In my previous post on the Epistle of James and the origins of its place in the New Testament Canon I noted (following David Nienhuis’s excellent work on the subject) that James found its canonical home within the New Testament as a corrective to the persistent threat of Marcionitism. While Marcion, reading Paul, divorced the God of gospel from the demigod of the Old Testament, the Epistle of James was written to ensure that this God and his commandments are not be discarded as obsolete. Rather than Marcion’s supposed antinomianism, the Epistle of James ensures that genuine faith is a “lively faith” (Thomas Cranmer).
The question/criticism immediately arose over how the Epistle of James functions today. While I highlighted its origins in the canon of the NT and its role in the Patristic period of church history, I had not thoroughly outlined what we are to do with James now. Here I want to suggest that presence of James in the New Testament should continue to ward off the specter of Marcion in the church. While genuine Marcionistism died off long ago, in many ways his legacy has proved to be remarkably persistent. What follows is two examples of modern Marcionitism and the role James plays in correcting these failed projects.
The first one is an obvious one, though it has so seamlessly integrated into some branches of modern theology that its relationship to Marcion has been obscured. In his 1777 essay, “The Education of the Human Race”, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing suggests that the world history is a single educational process moving from childhood to adolescence, to adulthood. Judaism in particular was an rude, child-like religion that must be further educated through the teachings of Jesus. The Old Testament is to dispense in favor of the new teachings of the New Testament. Yet, for Lessing, the education of humanity continues into his own day as the triumph of reason spurs the human race onto adulthood. Instead of Paul’s own Christocentric understanding of history, this three-fold division of human history is alive and well in the writings of the philosopher Hegel, the psychologist Freud, and right up into dispensationalism and the process theology of the 20th century. At its core, Lessing’s neo-Marcionite understanding of history demands that later revelation is a corrective to infantile error. One does not need to search hard to find even more examples of this today. Against this narrative stand the Epistle of James (and I Peter), which repeated affirms the continued veracity of God’s revelation in the Old Testament for Christians. James is a constant reminder that God, revelation, and world history are not an onward and upward trajectory toward greater perfection. There is certainly a complexity to contemporary issues and problems to which our answers may be novel compared to what came before, yet bare contrasts to prior epochs along the lines of Lessing are to be avoided.
The second, more obvious, parallel to Marcion is seen in what is known as the “apocalyptic” school of Pauline interpretation. For some of its proponents (though not all!), the radically unconditional character of Christ’s faithfulness suggests that grace is efficacious apart from human action and faith. Salvation is so “wholly other” and occurs on the cosmic scale, that it radically subordinates, if not precludes, its subjective effects on humanity. Consequently for Douglas Campbell, the unconditional revelation of Christ so sharply contrasts with the judicial and conditional systems that faith itself is seen as unnecessary. This pushes the faith-works contrast of Paul into oblivion such that James’ insistence upon a salvific faith that works appears to be either asking the wrong question altogether or, indeed, is based upon an outdated understanding of God.
Without addressing the very real issue of whether this is what Paul thought, James’ is a useful corrective in two ways. Again, James repeated affirmation of the constancy of God’s revelation forestalls any Marcionite contrast between a retributive God and the benevolent God of Jesus. More pointedly, James’ insistence upon a lively faith ensures that a canonical reading of Paul never divorce the redemption of Christ from its subjective appropriation in faith. Said another way, against some Apocalyptic Paul scholars James ensures that the efficacy of Christ’s work actually or efficaciously extends to the one who believes and that this faith has a very real relation to one’s salvation. In the same way that grace works in practice, so too does faith work as a good tree bears good fruit.
If the inclusion of James ensures that faith is a subjective and lively faith, a canonical reading of James ensures that this lively faith be understood as a gift (grace) and that this faith working through love (Gal. 5:6) depends upon God’s initiative. God’s one-way love produces love for others (1 John 4:19). James is entirely silent on the subject of grace. But within its canonical context set along side of Paul, this silence is not to be understood to be disagreement. So while James was received by the church as a corrective to combat potential misreadings of Paul, this likewise indicates that the Epistle of James was never intended to be read alone without Paul. Those who find in James a warrant for legalism are just as guilty as Marcionites. The church has needed and will continue to need both James and Paul, standing shoulder to shoulder as advocates of justification by grace through faith.
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14 responses to “Modern Marcionitism and the Epistle of James (Part II)”
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I just want to weigh in, that I think this is a very helpful post. Thanks!
I’ve enjoyed both these posts on James and it is helpful to understand why the Book is in the canon but it does beg, for me at least, the question of authorship and timing. I can agree on why Origen, etc. worked to include James as a counterweight to Marcion’s misreading of the Pauline epistles but I still want to know was James written first? Are the Epistles, particularly Romans, a response to James? Or vice versa?
