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really righteous may be recognised as such, as when an innocent man is acquitted before the judgment-seat, or when God in His righteousness is recognised by man, or when a really righteous pious man receives God's recognition as such. But an unrighteous man may also be acquitted, that is, declared righteous, justified by a judge, for example, who allows himself to be bribed (cf. Ex. xxiii. 7, LXX.: où SikaιwσELS TÒV ἀσεβῆ ἕνεκεν δώρων); or by a king who pardons a guilty man, and by that act of grace justifies him; or by God, who, letting grace come before righteousness, declares a sinner just. And in this twofold sense of a justificatio justi and a justificatio injusti, the notion δικαιοῦν, δικαιοῦσθαι found its application in the New Testament. The first is the common; when Jesus, in Matt. xii. 37, says, ἐκ γὰρ τῶν λόγων σου δικαιωθήσῃ, καὶ ἐκ τῶν λόγων σου καταδικασθήσῃ, the reference is to a justificatio justi—if thy words have been really good, thou wilt be justified on the ground of them; and if they have been evil, thou wilt be condemned on the ground of them. The words in the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican approximate to the notion of a justificatio injusti: kaтéßŋ οὗτος δεδικαωμένος εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ παρ ̓ ἐκεῖνον (Luke xviii. 14). Yet even here, as the note of comparison shows, the emphasis is not so much upon the fact that a sinner was pardoned, as that the publican, humbling himself before God, was really, in virtue of his conversion, more righteous before God than the proud impenitent Pharisee. And so the main idea, according to the simpler and more natural reading, is that of justificatio justi; this is a statement of the standard of justice. If thus it should appear that James follows this view, and that Paul in his peculiar doctrine of salvation gives religious form to the other and more artificial application of the notion of justification, we must recognise in James the source of the primitive thought on the subject before Paul. It was undoubtedly more natural for a religion, which, like Judaism, endeavoured to obtain the favour of God by means of a righteousness of works, to speak of a Sikaιovola in the religious sense, in the sense of the justificatio justi, than in that of justificatio injusti; and even primitive Christianity, in its endeavour to reach moral TeλELÓTηs (Matt. v. 18) and future salvation by observance of the righteousness which Jesus

had taught in the Sermon on the Mount, could not start from any other meaning or usage. The word Sikaιoûv, even to Paul, where he does not develop his peculiar doctrine of grace, is familiar only in the sense of the justificatio justi (cf. Rom. ii. 13; 1 Cor. iv. 4).

§ 2. JAMES' DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION

The doctrine of James is most simply comprised in the statement of ii. 24: Ορᾶτε, ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος, καὶ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον. The μόνον indicates that faith also belongs to justification; that it co-operates with works in respect of it (ii. 22). And we cannot conceive anything other than this from the nature of the works which justify before God; works which do not result from faith, that is, from a religious basis, could not, for that very reason, justify anyone. In the same way, we cannot conceive anything else as regards faith itself; for how could a man without faith, an unbelieving man, please God? (cf. Heb. xi. 6). But James most emphatically denies justifying power to faith alone, faith without works (ii. 14); for that is not a living, but a dead faith, and as such, of course, useless, ineffectual, ȧpyn in respect to justification, that is, in presenting man in God's eyes as righteous (ii. 20). It may now be asked, in what moment or stage of the Christian life does James place this divine justification by faith and works? He cannot have placed it in the beginning of the Christian profession, for then the young faith has had no possibility of proving and exhibiting itself in works. There lies rather in the idea of a justification by works-works in the sense of James-that the conclusion is drawn from the completed life, and the two Old Testament examples of Abraham and Rahab, adduced by James, show that this was also his idea. The justification of Abraham, of which he speaks (ii. 21), takes place after the offering of Isaac, after the last and greatest proof of love for God in the life of the patriarch, which in the Scripture narrative falls also tolerably near the end of his history. And the justification of Rahab immediately precedes the judgment of God upon Jericho, a symbol of the divine judgment of the world. If we add that, according to ii. 14, Sikaιoûobal is to

