Come and study the Holy Scriptures with us as Father Stephen DeYoung teaches verse by verse on the podcast, The Whole Council of God.

Father Stephen holds a PhD in biblical studies, and it's an Orthodox priest serving at Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church in Lafayette, Louisiana.

So we'll go ahead and get started.

When we get started here in just a moment, we'll pick up in the Epistle of St.

James chapter 2, verse 14.

As I was just saying, a completely non-controversial passage in any way that no one has

ever had an argument about.

And now, I will say, and I think we're going to see today that this should be a passage

about which there's not a lot of controversy.

But what causes controversy is not that there's something shocking or weird or bizarre

here in the middle of James Chapter 2.

It's that since at least Martin Luther, there's been a certain reading of St. Paul's epistles, as we talked about in the

introduction to St. James, and the sort of plain meaning of what we're going to see in the second

half of Chapter 2 of St. James' epistle, the plain reading of it directly contradicts that reading of St. Paul.

And so this then creates a dilemma for people who have been convinced of that reading.

One possible answer would be to just say, well, perhaps we've read St. Paul incorrectly.

That has been the minority approach taken, including by Martin Luther himself.

And the much more common approach, including that taken essentially bar Martin Luther himself,

although there's some ambiguity.

If you read his, Martin Luther's actual commentary on the Epistle of St. James,

it's not as clear as I'm about to make it.

So this is an oversimplification.

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