For me the main reason I haven’t accepted James as merely a response to Paul is while it conflicts at points it doesn’t seem to be written to contradict or correct. First and second century writers don’t strike me as taking oblique shots when they don’t like something. But I’m not the expert. It just strikes me as a time when polity and subtlety weren’t valued skills.
So which came first The James or The Paul?
Hey Jim, good questions. Nienhuis argues that James was actually written in response to Marcion and his Luke-Pauline canon. Modeling his letter from 1 Peter’s letter to the diaspora, James was a pseudepigraphal work intended to create a “Pillars” (Peter, James and John) letter collection in response to the rising threat of Marcionitism. I have shied away from making these claims in the posts because I know that this late dating is difficult for many to accept and because his argument is necessarily very detailed and too much for a blog post. The short of it is that Origen is the first actual reference to the letter of James we have. No other writer (Irenaeus, Tertullian, etc.) is aware of it. This, combined with an increasing interest in the person of James in the second century (Hegesippus, Clement of Alexandria, as well as texts like the broadly gnostic texts like the Apocryphon and Apocalypse of James) makes a second century date plausible. It seems odd that second century texts interested in James would not cite or have knowledge of his Epistle. Moreover, James seems to cite Paul in several places, which again push the letter into the second century. So instead of this more difficult argument I focused on Origen’s use and the role James played in the formation of the Canon.
One plausible placement of the letter within the Acts timeline could be Acts 21 – the final encounter between James and Paul – where Paul is compelled to respond to rumors that he is telling Jews to forsake the Law. The letter would then parallel the letter sent to Gentiles in Acts 15 now sent from James of Jerusalem to the actual Jews of the diaspora. Niehuis offers this scenario as a hypothetical canonical context which the second century author mimics, but for those who find a second century date unpalatable I think this is a plausible setting for a first century composition. It would then still be written in response to Paul and his writings on the law (particularly Romans), but is more narrowly addressed to Jews who he believes should still follow the law. It is interesting that the epistle of James is not concerned with Gentiles and would suggest that the letter is not to be used by Gentiles at all.
I am a trial lawyer, not a Biblical scholar. But I do know how difficult it is to determine with any degree of probability, let alone certainty, what actually happened 2 days ago, let alone 2,000 years ago. This is why it has always seemed highly speculative, if not purely speculative, to draw any conclusions concerning “why” anything in the canon was written, and for many of the works, “when” they were written is simply unknowable. Since we don’t have any of the original manuscripts, and what we do have were created many years later ( although the copies more or less line up) we can posit all sorts of possibilities for many of the books attributed to Paul, and other books, in addition to James, as to whether they were pseudepigraphal (a scholarly way of saying “written by someone else who intentionally fraudulently attributed it to a person of standing in the church”). There are endless other possibilities. For example, is the copy we have of James a linguistically more sophisticated version of an original, or was James dictated by “James” to a more educated and polished Greek speaker, or did Jesus just have a smart brother, “James”, who was fairly polished in Greek, but came from a working class background and was a bit pissed that rich people were using the “faith” thing to turn Christianity into their own personal cocktail party?
In any event, the fact that Tertullian, Irenaeus etc. don’t mention James doesn’t indicate much, since we know we don’t have all of their works, or at least don’t have any idea whether we have all of their works. We also don’t know why they don’t mention James. Maybe the James they had was in a cruder literary form and they didn’t give it much weight, or maybe the book was not widely circulated in non-Jewish circles, or maybe it simply didn’t interest them. My point is, who the hell knows? I am certainly not a Biblical inerratist or fundamentalist, but I also am always surprised by the huge speculative leaps that often pass as biblical scholarship in very respectable circles.
All fair points, MC! As far as Terlullian or Irenaeus go I would add that their omission of James is surprising chiefly because they mention him several times, often in conjunction with the other apostolic pillars (Peter and John). They are also embroiled in the same kind of faith/works debates against Marcion, yet don’t offer any quotation of James in support of their position.
I can see that as a possible inference to be drawn. On the other hand, as I said, we know that we don’t have all of Tertullian’s works, so we don’t know whether he mentions James in them or not. As for Irenaeus, the same may be true, although I’m not sure. Even so, we can never know whether we have all of Irenaeus’ works, either. In addition, the early Greek and Latin church fathers seem somewhat embarrassed by the relative lack of literary sophistication of the gospels, and I could easily join the speculation and guess that the original version of James was a working man’s fairly blunt rant, more of an embarrassment than the gospels, and not something to which you would want to call attention, given that you had other available sources. What one is trying to do is infer from silence as to any mention of James, that James did not exist at the time they wrote. However, there are many other possible inferences to be drawn from that silence, even if we make the leap, without the totality of the evidence of their entire body of work, to even say they were in fact silent. In the law there is something called the “equal inference rule”, i.e., that when circumstantial evidence gives rise to two or more inferences, none more probable than another, neither inference may be reasonably inferred. If that rule were followed in biblical scholarship, doctoral dissertations would be even harder to come by.