James synonymous with σώζεσθαι, and that σώζεσθαι almost throughout, in Paul even, is conceived as taking place in the future at the final judgment (cf. Rom. v. 9, viii. 24), then we are forced to recognise that this justifying judgment of God meant by James is the divine final judgment. Not that James directly understood by dikaιovolaι the acquittal by God at the last day, the statement ὅτι ἐξ ἔργων δικαιοῦται ἄνθρωπος, καὶ οὐκ ἐκ πίστεως μόνον in its present tense is too indefinite and general for that; he meant that judgment of complacency which God forms to Himself about the life of a pious man spent in His sight, on which He will, in His own time, base His final decision. That the final decision will not be made on the basis of a man's mere faith, but on the basis of his works, of having done or not done the will of God, is the simple and emphatic teaching of Jesus Himself, which no one can expect James to disavow. "Not everyone that saith unto Me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of My Father in heaven" (Matt. vii. 21; cf. vv. 23–27). But it is also the teaching of the Apostle Paul, who nowhere makes the final and saving decision of God follow on mere faith, but on the doing of the divine will, on the completed sanctification (Rom. ii. 13; 2 Cor. v. 10; 1 Thess. v. 23, etc.). If James thus teaches that God, in order to recognise a man ultimately as righteous, and to let him stand as such in His final judgment (owoai, ii. 14), takes into consideration, not merely his faith, but also his works, that is, his life and walk, he has both Scripture and reason on his side, and there is nothing in his doctrine either to surprise or raise question. There is only one main point that can perplex, and which has given the main occasion for attributing to James a polemic against Rom. iv.—a polemic that would be excessively clumsy-viz. that James appeals for his doctrine of justification by faith and works to the example of Abraham, which, according to the wording of Gen. xv. 6, rather favours the opinion he contests of a Sikaιovo lai ἐκ πίστεως μόνον ; and he appeals to this example with the passages of Scripture in his mind, as is shown by ver. 23. But this surprise disappears when we consider that James, as ver. 21 undoubtedly shows, starts from a quite definite traditional representation about Abraham in which his readers

shared, and which he can therefore hold up to them as an axiom, and by which also his comprehension and exposition of the apparently opposing passage (Gen. xv. 6) are conditioned. In spite of the saying, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness," the firm Jewish conviction was that Abraham had God's favour, not merely on account of his faith, but also, as an actual righteous and pious man, on account of his walk, his works, and especially on account of that unsurpassable deed of obedience, the offering of his son. Abraham, says the First Book of Maccabees ii. 52, offered his son, and God counted that to him for righteousness. From this view, common to him and his readers, he can plead to them, "Was not then Abraham our father justified by works when he had offered his son Isaac upon the altar?" He thinks of the promise of God, connected in the Old Testament narrative with this very deed of Abraham, and whilst he cannot, of course, leave unmentioned the apparently contradictory passage xv. 6, he can harmonise it with his view and teaching. He notes the necessary co-operation of faith and works, and the way in which works come in to perfect faith (ver. 22), and he brings in harmony by taking the words of Gen. xv. 6 as a provisional or prophetic declaration which can only be fulfilled when Abraham's faith is perfected in the work of offering Isaac.

§ 3. JAMES AND PAUL

Now, if this is James' doctrine of justification, in what relation does it stand to that of Paul? Not, at anyrate, in that of a polemic. For James has a different conception, not only of works but of faith and justification, from that which Paul has when he teaches that man is justified by God through faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, and so a polemic on the part of James against Paul would be a beating of the air, the most complete misunderstanding that could be imagined. But it is quite inconceivable that the historical James, to whom, according to Gal. ii., Paul explained his preaching of the gospel, and who declared himself in harmony with it and gave him the right hand of fellowship, should have cherished such a misunderstanding. And even

if we assume a psuedo-James as author of the Epistle, and make him contend, not against the actual, but against a misunderstood and degenerate Paulinism, we do not improve the case. It certainly is hard to conceive that the peculiar doctrine of the Apostle to the Gentiles should have entered and been perverted within exclusive and unmixedly JewishChristian circles. But in such a case one would expect from the polemic that it should distinguish between real and misunderstood Paulinism of which there is no trace in our Epistle. If we assume a polemic directed against the Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, we have to decide that the example of Abraham, turned specially to account in these Epistles, was applied in a contrary sense by James. But James amply shows by the example of Rahab, which Paul does not mention, that he did not borrow his examples from the Pauline Epistles. Surely the example of Abraham, whom his people honoured as the friend of God on account of his virtues, might have been suggested without the example of Paul, more readily than that of Rahab. Above all, the way in which he introduces the example of Abraham (ver. 21) as an unquestioned and unquestionable proof for his own doctrine, makes the assumption of a polemical reference to Rom. iv. absolutely impossible, for no reasonable man would quote a disputed case as conclusively establishing his point. But there is not even an objective conflict between the Pauline and Jacobean doctrine; both forms of teaching exist peacefully beside each other. James manifestly contemplated justification in the simple and most natural sense of justificatio justi, as the divine recognition of an actually righteous man (for he acknowledges that there are such as is shown by ver. 16), and he thought of it as the final judgment of God upon a man who is to stand in the last judgment and become a partaker of the final owτnpía. Paul also, as already noted, demands as a requisite for this last judgment and the final owτnpía, right works, the love that fulfils the law, and the perfected sanctification, but he (except in Rom. ii. 13) does not apply the expression Sikaιovo lai to the final judgment of God, which recognises this righteousness of life as actual. He applies it rather to that first sentence of God with which He graciously receives the

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