1. Please note that in general, when the authors discuss words in the original biblical languages, the series uses a general rather than a scholarly method of transliteration.

1. Quoted by Ralph P. Martin, New Testament Foundations: A Guide to Christian Students (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 2:365.

2. C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), 166.

3. J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1976), 118.

1. Havel is a playwright and essayist of no mean distinction. Under Communist rule he was an anti-totalitarian dissident, who made it his duty to combat evil armed with only the truth. In 1979 he was sentenced to four and a half years in prison as a result of his role in the human rights movement in Czechoslovakia. As President he has continued in the same vein, refusing to allow himself to be “packaged,” like so many Western politicians.

2. Václav Havel, The Art of the Impossible: Politics as Morality in Practice; Speeches and Writings, 1990–1996, tr. Paul Wilson et al. (New York: Knopf, 1997), 3–4.

3. W. Dyrness, “Mercy Triumphs Over Justice: James 2:13 and the Theology of Faith and Works,” Themelios 6 (1981): 11–16, argues that the idea of mercy binds the letter together, seen especially in the ethics of the community (as seen in 2:1–12) and in loving hospitality and welcome for those who are in need (as seen in 2:14–26). See also M. J. Townsend, “Christ, Community and Salvation in the Epistle of James,” EvQ 53 (1981): 115–23, who makes the case by focusing on the use of the term “brother” and on the ethics of forgiveness, mercy, and grace as expressed in the letter.

4. Martin Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, Hermeneia, reissued by H. Greeven, tr. M. A. Williams (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 4, 6.

5. See Fred O. Francis, “The Form and Function of the Opening and Closing Paragraphs of James and I John,” ZNW 61 (1970): 110–26.

6. R. M. Cooper, “Prayer, a Study in Matthew and James,” Encounter 29 (1968): 268–77.

7. See L. T. Johnson, “The Use of Leviticus 19 in the Letter of James,” JBL 101 (1982): 391–401, highlights the pervasive use of the “royal law” in James.

8. See Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 58–59.

9. Ralph P. Martin, James, lxvi–lxvii.

10. A. S. Geyser, “The Letter of James and the Social Condition of His Addressees,” Neot 9 (1975): 7–24.

11. See M. J. Townsend, “James 4:1–4: A Warning Against Zealotry?” ExpTim 87 (1976): 211–13.

12. Davids, The Epistle of James, 28–34.

13. For instance, the tension between faith and works in James can be used to argue a late date because James is a polemic against Paul, or an early date, because James seems unaware of the Pauline position.

14. R. A. Rendall, The Epistle of James and Judaic Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1927), argues that the author is a Palestinian Jew thoroughly conversant with the Hellenistic Scriptures.

15. See J. Marcus, “The Evil Inclination in the Epistle of James,” CBQ 44 (1982): 606–21; Peter H. Davids, “Theological Perspectives on the Epistle of James,” JETS 23 (1980): 97–103.

16. So Davids, The Epistle of James, 39.

17. See the discussion of this commentary, pp. 285–86.

18. James says that heavenly wisdom is “pure,” and that it is “peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere” (3:17).

19. “The Joy of What?” Wall Street Journal (Dec. 12, 1991).

20. See Cornelius Plantinga, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), xi.

1. The handbook attributed to Demetrius of Phalerum, known as Epistolary Types, lists twenty-one kinds of letters. This handbook seems to be concerned only with official letters written by persons in public service. See Stanley K. Stowers, “Letters (Greek and Latin),” ABD 4:290–93.

2. See John L. White, Light From Ancient Letters (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 3.

3. The letters produced by the early Christians are remarkable in part because of their willingness to stray beyond these set parameters.

4. Other types include philosophical letters (which often contained moral exhortation) and instructional letters. Early Christian letters, including those in the New Testament, closely parallel these (see Stanley K. Stowers, “Letters [Greek and Latin]”). There are also the letters between friends and acquaintances, such as the letters of Cicero and those between Pliny and Emperor Trajan. These types generally avoid the more formal patterns.

5. Thousands of these letters are known and have been collected. A short sampling can be found in the recently reprinted volume by A. Deissmann, Bible Studies (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1988), 22–25.

6. We can see examples of this general pattern in Acts and in the Pauline corpus. In Phil. 1:2 Paul writes “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” In Acts 15:23 we find the opening of the letter from the Jerusalem council to Gentile believers: “The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch, Syria and Cilicia: Greetings.”

7. See the Introduction, pp. 19–21.

8. See Ralph P. Martin, James, 4.

9. See Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 45–46; James Hardy Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 118.

10. M. A. Beavis has recently argued that in the New Testament doulos means slave, not servant. See her article “Ancient Slavery As an Interpretive Context for the New Testament Servant Parables With Special Reference to the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1–8),” JBL 111 (1992): 37–54.

11. Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (4.23.10) relates that Dionysius, bishop of Corinth around A.D. 170, wrote a letter to Soter, the bishop of Rome. In it Dionysius commended the Roman church for its generosity in sending contributions to churches in many cities, thereby “relieving the poverty of the needy and ministering to the Christians in the mines.”

12. Cato, De Agri Cultura, 56; Columella, Rei Rusticae, 1.3.12.

13. Cato, De Agri Cultura, 2.5.

14. See Philostratus, Apollonius, 8.7.12.; Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 15.22–23. Paul speaks against the practice in 1 Cor. 7:23. First Clement 55:2 asserts that some Christians have sold themselves into slavery in order to secure the ransom of other enslaved Christians: “We know of many among ourselves who have given themselves up to bonds, in order that they might ransom others. Many, too, have surrendered themselves to slavery, that with the price which they received for themselves, they might provide food for others.”

15. See Susan Treggiari, Roman Freedmen During the Late Republic (Oxford: Clarendon, 1969), 12–20, 111–12, 255.

16. See G. Alföldy, Noricum, tr. E. Birley (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1974), 129–31; idem, The Social History of Rome, tr. David Braund and Frank Pollock (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988), 135. Under Roman law the slave of a Roman citizen, when granted manumission, was often granted citizenship as well. In the first century such a condition was highly to be prized, and somewhat rare in the Roman provinces, as the surprise of the Philippian officials at Paul’s claim to bear citizenship attests. A series of laws enacted under Augustus were intended to limit the number and the rights of manumitted slaves, presumably because Augustus feared that these liberti (freedpersons) would overrun the state.

17. See Eph. 6:5–8; Col. 3:22–25; 1 Tim. 6:1–2; Titus 2:9–11. In all of these passages the Greek term is a form of doulos. First Peter 2:18ff. contains similar teaching, but Peter uses the Greek term oiketai, a more specific term for household slave/servant. A letter from a freedman to his former owner in Egypt in 14 B.C. provides us with an interesting parallel. It reads “You know in your heart that I have behaved in a manner which is beyond reproach, wanting your goodwill, just as a slave wants to please in the interests of securing his freedom” (Berliner Griechische Urkunden, Ägyptisch Urkinden aus Königlichen Museen zu Berlin, 4.1141 [pp. 23–25]).

18. Col. 4:1; cf. Eph. 6:9.

19. Narcissus, the freedman of Emperor Claudius, amassed four hundred million sesterces (HS400,000,000), one of the largest fortunes known during the early empire. Rendering monetary figures from the ancient world (here sesterces) into modern equivalents is a notoriously dangerous and imprecise affair. It is best, perhaps, to offer parallels of monetary value in terms of goods purchased. C. Nicolet (“Economy and Finance,” The Cambridge Ancient History, eds. J. A. Crook, A. Lintott, E. Rawson [Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994], 10:631) estimates that the purchase price of an upper class house in Italy during the first century B.C. would be HS4,000,000, or the equivalent of “four tonnes of silver.” Ramsay MacMullen in his Roman Social Relations, 50 B.C. to 284 A.D. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), 145, estimates the cost of building a temple at HS100,000; a theater at HS400,000; and a library at HS500,000. MacMullen concludes that these figures support “the rather unexpected possibility that a city’s full architectural equipment might draw on the fortunes of only a very few wealthy families, expended over a generation or so.”

20. In the LXX doulos can also refer to all of Israel, not just to heroes and authorities (see Deut. 32:36).

21. Vespasian is famous for his sardonic deathbed comment Vae, puto deus fio (“Alas, I think that I am becoming a god”). Vespasian grudgingly understood the need felt by the state to perpetuate the cult of emperor worship, but he harbored no illusions about his own status. Domitian, the son of Vespasian, took this address seriously, for he was a man of less ability, greater insecurity, and greater tyranny than his father.

22. This idea, that greater theological complexity necessarily goes hand in hand with chronological development, has attained the status of a nearly unquestioned axiom in New Testament studies. It is also a fallacy, as G. B. Caird pointed out (“The Development of the Doctrine of Christ in the New Testament,” Christ For Us Today, ed. N. Pittenger [London: SCM, 1968], 66–80.). The Christology of Mark, for example, is “higher” (or more “divine” and less “human”) than that of Luke, even though nearly all agree that Luke wrote later than Mark.

23. Here the parallel to the Gospel of John is evident (e.g., John 14:10).

24. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 338–40.

25. Ralph P. Martin, James, 9, argues that the use of the phrase “the twelve tribes” would be meaningless in relationship to Luke 2:36 if the phrase meant “the multiracial church”.

26. This is the line of thought taken by James Adamson, The Epistle of James, 49–50.

27. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 47–49.

28. In 2 Macc. 1:1 the Jews in Jerusalem send greetings to Jews throughout the world with the formula eirenen agathon. If James had wished to restrict his message to Jews or even more narrowly to Jewish Christians, we might have expected him to use such a formula that approximates the traditional Hebrew greeting.

29. Anders Nygren, Eros and Agape, tr. P. S. Watson (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1953). Nygren understood that the idea of self-giving love was not intended every time some form of agapao appeared. But popular perception often took this view.

30. C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1960).

31. See James Barr, “Words for Love in Biblical Greek,” The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Studies in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird, eds. L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 3–18.

32. As Martin Hengel put it recently: “New Testament scholarship has always been in good part a science of conjecture…. This fact should make us more modest…. Too often there exists the danger of confusing what is precisely possible with what in fact is really probable…. We should not be ashamed to speak candidly of our great uncertainty” (“Tasks of New Testament Scholarship,” BBR 6 [1996]: 75–76). Hengel here speaks of New Testament scholarship as an admittedly specialized branch of the discipline of ancient history.

33. The Romans used the Greek word oikoumene (Latin: oecumene) to refer to the world, or more properly the inhabited world. This word, derived from oikos, the Greek word meaning “house,” indicates the degree to which the Romans understood their “right” of patronage. Emperor Hadrian even constructed a sprawling palace complex at Tibur (modern Tivoli), in which was displayed flora, fauna, and replicas of buildings from around the world. The point, obviously, is that the entire world is the proper home of the Romans.

34. Virgil, Aeneid, 4.231. A similar notion is found in the Latin phrase fiat iustia pereat mundus, “Let justice be done even if the world perishes.”

