Does James preach the gospel?

It may sometimes appear that the narrative-historical approach to reading the New Testament throws up more questions than answers, but one point that I am pretty confident about is that what the modern evangelical world generally means by “gospel” is not what Jesus or Paul meant by “gospel”.

Or James.

I happened upon this quote by Donald Hagner recently, from his book The New Testament: A Historical and Theological Introduction, which my friend Chris Tilling had offered for consideration, I suspect in some bemusement:

One sometimes gets the impression from some people that all twenty-seven books of the NT, since they are inspired, canonical books, must be of equal importance and value. As a canonical book, James must be heard in the church, and it has much to offer. However, it does not express the gospel, and for that reason it is not the equal of other books. (683)

The argument that the “gospel” is the primary criterion for determining the “importance and value” of the books of the New Testament is suspect, in the first place. It is an entirely theologically motivated selection of a canon within the canon. Why gospel rather than kingdom of God, for example? Or more to the point, why Hagner’s understanding of gospel rather than some other—such as Jesus’s or Paul’s?

Or James’s?

If by “gospel” we mean merely an arrangement whereby individuals are justified by their faith in the atoning death of Jesus and reconciled to God, then no, we don’t find that gospel in the Letter of James. In fact, it’s debatable whether we find it anywhere in the New Testament.

The “gospel” in the New Testament is an announcement—or better a series of announcements—about what the God of Israel was doing, under the particular historical conditions of late second temple Judaism, to judge and restore his people and to establish his rule over the nations of the Greek-Roman world.

An important element in this narrative was the point that Paul makes in Romans—that under these circumstances Israel would not be justified on the day of God’s wrath against his people by the fact that they possessed the Law; they would be justified only by trusting in the determining reality of Jesus’ death (Rom. 3:21-25).

What this meant, in effect, was that if Israel relied on possession of the Law, it would not escape the catastrophe of the war against Rome. Only that community which believed that God raised his Son Jesus from the dead—and that this would change the future—would enjoy the new covenant life of the age to come, in the Spirit, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple.

The gospel of James

The Letter of James shares more or less this eschatological perspective. It was presumably written by James the Just from Jerusalem some time before his martyrdom in AD 62 (Jos. Ant. 20.9.1). It is, on the one hand, an exhortation to Jewish-Christians in the diaspora to endure patiently the trials that will come upon them; and on the other, a fierce denunciation of wealthy and powerful Jews who have abused and exploited their workers, whose wealth will not save them in these last days of second temple Judaism:

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. (Jas. 5:1–6)

Here we have the essence of his “gospel”—though he doesn’t use the word—his eschatological proclamation. It is the message that we have heard from Mary (Lk. 1:51-53), from John the Baptist (cf. Matt. 3:7), from Jesus (eg. Matt. 23:37-39), from Peter (Acts 2:40), and from Paul (Acts 13:40-41; Rom. 2:9; 9:22): [pullquote]God is about to judge his unrighteous, unjust people because they have failed to live by the Law. This is the good news.[/pullquote] Wickedness in Israel will not go unpunished. Judgment is imminent:

Be patient, therefore, brothers, until the coming of the Lord…. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand. Do not grumble against one another, brothers, so that you may not be judged; behold, the Judge is standing at the door. (Jas. 5:7–9)

In this context “faith” is a matter of patiently doing what is good and right as a concrete exercise in trust in the God who will eventually come to vindicate them. It is no different from Jesus’ call to the rich young ruler to abandon his wealth and pursue the narrow path of discipleship that will lead to the life of the age to come. It is little different from Paul’s argument about justification, which is no less a call to pursue a concrete path of obedience, arising out of trust in the way of Jesus, with eschatological vindication firmly in view.

James’ readers will be saved from the coming judgment by the “word of truth”, the “implanted” word, which has made them “a kind of first fruits” of the new creation of the restored people of God (1:18, 21). It is not the rich and powerful but “those who are poor in the world” who will be “rich in faith” and will inherit the kingdom (Jas. 2:5), which, of course, is exactly Jesus’ gospel (Lk. 6:20; and cf. 1 Cor. 1:26-29)—not because God has a bias towards the poor but because the poor have a bias towards faith. Their faith is to believe God, exactly as Abraham did, and to act on that belief, exactly as Abraham did. For that reason, they will be accounted righteous (2:18-23).

Does Paul preach the gospel of James?

So the underlying argument is that these Jewish-Christians believed the word that God would judge his religiously and politically corrupt people and that the poor would inherit the kingdom instead. “He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.”

Because this is an outlook centred on Jerusalem, we are closer to Jesus than to Paul, but the narratives are consistent. Paul takes the good news of what God is doing to judge and restore his rebellious people and he proclaims it to the nations because he has realized that the judgment of Israel is a necessary precursor to the judgment of the Greek-Roman world (cf. Rom. 3:5-6).

This is another one of those situations (see “The Gospel Coalition gets the gospel back to front”) where we would do much better to read Paul in the light of the Jewish Letter of James than to try to reconcile James to a Reformation reading of Paul. And while we on the subject, James 1:20 looks like it offers decent support for the Tom Wright line on the righteousness of God:

…for the anger of a man does not bring about the righteousness of God (dikaiosunēn theou).

In this narrative of God’s judgment against unrighteous Israel, YHWH’s purposes are not served by the anger of his people. We are close here to Paul’s command to the Romans: do not seek to avenge yourselves when you suffer aggression and persecution, “leave it to the wrath of God”. Better still, feed your enemy, give him something to drink, over evil with good (Rom. 12:19-21). That will bring about the righteousness of God. That is how YHWH will be vindicated.

The only way to accommodate the sort of “gospel” that we find in the Letter of James, which is simply the New Testament gospel,  into our theology is by way of the historical narrative. Modern evangelical theology of whatever hue is simply too restrictive, too narrowly preoccupied with the salvation of the individual, too detached from history, to do anything with James except set him at odds with Paul’s supposed gospel of justification by faith.