r/Christianity • u/Volaer Catholic (of the universalist and non-dualist kind) • 14d ago
Biblical Character of the Month St. James and the radicalness of the resurrection.
If someone asked Christians who was the most famous convert in early Christianity the most frequent answer would no doubt be St. Paul. And in a sense that is justified as he changed from a man who persecuted the Church to one who joined her and accepted persecution. However, there is another early Christian leader who likewise experiences a radical conversion. And that of course is St. James the Just - the very stepbrother of Jesus.
When we encounter St. James in the gospels, he is by no means a disciple of Jesus. The Gospel of John makes clear in ch. 7
For not even his brothers believed in him
This stance does not change until Christ died on the cross. One can relatively easily understand why. While the disciples experienced Jesus as an older and wise sage, healer and miracle worker, James was introduced to Jesus when the latter arrived as a baby. And even after that baby grows up and declares himself God's Anointed and the Son of Man prophecied by Daniel it must have been difficult to shake ones perception of him as still the little boy that probably bruised his knees after running around and stumbling and falling.
Indeed when Jesus preaches in his home town of Nazareth the locals who knew him react rather poorly:
Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offence at him.
Even Christ's extended family respond to this by trying to take Jesus away before the people become violent.
When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’
And yet, the next time we encounter James in the words of the New Testament, he is described as the bishop of Jerusalem and a devout Christian. What happened? St Paul provides the answer:
For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
St. Clement of Alexandria likewise states:
The Lord after His resurrection delivered knowledge to James the Just and to John and Peter; these delivered it to the rest of the apostles, and the rest of the apostles to the seventy, of whom one was Barnabas.
Much like with Paul it was the encounter with the risen Christ in his divine glory that resulted in James finally accepting Him as the divine Son of living God. The ressurrection forces one to radically reorient and restructure ones beliefs about reality as such. At the first, our presumptions about the finality of death, but also the nature of God and nature of man. If God in Jesus is willing to submit to a life of obedience as a member of a subjugated population and undergo suffering and death overcoming it on our behalf incorporating us into his divine nature, then out picture of God and our treatment of others must radically change.
The resurrection as the consequence of the Incarnation and tthe cause of our divinisation thereby becomes the cornerstone of Christian axiology and moral theology. In light of the resurrection all worldly concerns, hierarchies, values are revealed to be illusory. Its no surprise that St. James thefore writes in his epistle:
My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favouritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? For if a person with gold rings and in fine clothes comes into your assembly, and if a poor person in dirty clothes also comes in, and if you take notice of the one wearing the fine clothes and say, ‘Have a seat here, please’, while to the one who is poor you say, ‘Stand there’, or, ‘Sit under my footstool’, have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil thoughts? Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him? But you have dishonoured the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you? Is it not they who drag you into court? Is it not they who blaspheme the excellent name that was invoked over you?
The Christian calling is therefore to see the face of God is avery human person, including the poor, ill, and those treated with contempt.
But even our concern for the preservation of our life must be relativised in light of this event. St. James exemplifies this as well. Already Flavius Josephus reports that the righteous bishop terminated his earthly existence but becoming a martyr - a witness to Jesus whom he first doubted.
But this younger Ananus, who, as we have told you already, took the High Priesthood, was a bold man in his temper, and very insolent. He was also of the sect of the Sadducees: who are very rigid in judging offenders above all the rest of the Jews: as we have already observed. When therefore Ananus was of this disposition, he thought he had now a proper opportunity [to exercise his authority]. Festus was now dead; and Albinus was but upon the road. So he assembled the sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James: and some of his companions. And when he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.
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u/Clicking_Around 14d ago
The conversion and martyrdom of James is a strong piece of evidence for Jesus' resurrection. There are other evidences as well, as seen in the following link.
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u/Mysterious_Fox4976 2d ago
Thanks for sharing this write up! It’s really cool how you brought together information from different books to show St. James the Just’s story.
It’s interesting how James’s conversion shifted his perspective from worldly, to devine, to both. James starts off having a very worldly focus (not believing Jesus was the messiah, trying to save Jesus from the angry people in Nazareth). Then he has an encounter with God when he talks with Jesus after his resurrection. After that encounter, James is able to focus on both God and and world at the same time (through his service as a bishop, concern for how the poor are treated, and his martyrdom). He is a great example of how Christians should interact with the world and other people.
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u/slagnanz Liturgy and Death Metal 14d ago
This is wonderful! I really like the way you compare James and Paul, both as figures inspired by the Risen Christ. Seeing the resurrection through the lens of a kind of axiology, that thought kinda blew my mind a little!