35. Three examples will suffice. (1) Under Emperor Trajan a policy was established whereby he lent money from his imperial treasury to Italian landowners, under the condition that they pay a 5 percent tax into a municipal chest, the revenue to be used to care for the children of needy families in that area. This practice is known as the alimentary institutions. (2) In the correspondence between Trajan and Pliny, we read of the concern of Trajan for mundane matters, such as a proper water supply for provincial municipalities. (3) Note the case of Emperor Tiberius. When given advice to raise taxes in the provinces, Tiberius replied that it is the part of a good shepherd to shear the flock, not skin it (Suetonius, Tiberius, 32).

36. Josephus tells us that the combination of Roman taxes and the temple tax “bled the country dry” (see his Antiquities, 17.304–8). Jewish farmers whose families were murdered by the Romans because they could not afford to pay their taxes turned to banditry and open rebellion because of the blunt edge of Roman rule. On banditry as a peasant movement in Palestine under Roman rule, see Gerd Theissen, The Shadow of the Galilean (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 75ff.; S. Applebaum, “Judaea As a Roman Province: The Countryside As a Political and Economic Factor,” ANRW, 2d series (Berlin: de Gruyter), 8:355–99.

37. Pliny, Epistulae, 3.14.

38. ”Honesty,” said Juvenal, “is praised and then left to shiver” (probitas laudatur et alget) (Satires, 1.74). Our lack of resolve to live the principles of servanthood is no less worthy of remark.

39. At Jesus’ baptism the voice from heaven combined kingship (by quoting Ps. 2) with service (by quoting Isa. 42). The temptation accounts confirm that Jesus resolved to be a Servant-Messiah. Even Jesus’ favorite self-designation, “Son of Man,” points to this. The Son of Man in Dan. 7 is to be served, but Jesus attaches to the notion of the Son of Man the idea of servanthood: “The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

40. David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy—And Why (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992), 180–81.

1. Peter is more concerned with the test, which he values, while Paul and James agree that the virtues produced by the test are the most important issue.

2. Laws 646B.

3. Surely an odd lacuna if the writing is pseudonymous.

4. J. H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 118, argues that Paul claims to be a servant only in Romans and Philippians, two occasions in which he wished to avoid claims of personal authority.

5. See G. Adolf Deissmann, Bible Studies, tr. Alexander Grieve (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1988), 142.

6. See 4 Macc. 17:2–4.

7. See, for example, Ps. 71:4–5. In 4 Macc. 17:23 we read a slightly different twist: “It is unreasonable that those who are religious should not stand up against adversity.”

8. See parallels in Rom. 6:1–23 and Gal. 5:6.

9. See Pheme Perkins, First and Second Peter, James and Jude (Louisville: John Knox, 1995), 96.

10. Ralph P. Martin, James, 17.

11. For example, in James 3:2 being “perfect” is the ability to control the tongue. While admirable, this is hardly reserved only for those who are morally perfect or even morally superior.

12. The Old Testament has many references to God as the source of wisdom. Proverbs 2:6 says, “For the LORD gives wisdom, and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding.”

13. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 56.

14. See Luther’s Works, ed. Conrad Bergendoff (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg, 1958), 40:278–79.

15. Martin, James, 18–19.

16. James Adamson, The Epistle of James, 57. Yet Adamson notes that in 1:3 faith does mean “constancy in the Christian religion.”

17. The common view that Jesus could not heal unless there was sufficient faith in the heart of the one afflicted is easily unhorsed. No one, we may suppose, would argue that Lazarus, or the daughter of Jairus, or even anyone in attendance at either of these occasions, had faith for a resurrection. The often misunderstood locus classicus of this view is Mark 6:1–5, in which Mark tells us that in Nazareth Jesus “could not do any miracles there … [because of] their lack of faith.” Careful inspection of the text reveals that Jesus did heal people of afflictions, surely what we would consider a miracle. The problem is in the vocabulary employed by the New Testament, for the terms used most often (thauma [“wonder, miracle”], semeion [“sign”], and semeia kai terata [“signs and wonders”]) have a range of meaning far wider than our notion of “miracle.” The aged Simeon considers the very presence of the baby Jesus a “sign” in Luke 2:34. Mark 6:1–5 is the only time one of these terms is used in reference to Jesus, who “marveled” (ethaumazen) at their unbelief. The point here is that miracles do not necessarily “cause” faith (see Luke 16:31); and so Jesus declines to perform them when he perceived that the result would be the wrong kind of belief, namely, a belief in Jesus the wonder-worker. This incorrect belief, perhaps a belief in their own vision of what the Messiah was to do and be, characterized the disciples who left Jesus in John 6:66. Jesus sought to create and nurture a different kind of belief, a belief in Jesus as God’s agent, as the one who reveals the living God. A similar situation pertains in the case of the so-called “messianic secret.”

18. In Mark 9:14–32 Jesus heals a boy with an evil spirit. In verse 24 the father of the boy exclaims “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!“

19. See Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 140–41.

20. With the conquest of the Mediterranean basin Rome brought peace and Roman administration to the region. This resulted in a lack of opportunities for advancement through valor displayed in warfare or through political life. Cities and prominent families were forced to compete with their peers for fame through other avenues. We know of hundreds of cases of wealthy families that drove themselves pell-mell into bankruptcy in an effort to pay for public works, so that the fame of their names might be spread and last in perpetuity. Similarly, so few opportunities were available that Pliny complained to the Emperor Trajan that the cities of Asia Minor were ruining themselves economically by trying to outdo one another in the building of massive and elaborate public works. See Pliny, Epistulae, 10.39, and p. 39, note 19.

21. Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 18.3.

22. See the discussion of a similar case in James 4:4, in which the term “adulterous people” is used.

23. Martin (James, 23) is representative here.

24. Ibid., 25–26.

25. In 2 Thess. 3:6–14 Paul speaks against idleness and instructs the industrious to warn the idle and to shame them into action. Yet the idle should be treated not as an enemy, but as a brother. Here “a brother” stands in danger of losing membership because of his behavior. I believe we have here in James a parallel situation.

26. This is not a matter of Arminian or Reformed views of eternal security. Rather, the idea here is fully consonant with the words of John the Baptist (Matt. 3:9) that God could make children of Abraham out of the rocks strewn about. The question is one of loyalty manifesting itself in action.

27. The Roman economy simply did not allow it. Social climbing could be accomplished through three basic means, each of them rare. The first was a sterling career in the military. Vespasian, for instance, was an Italian peasant who rose to the rank of general, and then to the purple in the year of chaos following the death of Nero. As the empire grew older, this became more common. But statistically it remained the remarkable exception. The second route was that of citizenship and then wealth accrued by freedmen of Roman citizens. Trimalchio in the Satyricon of Petronius is such a one. There is considerable debate as to how widespread this practice was, yet its limit was the aim of a number of pieces of legislation instituted by Augustus. Finally, there were cities like Corinth. Corinth was destroyed by the Romans in 146 B.C. and recolonized by Julius Caesar in 44 B.C. He populated the city with army veterans and certain citizens of the city of Rome. As a result, there was no old aristocracy, and all could dream equally plausible dreams of achieving exalted social status.

28. See John Wimber, Power Evangelism (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986). In this book Wimber, the founder of the Vineyard “Signs and Wonders” movement, argued that while the causes of disease may be “physical, psychological, or spiritual … Christians have power over disease. Christians in the first century saw disease as a work of Satan, a weapon of his demons, a way in which evil rules the world” (p. 97). In recent years the Vineyard has modified its view. See Wimber, “Signs, Wonders and Cancer” Christianity Today (Oct. 7, 1996), 49–51.

29. Frank Peretti is a good example here. Peretti’s novels (the most famous being This Present Darkness [Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1986]) are wildly successful. They offer the metaphor of “spiritual warfare” as emblematic of the Christian life. This picture of the Christian life has been examined by Robert A. Guelich, the late Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary, who finds Peretti’s work interesting but offering a distorted picture of the biblical evidence. See Robert A. Guelich, “Spiritual Warfare: Jesus, Paul and Peretti,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 13 (Spring 1991): 33–64.

30. In the Babylonian Talmud, Nedarim 32b, we read that the body is composed of 248 parts, and that Satan has seductive powers over humankind for 364 days a year, the only exception being the Day of Atonement. The Midrash Rabbah to Eccl. 9:14–15 claims that “the evil impulse” is like the powerful king of 9:14, besieging the body as the powerful king besieges the city. “The good impulse” is like the poor man of 9:15—poor because not all possess it, and of those who do many do not obey it. Aboth Rabbi Nathan 16 claims that the yeṣer ha-ra is thirteen years older than the yeṣer ha-tov, because it begins to develop in the womb. The yeṣer ha-ra is also “king over his two hundred and forty eight limbs. When he goes off to some good deed, all his limbs begin to drag. For the evil impulse within man is monarch over his two hundred forty eight limbs, while the good impulse is like a captive in prison.” The evil impulse lies at the opening of the heart, and it is the evil impulse that even as infants drives us to harm others, and even ourselves.

31. Perhaps this idea stands behind Paul’s thought in 1 Cor. 2:6–8, where the principalities and powers unknowingly cause their own destruction by crucifying the “Lord of glory.”

32. For this entire matter see Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 36–38; and W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 20–35.

33. See Davids, James, 54–55.

34. The NIV, like many translations, uses “than the heavenly beings.” This tradition is derived from the LXX, which chose to translate the Hebrew word for God with “angels.”

35. Kathleen Norris, “Why the Psalms Scare Us,” Christianity Today (July 15, 1996), 21.

36. Martin Dibelius in his 1921 commentary denied the possibility of writing on the theological themes in James.

37. David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy—And Why (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 31–46.

38. Ibid., 177.

39. Peter King, “Bawl Players,” Sports Illustrated (March 18, 1991), 14–17.

40. Christopher Whipple, “Chrissie,” Life (June 1986), 64–72.

41. Jewel Kilcher, Pieces of You, Atlantic Recording Company, 1994.

42. I am indebted to Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness, for much in this section.

43. Susan Bergman, “Faith Unto Death: In the Shadow of the Martyrs,” Christianity Today (August 12, 1996), 24.

44. This citation is found in Martin Buber, The Way of Man (New York: Citadel Press, 1963), 63.

45. The NIV renders it, “Blessed are the poor in spirit.”

46. Quoted in Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, Analysis of Happiness (Dortrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 176.

47. Myers, 184, writes: “Persons of faith who encounter tragedy are statistically more likely to view the tragedy as spurring them on to some greater good.”

48. Lee Atwater and Todd Brewster, “Lee Atwater’s Last Campaign,” Life (February 1991), 67.

49. Gregory the Great, Epistles, 6.2.

50. Olle Hallesby, Prayer, tr. C. J. Carlsen (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1931), 11–13.

51. Bergman, “Faith Unto Death,” 22.

52. Peter Abelard, Commentary on Romans (on Rom. 8:32).

53. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness, 49–50.

