Paul and James: Calls to Action

Paul and James offer answers to conjoined questions, "By what means does a sinner become righteous?" and, "What shall we then do?"

"Justification" is the word given for the means or process by which a person, specifically a sinner, is rendered righteous before God. Both Paul and James make use of the word, or of words related to it (justify, justified, righteous), in answer to the first question. Bible students have noted their apparently almost diametrically opposed viewpoints of justification, namely, that Paul insists on faith apart from works of law, and that James insists on works that demonstrate a living faith.

For example, Paul will say, "We know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith of Jesus Christ, so we also have believed in Christ Jesus in order to be justified by faith of Christ and not by works of the law, for by works of the law no one will be justified." Gal. 2:16. And James, contrarily, will say, "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." Jas. 2:24. Paul and James each make appeals to the life of Abraham as evidence of their respective teachings, Paul to show that Abraham's faith justified him (Gal. 3:6), and James to show that Abraham's works justified him (Jas. 2:21). Indeed, each of them references the very same passage in Genesis (15:6) to advance their respective thoughts!

Attempts to resolve, or even to reconcile, these two ideas, justification by faith and justification by works, have generated considerable thought and controversy over the centuries.

(1) Some seek to merge both ideas such that justification takes an amount of faith and an amount of works, both; that is, we must work to the best that we can, but where our work is not adequate to the task, then we must have faith to make up the difference, as it were.
(2) Others find resolution in the idea that Paul and James, though using the same words (faith, justification, works, etc.), respectively address different stages of spiritual growth or standing before God; namely, Paul speaks of pre-conversion faith and James speaks of post-conversion responsive work. So speaking colloquially, from Paul we learn that "we get saved by faith," and from James we learn that "once saved, we work hard to show what kind of faith we have."
(3) Deferring to Paul, some relegate James to relative obscurity, almost as a biblical curiosity to be read seldom and certainly cautiously. One writer famously called it an "epistle of straw."
(4) Deferring to James, some think that he provides a corrective to Paul, or more to the point, a necessary corrective to the excesses engendered by certain of Paul's readers and followers. In this view, James brings a healthy realism to what a vibrant, living faith does in a human being, thus eliminating excuses for ungodliness or moral laziness in a believer's life.

Each of these attempts to resolve the two notions has its advocates and detractors, and none has entirely satisfactory solutions. So, (5) there are those who conclude there is an effectively permanent, standing tension between the two views, and that we (namely, the church) must proceed somehow without their reconciliation.

In the examinations ahead of Paul's letter to the Galatian churches and of James' encyclical to the twelve tribes of the diaspora, I wish to focus attention on their respective calls to action, on their answers to the second question above. Whatever their conclusions regarding justification, both Paul and James call for clear, unequivocal action. The reasons for the actions they prescribe, i.e., their theories of action, may be distinct, but a curious thing happens in the two letters. We readers discover a convergence of the two apostles in their call to common behaviors. However it is that we may be justified, in answer to the question, "What shall we then do?" they come to remarkably similar places, as we shall see.

To be sure, they may couch that behavior or action in differing contexts, but the behaviors themselves, whether of actions proscribed or actions prescribed, have much in common. And, perhaps, by starting our examination of these two letters from their common end points, namely, from their calls to behavior, we may also glean suggestions for something of a common theory of action, a common means of justification before a just and merciful God.