paul and martin luther v. james and harold bloom

I started reading Harold Bloom‘s Jesus And Yahweh, today.  Besides the fact that it is a provocative, insightful, and humorous read by a clearly well and widely read individual, the book also touches on historic debates and controversies that have arisen in the Christian religion.  One of them being the long exchange concerning the role of faith and works in justification.

Amid his reflections on Jesus of Nazareth (which, for Bloom, is the Jesus portrayed in Mark’s gospel), Bloom writes,

…in the Epistle of James…there is an overt polemic against Paul, [and] I am not impressed when scholars argue that James and Paul subtly can be reconciled.  Martin Luther‘s anti-Semitic diatribe against James counts far more: he reacted with fury to the Epistle’s “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24), a manifest repudiation of Paul’s “a man is justified by faith and not by works” (Romans 3:28). - Bloom from Jesus And Yahweh, p.38

I must admit that this issue has always puzzled me, and I, like Bloom and (clearly) Luther1, don’t believe this manifest contradiction can be easily smoothed over.  It is unconvincing to argue (as most have done…and as I used to) that what James has in mind here is not a kind of “works” which runs alongside or parallel to faith (though he so overtly proclaims as much) but a works which is the “proper outworking” of a “sincere” faith.

Now to be fair, Bloom did not quote the entire line from what has been dubbed “Romans 3:28.”  In actuality, Paul does not say that “a man is justified by faith and not by works,” but rather he writes, “a man is justified by faith and not by works of the law.”  That “of the law” part could be important, because then Paul could be speaking about a very particular conception of works in relation to the Mosaic law, whereas James is speaking more generally of righteous deeds, having no explicit reference to the Mosaic law.  However, this objection wouldn’t stand since both James and Paul, in speaking of “works,” refer to Abraham’s obedience to God.  Thus, they must have at least been conceptualizing in the same ball park when they used the word “works.”

The second trouble with these two New Testament writers is the way in which they reference Abraham.  James speaks of Abraham’s justification as happening at the time when he offered up his son Isaac (James 2:21, Genesis 22).  Thus, James sees Abraham’s obedience to God as a “fulfillment” (2:23) of his prior confession of faith in God’s promises (Genesis 15:1-6).  Paul, however, speaks of Abraham’s justification as happening at the moment God declared it in Genesis 15:6, which is when Abraham merely “believed”…prior to any “works” performed.  The writers’s divergent views on the reality of Abraham’s justification ostensibly mark another difficulty in trying to safely prove these two passages congruous.  (It should also be mentioned that this has many implications on the notions of justification.  That, of course, is whole other debate!)

In all honesty, I am at a loss at putting these two views together.  However, I don’t think harmonization is necessary and essential.  The pressure to reconcile all these details, though scholarly stimulating and intriguing, should not be our central task.  Of course, I’m sure this blatant disagreement will continue to prove a subject of discussion.  After all, the contrast is stark.  And while I’m aware of the different scholarly exchanges about which epistle was written first, it’s hard to believe that the two weren’t at least familiar with one another.  The language is so similar.  Either Paul or James (most likely James) is strong and (seemingly) purposefully disapproving of the other’s statement on the role of faith and works in justification.