54. Life (January 1991), 23.

55. See Robert Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1985), viii, 277–81.

56. Norris, “Why the Psalms Scare Us,” 20.

1. See Fred O. Francis, “The Form and Function of the Opening and Closing Paragraphs of James and 1 John,” ZNW 61 (1971): 110–26. Francis demonstrates that many literary and ordinary letters from the Hellenistic period contain a double opening, which usually includes the use of parallel terms that link the two openings. The double opening also introduces the key themes that provide the structure of the letter and inform its content.

2. For example, Isa. 30:18; 56:2; Jer. 8:32, 34.

3. For example, Job 5:17; Ps. 32:1; 42:1; 94:12.

4. This is not to say that James is an example of wisdom literature, however, as older commentaries often held.

5. The term “crown of life” is rare in Scripture (it is also found in Rev. 2:10), but it does have parallels: the “crown of glory that will never fade away” in 1 Peter 5:4; or the verbal form “[you have] crowned him [man/the son of man = humanity] with glory and honor” in Ps. 8:5.

6. The image of the wreath of wild olive granted to victors at Olympus springs to mind.

7. This is the idea in Prov. 1:9, where the father bids the son to listen to his instructions, for “they will be a garland to grace your head and a chain to adorn your neck.”

8. Another possibility is the crown of flowers worn on festive occasions, such as weddings.

9. See also 2 Tim. 4:8 and 1 Peter 5:4.

10. So Paul in 1 Cor. 9:24–25 contrasts the games, in which only one can win, with the life of spiritual endeavor, in which all can prove victorious.

11. See Luke 6:35–36, in which Jesus says that if we are merciful as God is merciful, we will be called “sons of the Most High.”

12. While James does not offer a full blown theodicy (an attempt to reconcile the presence of evil with the belief in a good God), it is not unlikely that he has in mind the theology of the book of Job.

13. Homer, Odyssey, 1.32–34.

14. In Matt. 5:28 Jesus speaks of “lust”; Paul in 2 Tim. 3:6 speaks of those who are swayed by “evil desires”; and Peter in 2 Peter 1:4 speaks of escaping the corruption caused by “evil desires.”

15. See pp. 18, 23–24, 56–58, above. It is interesting to note that the variety of rabbinic views concerning the yeṣerim (sometimes it is undifferentiated, sometimes clearly evil, and sometimes clearly pure) parallels the intended ambiguity of James’s use of peirasmos.

16. It should not be assumed that apoteleo must bear a negative sense. Jesus uses the word of himself in Luke 13:32: “[I will] heal [apoteleo] people … ! will reach my goal” (teleoumai, which literally means, “I am perfected”).

17. The picture of the “two ways” is clear in the book of Proverbs, which offers us two examples of wise behavior (the wise man, the good wife/wise woman), and two examples of negative behavior (the foolish man, the wicked woman). Similarly, Jesus speaks of two ways or “two gates”: the one broad and easy, which leads to destruction; and the small and narrow one, which leads to life and requires diligence in order successfully to navigate its approach and passage (see Matt. 7:13–14; Luke 13:24–30).

18. See also Num. 10:29; Josh. 21:45; Ps. 85:12.

19. Notably Ralph P. Martin, James, 31–32, 39–42.

20. Aelius Aristides, Orations, 23.30.

21. The correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto has come to us in fragmentary form, and no standard ordering is yet in force. This quotation, taken from paragraph 7 of a letter from Fronto to Marcus Aurelius dated A.D. 143, may be found on page 89 of the first volume of the Loeb edition of Fronto’s correspondence.

22. Among many similar passages see 1 Kings 14:10; 2 Kings 22:16; Isa. 24:6; 34:5; 43:28; Jer. 6:19; 11:8; 35:17; 39:16; Mal. 4:6.

23. Stan Moser, “We Have Created a Monster,” Christianity Today (May 20, 1996), 26–27.

24. Scottie Smith, “Shepherding the Stars,” Christianity Today (May 20, 1996), 28.

25. In his Screwtape Letters C. S. Lewis points out that the enemy tries to keep us from recognizing his existence.

26. May 19, 1977, well after his resignation from the office of the presidency.

27. Thomas C. Oden, “Why We Believe in Heresy,” Christianity Today (March 4, 1996), 12–13.

28. David Guterson, Snow Falling On Cedars (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 347.

29. G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 203.

30. Richard J. Foster, “Becoming Like Christ,” Christianity Today (Feb. 5, 1996), 27.

1. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, and the others argued that the practice of the cult without a moral standard that linked devotion to God with practical care for others was worthless. One of the classic expressions of this idea is found in Micah 6:8: “What does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

2. Ralph P. Martin, James, 38, 41.

3. E.g., Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 91.

4. Dio Chrysostom, Orations, 32.2.

5. See also Prov. 13:3; 15:1; Eccl. 7:9; Sir. 1:22; 4:29; Ps. of Sol. 16:10; and many others.

6. James Adamson, The Epistle of James, 78.

7. In this verse James uses the word aner instead of the more typical anthropos for generic humanity. Although aner bears the dictionary definition of “man” as opposed to “woman,” at this juncture James uses it in the interests of stylistic variety (cf. also 1:8, 12).

8. Prov. 15:1 springs to mind: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger.“

9. See also Matt. 5:20; 6:33.

10. This has a parallel in Paul: Christians are not to exact retribution, for that belongs to God alone: “Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Rom. 12:19).

11. In Rom. 6:3–4 Paul speaks of new life in Christ as baptism: “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? … in order that … we too may live a new life.” This image of dying to the old self was symbolized by the removal of dirty clothes—“stripping off” the old life.

12. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 81.

13. It is the word used in Rev. 1:3: “Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it….”

14. On this matter see G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 385–93.

15. It is not inopportune to note that in early Christian literature the doctrine of Christianity was frequently spoken of as a “law.” But as with James and the Prophets, this law has the power to change hearts. See Barnabas 2:6 and Justin Martyr’s first Apology, 1.43.

16. Michael Cromatie, “How We Muddle Our Morals,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (May/June 1996), 14.

17. Amos argues that worth of worship was contingent upon moral behavior: “You who turn justice into bitterness and cast righteousness to the ground…. You hate the one who reproves in court and despise him who tells the truth. You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain…. I hate, I despise your religious feasts; I cannot stand your assemblies. Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them…. Let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:7, 10–11, 21–22, 24).

18. Laws, The Epistle of James, 91.

19. In recent years this view has been overturned. In a series of important works, but most significantly his Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), E. P. Sanders has shown that first-century Jews kept the law not to earn salvation, but as a way of expressing the fact of their salvation. Simply being Jewish meant that they were within the sphere of God’s grace. That Sanders is right can be seen in the attack against this view leveled by both John the Baptist (Matt. 3:9) and Jesus (John 8:31–41). In both cases the claim of ethnicity is shown to be insufficient. Instead, it is actions that arise from the heart which demonstrate that “stones” can be “children of Abraham.”

20. Sanders argues, quite rightly, that there was great variety to be found within the Pharisaic tradition. Many Pharisees found themselves in general agreement with Jesus concerning the law, as the Gospels attest.

21. Mishnah Aboth, 1:2. This translation is found in Herbert Danby, The Mishnah Translated From the Hebrew With Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1933).

22. Hans Conzelmann, in his An Outline of the Theology of the New Testament, tr. J. Bowden (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), in consideration of the Jewish law writes, “The question is: can obedience be achieved by legalistic casuistry at all? What is sought after is not just formal fulfillment, but the correspondence of my will with the will of God” (p. 21). He further writes (p. 226) that a “distinction must be made between the aim of the law which God pursued in the dispensation of the law, and the use made of the law by men. The law reveals the will of God. But it cannot by itself bring about fulfillment—it is ‘weak.’ ”

23. See Temba L. J. Mafico, “Just, Justice,” ABD, 3:1127–29.

24. See J. J. Scullion, “Righteousness (OT),” ABD, 5:724–36.

25. Isa. 5:7 depicts God as one who searches in Israel for justice (mišpat) but finds only bloodshed (miśpaḥ), who looks for righteousness (ṣedaqah) but finds only distress (ṣe‘aqah).

26. See also Ps. 51:4–7, 10; Amos 5:21–23.

27. Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses (New York: Vintage, 1992), 136.

28. The meaning of his name is ambiguous, but it could mean “the LORD throws,” perhaps implying that God has thrown him into a hostile situation. Jeremiah’s life was not pleasant, but was one of distress and anguish. “Alas, my mother, that you gave me birth, a man with whom the whole land strives and contends! I have neither lent nor borrowed, yet everyone curses me” (Jer. 15:10).

29. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 67–79.

30. The obverse is true as well. As St. Augustine noted in his City of God (14.15–16), the pursuit of earthly pleasures only serves to make us jaded to these “pleasures,” requiring an ever more elevated experience to achieve the same effect.

31. In a famous experiment Stanley Milgram assigned to a number of volunteer subjects the role of “teacher” and explained that they would participate in an experiment testing the effect of electric shock on learning. In reality, it was an experiment testing responses to authority. The “teachers” were introduced to the “student” (actually an actor) and were then shown bogus electronic equipment that appeared authentic, including a shock switch and dial marked from 15 volts (labeled “mild shock”) to 300 volts (labeled “intense shock”) to 450 volts (marked “Danger: Severe Shock”). Each time the “student” answered a question incorrectly, the “teachers” were expected to administer a higher level of shock. If necessary, a researcher in a lab coat instructed the “teacher” to continue increasing the voltage. At the level of 120 volts the “student” shouted in pain, at 150 volts the “student” demanded to be released from the experiment, and at 270 volts he screamed in agony. After 330 volts the “student” exhibited dead silence. Well over half of the “teachers” willingly turned the dial to 300 volts, and more than 30 percent continued to turn the dial all the way to 450 volts. While Milgram’s experiment tested conformity, it also revealed the disturbingly high human capacity for insensitivity. The experiment is described in John J. Macionis, Sociology, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1997), 178.

32. Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, 46.

33. It is emblematic of the random inconsistency of this phenomenon that the public reacted in some outrage to Senator Bob Packwood’s steadfast refusal to admit that he had sexually harassed female staffers for years, even though sixteen women made such charges in 1992. The closest Packwood came to an apology was to claim that he never meant to make anyone feel uncomfortable, and that he must have been drunk during these episodes and was therefore somehow “innocent” of purposeful wrongdoing.

34. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 23–27.

35. See Phil Taylor, “Bad Actors,” Sports Illustrated (January 30, 1995), 18–23. Taylor describes the case of Derrick Coleman, who during the 1994–1995 season earned $7.5 million with the New Jersey Nets and refused to comply with the team dress code while traveling. In anticipation of the fines he knew he would incur, he smugly presented his coach with a blank check.

36. Tim Kurkjian, “Public Enemy No. 1,” Sports Illustrated (October 14, 1996), 28–35.

37. Julian the Apostate, Letters, 22.430.

38. Carl R. Rogers, “Reinhold Niebuhr’s The Self and the Dramas of History: A Criticism,” Pastoral Psychology, 9 (1958): 15–17; quoted in David G. Meyers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy—And Why (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 110.

