# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1855_S142
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

142 James’s Doctrine of Justifying Faith.

but rather the proposition that a person is justified by faith, and it is placed after the word “faith” only because, of all the words, this one is indeed affected most by that qualification. Justification by faith is not the sole or only justification; that is the meaning of “and not by faith alone.” This

a. acknowledges that a person is justified by faith, and

b. by no means asserts that, in order to obtain the righteousness that avails before God, faith alone or mere faith in the righteousness of Christ is insufficient. For it is not speaking at all about what is required to obtain that righteousness, but only about the fact that justification by faith is not the only justification.

It scarcely needs to be added that the fear that, with the words “and not by faith alone,” James overturns Romans 3:28 is unfounded. One need only place Romans 3:28, “that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law,” alongside the words under discussion: “that a person is not justified by faith alone (but also by ‘works’)”; this alone shows that the latter does not contradict the former. We must therefore now consider “and not by faith alone”

B. in its connection with the first assertion of v. 24: “that a person is justified by works.” In these latter words, as we have already recognized above, we are presented with a justification in which the judgment is based on the works and declares their author to possess the righteousness of faith, and thus to be justified by faith. This is a different justification from justification by faith; for in the latter, the judgment is based on faith and declares the believer to possess the righteousness that avails before God, or justifies him on the basis of faith. But the difference between the righteousness of faith and the righteousness that avails before God is that the former comes into being through the believing reception of the latter and through the justifying judgment based upon it, and is therefore a consequence of the imputation of the latter. Now, after James has drawn from the example of Abraham the conclusion concerning the justification by works just described, and has expressed it with the utmost sharpness and precision, he must naturally indicate what follows from this conclusion for justification by faith. For the purpose of his discussion of justification by works was not to describe the latter, but rather to deprive lazy Christians of their confidence in their kind of faith. But what follows for justification by faith from the existence of justification by works? Perhaps that faith alone or mere faith was insufficient to obtain the righteousness that avails before God? Impossible. The immediate consequence is that justification by faith is not the only justification. This alone James could in this