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Lord of the Faith

The other day, my wife asked me about the proper cutting of the verse-lines (paragraphing) of James 2: 20-26, where the New International Version (NIV) differs from the Jerusalem Bible. Biblical or not, the cutting matters because the emphasis changes when you create a new paragraph – I should know; being a writer and editor for the last 30 years at least, I have encountered enough rewriting and done enough revising myself to appreciate the subtle differences you make when you create a new paragraph out of an old one to make two. Here are the paragraphs in contention (JB, July 1966):

Do realize, you senseless man, that faith without good deeds is useless. You surely know that Abraham our father was justified by his deed, because he suffered his son Isaac on the altar? There you see it: faith and deeds were working together; his faith became perfect by what he did. This is what scripture really means when it says: Abraham put his faith in God, and this was counted as making him justified; and that is why he was called ‘the friend of God.’

You see now that it is by doing something good, and not only by believing, that a man is justified. There is another example of the same kind: Rahab the prostitute, justified by her deeds because she welcomed the messengers and showed them a different way to leave. A body dies when it is separated from the spirit, and in the same way faith is dead if it is separated from good deeds.

Never mind how the JB (Roman Catholic) differs in the paragraphing of those lines with that of the NIV (Protestant). These two paragraphs from the New Testament add enough fuel to the fire that walls off the Protestants from the Catholics. The Protestants believe in sola fide (faith alone); they claim that faith alone is enough to save you, and once saved, you cannot lose your salvation. Sola scriptura (the Bible alone) is another battlecry of the Protestants; the Bible is the only source of truth about God.

Now, consenting without conceding sola scriptura, what do the Bible verses quoted above say? Faith alone is not enough! The Bible alone is enough proof that faith alone is not enough. In fact, Martin Luther himself said, ‘You are saved by faith alone, but if faith is alone, it is not faith’ (quoted by Philip Yancey and Tim Stafford, all-4-him.blogspot.com/). What’s this: The Lord of the Faith of the Protestants has been abandoned by his flock?

That was the other day. Today, I was re-reading those verses in the Jerusalem Bible and then, as is my wont with any book, I went to the preliminary pages of that book and read. That was when I noticed one more time that there was a list of those who collaborated in the preparation of this Bible. This time I read that list. And you’ll never guess who I found included in the enumeration: The Lord of the Pen himself, he who wrote The Lord Of The Rings: JRR Tolkien!

That book has been called the ‘greatest of the century’ and ‘the world’s most popular work of fiction,’ the work of a literary genius (Ethan Gilsdorf, 2003, boston.com/). And do you know who The Lord of the Faith was for Tolkien? Believe me, it’s The Lord whom the Roman Catholics believe in. Tolkien himself had insisted that The Lord Of The Rings is ‘a fundamentally religious and Catholic work’ (Joson Boffetti, 2001, crisismagazine.com/). Tolkien was fundamentally religious and Catholic.

Image by BeingKatie titled 'Lord Of The Rings Exhibition at the Museum of Natural History' (flickr.com/).

3 August 2006