39. See Meyers, The Pursuit of Happiness, 27. Meyers has drawn upon a number of articles published by Weinstein.

40. Ibid., 110–11.

41. Augustine, Enchiridion, 30.

1. Among many who opt for this line of interpretation, see James Adamson, The Epistle of James, 105–6.

2. See Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 105–10; Ralph P. Martin, James, 57–59.

3. James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 185.

4. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 93.

5. A strong case in favor is made by C. Burchard, “Zu Jakobus 2,14–26,” ZNW 71 (1980): 28–30.

6. This position is championed by Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 95–97, who argues, quite rightly, that the intent of James is to show that Jesus is a theophany, a “manifestation of the presence of God.”

7. Adamson, The Epistle of James, 102–4. Adamson’s argument is impressive, and his solution ought to be considered.

8. The first two words of verse 2 (ean gar), which the NIV renders “suppose,” could also be translated “for example” or “to illustrate.” There is no clear reason to believe that this is merely a hypothetical situation. James is most likely referring to an actual situation in the life of the community.

9. See Luke 15:22. It is probably too optimistic to suggest that the ring here signifies a member of the equestrian order, and this may account for the attempt of Laws to shy away from this position after seeming to endorse it (see her The Epistle of James, 98–99). It is not, however, out of the question. Of the 731 inscriptions of Diaspora Judaism found in Italy, seven or perhaps eight refer to “God-fearers,” and one of these is a Roman of equestrian rank. See K. G. Kuhn and H. Stegemann, “Proselyten,” Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft-Supplement IX, 1248–83.

10. Adamson (The Epistle of James, 105) sees this as evidence of an early date for James, and he may very well be right. However, it should be noted that later Christian writers could use “synagoge” to refer to Christian meetings (for example, Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp, 4.2). He further argues that the person greeting the newcomers may be a Christian version of the Jewish ḥazzan, the usher in the synagogue. Adamson envisions an early Christian-Jewish synagogue service as the setting, perhaps in Galilee.

11. Davids, The Epistle of James, 108.

12. This is the same term used in Zech. 3:3–4 to describe the filthy clothes worn by Joshua the high priest, symbolic of the sin of the people.

13. Martin, James, 61.

14. Davids, The Epistle of James, 109.

15. W. B. Ward, “Partiality in the Assembly: James 2:2–4,” HTR (62, 1969): 87–97.

16. Ibid., 89–90.

17. Ibid., 89.

18. Laws, The Epistle of James, 102.

19. Cicero made his name through the successful prosecution of Verres, a former governor of Sicily who, as was common, extorted money from his subjects. Only the overpowering talent of Cicero led to the unusual outcome, the verdict of guilty. See Cicero, Verrine Orations.

20. See also Matt. 5:3.

21. Ernst Bammel, “πτωχός,” TDNT, 6:899.

22. Ibid., 885–915 (esp. 897, 911).

23. The case is similar in 1 Cor. 11, where Paul fights against the encroachment of the standards of the popular—first in the use of dress, which indicates a self-important attitude (the lack of head coverings for women), and second in the discriminatory practices of public meals.

24. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 196.

25. In A.D. 109/110 Pliny the younger was appointed by his friend, Emperor Trajan, to be his personal legate to the province of Bithynia-Pontus (northern Turkey today). Pliny and Trajan carried on a lively correspondence concerning many different matters of interest to the state. Some of these letters have to do with Christianity, and two of these (Pliny, Epistulae, 96–97) are of concern here. In the first Pliny describes Christians and their practices and requests advice on how to handle the matter legally. Trajan responds that Christians should be left alone, unless someone else has brought a charge against them. “You have done well, my dear Pliny, in the examination of those charged with being Christians…. These people are not to be hunted out, but if they are brought before you and the charge can be proven, they are to be punished.”

26. Scot McKnight (forthcoming) argues that “the Name” was how Jesus referred to God.

27. Hermas, Similitudes, 8.1.1; 8.6.4; 9.12.4. This last is particularly significant, because it claims that the name of the “son of God” must be received in order to enter the kingdom of God.

28. Isaiah 3:14–15 says, “The LORD enters into judgment against the elders and leaders of his people: ‘It is you who have ruined my vineyard; the plunder from the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people and grinding the faces of the poor?’ declares the Lord, the LORD Almighty” (see also 1:16; Amos 5:7; 6:12).

29. C. H. Dodd, The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder, 1935), 39.

30. As Wolfhart Pannenberg has shown (Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Revelation and Homosexual Practice,” Christianity Today (Nov. 11, 1996), 35, 37), Jesus argues that the original intent of God revealed in the Creation accounts take precedence over Mosaic Law.

31. Seneca, De Consolatione ad Helviam, 12.1.

32. An exception here is race. The United States remains a cultural context in which, as Cornel West has said, race matters.

33. See the discussion of G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London: Duckworth, 1981), 31–69.

34. Among many other references see Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, VII, in which Marx claims that economic conditions are chief in defining a class.

35. Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), 88–89. MacMullen estimates that the equestrians accounted for less than a tenth of one percent of the total population of the empire, and senators for two-thousandths of one percent of the population.

36. The feet of slaves were marked with white chalk before they were to be sold.

37. Juvenal, Satires, 1.110–14.

38. See Michael Woloch, “Four Leading Families in Roman Athens,” Historia 18 (1969): 503–12.

39. Martial (Epigrams, 3.33) even went so far as to say that sexual relations with a free woman were to be preferred to those with a former slave, and these were to be preferred to those with a slave.

40. But not to other senators. Juvenal tells us of a wealthy libertus, the owner of five shops, who feels he is regarded as nothing compared to a senator, now destitute, forced into tending sheep (Satires, 1.102–6).

41. See R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1982), 286–87. In the east the number was more fluid, ranging from 30 to 500.

42. See Dio Chrysostom, Orationes, 40.13–14.

43. See A. H. M. Jones, The Greek City (Oxford: Clarendon, 1949), 180; P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1970), 84, 224–25.

44. There are a few cases of women serving on a local decurionate, but only in very small towns. This has led to speculation that women were allowed this honor only as a last resort.

45. See Pliny, Epistulae, 10, 112–13.

46. Martial, Epigrams, 10.116; relates that it was common for patrons in Rome to pay their clients about six sesterces a day, the rough equivalent of the figure necessary for an average meal. The term originally designated the basket in which patrons would place gifts for the clients.

47. See the tables on pp. 184–86 of R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire.

48. Upon manumission former slaves normally became the clients of their former masters.

49. Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284, 125, quotes a political slogan preserved in Pompeii: “The united street neighbors urge the election of So and So for magistrate. He will provide a four-pair gladiatorial show.” Election to an office brought status and the opportunity for its further enhancement.

50. During his reign Augustus felt compelled to pass legislation limiting the number of slaves one could manumit (the Lex Fufia Caninia of 2 B.C.), the minimum age (set at 20 by the Lex Aelia Sentia of A.D. 4), and the favorable conditions under which slaves were manumitted (the Lex Iunia of A.D. 19).

51. Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 18.3.

52. In the middle decades of the second century A.D., Smyrna and Pergamum lusted after the title “First and Greatest Metropolis of Asia,” which had historically been used of Ephesus. The Emperor Antoninus confirmed the right of Ephesus to the title, and Pergamum had to be content with “Metropolis of Asia and the first city to be Twice Temple-Warden” (Ramsay MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order [Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1966], 186; D. Magie, Roman Rule in Asia Minor [Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1950], 1496, n. 18).

53. See, for example, Pliny, Epistulae, 10, 39.

54. See Ramsay MacMullen, Roman Social Relations 50 B.C. to A.D. 284, 76.

55. A. H. M. Jones, The Roman Economy, ed. P. A. Brunt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 44.

56. In a similar fashion, Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble, in the television cartoon The Flintstones, gained a measure of self-respect through membership in the Sacred Order of the Water Buffalo.

57. Such as Joanna and Susanna (Luke 8:3), and Chloe (1 Cor. 1:11).

58. Cicero, Pro Cnaeo Plancio, 15; Libanus, Orationes, 48.31. Pliny agreed, speaking of the need to “preserve the distinctions between classes” (Epistulae, 9.5).

59. Sallust, Bella Catalinae, 37.4.

60. Aelius Aristides, Orationes, 26.59.

61. The family of Plancia Magna established themselves as a leading family in Perge within a century of moving there. See M. T. Boatwright, “Plancia Magna of Perge: Women’s Roles and Status in Roman Asia Minor,” Women’s History and Ancient History, ed. S. Pomeroy (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1991), 249–72.

62. Bruce Malina, The New Testament World: Insights From Cultural Anthropology (Atlanta: John Knox, 1984), 27.

63. Ibid., 26.

64. Ibid., 26–27.

65. Livy, History of Rome, 1.1.

66. I am not here arguing that the decline of Rome in some fashion parallels contemporary America. Rome survived for nearly half a millennia after people like Livy began to speak of its decline.

67. Guenter Lewy, Why America Needs Religion: Secular Modernity and Its Consequences (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996).

68. Ibid., ix–x.

69. Ibid., 141–42.

70. Ibid., xii.

71. Amy Sherman, “Hope Dreams,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (May/June 1996), 3, 31–33.

72. Ibid., 31.

73. Douglas L. Leblanc, “The Mars Hill of Television,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (November/December 1996), 14.

74. Steve Rabey, “Pastor X,” Christianity Today (Nov. 11, 1996), 40, 43.

75. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 99–100.

76. Lord Acton in a letter to Creighton, April 4, 1887.

77. January 15, 1997.

78. I drive a used Volvo wagon. I am relatively certain that I do not want to think about what this choice says about the owner.

79. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Donald P. NcNeill, and Douglas A. Morrison, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (New York: Image Doubleday, 1983), 61.

80. January 16, 1997.

81. Michael G. Maudlin, “Female Fury Fuels Box-Office Frenzy,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (January/February 1997), 7.

82. Nouwen, NcNeill, and Morrison, Compassion, 49–61.

83. George Hunter, The Contagious Congregation: Frontiers in Evangelism and Church Growth (Nashville: Abingdon, 1979), 149.

84. Sherman, “Hope Dreams,” 33.

85. See the book written by Wayne Gordon and Randall Frame on the Lawndale Community Church, Real Hope in Chicago (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).

86. Ibid., 31–33

1. The wealthy within Roman society would often host a feast for the citizens of a town or city. These are known as sportulae feasts, from the Latin which refers to a basket in which patrons would place the gifts given to their clients. The idea was that the display of such wealth and munificence brought honor, fame, and prestige. While we know of some of these feasts that included women, the vast majority did not. See Petronius, Satyricon, 45, 71; R. Duncan-Jones, The Economy of the Roman Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974), 184–86. Such feasts and other cash distributions were weighted in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Since the point was the honor and status of the donor, it was more important to impress the wealthy and the powerful. See Steven E. Ostrow, “Augustales Along the Bay of Naples,” Historia 35 (1985): 71.

2. It is striking that James appears to grant even less efficacy to this “faith” than the “faith” of the demons (2:19). This opens the possibility that some who hold and teach this position do not believe at all, but merely are using the church as an opportunity for status, much like the collegia. However, this is highly speculative.

