The Straw Gospel: A Continued Study of St. James' Epistle

 

The Gospel started in a bed of straw and continues into the Last Judgment, where we will all give account for every idle word and every deed done in the body (1 Corinthians 9:24-27, 2 Corinthians 5:10), and these works will be revealed as "wood, hay and stubble" or "gold, silver, and precious stones." (1 Corinthians 3:12-13)

By Bp. Joseph Boyd (Ancient Church of the West) 

Introduction 

In September of 1522, Martin Luther published the first Bible translation into the German language, which contained Old and New Testaments, translated from the Hebrew Masorectic Text and a new edition of the Greek New Testament just published by his "frenemy,” Desiderius Erasmus. In this work, Luther attempted to put all Scripture in its appropriate, Protestant historical and hermeneutical context. In his forward to the Book of James, Martin Luther quite typically said, “St. James’ Epistle is really an epistle of straw, for it has nothing of the nature of the Gospel about it.” It is obvious that Luther was uncomfortable with James because it did not support his doctrine of “Sola Fide” or "salvation by faith alone," which he felt was supported in the Pauline Epistles - even though he had to insert the word “align,” which means “alone” in German, into Romans 3:28, where it says “Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith [alone] without the deeds of the law.” The only place where Scripture actually says “alone” is here in James 2, and it says exactly the opposite of Luther’s contended point. 

St. James Chapter Two 

In this morning’s reading, in which we read the whole chapter for context, we see that St. James starts with the moral teachings of the Church, telling us what we should do first, and then how we are to understand it theologically. As we see with all the Apostolic Fathers of the Ancient Church, the emphasis was first upon obedience and right moral actions, fulfilling the commandments of Christ, and then, after this is completed, a theological sense of what it means. Theology was very much “incarnated” in the actions of the community, rather than forming a literary basis of knowledge. 

2:1 My brethren, do not hold the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord of glory, with partiality. 2 For if there should come into your assembly a man with gold rings, in fine apparel, and there should also come in a poor man in filthy clothes, 3 and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say to him, “You sit here in a good place,” and say to the poor man, “You stand there,” or, “Sit here at my footstool,” 4 have you not shown partiality among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? 

This is echoed in Mathew 7:1-5, where it says, “Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you. And why do you look at the speck in your brother’s eye, but do not consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove the speck from your eye’; and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” 

Do Not Despise the Poor 

Christ taught us not to despise or oppress the poor in the “Sermon on the Mount”, which forms the core of Christian teaching from the beginning. Surely, St. James, the elder stepbrother of Our Lord, had this teaching deeply impressed upon his memory. 

5 Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? 6 But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? 7 Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? 

Jesus says this in Luke 6:20-23 - “Then He lifted up His eyes toward His disciples, and said: “Blessed are you poor, For yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who hunger now, For you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, For you shall laugh. Blessed are you when men hate you, And when they exclude you, And revile you, and cast out your name as evil, For the Son of Man’s sake. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy! For indeed your reward is great in heaven, For in like manner their fathers did to the prophets.” 

Echoes from the Mountain

St. James continues to expound the original understanding of the Gospel by echoing Christ’s teachings in the Beatitudes, and points out that He blesses the poor of the world with closeness to His Kingdom! 

8 If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well; 9 but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors. 10 For whoever shall keep the whole law, and yet stumble in one point, he is guilty of all. 11 For He who said, “Do not commit adultery,” also said, “Do not murder.” Now if you do not commit adultery, but you do murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. 12 So speak and so do as those who will be judged by the law of liberty. 13 For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment. 

This understanding also reflects what Christ teaches in Mark 12:28-34 - “Then one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, perceiving that He had answered them well, asked Him, “Which is the first commandment of all?” Jesus answered him, “The first of all the commandments is: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ This is the first commandment. And the second, like it, is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” So the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher. You have spoken the truth, for there is one God, and there is no other but He. And to love Him with all the heart, with all the understanding, with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is more than all the whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” Now when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” But after that no one dared question Him.” 

In the Gospels, Jesus identifies the whole message of the Old Testament Law with loving God with everything in our being - heart, mind and soul - and loving our neighbors as ourselves. This was a radical departure from the way that the Scribes and Pharisees understood the law because it dramatically simplified everything and related everyone and every situation to a relationship of love. This is the Christian “Law of Love” and the “Perfect Law of Liberty,” which which St. James is concerned in his epistle (James 1:25). 

Faith Without Works Is Dead 

14 What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? 15 If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, “Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,” but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit? 17 Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. 

