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Course 10 · Lesson 3.1

Justification in Paul and James

12 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 10 outline

Module 1: Sin and Human Nature

  1. Human beings in the image of God
  2. The fall in Scripture: Genesis 3 and Romans 5
  3. Original sin in Augustine and the Western tradition
  4. Ancestral sin and mortality in the Eastern tradition

Module 2: Grace and Free Will

  1. Pelagius and Augustine
  2. The church responds: semi-Pelagianism and the Council of Orange
  3. Luther and Erasmus on the bondage of the will
  4. Monergism and synergism across the traditions

Module 3: Justification and Sanctification

  1. Justification in Paul and James
  2. Justification by faith alone in the Lutheran and Reformed traditions
  3. The Catholic teaching and the Council of Trent
  4. Sanctification, holiness and theosis
  5. Recent ecumenical discussion of justification

Module 4: Predestination and Election

  1. Election and predestination in Scripture
  2. Augustine, Aquinas and Calvin on predestination
  3. Arminius, Wesley and conditional election
  4. Eastern and Catholic views on election and foreknowledge

Module 5: Atonement, Redemption and Adoption

  1. Atonement and its extent: for whom did Christ die?
  2. Redemption: the images of ransom, freedom and return
  3. Adoption: sons and daughters of God
  4. The order of salvation across the traditions

Module 6: Death, Resurrection and Judgment

  1. Death and the intermediate state
  2. The resurrection of the dead in Scripture and the creeds
  3. The final judgment: Christ the judge
  4. Purgatory, the Orthodox practice of praying for the dead, and the Protestant objection

Module 7: Heaven, Hell and the New Creation

  1. Heaven and the vision of God
  2. Hell: eternal torment, annihilationism and universal hope
  3. The fate of those who have not heard the gospel
  4. The new heavens and the new earth

Module 8: The Millennium and Christian Eschatological Traditions

  1. Revelation and apocalyptic literature
  2. Premillennial views, historic and dispensational
  3. Amillennial and postmillennial views
  4. Preterist, historicist and futurist approaches
  5. What the traditions hold in common about the end

All courses

Program / Course 10: Salvation and Eschatology / Lesson 3.1

What you will learn

  • Define justification and explain the Greek word behind it.
  • Summarize Paul’s teaching in Romans and Galatians and James’s teaching in chapter 2.
  • Describe the main ways Christians have reconciled Paul and James.
  • Explain what the New Perspective on Paul added to the discussion.

The big idea

Justification means being declared or made right with God. Paul writes that a person is justified by faith apart from works of the law. James writes that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. Christians have always read the two together, and they have done so in several ways. Some say Paul and James use the word justify differently, others that they use faith and works differently, and others that they answer different questions. These readings underlie the later Catholic and Protestant disagreements.

Key terms

Justification
Being put right with God. In Paul it is closely tied to the verb ‘to justify’ (dikaioō) and the noun ‘righteousness’ (dikaiosynē).
Works of the law
Paul’s phrase for deeds required by the Law of Moses. Interpreters differ over whether it means all moral effort or especially the identity markers of Israel, such as circumcision and food laws.
Faith
Trust in God and in what he has done in Christ. In the New Testament the Greek word can also mean faithfulness.
Righteousness of God
A phrase in Romans 1:17 and 3:21. It may mean God’s own justice, God’s saving faithfulness, or the right standing he gives. Interpreters hold each view.
Forensic
Of a courtroom. A forensic view says justification is a legal verdict that declares a person righteous.
New Perspective on Paul
A group of scholarly approaches from the late twentieth century that read Paul’s argument against the background of Second Temple Judaism and stress that ‘works of the law’ marked the boundary of God’s people.
Imputation
Counting or crediting something to a person’s account. Paul says faith is ‘counted’ for righteousness (Romans 4:3).

Background

The argument over justification caused the largest split in Western Christianity, between Catholics and Protestants in the sixteenth century. The argument began with how to read a few chapters of Paul and one chapter of James. It is wise to read these texts first, before the church’s formulas.