3. James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 207.

4. See the fine treatment of this problem by Scot McKnight, “James 2:18a: The Unidentifiable Interlocutor,” WTJ 52 (1990): 355–64.

5. James B. Adamson, The Epistle of James, 124–25.

6. F. J. A. Hort, The Epistle of St. James: The Greek Text With Introduction, Commentary As Far As Chapter IV Verse 7, and With Additional Notes (London: Macmillan, 1909), 60–61.

7. This is the position of H. Windisch, Die Katholischen Briefe, ed. H. Preisker (HNT; Tübingen, Mohr, 1951), 16–17.

8. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 211, opts for this reading, although he is well aware of its shortcomings. The trenchant response of C. F. D. Moule to this interpretation is compelling: “To tell the truth, I cannot think of a less likely way to express what J. H. Ropes wants the James passage to mean than what stands there written.” This quote is taken from a personal note cited in James B. Adamson, The Epistle of James, 137.

9. Ralph P. Martin, James, 87.

10. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 125–26, is not convinced that this constitutes a direct reference to the Shema, but is willing to allow the possibility.

11. See Martin, James, 87–89.

12. Laws, The Epistle of James, 126–28.

13. There are New Testament parallels to this, especially in the Gospel of John, as the Bridging Contexts section will show.

14. While it is true that James cites the near sacrifice of Isaac, within Judaism this event was paired with the mercy displayed by Abraham in Gen. 18 as emblematic of the “reckoned righteousness” of Gen. 15:6. See A Rabbinic Anthology, ed. G. G. Montefiore and H. Loewe (New York: Schocken, 1974), no. 1172.

15. It is also worth noting that both Abraham and Rahab must be seen as proselytes. Joshua 2:11 has Rahab declare that the God of the spies is God in heaven and on earth, and 6:25 says that Rahab lived in Israel.

16. In the introduction to his first German edition of the New Testament (1522), Luther wrote:

In fine, Saint John’s Gospel and his first epistle, Saint Paul’s epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and Saint Peter’s first epistle—these are the books which show thee Christ, and teach thee everything that is needful and blessed for thee to know even though thou never see or hear any other book or doctrine. Therefore is Saint James’s epistle a right strawy epistle in comparison with them, for it has no gospel character to it.

Although, as we have seen, Luther has much good to say about various verses in this letter.

17. G. E. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 592.

18. Ibid., 592.

19. Joachim Jeremias, “Paul and James,” ExpTim 66 (1954–1955): 368–71. Jeremias sees in James 2:19 (“the demons believe”) a reflection of the rabbinic conception of ‘amuna, which means the assertion of monotheism (370). He does grant that here James refers to a popular conception of faith and that James knows another, the assurance that God hears our prayers. Nevertheless, Jeremias does say that pistis “with James means—to admit the existence of God” (370). This limited definition is unsatisfactory.

20. Ladd, A Theology of the New Testament, 592.

21. Laws, The Epistle of James, 128–30.

22. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 179, 185–90.

23. Martin, James, 81.

24. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, tr. R. H. Fuller (New York: Macmillan 1960), 99.

25. Stephen L. Carter, Integrity (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

26. See Michael Cromartie, “How We Muddle Our Morals,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (May/June 1996), 14.

27. Augustine, Confessions, 1.1.1.

28. January 29, 1997.

29. As a young man Bonhoeffer was aware that National Socialism was an attempt to make history without God, and in 1933 he denounced the system that made the Führer its god and idol. He was a leader of the underground confessional church in Germany during World War II. Eventually he became involved in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler and was executed at the concentration camp at Flossenburg on April 9, 1945. For a fuller account, see Thomas Powers, “The Conspiracy That Failed,” The New York Review of Books (Jan. 9, 1997), 49–54. The article is a review of several books on the so-called “German Resistance” and mentions Bonhoeffer.

30. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship, 45, 47.

31. Ibid., 47.

32. Ibid., 69, 76.

33. Ibid., 68.

34. Robert Hilburn, “Rap,” Los Angeles Times Calendar (April 2, 1989).

35. One of the distinctive features of Los Angeles gangster rap was its unabashed concern for the accumulation of wealth. The New York-based group Public Enemy, in contrast, positioned themselves as the harbingers of Black interests and Black nationalism.

36. Mike Davis, City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles (New York: Vintage, 1992), 302.

37. Paul Ong, The Widening Divide: Income Inequality and Poverty in Los Angeles (UCLA; June 1989), quoted in Mike Davis, City of Quartz, 315.

38. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, 309.

39. Nicholas Dawidoff, “The Pop Populist,” The New York Times Magazine (Jan. 26, 1997), 71.

40. Mike Davis, City of Quartz, 320, n. 65.

41. Ibid., 283.

42. Ibid., 284, 286.

43. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 64.

44. Augustine, Confessions, 7.11.17–12.18.

45. Quoted in Mary Ann Glendon, “The Man Who Loved Women and Democracy,” First Things (February 1977), 43.

46. John Perkins, Let Justice Roll Down (Ventura, Calif.: Regal 1976), 78–79.

47. Ibid., 79.

48. Ibid., 79–80.

49. Ibid., 109.

50. Ibid., 204–6.

51. Ibid., 7.

1. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 140, sees no clear link.

2. See Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 135, 149, 155.

3. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 328.

4. Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1969), 243–45, provides a number of examples. The Talmud (b. Yom. 71b) relates that one year on the eve of the Day of Atonement a crowd was escorting the high priest to his home. Having spied two scribes, the crowd left the high priest in favor of them.

5. Davids, The Epistle of James, 138.

6. Proverbs 16:27–28 says, “A scoundrel plots evil, and his speech is like a scorching fire. A perverse man stirs up dissension, and a gossip separates close friends” (see also 10:8, 11, 19; 18:7–8).

7. Early in World War II a shell from the German battleship Bismarck sunk the heavy cruiser Hood, the pride of the British navy. A great chase commenced, and the Bismarck was finally doomed when a torpedo destroyed its rudder, causing it to sail haplessly in circles until a barrage of British naval artillery sent her to the bottom of the Atlantic. See Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton and Mifflin, 1950), 315–19.

8. This was an image known to ancient writers; see Plutarch, Moralia, 33.

9. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 139, refers unfavorably to Reicke’s explanation that James wishes to link Paul’s image of the church as a body to the image of the church as a boat. This begs the dating question, for there is no biblical reference to the church as a ship. The reference to the ark in 1 Peter 3:20 may provide the basis for this picture, but there is no evidence for it.

10. M. Dibelius, James: A Commentary on the Epistle of James, rev. H. Greeven, tr. M. A. Williams (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976), 185–90.

11. Davids, The Epistle of James, 140.

12. See Ralph P. Martin, James, 113.

13. Note Prov. 26:21: “As charcoal to embers and as wood to fire, so is a quarrelsome man for kindling strife” (see also 16:27; Ps. 39:1–3; 120:2–4).

14. In one of his letters to Trajan Pliny makes mention of an urban fire: “While I was inspecting another area of the province, a fire in Nicomedia consumed many private homes and two public buildings, the club for elders and the temple of Isis, even though a road runs between them. It was encouraged at first by a breeze, but it would not have been so violent were it not for the uncaring attitude of the citizens. It seems people stood and watched the disaster, immobile, doing nothing to stop it. Nor is there even one fire engine in town, nor a bucket, nor any other instrument for fighting a fire” (Pliny, Epistulae, 10.33).

15. Traditionally the “fires” mentioned here are pictured as forest fires, a tradition the NIV continues. While this is not incorrect, the Greek term used here, hylen, is derived from hyle, which means a conflagration, whether of timber or cut wood. For this reason the horror of fire in an urban center is not out of the question here.

16. See James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 234; James B. Adamson, The Epistle of James, 158.

17. Martin, James, 115.

18. This interpretation is strengthened by the appearance of similar themes in 3:15 (“Such ‘wisdom’ does not come down from heaven, but is earthly, unspiritual, of the devil”) and in 4:7 (“Resist the devil”).

19. Gehenna (here rendered “hell”) could function as a circumlocution for Satan, just as “heaven” is frequently a circumlocution for God (see Luke 15:21).

20. Martin, James, 116; Davids, The Epistle of James, 143–44.

21. Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.34.

22. See the discussion on this expression in 1:4.

23. Found in the New Testament only here and in James 1:8.

24. The image was not unknown to the Hebrews. Psalm 140:3 says: “They make their tongues as sharp as a serpent’s; the poison of vipers is on their lips.”

25. Psalm 62:4 says, “With their mouths they bless, but in their hearts they curse.”

26. See the discussion on James 1:26, pp. 96–97.

27. Midrash Bereshith 1. 1. Cf. also Mark 14:61, which includes the question of the high priest, “Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?”

28. In 1 Cor. 5:5 Paul offers his opinion that the man guilty of incest ought to be handed over to Satan in order to destroy the sinful nature, so that his spirit might be saved; in at least one text (Rom. 3:8) Paul judged that the condemnation of some was well deserved.

29. On this issue see H. Bietenhard, “γέεννα,” NIDNTT, 2:208–9; Duane F. Watson, “Gehenna,” ABD, 2:926–28.

30. Lord Acton, “Letter to Bishop Creighton,” September 5, 1887. Henry Adams said, “A friend in power is a friend lost” (The Education of Henry Adams, ch. 7).

31. It is for this reason that in Rev. 21:1, when the new heaven and the new earth are described, the first item mentioned is that “there was no longer any sea.”

32. William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory; 1874–1932 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983), 867, 870.

33. Ibid., 876.

34. Augustine, De correptione et gratia, 9.

35. Cornelius Plantinga Jr., Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 163–64, 180–81.

36. J. A. Hanson, “It’s Heavy, Man” (a review of the movie “Trainspotting”), Regeneration Quarterly, 2 (Fall 1996): 41.

37. Ibid.

38. Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World (New York: Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1994), 3.

39. Plantinga, Not The Way It’s Supposed to Be, 55.

40. Soranus, Gynaecology, 1.30. Soranus was born in Ephesus late in the first century A.D. He studied medicine in Alexandria and practiced in Rome under Trajan (A.D. 98–117) and Hadrian (117–138).

41. Churchill had little use for opinion polls. He said, “It is not a good thing always to be feeling your pulse and taking your temperature. Although one has to do it sometimes, you do not want to make a habit of it. I have heard it said that a Government should keep its ear to the ground, but they should also remember that this is not a very dignified attitude” (Manchester, The Last Lion, 106–7).

42. Dick Morris, Behind the Oval Office: Winning the Presidency in the Nineties (New York: Random House, 1997).

43. Garry Wills, “The Real Scandal,” The New York Review of Books (Feb. 20, 1997), 4.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid., 6.

