The Epistle of James and the Ethical Prehistory of Born Man
The Epistle of James occupies an uneasy position within the New Testament canon. Long perceived as ethically severe, theologically austere, and resistant to systematic integration with Pauline doctrine, James has often been treated as a corrective, an anomaly, or even a regression. Yet when read genealogically rather than doctrinally, James emerges as one of the most significant ethical texts for understanding the modern condition of obligation after transcendence. What James contributes is not a new virtue, but a decisive intensification of endurance—an ethic that already stands perilously close to obligation without consolation.
James writes into a moment that presupposes the collapse of the Law as an external guarantor of righteousness. The debates that animate the Apostle Paul’s letters—faith versus works, law versus grace—are already behind him. James does not ask how one is justified; he asks what kind of life remains once justification has been proclaimed. This shift in question fundamentally alters the ethical terrain. Faith is no longer at issue as a saving act; it is at issue as a potential evasion.
This is the force of James’s most famous claim: “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead” (Epistle of James 2:17). This statement is not a denial of faith, nor a rejection of Pauline theology. Rather, it is a refusal to allow faith to function as psychological relief. James does not attack belief; he attacks the use of belief to lighten the burden of existence. Faith that does not manifest in sustained action under pressure is, for James, indistinguishable from self-deception.
The ethical center of James’s letter is not makrothymia (longsuffering in the Pauline sense), but ὑπομονή (hypomonē), usually translated as “steadfastness” or “endurance.” The distinction is significant. While makrothymia emphasizes the restraint of reaction and the bearing of delay, hypomonē emphasizes remaining under weight without release. James opens his letter with a stark formulation: “When you meet trials of various kinds… you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance (hypomonē). And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2–4).
Here suffering is neither explained nor redeemed. No symbolic meaning is offered, no narrative of salvation invoked. Endurance is not instrumental; it is not a means to happiness, success, or even understanding. Endurance is itself the telos. James presents ethical maturity not as insight or belief, but as the capacity to remain intact under sustained pressure.
This marks a significant shift from Paul. In Paul, longsuffering (makrothymia) remains embedded within an eschatological horizon. Time is borne because it is moving toward fulfillment; judgment is delayed because redemption is at work (Epistle to the Romans 2:4; Epistle to the Galatians 5:22). In James, by contrast, the delay itself becomes the burden. Although James gestures toward the coming judgment (James 5:7–9), the emphasis falls overwhelmingly on the heaviness of waiting rather than on the promise of resolution. Consolation is minimal; demand is maximal.
This severity is reinforced by James’s sustained hostility to interiority as a refuge. Again and again, he warns against self-deception: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves” (James 1:22). James understands, with remarkable psychological acuity, that inward assurance can become a substitute for ethical endurance. Belief, language, and self-understanding can function as compensations that allow one to avoid the demands of time, action, and responsibility. James refuses all such escape routes.
In this respect, James anticipates a central feature of the modern ethical condition. Where religion later becomes therapeutic, symbolic, or aesthetic—offering meaning rather than demand—James insists that ethical life consists in sustained exposure without reassurance. He allows neither belief nor inwardness to soften the weight of existence. The ethical subject is not comforted; he is required.
Seen genealogically, James occupies a crucial transitional position. In the Hebrew Bible, endurance is borne primarily by God, whose longsuffering (’erekh appayim) allows history to continue as mercy (Exod. 34:6). In Paul, endurance is shared between God and humanity, sustained by participation in Christ and oriented toward eschatological fulfillment. In James, endurance is borne almost entirely by the human subject under demand. God remains, judgment remains, but consolation is withheld. What emerges is an ethical form that can survive even when transcendence later collapses.
This is why James proves so unexpectedly relevant to the condition of Born Man. Born Man lives after transcendence has withdrawn and religion can no longer be returned to without falsification. Yet obligation persists. What James articulates is the ethical form of this obligation before its theological ground has disappeared. James already assumes that belief will not rescue the subject from the burden of time. Endurance, not faith, is the decisive ethical reality.
This continuity also clarifies James’s relevance to contemporary phenomena such as addiction and violence. Both represent collapses of endurance—attempts to annihilate the interval that ethical life requires. Addiction collapses time chemically; violence collapses it explosively. Against both stands James’s uncompromising injunction: do not deceive yourself, do not flee inwardly, do not shorten time. Remain. Act. Endure.
For this reason, James is neither a moralist nor a proto-modern secularist. He is something rarer: a religious writer who already refuses religious consolation. He articulates an ethic capable of surviving the loss of metaphysical support because it never relied on that support to begin with.
James thus stands as the ethical bridge between covenantal religion and post-religious obligation. Whether Born Man represents the fulfillment of James or his final displacement remains an open question. What is clear is that James names, with extraordinary clarity, an ethical demand that modernity can neither justify nor escape: endurance without explanation.
References
- Epistle of James
- Epistle to the Romans
- Epistle to the Galatians
- Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Letter of James. Anchor Yale Bible.
- Dunn, J. D. G. The Theology of Paul the Apostle.
- Wright, N. T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God.
Brenton L. Delp
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