Martin Luther notoriously called James “a right strawy epistle,” troubled by its apparent tension with justification by faith alone and its comparatively thin Christology. In this session we will zero in on James 2 and its claim that “faith without works is dead,” reading it alongside Paul’s teaching on justification. Is this a real contradiction, two different questions being answered, or two complementary halves of a single gospel vision? We will consider how to hold James and Paul together with integrity, and why this matters for how we preach grace and obedience side by side.