46. Quoted in ibid.

47. Stephen L. Carter, The Culture of Disbelief: How American Law and Politics Trivialize Religious Devotion (New York: Basic Books, 1993). On pages 4–5 Carter cites this example: “When Hillary Rodham Clinton was seen wearing a cross around her neck at some of the public events surrounding her husband’s inauguration as President of the United States, many observers were aghast, and one television commentator asked whether it was appropriate for the First Lady to display so openly a religious symbol. But if the First Lady can’t do it, then certainly the President can’t do it, which would bar from ever holding the office an Orthodox Jew under a religious compulsion to wear a yarmulke.“

48. Larry Woiwode, “A Martyr Who Lives,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (March/April 1996), 23–25.

49. As of this writing the email address for this web site is (http://www.anacapa.net /~lesid/icc/icc.htm). A more general website sponsored by ex-members may be found at (http://www.reveal.org/).

50. Philip Yancey, “A State of Ungrace. In Fighting the Culture Wars: Has the Church Forgotten Its Central Message?” Christianity Today (Feb. 3, 1997), 32.

51. Ibid.

52. C. Stephen Evans, “Why I Feel Sorry for Bishop Spong,” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (January/February 1997), 5.

53. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Public Square,” First Things 71 (March 1997): 69.

54. See John Wimber, “Signs, Wonders and Cancer,” Christianity Today (Oct. 7, 1996), 49–51.

55. The saying has been attributed to many others throughout history.

56. Thucydides, History of the Peloponessian War, 1.20.

57. Herodotus, History, 1.60.

58. Yancey, “A State of Ungrace,” 36.

59. Quoted in Thomas Powers, “The Conspiracy That Failed,” The New York Review of Books (Jan. 9, 1997), 50.

60. Henri Frederick Amiel, Journal (Aug. 30, 1887).

61. Manchester, The Last Lion, 596.

62. Ibid., 597.

63. Dennis Ngien, “The God Who Suffers,” Christianity Today (Feb. 3, 1997), 41.

64. Manchester, The Last Lion, 182–83.

65. New York Times (Feb. 26, 1997): 1.

66. Ibid.

67. Ibid.

68. Ibid., 13.

1. Based largely on grammatical evidence, Dibelius argued that this section was originally an independent unit, as there appeared to be “no connection of thought” to the preceding argument in James (M. Dibelius, A Commentary on the Epistle of James, rev. H. Greeven, tr. M. A. Williams [Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1976], 207). However one weighs the grammatical evidence, there are, in fact, numerous connections.

2. As Paul argued in 1 Corinthians 1, the “wisdom” of this world (the pursuit of which is dominated by self-interest, the desire for wealth, and the desire for status) is diametrically opposed to the wisdom of God. James has made a case similar to that of Paul in 1 Cor. 2 and 3.

3. See also Dan. 5:12, in which Daniel is described as a man with a “keen mind and knowledge and understanding.” In Job 28:28 God, apparently addressing the entire human community through Job, says, “The fear of the Lord—that is wisdom, and to shun evil is understanding.”

4. Ralph P. Martin, James, 129.

5. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 150.

6. See Rom. 13:13; 2 Cor. 12:20; Gal. 5:20.

7. Phil. 3:6. See also Rom. 10:2, where Paul describes the Israelites—“they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge.”

8. See 1 Kings 19:10, 14; John 2:17; 2 Cor. 7:7; esp. 11:2, where Paul speaks of “godly jealousy.”

9. Paul uses it this way; see 2 Cor. 12:20; Gal. 5:20, two texts cited above.

10. Aristotle, Politics, 5.3.

11. James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 246.

12. 1 Cor. 2:14; 15:44, 46; Jude 19.

13. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon 1994), 99–100.

14. Tertullian (Against Praxeas, 1.6) relates that the Montanists branded the orthodox with this term.

15. While the speech of Jesus is often hyperbolic—“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother … he cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26)—the point is clear: Jesus demands our primary allegiance.

16. See also Phil. 4:8; 1 John 3:3.

17. See the discussion concerning the meaning of “mature” and “complete” in 1:4 and 3:7.

18. Davids, The Epistle of James, 154.

19. In 1 Tim. 3:3 Paul uses it to describe the ideal behavior of church leaders.

20. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 165–66.

21. H. Beck, C. Brown, “Peace,” NIDNTT, 2:777.

22. Joseph P. Healey, “Peace,” ABD, 5:206.

23. In 1 Kings 5:4 Solomon says, “The LORD my God has given me rest on every side, and there is no adversary or disaster.” In Judg. 4:17 we read, “Sisera, however, fled on foot to the tent of Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, because there were friendly relations between Jabin king of Hazor and the clan of Heber the Kenite.”

24. William Klassen, “Peace,” ABD, 5:209.

25. Thucydides, The History of the Peloponnesian War, 1.42.

26. William Manchester, The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone; 1932–1940 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1988), 95.

27. Ibid., 82.

28. New York Herald Tribune (May 12, 1933).

1. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 167, sees no structural connection, but does observe that the transition is “understandable.“

2. See the discussion of the two ways in the Original Meaning section of 1:16–18 (pp. 75–78).

3. The term machai is related to machaira, the Greek word Homer uses to indicate a short sword or a long knife. Machai is often reserved for battles without weapons; these battles can be physical or verbal.

4. Recall the decision to define “twelve tribes,” “brothers,” and “the rich” as each referring to Christians.

5. Although later than the New Testament, these rabbinic sayings are evidence of this “war” among the members of the body. “R. Simeon b. Levi said: The evil yetzer of a man waxes strong against him day by day, and seeks to kill him, and if God did not help him, man could not prevail against it” (Kiddushin 30b). “The Rabbis say: so hard is the evil yetzer that even its Creator calls it evil, as it is said, ‘For the yetzer of man’s heart is evil from his youth’ (Genesis 8:21)” (Kiddushin 30b). In the Talmud, b. Nedarim 32a–32b, the numerical value of ha-satan (Satan) is 364, which, claims the Talmud, means that Satan has power over human beings for 364 days a year, but not on the day of Atonement. The Talmud goes on to say that humans are composed of 248 body parts, and the “Good Urge” and the “Evil Urge” struggle over the body as a whole, each lodging in various body parts.

6. See James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 253–54.

7. See comments of Ralph P. Martin, James, 146.

8. Martin argues that some of the Christians to whom James writes were former Zealots.

9. Some see the middle voice as marker of the prayer of the heart and the active voice denoting the prayer of the lips. F. J. A. Hort, The Epistle of St. James: The Greek Text with Introduction, Commentary As Far As Chapter IV Verse 7, and Additional Notes (London: Macmillan, 1909), 89, saw the middle voice as the designation of asking for something and the active voice designating the asking of a person.

10. The premise of the book of Hosea is that the people of Israel have been adulterous (see also Jer. 3:7–10).

11. As we have seen, in Dan. 7 this is pictured as four beasts (human governments and institutions) that stamp on the earth and devour flesh, but whose dominion is taken away by the Son of Man in order to institute God’s kingdom.

12. Martin, James, 148. He points out that the verb “chooses” (boulomai) implies a conscious choice. Of course people often make conscious choices in ignorance of the ramifications, especially if duplicity is involved.

13. In John 14:17 Jesus refers to the Spirit in him who will be in them once his crucifixion and resurrection are accomplished: “You know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.” In 14:23 Jesus speaks even more deeply of this love-relationship between God the Father, Son, and Spirit and with human beings: “My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.“

14. Note text note on this verse in NIV. The subject could also be the human spirit: “The spirit that he caused to live in us is one of jealousy and envy.” This translation leaves us with the human spirit bent toward friendship with the world. This is not off the mark, but it does seem to make less sense of the current trajectory of James’s argument. Furthermore, the subject of the verb katokisen (to dwell) is God, and it makes the most sense for James to have the same subject for both verbs.

15. See the discussion “Satan, evil, and trials” on James 1:2–11 (pp. 56–58), and the discussion of 1:13–15 (pp. 72–75).

16. The discussion of the armor of God in Eph. 6 includes the idea that against the powers and the spiritual forces of evil Christians can “stand their ground” when properly prepared. First Peter 5:9 also commands Christians to “resist” the devil.

17. Martin, James, 153.

18. It is a part of the enduring attraction and interest of the “spiritual gospel” that in John this verb bears a literal sense (see John 12:32, “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself”).

19. G. B. Caird, The Language and Imagery of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), 17.

20. This seems to be the issue in John 4:9, where Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink. The text adds the comment, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Whatever the verb (synchraomai) means, it cannot signify complete noninteraction, for the disciples have gone into Sychar to secure food. Many years ago David Daube argued that synchraomai means “to use together with” and therefore concerns issues of purity in the preparation of food (David Daube, The New Testament and Rabbinic Judaism [Univ. of London: Altone Press, 1956], 375–79; cf. his earlier article, “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman,” JBL 69 [1950]: 137–47; see also John Marsh, The Gospel of Saint John [Middelsex: Penguin, 1971], 210).

21. This entire section is indebted to G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994), 150–52.

22. Eugene J. Lipman, The Mishnah: Oral Traditions of Judaism (New York: Schocken 1974), 18.

23. Herbert Danby, The Mishnah: Translated From the Hebrew With Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1933), xiii.

24. A good summary of the debate can be found in Jacob Neusner, “Mr. Sanders’ Pharisees and Mine: A Response to E. P. Sanders, Jewish Law from Jesus to the Mishnah,” SJT 44 (1991): 73–95. Sanders and Neusner are the most prominent of the partners in this debate.

25. Ron Hansen, Atticus (New York: HarperCollins, 1996), 7.

26. Ibid., 19–20.

27. Ibid., 227, 238.

28. Ibid., 240, 243.

29. Ibid., 247.

30. Charles R. Swindoll, Improving Your Serve: The Art of Unselfish Living (Waco, Tex.: Word, 1981), 54–57.

31. Bessel A. van der Kolk, J. Christopher Perry, and Judith Lewis Herman, “Childhood Origins of Self-Destructive Behavior,” American Journal of Psychiatry 148 (December 1991): 1665–71; Beth S. Brodsdky, Marylene Cloitre, and Rebecca A. Dulit, “Relationship of Dissociation to Self-Mutilation and Childhood Abuse in Borderline Personality Disorder,” American Journal of Psychiatry, 152 (December 1995): 1788–92.

32. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Public Square,” First Things 70 (February 1997): 69.

33. Timothy C. Morgan, “SBC Targets Clinton, Disney, Jews,” Christianity Today (July 1996), 66. Morgan quotes outgoing Southern Baptist Convention President James Henry Jr. as pleading for greater understanding and unity: “We as Southern Baptists are a diverse people. We must appreciate and appropriate this diversity for the common good.” The comments of new President Tom Ellit were less conciliatory. See also Keith Hinson, “University Independence Sparks Renewed Tensions,” Christianity Today (Feb. 3, 1997), 81.

34. Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1978), 46.

35. Daniel Berrigan, Whereon to Stand: The Acts of the Apostles and Ourselves (Baltimore: Fortkamp, 1991), xxiii.

36. A number of documents related to this issue, including the statement “Where It Is Corrupt, Purify It,” are available at (http://www.episcopalian.org/EU/Press_Releases/index.htm).

37. Penthouse (December 1996), 42, quoted in the United Voice editorial “Penthouse Rebukes the Church,” available at the website listed in note 36.