This passage causes problems because people automatically see that this contradicts the doctrine of “Legal Justification” championed by St. Jerome, Martin Luther and the Reformers, meaning that God declares us righteous based on faith and not by works. This comes from a basic misunderstanding between Latin and Greek. In Greek the word “Dikaiosis” (δικαίωσις) we translate as “justification” means “to be made righteous”, but in Latin the word “iustificario” means “to be declared blameless in a court of law”. The misunderstanding occurs when you read the Greek New Testament with Latin legal definitions, which was created when St. Jerome, a Roman Lawyer, translated the Greek New Testament into the Latin Vulgate. What we read in Latin was the translation and doctrinal understanding of one man, and that’s why it created problems later on. This error was propagated and worsened by yet another translation sieved through one man’s understanding during the Reformation. If you read verses  referring to justification with the original Greek definition, there is no contradiction between James 2:14-17 and the rest of Scripture. God makes us righteous through our faith, which is lived out and proven in our works. It is one, continuous action, pouring out of our hearts into the world, through a love relationship with our Lord and Creator, by the Power of the Holy Spirit. 

Justification by Faith and Works? 

The Scriptures addresses justification through faith, but this is never understood by the Church to cancel Christ’s Commandments to righteously act, or dismiss the Apostles’ exhortations to do that which is just, good, and equitable. Just as our faith is not a “work” and does not mean that we “save ourselves” when we have faith in God, so none of the actions flowing out of our faith can be ascribed ultimately to us. It is the energy of the presence of the Holy Spirit, God’s grace, manifest in our lives. The “Works of the Law”, which were the Jewish ceremonial actions that tied the Jews to the Old Covenant, were never the same thing as “Good Works” even in the Old Testament. This basic misunderstanding is at the root of the anti-Orthodox paradigm that took root in the Reformation. 

Romans 5:1 - Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ… 

Ephesians 2:8-9 - For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: [it is] the gift of God… 

Galatians 2:16 - Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. 

Romans 4:5 - But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. 

John 5:24 - Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life. 

Galatians 5:6 - For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing, nor uncircumcision; but faith which worketh by love. 

Galatians 2:21 - I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness [come] by the law, then Christ is dead in vain. 

Romans 4:1-25 - What shall we say then that Abraham our father, as pertaining to the flesh, hath found? 

Philippians 3:9 - And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith... 

John 1:12 - But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, [even] to them that believe on his name...

The “Straw Gospel” 

St. James continues his thesis in verses 18-20 - 

18 But someone will say, “You have faith, and I have works.” Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. 19 You believe that there is one God. You do well. Even the demons believe—and tremble! 20 But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead? 

Here we have a classic refutation of the foundational tenets of Protestantism. These few verses are the reason why Martin Luther attempted to eject the Book of James from the New Testament, and called it a “Straw Gospel” in his forward to the book in German. For anyone who takes Scripture seriously, believing in “Sola Fide”, “Scripture Alone”, this should be enough to see that Protestant presuppositions are not truly biblical, and undermine the whole project of rejecting Apostolic, Conciliar, Orthodox Christianity. The only thing that remains is the Holy Spirit, alive in the Church, which holds the Bible as its core, its very heart. To separate one from the other kills both. 

The entire teaching is summed up in the last five verses of this second chapter - 

21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? 22 Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works faith was made perfect? 23 And the Scripture was fulfilled which says, “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.” And he was called the friend of God. 24 You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only. 25 Likewise, was not Rahab the harlot also justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out another way? 26 For as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also. 

Summary 

James 2 is still many people’s least favorite passage in Scripture, because they think it teaches “works-based Christianity” and contradicts their favorite passages about faith-based salvation in other passages of Scripture. But this Protestant understanding of “Faith Alone," is not based in the Scriptures themselves, and modern scholarship has identified where the misunderstanding occurred – based on one little word in Latin word that was mistranslated by St. Jerome a thousand years before in the Vulgate, the word “iustificario,” which substitutes the process-based justification of the Greek for the legal/declarative justification of Roman Law. Based on this word and its logical conclusions, Luther decided to ignore what the Scripture itself says, which is upheld by the Councils and the Fathers of the Church, and chose to break with the Apostolic Gospel to preach his own understanding of the Gospel instead! If faith without works is dead, then the Reformation created a religion of death. With the decision to explain the Gospel in exclusively legal terms, without reference to Holy Tradition or the Councils of the Church, the Reformers created a dead letter, a law that kills, a bondage to legal thinking that separates us from God and makes salvation something that occurs in "name only." Salvation that occurs without transformation and true communion with the Life of God is a plastic, artificial, torturous eternity, a Heaven in "name only", a "snow covered" Hell.

Scripture shows us that faith and works are two sides of the same coin and cannot be separated, just like the Bible and the Church are dependent upon one another to proclaim the Gospel by the power of the Holy Spirit. The inner condition and the outward manifestation are both nevessary. It is no more “earning salvation” by doing good works than it is to earn salvation by having faith in God. Our faith is a gift of God, just as our works, which are necessary and always accompany faith, are wonderful fruits of the Holy Spirit in our lives. We cooperate with the grace of God, we submit to His Spirit, and in this “synergy” we are incorporating our lives with God’s life and renewing and restoring all of creation in the process. These things cannot be separated. If we do, artificially creating a dichotomy of faith and works, it is exactly like cutting the Scripture out of its context in the Church, it is like cutting the heart out of the man. They can only live together, and both die when separated. 

The Collect 

O LORD, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that are good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through Jesus Christ Our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever One God, world without end. Amen.