Tension in the Early Church: Paul vs James

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In Acts and Galatians we read of Paul’s interactions with the rest of the leadership of the Church, especially James. While both Paul and James believed in Jesus, Paul was more focused on what Jesus meant for all nations and James was focused on He meant for the Jews. The attitudes and beliefs of these men seem to put a strain on their relationship. Consequently, we see James practically order Paul to go through a purification ritual to prove his loyalty to the Law of Moses and basically sit on his hands when Paul is assaulted by the Asian Jews.
 
For the most part they were speaking to different audiences.
Their delivery was different becuase it needed to be.
 
Doesn’t explain much, like how James basically does nothing when Paul is the center of the fracas in Jerusalem.
 
James817 said:
The attitudes and beliefs of these men seem to put a strain on their relationship.
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I think the strain evidenced in Matthew’s gospel as well.

Pauline theology is a problem for Matthew. Matthew’s teaching contradicts Paul’s. Paul rejects the Torah as a means of justification, “We . . . may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law because by works of the law no one will be justified” (Gal. 2:16). Paul’s radical followers were pushing Paul’s gospel of freedom from Torah to a virtual antinomianism: “All things are lawful for me” (1 Cor. 6:12).

Matthew, exerting a strong influence on the church, acts as a moderating force on this radical element. Matthew answers his opposition by insisting on the validity of the Law, but in a Christian way relegates Paul’s followers, those who are not up to keeping the Law, those who break the Law, to “being called the least in the kingdom” rather than condemning them to suffer eternal damnation (5:19).
 
Romans 3:31
Do we, then, nullify the Law by this faith? By no means! Instead, we uphold the Law.
 
Paul didn’t know Jesus on Earth; James did.

Regardless, Peter was in charge. Peter was a fisherman who couldn’t read or write.
 
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Two separate questions are being asked here. First there is the confrontation between James and Paul at the Council of Jerusalem, in Acts 15, and then there is the separate question of the riots, followed by Paul’s arrest by the Roman authorities, in Acts 22-23.

It’s pretty clear what’s going on at the Council of Jerusalem (Acts 15). Paul’s Gentile flock in Antioch are chafing under an array of demands that mean, for them, that the Christian Church is still too Jewish, while James’ Jewish Christians in Jerusalem are pulling in the opposite direction: they’re not willing to allow Christian worship to drift too far away from Judaism.

In connection with the second episode, the riot and Paul’s subsequent arrest, the question is, Why didn’t James come to his rescue? But this would imply that James wielded some kind of influence over the citizens of Jerusalem as a whole, rather than within the narrower confines of the Christian community alone. But did he, in fact, enjoy such broad-based prestige? Would it have been within his powers either (a) to swing the opinion of the Sanhedrin to Paul’s side, or (b) to convince the Roman authorities to release him? I have always been given to understand that the answer to both questions is No.
 
Actually when one understands what Paul was referring to when he talks about works not saving anyone and james saying it seems just the opposite are really talking about different things to two different audiences . In Paul he was talking about the laws of Moses and the Jewish rituals that are not going to save anyone not about good deeds or good works that one does for someone. James was talking ws saying to have faith is not enough one must have good works or good deeds to show one has faith.

Paul was taking about converted Pharisees who were preaching and teaching converted Gentiles that they had to follow the laws of Moses and the Jewish rituals and had to be circumcised in order to be saved which Paul spoke against say that does not save but faith in Christ not about not doing good works or good deeds which is much different from ritual works and law of Moses.
James was talking about converted Pharisees who were preaching and teaching in Jerusalem that no one had to do anything like good works or good deeds in order to be saved one only needed to have faith and nothing more than that. James was saying if one has faith in Christ then one shows it by doing good works and good deeds. otherwise just to say one has faith but nothing to show one has is nothing more then a dead faith and is meaningless.
 
