Journal: Faith and Mission
Volume: FM 19:3 (Summer 2002)
Article: An Examination of the Role the Epistle of James Might Play in Introducing the New Testament to Muslims
Author: Ant Greenham

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An Examination of the Role the Epistle of James Might Play
in Introducing the New Testament to Muslims

Ant Greenham

Ph.D. Student in Theological Studies
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Instructor of Religion and Islamic Studies
Southeastern College at Wake Forest
Wake Forest, North Carolina 27587

Introduction

When questions on the nature of New Testament theology arise, all too often the Epistle of James is left aside. In fact, one may argue that the theology of James does not encapsulate the essential teaching of the New Testament, as he is silent on Jesus’ death and resurrection, and so is largely irrelevant to NT theology. James is not to be written off in this manner, but precisely because of his apparent silence on the cross, James might serve as a key communicative tool to introducing the message of the New Testament to the atonement-rejecting adherents of Islam. The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether the epistle may be used as a gentle first encounter for Muslims— with a view to introducing them thereafter to the core of the New Testament, of which James is an integral part.

James and the Theology of the New Testament

In his Theology of the New Testament, George Eldon Ladd sees no need to go beyond a brief summary of James and the other Catholic Epistles, as “they add little to the main theological thought of the New Testament.”1 As for James itself, Andrew Chester notes that this epistle “has been left on the margins of the canon and formulations of Christian doctrine, and is rarely given any place at all within an overall theology of the New Testament.”2 If anything, New Testament scholars isolate James’s discussion on faith and works, and Ladd is not atypical in seeing this discussion as a “theological problem in which he has been held to be in flat contradiction to the Pauline doctrine of justification.”3 Ladd deals with the matter by suggesting that the two authors faced differing situations, i.e., those

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of self-righteous legal piety (countered by Paul) and dead orthodoxy (countered by James).4 However, while Ladd deals with the “problem” raised by James, he does not elaborate on his theology beyond brief treatments of James’s practical emphasis and his interest in the church, temptation, and the Christian life.5 It may thus be asked whether James has any significant or uniquely valuable theology to contribute.<...