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Quotations
Exerpts from James Kelley’s Theological Notebook:
Commentary on the Epistle of St. James
The central theological presupposition of the Epistle of St. James is that salvation is the cure of the whole man through the purification and perfection of the heart. We will organize St. James’ teachings on salvation around his specific theology of perfection, which he develops in great detail in each of the five chapters of the Epistle. Once we have outlined the meaning(s) of perfection in St. James, we will show what he teaches about imperfection. Fallen man’s imperfection is presented by St. James through symbolic, antinomic language which preserves the apophatic approach to theology. Special attention will be accorded to St. James’ explication of “respect of persons” and “offending not in word” as images of “the two ways”–the former of death and dissolution; the latter of life and perfection.
General notes:
Presuppositions of Jamesian theology:
1) “They crucified the Lord of Glory”
The Lord of glory and the Lord of hosts of the Old Testament is Jesus Christ (2:1). He is the “one law-giver, who is able to save” (4:12).
2) The law of freedom
Because there is only one law-giver, there is only one law, one way (torah) of salvation. The law is not contrasted with grace, nor is it identified with works per se. There is no opposition between the Old and New Testaments, a fact evinced by the glorification of the prophets (hassidim) in the Old Testament, who remain an example and concretization par excellence of holiness and union with God (5:10) The law is the “law of freedom” because, as the logos God writes on the tablets of the pure heart, its is the transcendence of the sick love which constitutes man’s enslavement to his environment.
3) Love seeks not its own
This overcoming of happiness is a self-crucifixion (a life according to the law of the Cross) which both heals the inner divisions and dispersions of man’s spirit and also unites man ineffably to God’s uncreated grace (4:6). The notion of the keeping of the whole law as perfection in Christ is ubiquitous in both Testaments, and is the basis of sainthood and martyrdom, as in St. Stephen’s “Who have received the law by the disposition of angels and have not kept it” (Acts 7:53. Also I John 3:4).
4) “There are two ways” of the heart: Fear of man and fear of God
In a great number of early Christian writings (including the Didache, I Clement, I Peter, The Shepherd of Hermas, as well as James) the path to salvation is called the way of life, which is contrasted with the way of death. As the Shepherd relates, both paths are both practical (involving ascetic labors) and spiritual (pertaining to the inner man and whether its is influenced by God’s energy or by demonic energy). The notion of the Cross as a Way of Life reflects Yannaras’ insistence on an ontology of freedom where man’s destiny and eschatological realization is not separated or opposed to his ethical decisions and capabilities in the here and now. Practical ethics are not divided from the reason for ethics: purification of the inner man so that the heart attains to perpetual remembrance of God. This illumination of the heart’s center, or nous, is the gradual yet ever-perfective overcoming of corruption, mortality, and all of the limitations of creatureliness.
Contents:
I. The sickness of the soul as di_yucoV
II. The way of perfection as “offending not in word”
III. The way of imperfection as “respect of persons”
1:3-4 “. . .the trying of your faith worketh patience. (4) But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”
1:17 God gives the perfect gift, the gift that is the only true perfection, transcending space, time, and all temporal/mortal limitations: “. . .the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning”. Also, 2:21-23.
3:17 “But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hyposcrisy.”
1:5 “. . .God, that giveth to all men liberally, and not reproaching. . .”
1:13 “Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:”
—————————————————————————————————The sickness of the soul as di_yucoV
1:8 “A double-souled [di_yucoV] man is unstable in all his ways.”
4:5 “. . .[T]he spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy”
1:12 “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” Also 2:8.
1:14- “but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. (15) Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.”
1:18 “Of his own will begat he us with a word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures”.
1:25 “. . .the perfect law of freedom” is a way, a path of faith to be endured, our primary example being the prophets (5:10), who are also hassids and martyrs par excellence.
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The way of imperfection as “respect of persons”
2:1 “Respect of persons” is an archetypal sin because it is equivalent to “love of man”, and self-love. Men under the sway of this passion curry favor with wealthy men, seeking security through association with those who appear important and powerful according to the world’s eyes. Such love for the world originates in man’s soul and remains centered there in place of remembrance of God, for according to “respect of persons”, men are “partial in [themselves], and judge according to evil thoughts” (2:4). That “respect of persons” is the sickness of man’s love in his inner spirit is shown in 2:8-9: “If ye fulfil the royal law according to the scripture, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself, ye do well: / but if ye have respect to persons, ye commit sin, and are convinced of the law as transgressors.” Verse 13 implies that to respect persons is to be guilty of offending the “law of freedom” by casting “judgement without mercy”. We fail to be free when we fail to love with the perfect love of God, who loves all and saves all. This is the meaning of the law: We purify our hearts and through God’s gift are given perfect love and freedom, which is a freedom into something: An eternal, incorrupt, always-ever-outward oriented, self-emptying love. We literally can, through God’s grace, fulfill the law. Following the letter of the law was the sin of those whose self-insulating “hedge-building” was a eudaemonistic perversion of the law.
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2:21- “Was not Abraham our father justified by works, when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar? (22) Seest thou how faith wrought with his works, and by works was faith made perfect? (23) And the scripture was fulfilled which saith, Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness; and he was called the Friend of God”.
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The way of perfection as “offending not in word”
3:2 “For in many things we offend all. If any man offend not in word, the same is a perfect man, and able also to bridle the whole body.”
3:8- “But the tongue can no man tame; it is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison. (9) Therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men, which are made after the similitude of God.”
3:16 The work of the devil and “respect of persons”: Evil exists in works (3:16 “every evil work”, 4:5 man’s primary activity “The spirit that dwelleth within us lusteth to envy”.) Evil is the elevation and trust in the physical, earthly, and sensual as a way of existence to the exclusion of the noetic, the spiritual, the pure (3:15). It is not a negation of good but rather an anti-good, a parasitical imitation of the good; Evil is a counter-gnosis because it promises peace from within man’s heart but delivers strife, promises incorruption through greed and “respect of persons” but delivers an illusory incorruption which is eternal corruption and self-consumption (5:3, 5).
4:1-2 “From whence come wars and fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? (2) Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not.”