. (b) It has been maintained that St Paul speaks of a true faith, St James of that which is false or feigned; but nothing in the language of the latter, though he stigmatizes the faith which is without works as dead, suggests the thought that it did not mean a real acceptance of the dogma which it professed to hold. (c) It has been held that the "works" of which St Paul speaks as unable to justify, are the ceremonial works of the law of Moses, those on which the Pharisees laid stress; but the width of St Paul's teaching as to the nature and office of the law in Galatians 3; Romans 7 scatters this view to the winds at once. (d) There is a nearer approximation to the truth in the solution which finds in St James's faith the intellectual acceptance of a dogma, in St Paul's the trust in a living Person as willing and able to save, and therefore the confidence that salvation is attainable by him who so trusts. This is, in the main, the view that has been taken in these notes, with the exception of the point on which stress has been laid above, that the Antinomianism which St James condemned was that of ultra-Jewish teachers, who taught a justification by faith in Monotheism, and not of an ultra-Pauline party. It agrees practically with the distinction drawn by the Schoolmen that St James speaks of a fides informis, rudimentary and incomplete, St Paul of a fides formata, developed or completed by Love. Errors, however, assume subtle disguises. Those who used St James's name in the Apostolic age dwelt so much on outward acts apart from the motive that gives them life, as sufficient for man's acceptance with God, that it was necessary for St Paul to revive the truth which had been first distorted and then denied, that "the just by faith shall live" (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11). His teaching again, in its turn, led men to think that they might be justified by faith, not in God who justifies, but in a dogma about justification. It was well that both aspects of the truth should have been presented then, and have been preserved for the guidance of the Church in all ages, as completing each the other. We need not fear to be as varied in our teaching as were those who were taught of God, and to tell men, according to their variations in character, as they require more deepening of the spiritual life, or more strengthening for practical activity, now that they must be justified by faith, and now that they must be justified by works.