James817 said:
In Acts and Galatians we read of Paul’s interactions with the rest of the leadership of the Church, especially James. While both Paul and James believed in Jesus, Paul was more focused on what Jesus meant for all nations and James was focused on He meant for the Jews. The attitudes and beliefs of these men seem to put a strain on their relationship. Consequently, we see James practically order Paul to go through a purification ritual to prove his loyalty to the Law of Moses and basically sit on his hands when Paul is assaulted by the Asian Jews.
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It’s a false conflict. They are in agreement with each other… They say the same thing differently.

Paul and James don’t disagree. The distinction is between "good works", and “works of law”

"Faith, by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (Jas. 2:17), for “a man is justified by works and not by faith alone” (2:24). Ever since the time of Luther, who discredited this letter because it did not fit in with his doctrine of faith without works, many people have tried to make out that it is at odds with Paul’s teaching “that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith” (Gal. 2:16, Rom. 3:20).

But the contradiction is only apparent, because from the context it is clear that James (who knew the letter to the Galatians) is talking about the “good works” which Jesus recommended in the Sermon on the Mount, for “not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father” (Matt. 7:21). Paul, on the contrary, is referring to the Old Covenant, which he regarded as superseded, and he is taking issue with these Judaizers who made out that Christians had to keep the observances of the Mosaic law if they were to attain salvation.

Paul and James, then, are at one. Paul shows this when he speaks of "faith working through love" (Gal. 5:6); and in Romans he is even more specific when he says that God “will render to every man according to his works” (Rom. 2:6).

Excerpted from The Letter of James | Catholic Answers
 
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James was ministering to Jewish converts , Paul to gentile converts mainly
 
Roseeurekacross said:
James was ministering to Jewish converts ,
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“Converts” may not be the right word in the case of James’ flock in Jerusalem. Like James himself – known as “James the Just,” a translation of Ya’akov ha-Tzadik – they evidently regarded themselves as loyal, observant members of the Jewish community, just as John the Baptist and Jesus had both regarded themselves a few years earlier. Nobody had yet “converted” away from Judaism to the new sect. The so-called ”parting of the ways,” when the Christian Church broke away from Judaism, didn’t happen until several years after James’ death.
 
You have to keep in mind that James was walking a fine line between being a Orthodox Jewish priest and a Christian advocate. Likely certain factions within the Jerusalem High Priesthood catered somewhat to James just to placate the growing Christian faction.

However, Josephus is clear that when the Procurator Festus died suddenly in about A.D. 62, in the power vacuum, and before Albinus could come out to take control, the Jerusalem Sanhedrin was illegally convened for the sole purpose of executing James and others of the high ranking Christian leaders.

Hagan speculates that Festus could well have been murdered specifically so James and the Christians could be gotten rid of.
 
Josephus and Hegessipus seem to say James wielded great influence in Jerusalem.
 
I mean, really! After 2,000 years, are we going to discover something that Ignatius of Antioch did not know? That Saint Augustine did not know? That Saint Jerome did not know? That Saint Thomas Aquinas did not know? When we conjure up supposed disputes, let us first doubt ourselves.

As to the doings in Jerusalem, not every danged thing was written. In fact, it was better for the faith that very little was written. Paul was apparently somewhat irascible, as he also broke with Barnabas and Mark. He also confronted and chastised Peter, but did something at least as egregious to Timothy, in having him circumcised to avoid offending the Jews. Yet, Peter leveled no recorded condemnation against Paul for having done this.
 
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James817 said:
Josephus and Hegessipus seem to say James wielded great influence in Jerusalem.
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Josephus doesn’t say that in so many words. He only mentions James once. He says that after James was stoned, a group of influential Jerusalemites secretly sent to Agrippa, who was then in Rome, urging him to order Ananus to desist from any further such actions (Ant. XX, 200-201). Does that prove that James himself was an influential citizen who could have stepped in to rescue Paul? I don’t think so.

What does Hegesippus say, and how reliable a source is he? Remember that he was writing a hundred years or so after the event.
 
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