Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 35:140 (Oct 1878)
Article: Doctrine Of The Epistle Of James
Author: Ezra P. Gould

BSac 35:140 (Oct 1878) p. 681

Doctrine Of The Epistle Of James

Ezra P. Gould

This Epistle is practical and ethical, with only one strictly doctrinal passage, but that one of great interest and importance. But, as might be expected in a discussion of Christian ethics, the references to Christian doctrine are scattered through the Epistle, though not so thickly as would be expected from a more speculative and discursive mind. We need not be reminded at this late day that these references to assumed doctrinal belief are as important and significant as the intentional development of doctrine. And on the same principle such references and implications in a writing so exclusively ethical are specially interesting.

Neither has the Epistle any general subject. It enforces certain duties and practical aspects of the Christian life, and without any attempt to give unity to the discussion. But its teachings, disconnected as they are, all belong to the one subject of the practical Christian life. We will take this, then, as our basis, and the first question suggested is the view of the author in regard to the

Origin Of The Christian Life

By this is meant the source of the Christian’s moral state. If the other question of the saved state, the justification of the believer, is treated, it will be incidentally. In fact the question before us, though it forms our starting-point, is only incidentally answered in the Epistle. On this moral side, then, the Christian life has its source in regeneration (1:18). In this passage the author of regeneration is said to be God. That which determines him to the act is his own will, by which we are probably to understand, from the nature

BSac 35:140 (Oct 1878) p. 682

of the act itself, his independent will. The instrument which he employs is the word of truth. But in what way this instrument is employed is not stated here, any more than in the other New Testament passages teaching the same thing. The fact that the Christian life is regenerate is also plainly implied in those passages which speak of the law as a law of liberty (1:25; 2:12). For the ἐλευθερία describes the Christian state as one in which the believer obeys the law of God out of his own free will, not with the constraint which implies bondage. And James recognizes, also, the Christian philosophy underlying the necessity of regeneration, that like produces like, which of course makes a change from the old sinful state essential, and at the same time precludes its self-origination (3:12).

In regard to the p...