Part II, Week 9 - Chapter 21 - The Epistle of James -

The Epistle of James states that the sender was “Iacobos” (translated as James). Both de Silva and the NIV Study Bible note that there is a good possibility that the author was James, the brother of Jesus, who was a leader, a “pillar” of the Jerusalem church, until his martyrdom in about 62 A.D. De Silva comments that James the brother of Jesus would have had the stature and the longevity to produce the letter. Regarding the dating of the letter, the NIV Study Bible indicates that although some date it to about 60 A.D., because of its strongly Jewish character and the lack of any reference to the rancorous dispute over circumcision, it may have been written before 50 A.D. In that case, it may be the earliest surviving writing – whether Gospel or Letter - in the NT, except for perhaps Galatians.

De Silva first notes, rather unpromisingly, that Martin Luther considered it the least of the books of the New Testament, an “epistle of straw.” Then he notes that there doesn’t appear to be an overarching theme to the letter. Rather, he writes that it “comes across as a disjointed collection of good advice.” (pg. 819) The letter is not directed to a particular group facing a particular challenge, and hence the letter lacks those references to particular individuals, companions and adversaries that help to give Paul’s letters such human interest.

However, de Silva recognizes that the letter has an organizational structure that does give it coherence. Funnily enough, both de Silva and the NIV Study Bible laud the author’s command of Greek (which is one of the reasons which “Jamesian” authorship is often contested); I detected some similarities to Mark’s Gospel, with his use of “inclusios” and thematic repetition for the purposes of driving home his points. Perhaps it is just because the letter is so “bare bones” that the organizational structure seems fairly obvious.

The Epistle of James has an epistolary greeting but no other evidence of having been actually dispatched as a letter. As in the case of Hebrews, that suggested to me the possibility that the epistolary portion may have been a later scribal addition – perhaps intended, in this case, to provide the desirable evidence of authorship and readership which might have been handed down by tradition in the communities in which it was preserved.

De Silva acknowledges that the greeting causes it to be classed as a letter, but adds that it most resembles collections of wisdom sayings, which were common in the Intertestamental Period in both Greco-Roman and Judaic cultures. He says it most resembles a “paraenetic letter,” a collection of “ethical advice that is generally assumed to be true and irrefutable, holding up core values of the culture in which it is written.” (pg. 821) He also notes a similarity to exhortations of the Greco-Roman philosophers who used the “diatribe,” like Epictetus, or the advice collections of Pseudo-Isocrates. The difference in this case is that the letter has a strongly Jewish character emphasizing morality rather than household codes and such that were common in the pagan wisdom tradition. De Silva suggests that the sayings may have been collated and given order by a later editor. Or they may have been organized by James himself. Either way, he notes that they bear a close resemblance – and share some of the sayings – which appear in Jewish wisdom literature of the Inter-testamental Period, including many of the sayings of Jesus which were preserved and which appear in the NT Gospels. In fact, de Silva suggests that James can be reasonably viewed as an example of the development of Jewish wisdom tradition in the setting of early Christianity.

The message of James is fairly straightforward. The Law for James is a living force (similar to what we read in the Gospel of Matthew) and not something that has been superseded by the New Covenant. De Silva notes that James emphasizes the importance of doing right and not just paying lip service to one’s faith. And he also notes that James’s focus is the trials that are within us, rather than persecution and ill-treatment from without. We are tested in these trials to give up something that we earnestly desire, “to give up something of himself or herself and to endure some kind of loss. . . . each situation becomes an opportunity for moving closer to wholeness, to that integrity that James so greatly yearns for Christians to possess, and to that transformation of life that leads to a positive verdict when we come to be judged by the “law of freedom” (Jas 2:12). (pg. 826)

De Silva feels that the usual presupposition is that Paul and James were bitter enemies, but that when the respective positions are examined, they are actually in agreement. He argues that the historic James would never have misunderstood Paul’s ideas as drastically as has been proposed, and therefore that would be an argument for late authorship and pseudonymity of the letter. (pg. 826) I think there is another possibility. I think that initially Paul was struck by the force of his revelatory vision – in effect overturning his previous mindset of Pharisaic zealousness for the Law. He felt guilty, I think, for having unjustly persecuted Jesus’s followers. He didn’t feel worthy of having been blessed with the revelation of God and Christ. He felt, naturally enough, that he had been blessed by God’s grace, in spite of his own efforts in support of the Law, rather than because of them. Consequently his message preached the idea of grace and justification by faith rather than works of the law. I don’t think Paul opposed good works as such; but his core message was that one was not saved by good works but by faith and grace. De Silva cites Galatians 2:15-16 (the classic Pauline doctrine of justification by faith) and James 2:14-26 (which begins in v. 14 with the declamation, “What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him?”) in support of his argument that the two are actually in agreement. But if one reads those verses, taking them at face value they seem to be in direct contradiction with one another. I would suggest that such a view as James expresses, which in effect propounds both faith and works, would be a message that an early follower of Jesus in the Jewish tradition might well espouse. I would also suggest that Paul’s views may have evolved to incorporate moral codes and good works – becoming more conventional, in a sense, as we see in the later Pauline writings - as problems arose with some of his congregations with sexual license and so on, as we saw in the Corinthian letters.