The Greek verb dikaioō is the root issue. In ordinary Greek it usually means to declare someone in the right, or to vindicate. In Latin, Jerome translated it with iustificare, ‘to make righteous.’ Augustine and the Western church often heard this as making a person actually righteous. The Reformers insisted that Paul means primarily to declare righteous. This difference of emphasis shaped everything that followed, though few interpreters today put the matter as sharply as the sixteenth-century debaters did.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: Paul in Romans and Galatians

In Romans 3:23-28, Paul writes that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” He concludes that “a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” In Romans 4 he points to Abraham, to whom faith was counted for righteousness (Genesis 15:6), and he notes that this happened before Abraham was circumcised.

In Galatians 2:16 Paul says that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ. The context is a quarrel over whether Gentile Christians must be circumcised and keep the Law. Paul says that no one, Jew or Gentile, is put right with God by that path.

Step 2: James in chapter 2

James asks, “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?” (James 2:14). He gives the example of someone who says to a hungry person, “Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,” and does nothing. He concludes that faith without works is dead.

He then turns to Abraham, who was “justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar” (2:21), and to Rahab. James 2:24 states: “Ye see then how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” Most readers see that James is arguing against a faith that is only a claim, not a trust that acts.

Step 3: Ways of reconciling the two

Several answers have been given. First, the words differ. For Paul, justify means to declare right before God. For James it means to show to be right, to vindicate before others, so that works are the evidence of faith. This is the traditional Protestant reading. Second, the kind of faith differs. Paul speaks of a living trust in Christ, and James of an empty claim, so they agree that real faith works through love (Galatians 5:6). Third, the question differs. Paul answers how a person is brought into right standing, and James answers how a person’s faith is shown real.

Catholic interpreters generally add that justification is not only a declaration but a real transformation, so that works done in grace belong to the whole. They find in James support for the view that charity and good works have a part in remaining and growing in justification. Orthodox interpreters typically see no conflict, since they do not ask Paul’s question in the legal form that the West did, and they see works and faith as parts of one living response.

Step 4: The New Perspective

In 1977 E. P. Sanders argued that first-century Judaism was not a religion of earning salvation. He called its pattern covenantal nomism: people enter by God’s grace in the covenant and stay in by keeping the Law. James Dunn and N. T. Wright, among others, developed the view that Paul’s phrase ‘works of the law’ mainly meant the practices that marked Jews off from Gentiles. On this reading, Paul’s chief target was the claim that Gentiles had to join Israel’s boundary markers to belong to God’s people.

Many scholars, Protestant and Catholic, have been persuaded by parts of this reading. Others, including many Reformed and Lutheran scholars, answer that Paul does also teach that no one can earn righteousness by any works, as in Romans 3:20 and 4:4-5. The debate is active and not settled.

Step 5: What the traditions share

All five traditions in this course agree that salvation is by God’s grace in Christ, that no one deserves it, that faith is the way it is received, and that a living faith produces good works. They disagree over how faith, works, righteousness and the sacraments are related. The next lessons take up each.

  1. What difference does it make whether ‘justify’ means ‘declare righteous’ or ‘make righteous’?
  2. Who is James arguing against: someone who denies works or someone who misuses faith?
  3. Does Paul use the same word ‘faith’ as James? How can a reader decide?
  4. What problem was Paul solving in Galatians, and how does that shape the passage?
  5. Why might a verdict and a transformation both be true?
  6. What would it take to read Paul and James without assuming a sixteenth-century debate?

Examples

Abraham twice

Paul and James both cite Abraham. Paul points to Genesis 15, where Abraham believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness. James points to Genesis 22, where Abraham offers Isaac. A reader notices that the two episodes are decades apart in the story, and that James quotes Genesis 15:6 in 2:23 before drawing his conclusion. Many see here a sign that James builds on Genesis 15, not against it.

A trust that acts

A man says he trusts a bridge. He walks across it every day. Another says he trusts it but has never set a foot on it. Teachers from many traditions use this sort of illustration to explain that faith is a trust that shows itself. The illustration cannot decide the technical questions about justification, but it shows what James has in view. (A constructed illustration.)

Different perspectives

Catholic

Justification is both the forgiveness of sins and the sanctification and renewal of the inner person. Faith is its beginning and root, but it is faith working through love. Works done in grace are not contrary to Paul, and James confirms that a faith without works is dead.