38. See the document “A Response to the Opinion of the Court for the Trial of a Bishop,” available at the website listed in note 36.

39. Richard John Neuhaus, “The Public Square,” 71.

40. The question of homosexuality from a clinical perspective is insightfully treated by Elizabeth Moberly, “Homosexuality and Truth,” First Things 71 (March 1997): 30–33. She points out that many recent studies on the biological origin of homosexual behavior are inconclusive. She advocates “respect for truth and respect for people” (33).

41. See the Contemporary Significance sections to 3:1–12; 3:13–18, pp. 188–202, 212–20.

42. J. Budziszewski, “Second Thoughts of a Secularist,” First Things 72 (April 1997): 43.

43. Ronald J. Sider, “Can We Agree to Agree?” Books and Culture: A Christian Review (January/February 1997), 27.

44. Ibid.

45. Ibid.

46. Leges sine moribus vanae.

47. See the Bridging Contexts section to James 3:1–12, pp. 187–88.

48. Baba Batra, 16a.

49. David M. Paton, Christian Missions and the Judgment of God (London: SCM, 1953), 15.

1. See Lev. 19:16, “Do not go about spreading slander among your people.”

2. See Ps. 101:5, “Whoever slanders his neighbor in secret, him will I put to silence.”

3. See Prov. 10:18, “He who conceals his hatred has lying lips, and whoever spreads slander is a fool.”

4. See L. D. Hurst, “The Ethics of Jesus,” DJG, 210–22.

5. See the discussion relative to “true membership” and the rich in James 1:2–11.

6. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 170.

7. See Epictetus, Discourses, 1.2.20.

8. See James H. Ropes, The Epistle of St. James, 276.

9. The eminent sociologist Rodney Stark has recently published a book, The Rise of Christianity, in which he says that Christianity grew because of its theology—a remarkable assertion given the usual attitude of sociologists toward religion. Stark says that “Christians introduced into a world of hatred and cruelty a totally new concept about humanity—that you had a responsibility to be compassionate and caring to everyone” (see review in Chicago Tribune, March 27, 1997).

10. Davids, The Epistle of James, 170–71.

11. “Wealthy,” of course, is a hopelessly inaccurate term, as what might appear to be a staggering fortune to a Galilean fisherman would be insignificant to an equestrian. Wealth was relative to location, status, and background.

12. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 190.

13. Gerd Theissen, The Social Setting of Pauline Christianity: Essays on Corinth, ed. and tr. by John H. Schütz (Philadelphia: Fortress 1982), 91–96.

14. Of course travel does not necessarily indicate the wealth of the traveler. But someone with wealth paid the bill. As is the case with so much else in the ancient world, the gaps in our knowledge about travel and its implications are disturbing. For example, why would Pliny feel the need illegally to secure an imperial travel permit so his wife could return to Rome on the occasion of the death of her grandfather? See Pliny, Epistulae, 10.45–46.

15. See Plato, Alcibiades, 135D. In this passage Socrates says, “if it be God’s will” (hoti ean theos ethele).

16. Laws, The Epistle of James, 193.

17. See W. Schneider, “Judgment,” NIDNTT 2:362–67.

18. The Gospel of John clearly adheres to this pattern. God is the judge (cf. 8:50, where Jesus says, “I am not seeking glory for myself, but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge”). John also argues that Jesus has been delegated the authority to judge by God, for in 5:22 Jesus says, “The Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son.” That Jesus judges in fidelity to God’s appointment is affirmed in 5:30, when Jesus says, “I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just.“

19. See A. H. M. Jones, “The Economic Life of the Towns of the Roman Empire,” The Roman Economy, ed. P. A. Brunt (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974), 35–60.

20. Libanius, Orationes, 46.22.

21. The term coloni signifies free peasants who were legally tied to the land.

22. Palladius, Lausiac History, 15.

23. Callistratus, Digest, 50.2.12.

24. Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans, ed. Hilton C. Oswald (Concordia: St. Louis, 1972), 258–60 (v. 25 of Luther’s Works).

25. Karl A. Olson, “The Covenant Constitution and Its History,” Narthex, 3/1 (February 1983), 11.

26. Cicero, Ad Familiares, 7.

27. John F. Alexander, Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus’ View of Wealth and Power (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986).

28. Chicago Tribune (May 11, 1997).

29. Joseph R. Blasi, Maya Kroumova, and Douglas Kruse, Kremlin Capitalism: The Privatization of the Russian Economy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1996).

30. Robert Cottrell, “Russia: The New Oligarchy,” New York Review of Books (March 27, 1977), 28.

31. Ibid., 30.

32. Martin Gardner, “How He Lost It,” The New York Review of Books (May 29, 1997), 29–32.

33. Ibid., 30.

34. For these examples see David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy and Why (New York: William Morrow, 1992), 40–42.

35. Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, 2.61.

36. President Clinton promised while campaigning for the presidency to do his best to address human rights violations in China, but on May 28, 1993, he abandoned that promise, claiming that economic engagement with China would improve the positions of all. This has proven to be a hollow position. At least the Reagan administration’s position vis-à-vis South Africa did assist in the end of apartheid. No parallel development is in the offing in China.

37. Arthur F. Holmes, Shaping Character: Moral Education in the Christian College (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991).

38. The work of sociologist James Davison Hunter seems to bear this out. His research has led him to two conclusions. (1) Most Americans believe in God and the existence of absolutes. (2) Most Americans do not feel it is appropriate to impose a universal set of moral principles on others. This split Hunter attributes to the success of the media in convincing Americans of the “rightness” of moral relativism. The irony of this is, of course, bitterly amusing. See Richard John Neuhaus, “Tongue-Tied in Public,” First Things 70 (February 1997), 58–59.

39. Wolfhart Pannenberg, “Revelation and the Homosexual Experience,” Christianity Today (Nov. 11, 1996), 35, 37.

1. Ralph P. Martin, James, 172; Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 195; and Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 174, also see the rich landowners as outside the Christian church.

2. G. B. Caird, “The Development of the Doctrine of Christ in the New Testament,” Christ For Us Today, ed. N. Pittenger (London: SCM, 1968), 69–70, pointed out that as helpful as the original meaning of a term may be, the only issue of prime importance is to understand what the author intended by that term.

Parallels to the New Testament in other literatures and religions are in themselves no evidence of dependence; and, even where dependence can be proved, the fact remains that to trace a word, an idea, or a practice to its origin helps us very little to explain what it means in its new setting. A probe into the pre-Mosaic origins of the Jewish Passover tells us nothing about the Christian Eucharist. Bultmann has told us the Prologue to the Fourth Gospel had a previous existence as a Gnostic hymn, and for all I know he may be right. But even if this could be proved beyond reasonable doubt, it would be a fact of singularly little importance to the commentator on the Gospel. What the hymn meant to its supposititious Gnostic author may provide an interesting exercise for the antiquarian. But for the exegesis of the Gospel all that matters is what it meant to the Evangelist; and this we can discover only by reading the Gospel.

3. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 197.

4. Salvian, On the Governance of God, 6.12.

5. Most of the time these landlords were absentee landlords. Tacitus (Annals, 12.23) tells us of Roman senators who owned vast estates in far provinces. Pliny considered purchasing a certain estate near many others that he owned but had never visited. He worried that it might be a poor purchase, because he liked to have estates in far-flung areas since it “amused” him to travel about (Pliny, Epistulae, 3.19); half of the Roman province of Africa was owned by six landlords (idem, Natural History, 18.35). During the reign of Trajan only 7 percent of the population owned 40 percent of various regions in Italy (Geza Alföldy, The Social History of Rome, tr. D. Braud and F. Pollock [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, Baltimore, 1988], 107). Likewise, Luke 12:16–21 and 14:18–19 speak of wealth in crops and land; while Matt. 25:14–30 speaks of money-lending as an avenue to wealth.

6. In the LXX Isa. 5:9 has the phrase kyriou sabaoth, who declares the vacancy of the fine houses of the landowning class.

7. Pliny (Epistulae, 3.19) writes there are three ways to make money: inheritance, loaning at interest, and marrying into money. By inheritance he meant land, which was the only sure basis for wealth. Cato recommended the cultivation of a cash crop, such as olive oil (Cato, De Agri Cultura, 2.7).

8. The American notion of “climbing the ladder” of economic success would have made no sense to the ancients. As M. Woloch (“Four Leading Families in Roman Athens,” Historia 18 [1969]) has pointed out, to an astonishingly high degree wealth and status remained the province of rigidly secure groups of families in any given locale.

9. Ralph P. Martin, James, 180.

10. Amos 5:11–12 speaks of this: “You trample on the poor and force him to give you grain. Therefore, though you have built stone mansions, you will not live in them; though you have planted lush vineyards, you will not drink their wine…. You oppress the righteous and take bribes and you deprive the poor of justice in the courts.”

11. Plutarch tells us that Cato considered himself the law on his estates, presiding over even capital trials (Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 21.3–7). Other practices endorsed by Cato, such as the chain-gang for slaves (Cato, De Agri Cultura, 56) and his advice that the owner or the representative of the owner arrogate to themselves the role of judge and jury (see Plutarch, Marcus Cato, 145), demonstrate with crystal clarity that Roman justice was for Roman citizens, and even then especially in urban settings.

12. Cato, De Agri Cultura, 2.7.

13. Plutarch, Cato, 21.5–6.

14. Cicero, De Officiis, 42.

15. Pliny, Natural History, 14.5.47–57.

16. N. Purcell, “Wine and Wealth in Ancient Italy,” Journal of Roman Studies, 75 (1985): 1–19.

17. Varro, Rerum Rusticarum, 1.17.1–7.

18. Ibid., 1.17.7.

19. Cf. also Philostratus (Vit. Soph., 547–48), who tells us that the fabulously wealthy Athenian of the early empire, Herodes Atticus, became wealthy through his landed estates worked by poor tenant farmers.

20. Philostratus, Vit. Apollonius, 1.15.

21. Sallust, The War With Cataline, 10.

22. Petronius, Satyricon, 44.

23. Juvenal, Satires, 1.110–16.

24. See Gerd Theissen, The Shadow of the Galilean, tr. John Bowden (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987), 75–82; S. Applebaum, “Judaea As a Roman Province: The Countryside As a Political and Economic Factor,” ANRW, 2nd series, ed. H. Temprorini and W. Haase (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1977), 8:355–99.

25. Josephus (Antiquities, 14.202–3) writes, “Gauis Caesar, Imperator for the second time, commanded that they shall pay a tax for the city of Jerusalem … every year except the seventh … in addition, they shall also pay tithes to Hyrcannus and his sons, just as they paid to their forebears.”

26. Josephus (Jewish War, 1.219–22) relates how the populations of several towns were sold into slavery when they were late paying their taxes.

27. Josephus, Antiquities, 17.304–8.

28. See Richard Horsley and John Hanson, Bandits, Prophets, and Messiahs, Popular Movements in the Time of Jesus (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), 55–56.

29. Seneca, Epistulae, 41.7.

30. See David G. Myers, The Pursuit of Happiness: Who Is Happy and Why (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992), 40–42.

