Is a person, such as Abraham or Rahab, justified by faith or by works?

Paul and James are answering different errors, and they use the key words in different senses. Paul opposes the idea that anyone can earn a right standing with God by keeping the law, ‘the deeds of the law’ such as circumcision. Against that he shows that Abraham “believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness” (Romans 4:3, quoting Genesis 15:6) before he was circumcised and many years before he offered Isaac. James opposes a ‘faith’ that is only a claim, words without deeds, which leaves the hungry hungry (James 2:14-16), the kind of belief the demons have, who “believe, and tremble” (2:19). Such faith, he says, is dead.

So when James says Abraham was justified by works “when he had offered Isaac his son upon the altar”, he means that Abraham’s faith was shown to be real years after God had counted it as righteousness. James quotes the same verse as Paul and says that Abraham’s obedience fulfilled it: “by works was faith made perfect” (2:22-23). ‘Justify’ can mean to declare righteous, or to show to be righteous, as in “wisdom is justified of all her children” (Luke 7:35); Calvin put it that Paul speaks of righteousness reckoned before God, and James of righteousness shown in conduct. Paul agrees that real faith works: what counts is “faith which worketh by love” (Galatians 5:6), and believers are “created in Christ Jesus unto good works” (Ephesians 2:10). Rahab is the same case. Hebrews names the faith and James the deed that showed it, and both speak of one act, her receiving the spies.

Faith alone

Lutheran and Reformed Christians hold that a sinner is justified before God by faith alone, through Christ’s righteousness credited to him. Good works are the necessary fruit and evidence of that faith, as James insists, but add nothing to justification itself.

Faith working with works

The Council of Trent (1547) taught that no one earns the grace of first justification, by faith or by works, but that the justified, ‘faith co-operating with good works’, grow in righteousness and are further justified; it cites James 2:24. Catholics therefore read James as speaking of justification in its full, lifelong sense.

The main Christian traditions all hold that Paul and James do not contradict each other, but how faith, works and justification fit together has been debated since the Reformation, and it still divides Protestants and Catholics.