Quote:
Originally Posted by DistantStar
Do you consider James inspired or not? If yes, then how can it be false? If no, then what others books are wrong?
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A better question to ask is "does it contain spiritual value?". To that I say yes, so it is inspired.
Inspiration is not really about truth or error but spiritual value. There were many books in circulation in the early church, so they decided to work out which ones had the most spiritual value, and these they called the Canon.
One of the most ridiculous argument some Christians make is that the bible is inspired because it says so. This sort of self-serving argument says nothing about which books should make up those scriptures. The church had to go through a process of deciding which books are canon and which are not.
When the Canon was being decided upon, not all Christians agreed which books should go into it. James was one of the disputed books. See here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilegomena
Some churches such as those in the East did not really see the need to determine what is inspired and what is not:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Develo...Eastern_canons
Inspired or not, it doesn't change the fact that saying "a person is justified by works" contradicts Paul.
Now if you or I said that a person is justified by works, in a Catholic church no one would have a problem with that. But in a Protestant church they would have a problem with that. Yet they have no problem with it being in their own Bibles, and always give James the benefit of the doubt by trying to explain it away or claim it does not mean what it plainly says.