When the conversation of faith and its relationship with good deeds is brought up, those who adhere to the doctrine of sola fide will often point to Romans 3:28, "a man is justified by faith and not by deeds of the law," as a proof-text for their doctrine. Those opposed to sola fide will often respond by pointing to James 2:24, "ye see how that by works a man is justified, and not by faith only."
This creates a problem for the earnest Christian. If Scripture is contradictory, then our faith is (probably) false. Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that any apparent contradiction, such as this one, is reconciled and brought to exegetical harmony. Naturally, those who disbelieve in faith alone will interpret St. Paul as meaning something other than all good deeds when he says "deeds of the law," and those who do believe in faith alone will interpret St. James as meaning something other than works playing a role in justification.
In a later article, Deo volente, we will address the anti-sola fide interpretations of St. Paul, but in this article, we will address the pro-sola fide interpretation of St. James.
The Pro-Sola Fide Interpretation
The pro-sola fide understanding of St. James 2 can be summed up as this: when St. James is talking about faith and works in this passage, he merely means that works are evidence of saving faith unto justification, not a condition for justification. Reformed Protestant apologist James White puts it succinctly in his book The God Who Justifies, “The entire purpose of James 2:14–26 can be summarized by the words ‘show me’… This exhortation of Christians is not addressing how the ungodly are declared righteous before God, but how that declaration is shown outwardly in the Christian life.” However, this is not easily shown to be the case, and further reflection points to a different understanding of St. James which contradicts the pro-sola fide interpretation.
Preliminary Observations
First, let us examine the relevant text in its entirety:
What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder! Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone. And in the same way was not also Rahab the prostitute justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way? For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
— St. James 2:14-26, ESV
In the preceding 13 verses, St. James is rebuking the Christian community for showing partiality towards the wealthy. He continues his discourse to the same Christians in verse 14, continuing to make the point of living in the faith of Christ our Lord. In short, verses 1-13 address the particular issue of partiality, and after this, verses 14-26 address the underlying issue of works and their relation to faith.
St. James’ Argument
St. James opens this passage with the following question: “What good is it if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?” Here, the common interpretation will be that St. James is considering a different kind of faith than efficacious or “saving” faith. St. James, according to the pro-sola fide understanding, is addressing a workless faith, a mere claim to saving faith, and asks if this faith can save him. The initial issue with this argument is that the word translated “says” (“lege” in the original Greek) does not mean “claim.” The Englishman’s Concordance records this word being used in this form three times in the New Testament: St. John 2:5 (“His mother said [lege] to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you’”), 1 Cor. 3:4 (“For when one says [lege], ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?”), and St. James 2:14. Further, in Bible translations that use formal equivalence (a literal, word-for-word translation), we see the word “lege” in Jas. 2:13 translated as “says” rather than “claims” (cf. ESV, Berean Literal Bible, NASB, KJV, NKJV, DRB).
This is important because the term “claim” insinuates disingenuity on the part of the person making the claim. For the pro-sola fide understanding to hold up, St. James must:
a) be talking about two distinct kinds of faith, and
b) hold that works are mere evidence of saving faith.
If both thresholds are not met, the interpretation fails. For St. James to be coherent under this view, there must be a kind of faith that is evidenced by works and a kind of faith that is unsubstantiated apart from works. Otherwise, v. 18 cannot be understood in light of sola fide. Further, if works are not merely evidence of the first kind of faith, then v. 24 clearly refutes sola fide. Both prongs must therefore be met.
Conversely, the anti-sola fide position can remain if St. James is talking about two kinds of faith. Theoretically, the passage could be read as St. James criticizing the faithful for having a false faith which is without works so long as he means that saving faith is brought to completion by works. In other words, the only issue that matters for this interpretation is whether or not saving faith is completed by works, as opposed to being evidenced by works. This being the case, we will grant for the sake of argument that St. James speaks of two different kinds of faith, and only focus on the role of works in salvation.
We go on to vv. 15-17: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
St. James here illustrates his point with the example of failing to practice the corporal works of mercy. If you wish someone well but do not act on those well wishes, what benefit is there? Notice here that St. James does not call into question the sincerity of the well-wishing, only its efficacy. It would be ridiculous to suggest that merely because someone does not act on their good intentions it then follows that their good intentions were non-existent, and St. James makes no such claim. St. James merely points out that well-wishes, genuine or otherwise, are of no benefit if they are not completed by works, and so also is faith of no benefit without works. Once again, the sincerity of faith is not called into question, nor is the presence of “true” faith. The point being made is whether or not any benefit comes if works are absent of faith.
