Despite Having Few References to Jesus, the Book of James Is Remarkably Christological
An evangelical reading of James that finds a high Christology in its titles for Jesus, its account of new birth, and its sustained echoes of Jesus's teaching.
Read the original sourcePlummer addresses a real reading problem: Jesus is named only twice in James, while the letter is often remembered chiefly for moral instruction. He argues that explicit name counts are a poor measure of theological presence. “Lord,” “Christ,” and “Lord of glory” carry christological weight, while James's language of birth through the word of truth and its many parallels with Jesus's teaching place the letter within the gospel's larger theological world.
The argument is strongest when it sends the reader back to the letter's texture. James can echo Jesus without announcing each echo, and practical exhortation need not be opposed to Christology. Plummer's comparison of James 1:18 with new-birth language is a more specifically evangelical and Reformed account of salvation, however, and some of his larger formulations reach beyond what those verses establish on their own.
Use the essay as a set of testable reading questions rather than as a settled index of every allusion: What do James's titles imply in their Jewish scriptural setting? Which parallels to the Sermon on the Mount are verbal, thematic, or merely possible? How does the letter connect God's gift of new life to the obedience it commands? Those questions preserve Plummer's central insight without making agreement with every exegetical step a condition of benefiting from it.