Martin Luther’s dismissal of the Letter of James as the ‘right strawy epistle’ (written in the preface to his 1522 edition of the New Testament) is well known.
Less well known is his complete agreement with the actual argument of James, that faith without works is dead. He wrote this in his preface to Romans:
Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith; and so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises; it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.He who does not these works is a faithless man. He gropes and looks about after faith and good works, and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks, with many words, about faith and good works.
Martin Luther, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1954), p.xvii.