Vv. 18-19 read as follows: But someone will say, “You have faith and I have works.” Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!
Here we see the common pro-sola fide argument: St. James tells the Christians to show their faith without works but he will show faith by works, and therefore he means for works to be evidence of faith. However, we must note a few things. First, as the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible notes, St. James is using a common teaching tool in which he sets up an imaginary interlocutor and argues a potential objection to his point. It reads
“The issue is whether faith and works represent two different but equal ways to be justified before God. James denies the proposition and insists that faith that is not expressed in works is dead faith, not saving faith (2:26). If one has faith but no good works, he is no better off than the demons, who believe yet face the certainty of condemnation rather than justification (2:19). Just as faith apart from works is dead, so works apart from faith are dead.”
In other words, St. James is not really making a point to bolster his argument. Rather, he is preemptively arguing against the radical extreme contra sola fide, which is solus actus: works alone. St. James makes the point that faith and works, in order to be salutary, must be united. Works alone will not save, but neither will faith alone. He states this point most explicitly in v. 26, which we will address later in this article.
Abraham’s Justification
Vv. 21-24 is as follows: Do you want to be shown, you foolish person, that faith apart from works is useless? Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered up his son Isaac on the altar? You see that faith was active along with his works, and faith was completed by his works; and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”—and he was called a friend of God. You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.
Here St. James appeals to Abraham to prove his point. This is perhaps where we most clearly see what St. James intends to say. As we unpack this passage, we must note that St. James appeals to the Binding of Isaac as the instance of Abraham’s justification, the fulfillment of Gen. 15:6, and the completion of faith by its cooperation with works.
Among the reasons why this is the most important passage to the proper understanding of St. James’ soteriology is because it gives us the proper understanding of what relationship works has with saving faith. If St. James presents the Binding of Isaac as mere evidence of Abraham’s faith, then the pro-sola fide interpretation probably prevails. If not, the pro-sola fide interpretation probably fails. Thus, we must pay close attention to what he says of Abraham’s works.
First, let us address the word “justified.” The idea that the word rendered “justification” in v. 22 is used in any other way than salutary righteousness before God is to be roundly rejected as sectarian sophistry. The reason for this is twofold: first, the word rendered “justification” in the Greek (deikaiothe) is the 3rd person singular aorist (i.e., past) passive tense of the verb “dikaioo,” which is universally used to mean justified in a salutary way in the Pauline epistles, and; secondly, because St. Paul uses this exact word in this exact tense to describe Abraham’s justification in Romans 4:2. St. James does not mean evidence of justification here. He means justification as such.
Second, St. James tells us that Abraham’s faith “was active along with” his works, and by his works, his faith was brought to “completion.” Notice immediately that St. James does not say that Abraham’s faith was made apparent by his works, or proven to be existent by his works, or anything similar. The phrase rendered “was active along with” in the ESV is the Greek word “synergei.” Taken literally, it means “cooperate with” or “work with,” and is rendered that way the four other times it is used in the New Testament (cf. Mk 16:20, Rm. 8:28, 1 Cor. 16:16, 2 Cor. 6:1). This is of massive significance because it tells us that Abraham’s saving faith was not related to works in a mere evidentiary way, but instead was an active partner with faith.
This then brings us to an obvious follow-up question: what is faith and works working together towards? St. James tells us immediately that it worked towards the “completion” of Abraham’s faith. The word rendered “completion” in the Greek is “eteleiothe.” It is closely related to the Greek word “telos” which means the directed end of a particular thing. HELPS Word Studies defines the infinitive form (teleioo) as “to consummate, reaching the end-stage, i.e. working through the entire process (stages) to reach the final phase (conclusion).”
We now see the clear relationship between saving faith and works. Rather than works being a proof of saving faith, works participate with faith to bring faith to its completion. Put another way, works perfect faith. The relationship between faith and works can be seen as a positive feedback loop, in which faith first produces works, and works further perfect faith, creating a cycle that is broken only by a loss of faith or a loss of works. Nowhere here does St. James even intimate that works merely serve as evidence of faith, nor does he intimate that faith is already perfect when it produces said works. This point is further made when St. James presents this as a fulfillment of Genesis 15:6. Abraham’s belief in God is not fulfilled until it produces and cooperates with works in the Binding of Isaac. Otherwise, Abraham’s saving faith is no better than the dead “faith” of demons.
