Main Points:
1. James is an important book from a mission angle.
2. James tackles the practical challenges of community.
3. James arises out of the wisdom literature tradition of teaching by opposites.
4. James was a witness, disciple and apostle of Jesus.
5. James is reflective of the prophetic tradition and the best of the western philosophical tradition.
6. James calls us to a holistic faith that doesn’t divorce theory from practice.
From my Intro:
“I think the book of James is particularly relevant to the crisis of faith in America today. We are suffering from a divorce of belief and practice. There’s been a war waged in the theological courtrooms of Christendom that has its roots in evangelical’s reformation history. Unfortunately it has had dire consequences in the everyday life of the average believer whose disconnected from that once fresh headwaters of reform.
Somehow what started out as a prophetic call and epoch shifting return to the truth of the Bible and the faith of the fathers has resulted in the degeneracy of discipleship, the very plague that started the reform! The idea that one can believe in Jesus and yet live their lives as they want contradicts the claim of Jesus’s lordship. How did we move away from the simplicity of the gospel of Jesus that rooted faith and action in one’s confession?
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