31. The cover story for the June 1997 issue of Money was “How to Build Wealth On Even a Modest Income.”

32. Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study (New York: Paulist, 1977), 131.

33. See Lewis W. Spitz, The Renaissance and Reformation Movements, v. 2, The Reformation (St. Louis: Concordia, 1971), 313.

34. Dom Heldert Camara, Revolution Through Peace (New York: Harper, 1971), 142–43, quoted in Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, 122.

35. Donald P. McNeill, Douglas A. Morrison, Henri J. M. Nouwen, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982).

36. Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador, El Salvador, was assassinated on March 24, 1980. He had been Archbishop of San Salvador for three years. During this time he had weekly spoken out against the combination of wealthy elites and the government for their systematic campaign of torture and murder. This earned him their ire, and eventually his martyrdom. Pope John Paul II said Oscar Romero surrendered his life “for the church and the people of his beloved country” (see Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love: The Pastoral Wisdom of Archbishop Oscar Romero, compiled and trans. James R. Brockman [San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1988], xii).

37. Ibid., 162.

38. Paul Marshall and Lela Gilbert, Their Blood Cries Out: The Growing Worldwide Persecution of Christians (Dallas: Word, 1997).

39. World (May 31/June 7, 1997), 10.

40. Robert L. Borosage, “China Syndrome,” The Nation (June 9, 1997), 6–7.

41. Luther captured this idea perfectly. The great Luther scholar and Stanford professor, Lewis W. Spitz, put it this way (The Protestant Reformation: 1517–1559 [New York: Harper and Row, 1985], 86):

The Christian lives by faith alone, a faith which is trust in Christ (fiducia) not merely belief (credulitas). It must be the individual’s personal faith (fides explicita), not a general agreement with the facts of the biblical account (fides historica) or acquiescence in the stand of the church (fides implicita). Faith is the life of the heart (via cordis) which unsettles poise and insists upon man’s transformation, growth in holiness of life. Luther hoped to be known as the doctor of good works (doctor operum bonorum). The man of faith produces good works; it is not the works that make man good, as Aristotle argues in the Nicomachaean Ethics. Man is at the same time righteous and a sinner (simul justus et peccator); he is righteous in God’s eyes when forgiven for Christ’s sake, yet while on the earth he remains partially a sinner in his own eyes and in those of his neighbor. He is justified in hope, sinner in reality (justus in spe, peccator in re). Nevertheless, man can and should grow in holiness of life or sanctification. The most prominent emphases in Luther’s ethics were responsibility, gratitude, and stewardship, as expressions of love of God and fellow man, the neighbor in need of love.

42. Oscar Romero, The Violence of Love, 3, 10.

1. Fred O. Francis, “The Form and Function of the Opening and Closing Paragraphs of James and 1 John,” ZNW 61 (1970): 110–16.

2. Cf. Mishnah, Taanith 1.1–7, which refers to this.

3. Marcus Borg, “An Orthodoxy Reconsidered: The ‘End of the World Jesus,’ ” The Glory of Christ in the New Testament: Essays in Christology in Memory of George Bradford Caird, eds. L. D. Hurst and N. T. Wright (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), 207–17.

4. See G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon 1994), 32–33.

5. Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 184–85.

6. This is obvious. It also confirms our earlier decision to see the landowners of 5:1–6 as members of the Christian community and familiar enough with the Old Testament to see in their own behavior a parallel to the wealthy castigated by the prophets.

7. Similar sentiments regarding himself and his people were not infrequently on the lips of Jesus, even as he anticipated his own final persecution and death (see Matt. 23:37; Luke 9:22).

8. Sophie Laws, The Epistle of James, 214.

9. See the argument in Ralph P. Martin, James, 194 (though Martin does not have sympathy with this view).

10. There are four chief reasons. (1) The term hypomone (“perseverance”) and its cognates, which appear in 5:11, are prominent in James (1:3, 4, 12), yet occur only once in Job in the LXX (14:19), and even then it is not clear that it refers to Job. However, hypomone and its cognate forms are frequent in the Testament of Job. (2) In the Testament of Job the complaints are found on the lips of his wife, but not on those of Job. (3) The testing is portrayed as parallel to the testing of Abraham and is clearly satanic. (4) The charity of Job is stressed.

11. See, for example, Ps. 6 or Ps. 69:1, in which the psalmist declares, “Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.” In these, and other “psalms of lament,” the psalmist wonders if God hears his cry and if God will be true to the covenant and answer.

12. Augustine surmised that this referred to the death of Jesus; see Martin, James, 195.

13. See the discussion on pp. 269–70.

14. See Caird and Hurst, New Testament Theology, 27–30. Telos can mean both “end” in the sense of termination and “end” in the sense of goal.

15. See, for example, R. H. Fuller, A Critical Introduction to the New Testament (London: Duckworth, 1966), 57–58. But R. Jewett, in his The Thessalonian Correspondence: Pauline Rhetoric and Millenarian Piety (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), 16–18, summarizing the work of many others, has effectively argued for Pauline authorship of both letters.

16. Caird and Hurst, New Testament Theology, 243 (for a full discussion of the issue see 243–67).

17. See L. D. Hurst, “The Ethics of Jesus,” DJG, 210.

18.

19.

20. Albert J. Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978), notes that slave owners and even missionaries believed that the otherworldly emphasis of Christianity rendered a force for docility among slaves (290). However, Raboteau goes on to say, Christianity has often been the seedbed of subversion on moral grounds. Raboteau cites the case of the slave Henry Atkinson, who said, “I heard the white minister preach, and I thought within myself, I will seek a better world—here I am in bondage, and if there is a better world above, where I shall not be pulled and hauled about and tormented, as I am in this, I will seek it.” But Raboteau also notes that Henry Atkinson made good on an escape attempt (303–4).

21. Caird and Hurst, New Testament Theology, 244.

22. John of the Cross, The Dark Night of the Soul, 1.1–3.

23. Theophan the Recluse, quoted in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, eds. Reuben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), 113–14.

24. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday [Image Books], 1971), 34.

25. Henri J. M. Nouwen, Making All Things New: An Invitation to the Spiritual Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 65–66.

26. Richard J. Foster and James Bryan Smith (eds.), Devotional Classic: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993), 213–14.

27. Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, 13.2–3.

28. Foster and Smith, Devotional Classics, 179.

29. Malcolm Muggeridge, Something Beautiful for God, quoted in A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants, eds. Reuben P. Job and Norman Shawchuck (Nashville: The Upper Room, 1983), 111.

30. Eric Hoffer, interview with Eric Severeid of CBS News (Nov. 14, 1967).

31. Janet Peery, The River Beyond the World (New York: Picador, 1996), 9.

32. W. B. Yeats, “Easter, 1916,” lines 57–58.

1. See Peter H. Davids, The Epistle of James, 189.

2. Ralph P. Martin, James, 203.

3. Sirach 23:9, 11.

4. G. B. Caird, “The Development of the Doctrine of Christ in the New Testament,” Christ For Us Today, ed. N. Pittenger (London: SCM, 1968), 66–80.

5. Antiquities, 15.10.

6. This is based on the work of J. A. Motyer, The Message of James, 186–208.

7. Davids, The Epistle of James, 191.

8. D. Moo, The Letter of James, 175.

9. Davids, The Epistle of James, 192.

10. See Acts 11:30; 1 Tim. 5:17–19; 1 Peter 5:1; see also L. Coenen, “Bishop,” NIDNTT, 1:192–201.

11. Martin, James, 208.

12. See comments on 5:7–11, p. 285.

13. On this matter see Martin, James, 208–9.

14. Olive oil was used for a variety of medicinal purposes, including cleansing and soothing wounds (Isa. 1:6; Luke 10:34). Herod tried a hot oil bath to heal a variety of internal and external ailments (Josephus, Antiquities, 17:172); and Pliny tells us that oil was used to treat the gums and teeth, to keep the body supple, to neutralize “all poisons,” to restore vigor if fatigued, to serve as a laxative, and to improve vision (when mixed with honey) (Pliny, Natural History, 23.39–40).

15. J. Wilkerson, “Healing in the Epistle of James,” SJT 24 (1971): 326–45, argues that the oil was a medical and not a religious procedure. His point is that the church should embrace all forms of healing, and should support them through prayer.

16. Cf. also Heb. 11:32–40.

17. See the book by Gerald Sittser, A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), which explores through personal tragedy the relationship between suffering loss and experiencing God’s grace.

18. Hannah More, Religion of the Heart, ed. Hal M. Helms (Orleans, Miss.: Paraclete 1993), 198.

19. Publius Syrus, Sententiae, 50.

20. Brenda Meehan, Holy Women of Russia: The Lives of Five Orthodox Women Offer Spiritual Guidance for Today (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1997), 4.

21. More, Religion of the Heart, 199–200.

22. Ibid., 202.

23. Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (San Francisco: Harper, 1992), 219.

24. Sue Monk Kidd, When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 21–22.

25. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 205.

26. Cf. Mark 13:22–23, where Jesus warns, “For false Christs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and miracles to deceive the elect…. So be on your guard.”

27. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 210–16.

28. Quoted in ibid., 211.

29. Ibid., 206–7.

30. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 221–22.

31. From Rob Goldman, “Healing the World by Our Wounds,” The Other Side 27, no. 6 (November/December 1991): 24.

32. Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home, 209.

1. Paul found himself in a similar situation when he wrote 1 Corinthians. There members of the Christian community had also sought to use the church as an avenue to exalt themselves and had arrogated to themselves the mantle of teacher and prophet in order to validate these theological and cultural positions.

2. Ralph P. Martin, James, 218, is accurate but not technically correct to claim that James concludes with a call to refrain from disobedience.

3. Here again is a striking similarity to Jesus (see esp. Matt. 18:12–14; Luke 15:3–7; 19:10).

4. Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community (Exeter: Paternoster, 1980).

5. Ibid., 32.

6. In 1 Cor. 11:33–34, for instance, Paul instructs the entire congregation concerning the Eucharist; he does not give directions to the “elders” (see also 14:39–40; 16:2–3).

7. Paul instructs the entire congregation to “carry each other’s burdens” (Gal. 6:2) and to “encourage one another and build each other up” (1 Thess. 5:11).

8. Paul says that when one member has a grievance against another, it should be taken to the members of the congregation, not the church leaders (1 Cor. 6:1–6).

9. In Rom. 15:14 Paul says, “I myself am convinced, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, complete in knowledge and competent to instruct one another.”

10. Robert Banks, Paul’s Idea of Community, 139–41.

11. Ibid., 133.

12. On this matter see Richard B. Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament: Community, Cross, New Creation; A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (San Francisco: Harper, 1996), 101–4.

13. Ibid., 101.

14. Ronald J. Sider, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger: A Biblical Study (New York: Paulist, 1977).

15. Hannah More, Religion of the Heart, ed. Hal M. Helms (Orleans, Miss.: Paraclete 1993), 205.

16. G. B. Caird and L. D. Hurst, New Testament Theology (Oxford: Clarendon 1994), 204.