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| Bskillet Registered user Username: Bskillet Post Number: 427 Registered: 8-2008 |
I still sometimes am not sure how to deal with the book of James. He seems to contradict Paul when he says we aren't justified by faith alone, but then he also seems to be using the words faith and justified differently than Paul does. I've always thought one of the central points of James is that faith is foundational. When I was unregenerate, I thought faith was akin to an intellectual belief. I thought it was like my head knowledge, or my ability to close the probabilistic gap between the evidence and the claims of the Bible. Faith is no such thing. It is beyond and before knowledge. It is a reality implanted in us by the Spirit, by which trust in God is the foundational basis of our lives. All knowledge or feeling or anything then flows from faith, not the other way around. So when I read James, I get the distinct feeling that he is contrasting intellectual knowledge, or "betting" as I would call it, with faith. Pascal once came up with the wager scheme, where a person chooses to have faith because he sees that, whether or not the Gospel is true, his life will be better off in all cases by believing. This is not faith. It is trading. I used to work on a Wall Street trading desk. Trading is based on "wagers," as it were, on some form of calculation of odds and an estimation that the market is mispricing those odds. Faith and trading are not the same at all. Because faith in God is foundational to the regenerate Christian, it becomes the means by which the Christian judges "odds," or "probabilities." Granted, no one is really sure what we even mean when we talk about "probabilities," but the Bayesians have a good way of looking at it: In its barest form, "probability" is simply a measure of the intensity of belief in some proposition. So probabilities only come in after faith, after belief. Abraham could attach a 100% probability to his progeny possessing Canaan because he had faith to start with. Faith, then, is not mere intellectual belief or wagering or anything like that. It is a supreme miracle placed in us by God in His grace. It is defiance of the way the world works, always trusting itself. Consequently, the obvious difference between mere intellectual head knowledge, and real faith, is that real faith, just by virtue of being what it is, will tend to impact actions. Head knowledge doesn't do so because it isn't always foundational to a person's core being. Now, when James illustrates real faith, and the works that follow it, I used to think as an SDA that the works he meant were keeping the Ten Commandments and other SDA rules. But he doesn't at all use these illustrations. James uses the illustration of Abraham offering Isaac, and Rahab helping the Israelite spies. I realized not too long ago why he used these examples. For Abraham, consider what Hebrews says: Consider also what the story in Genesis says. As Abraham and Isaac are walking up the mount together, we read: God had promised to Abraham that His promise would come through Isaac. Abraham trusted this promise completely. As the writer of Hebrews states, Abraham foundationally believed that, no matter what happened on top of that mountain, he and Isaac would both be walking back down afterward. Similarly, in his statement to Isaac, Abraham showed that he truly believed that Isaac would somehow live through the ordeal. Thus, Abraham was able to offer Isaac because he knew that it would not be the end of Isaac. Beyond mere reason, he knew that Isaac would live, because he trusted what God had said. It was only because of Abraham's faith in God that he was able to go through with the sacrifice. Second, Rahab was committing treason by harboring the Israelite spies. She was risking the death penalty. She was only able to do so because she had faith that the God of the Israelites would protect her. Neither of these things are "keeping the law." They are the acts of people who deeply trusted God to provide for them and keep His promises. The recent SDA Sabbath School Quarterly says "faith must lead to obedience to the law." This is the SDA way of viewing faith: "If your faith doesn't cause you to keep the Ten Commandments and also to abstain from pork and a few other things, then your faith doesn't count and you can't be justified. So you had better work hard." This isn't faith at all. It is works. It isn't that faith "must lead to obedience to the law" in order for God to accept that faith. If that is what it meant to be "justified by faith," then it really means we are justified by keeping the law. Thus, Ephesians 2:8-9 is a falsehood. No, it is not that we must work to make our faith turn into law-keeping. It is that faith, in its very nature, will result in certain things. If you have to work, apart from faith, to cause "faith" to result in these things, then it isn't faith. You aren't trusting God then. You are trusting your own abilities. Faith results in certain realities in our lives, in the same way it did for Abraham and Rahab. Simply by having trust in God as the foundation of our lives, everything is naturally different. Faith leads to certain actions just like dropping an apple from your side leads to that apple falling to the ground. The SDA idea is that faith in God won't, by its nature, intersect with how we live, unless we also add "works" or the power of our efforts to faith. This can only come from the false view of faith as merely intellectual head knowledge. In fact, it is this exact false view of faith that I experienced as an Adventist. James doesn't say you have to add works to your faith because faith isn't enough. James says faith results, by its nature, in certain works. James was NOT a Seventh-day Adventists. We don't sit here saying, "I have faith, but I had better work hard because if I don't add law-keeping to that faith, the faith won't be good enough." That is, as I said before, salvation by works, masquerading as real faith. Faith, on the other hand, trusts God to will and to do within us, and through us, for His purposes. | ||
