Can James And Paul Be Reconciled?

[Guest]

Reply to "Guest" (above):

I guess some things seem so clear to me that it inhibits my ability to explain them, simply because I don't know what part is hard for another person to understand, and where to concentrate my explanatory comments. It is, of course, possible that I don't understand this matter correctly, but it seems rather straightforward. Sean has also explained the position essentially identically to my way of seeing the matter.

As I said above, the choice of phrases used by James would not be troublesome if not placed in juxtaposition with those of Paul. The two men held quite the same view of justification (and taught the same in their epistles). That a man is essentially justified by faith alone is clear from the examples given in my post above that demonstrate the presence of justification in the believer prior to the appearance or performance of any works at all (e.g., the publican praying in the temple and the thief on the cross). It might be argued that the thief's verbal confession was a "work"—and I would not deny it, if we are understanding the word "work" to simply mean an evidence of faith. In such a case, even Paul mentions that such a "work" (i.e., confession of Christ) is a necessary corrolary of faith (Romans 10:9-10).

But that is just the point, I think, that James is making—namely, that faith has corrolaries. As the writer of Hebrews points out, there are "things that accompany salvation" (6:9). When faith is of necessity "alone" (that is, when a man believes on his deathbed and has no opportunity to amend his ways or to perform any good or religious deeds before dying), then that man truly is justified "sola fide" ("by faith alone"). This fact proves the general truth of the doctrine.

However, most people who come to Christ are not on their deathbeds. They continue to live in this world for a period of time. If they do so, the remainder of their life will be chartacterized by "newness" of life (Romans 6:4). They will live for Christ, which translates into a life of obedience and good works. If they do not do this, there is no reason to believe that they have truly believed unto salvation, because such works do "accompany salvation."

Thus the man who is justified by faith alone will find that his faith is not "alone" at all. It is a faith that generates good works as surely as natural life generates vital signs. It would be absurd to say that a body without vital signs possesses life, but it would also be incorrect to say that a person is made alive by having vital signs.

If one man were to emphasize that "life" is essentially a gift from God, and not the result of the sum total of one's vital signs, we could sympathize with his viewpoint. But if someone would then argue that a certain corpse was alive despite the absence of vital signs, another man, with equal validity might counter "what you may call life, if it has no vital signs, is actually death—the life is in the vital signs." This man might seem to be contradicting the first man, but he is not. He is making a different statement, but not one with which the first man would disagree. Any perceived difficulty in harmonizing the statements of the first man and the last man in such an exchange would seemingly have to be the result of someone looking for a fight.

When James says "a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone," I think he is just saying that "faith alone" (i.e., without corrolary works) isn't "faith" at all, in the sense that has any relevance to the topic of justification.

If one man said, "This man died for lack of oxygen," and another said, "The man died because he was trapped underwater and could not reach the surface in time," we would have two different accounts of the "cause" of death—but there need be no confusion as to whether the two reports are agreeable in their meaning. The truth is that one report speaks of the actual cause of death (oxygen deprivation) and the other provides circumstantial detail. Either account could rightly be said to give the "cause of death," but in different senses.

So if one man says "A man's justification is occasioned by his possessing a faith that generates works of a certain kind," and another man says, "A man's justification is not by faith alone, but by a faith that is not alone—one which includes works," I am not so saucy a fellow as to accuse either of them of technical inaccuracy. Only if I began to see some evidence that one man was talking about a faith that lacked corrolary works, and the other was talking about a faith that required them, would I find them to be contradicting each other.