Irish1975 wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 8:37 am
Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 9:06 pm
So "Luke" is only
pretending to misunderstand Paul in the epistle of James?
No, Luke is pretending to be James, who is criticizing unnamed persons who, to the reader, hold a distorted version of Paul’s doctrine of salvation. That’s not the same as Luke himself “pretending to misunderstand Paul.”
Okay, I admit I am not understanding your approach, then. I can see a distinction above, sure, but I do not understand what difference that distinction makes.
The stumbling block for me is still this:
Romans 4.1-3: 1 What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? 2 For if Abraham was justified by works [εἰ γὰρ Ἀβραὰμ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη], he has something to boast about; but not before God. 3 For what does the Scripture say? “And Abraham had faith in [ἐπίστευσεν] God, and it was reckoned to him as justification.”
James 2.20-22: 20 But are you willing to recognize, you foolish fellow, that faith without the works [ἡ πίστις χωρὶς τῶν ἔργων] is useless? 21 Was not Abraham our father justified by works [Ἀβραὰμ ὁ πατὴρ ἡμῶν οὐκ ἐξ ἔργων ἐδικαιώθη], when he offered up Isaac his son on the altar? 22 You see that faith was working with his works, and as a result of the works, faith was perfected.
If, as we seem to agree, the author of James is reacting to the epistle to the Romans (that is, James is not being written independently of Romans), then the above makes it look like James is flatly contradicting Paul. We can perform all the same maneuvers that apologists and others have had to perform over the years to get them to be saying the same thing, but the fact remains: it
looks like James is contradicting Paul. The sympathetic reader of both epistles is being forced into a position of having to reconcile the two, if possible. The author James seems to be saying to the author of Romans, "You drew the wrong conclusion from Abraham's faith in God; here, let me show you how it is done."
This strikes me as exactly the
opposite of the MO that the author of Acts used, for instance, on Peter and Paul, as summarized by Ulan:
Ulan wrote: ↑Sat Sep 12, 2020 4:51 am
Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Sep 11, 2020 11:07 pm
Acts misunderstand the conflict between Peter and Paul.
Deliberately so, I think. Given
they transform Paul into Peter and Peter into Paul, they try to bridge two irreconcilable positions by mincing those personalities and their views until you get a patty that is palatable for most people from both camps.
Acts transforms Paul into Peter and Peter into Paul; Acts makes them speak with the same voice, in an ideological sense. I do not think one can go through Peter's words in 1 Peter, Paul's words in his epistles, or the words of either apostle in any of the speeches given to them in Acts and find a pair of passages that even
look like they contradict one another in a manner similar to how James 2.20-22 seems to contradict Romans 4.1-3. The sympathetic reader has it easy; no need to reconcile anything, because the author has already ironed out the wrinkles. Maybe I am wrong about that; maybe such a pair of passages exists. But, at any rate, this is the (main) source of my hesitation: if the author of Acts also wrote James, then he is making James look contradictory to Paul, whereas elsewhere he seems to want to make all the apostles speak as one.
I am not trying to be difficult; I just do not see how James and Romans give us the same MO as Paul in Acts and Peter in Acts (or any other apostolic pair in Acts, for that matter).