| Colleentinker Registered user Username: Colleentinker Post Number: 10127 Registered: 12-2003  |
You've got it, Brent. That is exactly the point of the book of James. It's important to remember that James was writing to recently born-again orthodox Jews who had scattered throughout the neighboring nations as Nero's persecution of Jews and Christians intensified. Many of them, perhaps, had actually been present in Jerusalem when Peter preached at Pentecost. The recipients of his letter were steeped in Judaism and had no Christian communities with whom to fellowship. Their Scriptures were the books of the Old Testament. In his letter, James contrasts the law with the "law of liberty", the "royal law of Scripture": "Love thy neighbor as thyself." (See James 2:1-13.) Adventists try to equate the royal law and the law of liberty with the 10 Commandments. But that's not what James is saying. And in this passage, as Dale Ratzlaff explained during the Q & A in Miamisburg, James is comparing and contrasting the fact that if you break one of the OT commandments, you break them all, and so you break the royal law by giving preferential treatment to the wealthy over the poor. The law of Christ can be summarized as love: loving God with all one's heart, mind, and strength, and loving one another as Christ loved us—sacrificially to the point of dying for another's salvation. We break the royal law of love by showing partiality. When James is saying faith without works is dead, he is basically saying that if one's life bears no fruit of love, selflessness, and the rest of the characteristics Paul lists in Gal 5:22-23, then that person's professed faith is not real. Adventists are just wrong in their explanation of the book of James. It is totally a grace book—it is a book teaching those law-bound orthodox Jews who found themselves born into God's family by the Holy Spirit how to live NOT by the 10 Commandments but by the law of the Spirit: the royal law of liberty characterized by God's love—a paradigm shift from measuring their behavior by the law. Colleen | ||
| Hec Registered user Username: Hec Post Number: 343 Registered: 3-2009 |
I don't remember how as an SDA we come up with "faith without works is dead" = faith plus the ten commandments. Works are positive: do this, do that. Visit the prisoner, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the widows, etc. Ten C are negative: thou shall not... So the ten C could not be the works of faith since they are not work, but prohibitions. Hec | ||
| Animal Registered user Username: Animal Post Number: 564 Registered: 7-2008  |
We must remember that the Law was not evil or bad. God was the source of the Law. The Law becomes harmful and deadly when it is used in a way God never intended it to be used. The Law has a purpose. But that purpose was not to save man. It was to point out how sinful we are and point us to the answer to the sin problem. And that solution is CHRIST. The Law was added because of Sin. Now we walk not by the Law but by faith thru the Holy Spirit (Rom8) The Law condems the sinner. Christ took that condemnation and nailed it to the Cross. The works that are a part of the new birth are the Fruits of the Spirit. Against such there is no law.Galatians. Animal | ||
| River Registered user Username: River Post Number: 5205 Registered: 9-2006  |
It is because of our faith that we have works. The legalistic mind such as Adventism say that works produces faith. If I work hard enough I will have faith. They say it one way but mean another way, as you demonstrated, faith precedes works. Their supposition is completely opposite from faith and without faith it is impossible to please God. Where does that leave them? River | ||
| Animal Registered user Username: Animal Post Number: 565 Registered: 7-2008 |
It leaves them still wandering in the desert..LOL LOL | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 7232 Registered: 3-2004  |
I read some where in Paul that after we have faith we do the works that God planned for us to do. I do not remember where it is. If anyone can help me, please do. Diana L | ||
| Raven Registered user Username: Raven Post Number: 1047 Registered: 7-2004  |
Hec - great point I hadn't thought of before! Diana, are you thinking of Ephesians 2:10? "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." | ||
| Flyinglady Registered user Username: Flyinglady Post Number: 7237 Registered: 3-2004 |
Thanks Raven. I could not remember where it was. A senior moment, I think!! Diana L | ||
| 8thday Registered user Username: 8thday Post Number: 1077 Registered: 11-2007  |
Recently had a light bulb moment reading James. A verse that never made sense to me before suddenly made perfect sense. Jam 4:11 Do not speak evil of one another, brethren. He who speaks evil of a brother and judges his brother, speaks evil of the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law but a judge. Jam 4:12 There is one Lawgiver, [fn] who is able to save and to destroy. Who [fn] are you to judge another? [fn] That never made sense with the 10C as the law. I could never figure out what he meant. That's because he is talking about the Law of Christ - Love your neighbor as yourself, and Love one another as I have loved you. Now I get it. It does take awhile for some things to click. =) |
