letter. If the church is a fellowship trying to keep pace with Jesus, then both reproof and encouragement should be expected at every level, even at the apex. Paul, for all his greatness, wasn’t Christ—and if James felt that Paul, or at least his followers, needed correction to stay in line with the teachings of his brother, then we should see in that an example for us as well. No one stands above Jesus’ ethical commands regarding, among other things, the condemnation and judgment of others and giving in to intemperate speech.
For too long we have allowed ourselves, usually without realizing it, to put James in a second-class compartment, unconsciously perpetuating the unwarranted disregard evinced by Luther and those before him who weakened the letter’s sharp message by deeming it “disputed”—thereby subtly casting a measure of doubt on its authority. It is time to reappraise such thinly veiled dismissiveness and recognize in James precisely the sort of corrective we most need today. Hence, as I’ve already indicated, I am calling this “a pastoral commentary.”
Our own time may not be marked by any greater moral challenges in the church than was the case in earlier generations, but ours is nonetheless a period in which the ethics of right relations between disciples is being put to the test. This is nowhere more evident than in the nations of the West. More and more, it seems, sincere believers are mirroring the behaviors and moods of the world around them. There is a notable increase in coarseness and loose talk, less patience and charitableness towards those with differing (often doctrinally differing) views, a cavalier tendency to judge and condemn others, a quickness to take sides in quarrels, a defensiveness in matters of material acquisitiveness and a negligence of the poor, and so on—all matters which James addresses sharply. Only by ignoring such ethically unambiguous texts as the Letter of James and the clearest teachings of Christ himself, however, can any disciple behave in such ways and still feel himself or herself “safe” and “without reproach.” Against all such self-satisfaction, false security, and spiritual arrogance James sets himself in opposition. In this he imitates his brother’s rebuking of the distortions of religion among the professional religionists of his day. The difference is that James is taking aim at the churches of “the Diaspora”—that is to say, the churches or Christian “synagogues” (Jas 2:2) in the gentile world. By extension, as I take pains in my commentary to stress, he continues—as the author of a canonical, that is to say, a perennial text recognized as “God’s word”—to take aim at us.
Our churches today must relearn how to be pilgrims in an alien social and cultural environment.11 Unless the communities of Jesus today live, work, and speak like the Christ they are called to imitate, whatever light they may have will go unnoticed in a world where phoniness is quickly spotted and ridiculed. Likewise, if those same communities live, work, and speak like Christ, they will prove to be “a city set on a hill” and “a light to the world.” James’s message is a timeless reminder to live the gospel, not just talk or theorize about it.
10. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Volume I (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1923), 216.
11. As I argued in my book, Strangers and Pilgrims Once More: Being Disciples of Jesus in a Post-Christendom World (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).
VI.
Outline of the Letter of James
1:1: Greeting
1:2–27: Opening Exhortations
a. Faith and Wisdom (1:2–8)
b. Poverty and Riches (1:9–11)
c. Trial and Temptation (1:12–18)
d. Hearing and Doing the Word (1:19–26)
e. True Religion (1:27)
2:1–13: Denunciation of Bias Towards the Wealthy and the Judging of Others
2:14–26: The Divisive Doctrinal Issue: The Relationship of Faith and Works
3:1–12: Denunciation of Wrongful Use of the Tongue, With Focus on Those Who Would Teach Others
3:13—4:10: What is Required for Friendship with God
a. Two Kinds of Wisdom (3:13–18)
b. Either Friendship with “the Cosmos” or Friendship with God, But Not with Both (4:1–10)
4:11–5:6: Admonitions Against Judging Others, Boasting, and Avarice
a. Do Not Judge One Another (4:11–5:12)
b. Boasting of One’s Plans While Neglecting to Do Good (4:13–17)
c. Warnings to the Rich (5:1–6)
5:7–12: An Appeal for Long-Suffering and Restraint in Speech
5:13–20: The Communal Life
A Note About the Translation Used in this Book
Throughout this book I will be using the recent English version of the New Testament that my brother, David Bentley Hart, translated for Yale University Press (2017). I haven’t chosen it out of a sense of familial loyalty, although that loyalty exists. My chief reason for choosing David’s version, admittedly a self-serving one, is its labor-saving benefit to me. It is as painstaking a literal rendering of the Greek original as one could hope to find. It has saved me the trouble of “re-rendering” verses here and there from a less literal translation such as, for instance, the Revised Standard Version (the version I have tended to use in previous books). All the odd phraseology of the original text is preserved, making it both a little strange to our ears, accustomed as they are to the cadences and customary choices of words that we find repeated in most other English versions. As a translation, it is fresh and new, and yet its close adherence to the original reminds us that the text of the New Testament is ancient and therefore removed from us in time and culture, and so, in some ways, it is not really as familiar to us as we are sometimes lulled into believing. It has been a real boon to make use of this work, and I want to thank David for it here.
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