Typical Skew on Sin in James

In my General Epistles class this semester, we worked through Nystrom's commentary in the NIV Application series. My impression of Nystrom from the commentary is that I would like this guy. He seems full of faith and exactly the type of person Zondervan wanted to write for this series. An added bonus to me are the references to classical literature sprinkled throughout. I don't know if Nystrom had some training in classics or if one of his principal sources did, but I like it.

I do have one bone to pick with him, however, and that is his use of the idea of a yetzer hara, an evil impulse, as the lens through which to look at double-mindedness in James. We all have an evil impulse, so the story goes, as is attested in the rabbinic literature. Thus we have a war within us between our good side and our evil side.

I'm going to leave almost completely out of discussion (in other words, other than this paragraph ;-) the fact that it is always thin ground to use later rabbinic discussions to interpret a person like Paul or James, who wrote some 150 years before the rabbinic material was written down. I know it puts a horrible damper on things, but half the stuff pastors use from the pulpit comes from older sources like Jeremias who were not scrupulous with their use of later sources--often much later!

But what is really significant is that this concept is clearly the wrong lens through which to read James. The double minded person in James is not "everyman" but is a person in big trouble. This person should not think they will receive anything from the Lord. The double minded person is someone whose loyalties are divided between God and the world, and this divided loyalty must either stop or face judgment.

So once again, the Zeitgeist of the church right now, unable to see that the Bible does not expect believers to be defeated by sin, the world, or the Devil, let alone to be double-minded.