I appreciated the message of James. Since the perhaps-oversimplified Pauline doctrine of faith versus works has been so influential in the Protestantism of my lifetime, it is cool to read a counter-argument which was contemporaneous with Paul and which has been historically so submerged.

Week 10 - Chapter 10 - The Epistles of John

This topic is following the order of the chapters in our text, not the order of the class lectures . . . I am fighting an insecure feeling that I’m getting the order of the material wrong. (I hope that’s not the case!) Or that I may be blogging a week ahead of the schedule in the syllabus. (That wouldn't be so bad, I guess.)

There are three “epistles,” designated 1 John, 2 John and 3 John, relatively short pieces which, according to de Silva, form sequels to the Gospel of John in somewhat the same way that Acts forms a sequel to Luke’s Gospel.

The major difference is that Acts forms a sort of apologia for Paul, in particular, while the Epistles of John were written in response to a split, or schism, in the Johannine community, in which a group of “secessionists” (as de Silva refers to them) broke off from the parent church. Although they were not properly Gnostics (which arose later), de Silva indicates that it appears (from what can be inferred from the Epistles) that they minimized the human nature of Christ and also that they substituted the Baptism of Christ for the death of Christ on the cross as the crucial “salvific act” (again, de Silva’s term). Though not Gnostics per se, de Silva indicates that these beliefs formed another stage on the path that led to Gnosticism in the second century.

There are three Epistles of John, logically designated 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. Their authorship is uncertain; some ascribe all three to the author of the Gospel of John. De Silva discusses the various options and concludes that it is likely that all three Epistles were written by the same person (who refers to himself in 2 and 3 John only as “the Elder”), but that it is most likely that that was not the same person who was the author(s) of the Gospel of John. All three Epistles are believed to have been composed about the same time, likely after the writing of the Gospel – although de Silva does indicate that the final redactor of the Gospel may have been aware of 1 John. (In other words, it is acknowledged that the Gospel was composed in stages and that 1 John at least may have been written before the Gospel was put into its final form.)

All three are referred to as Epistles, although 1 John does not take the form of a classical Epistle, as 2 and 3 John do. De Silva indicates that 1 John may actually be a tract, or homily, or handbook. As de Silva notes, it does not purport to be a fair and dispassionate view of the secessionists but rather adopts a polemical tone and denounces them, promoting what the author espouses as true beliefs while disclosing as little as possible of exactly what the secessionists’ beliefs were. De Silva states that this tract was written for the authors’ closest associates/community, and he states that it seeks to purge secessionist influences, provide a prophylaxis (protection against the spread) of secessionist influence, and help in healing the rift caused by the secessionists.

2 and 3 John do follow the form of ancient Epistles. De Silva notes that they start off as “friendly” letters, then 2 John morphs into the “advisory” type, while 3 John morphs into the “praising” type and finally closes with a “vituperative” form. According to de Silva, these letters were addressed to a church or a number of churches further afield than the community addressed in 1 John.
The author of the Epistles emphasized God’s love for his people, and as evidence of that love, the fact that he sent his Son to die for us, to be an atoning sacrifice, in order to save us from our sins. The death of Jesus was the supreme revelation of God in the world, and believers were to “walk in the light” in imitation of the example provided by Jesus. He seems to have had a complex view of sin, as he proposed on the one hand that those who are walking in the light should be without sin as proof that they are born of God, but on the other hand, to accept that even those who are born again may sin in the future and that Jesus’ sacrifice can save us from our future sins as well as from past sins.

According to de Silva, it was the Fourth Gospel that contained in itself the seeds that would lead to the development of Gnosicism in the second century. These Epistles give us evidence of some of the first attempts to deal with/quash the heretical impulse of minimizing Christ's humanity which recurred throughout the early centuries of Christianity.