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Originally Posted by ZNPaaneah
To be fair to James this passage is a specific rebuke to Peter and Barnabas, and is less clear about the influence of James. Still, I am willing to say that "coming from James" is enough to say that he was a Judaizer at this point...
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Oh, I don't believe James was a Judaizer. He was a Law-abiding Jewish Christian. He rather may have tolerated or was weak towards the Judaizers. The Judaizing groups within his church probably had influence, just like the Pharisees had influence in Judaism (but not all Jews were Pharisees).
Perhaps James was as afraid of them as Peter was. Perhaps he wanted to keep the unity in the church and not make a fuss about it. I think it may not be too different to the situation today with Jerusalem, and which has always been. Most Jews are moderates, but then there are the zealots or ultra-orthodox as well.
The book of James was accepted into the new testament canon. So we should respect that. It is useful to us today like any other book of the Bible. The problem comes if we make the gospel around his "faith+works" verse like the Catholics do, and ignore the majority "grace alone" writings by Paul. We could try to reconcile the two, but in my view if we are not careful that could be a step in the Catholic direction. Of course it is always possible to go to the other extreme as well with Paul's writings, and for that reason James provides some balance.