Orthodox

Orthodox writers speak less of justification as a separate step. They read Paul and James together as describing a living faith in Christ, shown in love and repentance, by which a person is united to Christ and begins the path of theosis. They do not accept a sharp separation of verdict and renewal.

Lutheran

Justification is God’s declaration that a sinner is righteous for Christ’s sake, received by faith alone. Works follow as the fruit of faith but contribute nothing to justification. James speaks of the living faith that proves itself, and does not contradict Paul.

Reformed

Justification is an act of God’s free grace in which he pardons sinners and accepts them as righteous, imputing Christ’s righteousness to them, received by faith alone. James describes the evidences of that faith. Reformed theology teaches that justifying faith is never alone, since it always produces works.

Arminian and Wesleyan

Wesley taught justification by faith as pardon and acceptance through Christ’s merit, received by faith. He insisted that good works follow from faith and are necessary for continuing in it, and he drew on James to warn against empty professions. Arminius described faith as imputed for righteousness, which Reformed critics sometimes questioned.

Scholarly views

Many modern scholars hold that Paul and James address different situations. Paul speaks about the entry of Gentiles into God’s people, James about the need for faith to be practical. Some find real tension and think James may be responding to a distorted version of Paul’s teaching.

Why it matters

Justification is the doctrine on which, as Luther said, the church stands or falls. Even if one disagrees with that estimate, the argument over Paul and James shaped Western Christianity and is still alive. A student who reads the texts calmly can see why sincere readers have taken different paths and can tell when a slogan like ‘faith alone’ or ‘works count’ is being used to mean different things.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: James contradicts Paul.

Correction: Most Christian interpreters, and many scholars, see the two as addressing different questions with different uses of the key words. Luther felt the tension strongly and called James an epistle of straw in an early preface, but he later softened the remark, and Lutheran churches count James as Scripture.

Misunderstanding: Protestants think works do not matter.

Correction: Protestants teach that works are the necessary fruit of faith. They deny that works are the ground of justification before God.

Misunderstanding: Catholics think people earn salvation.

Correction: The Catholic Church teaches that the beginning and the end of salvation are gifts of grace and that merit itself is a gift. The Council of Trent declares that nothing that precedes justification merits it.

Misunderstanding: The New Perspective rejects justification by faith.

Correction: Its main proponents affirm justification by faith. They argue about what Paul was opposing and about how to read righteousness and works of the law.

Knowledge check

What does the verb ‘to justify’ mean in Paul?

In ordinary Greek, dikaioō usually means to declare someone in the right. Protestants stress this sense, with a verdict of righteousness. The Latin translation iustificare, ‘to make righteous,’ influenced the Western church to hear it as including transformation. Interpreters today debate how far the two aspects can be separated in Paul.

What is James’s main point in chapter 2?

James argues that faith which does not act is dead and cannot save. He uses the examples of Abraham and Rahab to show that real faith is shown in deeds. Most readers take him to be opposing a faith that is only a claim, not Paul’s teaching on trust in Christ.

Name two ways Christians have reconciled Paul and James.

One way says that the word justify has different senses: Paul means being declared righteous before God, James means being shown to be righteous. Another says that Paul and James speak about different kinds of faith, a living trust and an empty claim. Others say they answer different questions or confront different opponents.

What did the New Perspective on Paul add?

It proposed that first-century Judaism was based on God’s covenant grace and that Paul’s phrase ‘works of the law’ referred especially to practices such as circumcision that marked off Jews from Gentiles. It shifted attention to Paul’s concern for Jew and Gentile in one people. Critics hold that Paul also denies any ground of boasting in human works.

Think it through

  1. Have you ever heard ‘faith alone’ or ‘faith and works’ used as a slogan? What did the speaker seem to mean?
  2. What would change if you read Galatians chiefly as a letter about Jews and Gentiles in one church?
  3. How might the two images, a courtroom verdict and a healing, each help you understand salvation?

Independent assignment

Reading Romans 4 and James 2 together

In your notebook, write 400 to 600 words. Read Romans 3:21 to 4:25 and James 2:14-26 in one sitting. Make two lists: what Paul claims about faith and works, and what James claims. Then write a paragraph on each of three ways of reconciling them, using the names Protestant, Catholic and New Perspective. Mark which reading seems to you most natural from the texts alone, and say what evidence would change your mind.

Further study