Thirdly, we must address a common pro-sola fide understanding of this passage, that Abraham was merely shown to be justified in his works. This is the rendering of several translations that use the dynamic equivalence approach to translation:
NIV: Was not our father Abraham considered righteous for what he did when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
NLT: Don’t you remember that our ancestor Abraham was shown to be right with God by his actions when he offered his son Isaac on the altar?
AMP: Was our father Abraham not [shown to be] justified by works [of obedience which expressed his faith] when he offered Isaac his son on the altar [as a sacrifice to God]?
Here we have to ask, who is Abraham showing his faith to? There was nobody on the mountain to whom he could demonstrate his faith save Isaac, and it would be an awful stretch to say that Abraham had to show his faith in God to the son he was sacrificing to God. Surely there were other instances for him to demonstrate his salvation to his son other than nearly killing him. If Abraham is demonstrating his faith to God, then we have to ask why? Why does God, who gives grace to man, makes him just, and knows his heart, need evidence of Abraham’s faith? God already knows that Abraham is justified because He’s the one justifying Abraham. The only logical interpretation of this is the one that is plainly obvious from a simple, straightforward reading of the verse: by works, Abraham was made right with God (two non-Catholic translations of the Bible, Weymouth and Young, even go so far as to render the passage in these words).
Faith and Works, Body and Soul
We then come to the final verse in the chapter, v. 26: For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.
St. James ends his discourse on faith and works by equating the relationship between the two with the relationship between the body and the soul. Just as a body without a soul is a corpse, a faith without works leaves someone just as damned as a demon.
This analogy confirms the salutary understanding of Abraham’s justification by faith and works and serves as the final nail in the coffin for the pro-sola fide interpretation. What is the relationship between the body and the soul, and what is the specific role of the soul to the human person? The answer, for all Christians, is simple: the two are equally important components to have a human person, and the soul is the essence of the person.
Would anyone ever say that the purpose of the soul is to give evidence that a body exists? Of course not! Nothing would be worthier of mockery than such a metaphysic as that. Christianity holds to hylomorphism, meaning that the human is a combination of body and soul. The two are necessary for a complete person (which is why the Resurrection of the Dead is such a central doctrine).
Let’s examine this in more detail: as stated above, without the soul, a body is a corpse. Without both components, there is no physical life and no human person. Likewise, without the body, the soul is not animating anything, so there can’t be physical life because there is no physicality to begin with. Once again, without both a body and soul, there is not a human person (even though the soul still lives apart from the body).
Likewise, without works, faith is a barren corpse and there is no salvation. Intellectual assent does not even approach the mount, for the Tempter and his agents know firsthand the great wonders of God and fear His just wrath. More than that, even devoted intellectual study is not enough: the most renowned American Biblical scholar, Bart Ehrman, is an agnostic atheist!
Further, works without faith lack the necessary first step, and by themselves do not produce salvation just as a soul without a body does not produce a human person. It is not enough to live out the moral teachings of Christ and not believe in God, or even to live out the moral teachings of Christ and believe in God if the God you believe in is not Christ, because there is nothing for those good works to bring to completion.
Final Analysis
When looking deeply at the relevant Scripture, without the lens of doctrinal bias, we see that St. James does not teach sola fide. Rather, through the example of our Father Abraham and the analogy of the body and the soul, St. James teaches that faith is the necessary cause of salvation, but that this is brought to completion and is further increased by our good works. This understanding fits right in line with the Sixth Session of the Council of Trent.
If any doubt remains as to the proper interpretation of St. James, you do not have to take our word for it. Instead, read what the ardent proponent of sola fide, Martin Luther, had to say about the Epistle of St. James:
...it is flatly against St. Paul and all the rest of Scripture in ascribing justification to works. It says that Abraham was justified by his works when he offered his son Isaac; though in Romans 4 St. Paul teaches to the contrary that Abraham was justified apart from works, by his faith alone, before he had offered his son, and proves it by Moses in Genesis 15. Now although this epistle might be helped and an interpretation devised for this justification by works, it cannot be defended in its application to works of Moses' statement in Genesis 15. For Moses is speaking here only of Abraham's faith, and not of his works, as St. Paul demonstrates in Romans 4. This fault, therefore, proves that this epistle is not the work of any apostle.
— Martin Luther, "Preface to the Epistle of James"
The ardent defender of sola fide and the founder of the Reformation did not think that St. James taught salvation by faith alone, and for this reason thought his epistle should not be considered part of Holy Writ. We tend to agree with him on the first point and reject him on the second point.
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