Thanks for the response Todd, it is helpful. And Michael I take your point as well. But I think the effort is worthwhile even all we can do is arrive at guesses because it expands our historic perspective and seats the writing within some context further removing them from ethereal “wise words and theories” and placing them within some possible tableau of human events. Otherwise we’ve just got the Tao Te Ching in Western form.
For instance, Michael, in our profession, (lawyer too) I cringe anytime someone starts a speech or explanation with “the Founders intended.” It is so unclear what the Founders intended in so many areas that to even say that is to deify them. And more importantly the Founders were mostly focused on getting elected, cutting deals, and avenging past slights.
When I tell people the citizens of DC lost their voting rights in the 1800 lame duck session as part of a Federalist power grab to protect the nation from the heathen Jeffersonians they are dumbfounded. They think the ‘Founders intended” DC to not have voting rights. But the Founders didn’t even know there would be a DC!
There’s no question things happened for a reason. Even if we don’t get it exactly right it’s helpful today to remember that the Church back then was responding to the events of the day, as well as writing works that came to be view as inspired and sometime even prophetic. When we see that happening around us now it is comforting to know it is not new and we are free to participate with the Spirit in the process of shaping his church.
Another way of saying that is that we are free to make it up as we go along and claim the Spirit’s blessing. Where that leaves the “apostolic” church, and what that means for what it is “mockingbird” is supposedly “repeating”, God only knows.
Easy there, MC! I have just one point to add here. However messy the canonization process was, particularly for the Catholic Epistles, a doctrine of sola scriptura must also include the canonical decision by the church, which we might say was providentially led by the Spirit.
HA! You know I’m a bull in a china shop who loves all of y’all mockingbirds!!! I have just been scratching my head a little over our erstwhile guru’s recent advocacy of daily meditation over Bible reading as a way to get a “message” from the Almighty 🙂
I think that’s saying a great deal more than what I said.
And it’s not really fair to tattoo Mockingbird with my words since they aren’t me.
I think it is an entirely fair conclusion given the assumptions behind your comment, although you may not be personally willing to “go there.” That said, I’m not making any judgments, it’s just that my skepticism does not end with the rejection of fundamentalism, and I don’t see mockingbird as “there” yet, but certainly that is the drift.
MC,
My exposure to NT studies is limited, but it certainly seems like people make inferences all the time, and luckily there are clear methodological guidelines and criteria for how to do so in more or less legitimate ways. Of course these sorts of historical probablities can’t be used as a necessary foundation for faith’s essentials, because we can’t have a faith that could theoretically be demolished tomorrow by the discovery of a new scroll. But they can render certain conclusions relatively more or less justified. Philosophically, no statement about the past can be proved, but we must take the best we have to go on, and we almost always have something. Given my NT background runs no deeper than two or three books, I’ll defer to contemporary scholarship.
I also think that were a scroll discovered tomorrow which placed James’s composition in the forties, most of Todd’s insights would stand. We have the canon as it is and can trust that it works, as already presented to us, in a certain way – who says James couldn’t have been written against proto-marcionite tendencies? Or, if it wasn’t, that the Spirit couldn’t have intended it as a counterweight within the canon? That it works as such leigitmates the interpretation – Augustine’s On Christian Teaching, and a good deal of tbe hermeneutic tradition as i understand it, would seem to affirm that possibility.
Will, The faith I have could be demolished by a new scroll, if that new scroll contained evidence that showed, to a high degree of probability, that Jesus did not rise from the dead. I would simply walk away from Christianity as being what the vast majority of educated people in the West already think it is: belief in a Three in One Sky Pixie.
As for the book of James, I happen to think that it is impossible to know when, why, or by whom it was written with any degree of certainty. The evidence for a later date is not particularly compelling to me, for the reasons I have stated. I would certainly not defer to contemporary scholarship without any examination of a given scholar’s assumptions, particularly given the paucity of actual hard evidence upon which any inferences can possibly be drawn, 2,000 years later. And, being a beat up old trial lawyer dealing with expert witnesses for the past 30 years, certainly not because I have faith that the experts conclusions are to be trusted because they use “clear methodological guidelines.” Any trial lawyer will tell you that they can and have hired highly respected experts to testify in support or in opposition to just about any conclusion they want. There are exceptions of course, but generally this is the case, and you do have to shop around for the right expert, and you don’t want one who is a total whore, but there is a lot of wiggle room in the middle if the money is right. Of course biblical scholars are not motivated by money, but they are motivated by status in their little world, and that has a powerful effect as well. I guess my low anthropology extends even to the world of biblical scholarship. Of course, Luther seems to have had zero respect for the contemporary accepted scholarship of his day (e.g. his address to Erasmus in the Preface to On the Bondage of the Will) and the Holy Spirit certainly didn’t seem to act on Luther to use James as a canonical counter-weight to Paul!