LIBERTY UNIVERSITY JOHN W. RAWLINGS SCHOOL OF DIVINITY
The New Testament letter of James and true faith
A Paper Submitted to
the Faculty of the School of Divinity
in Candidacy for the Degree of
Doctor of Education in Christian Leadership (Ed. D) Department of Christian Leadership and
Church Ministries
By
Mary Gracias
Lynchburg, Virginia
5/2022
The New Testament letter of James argues that true faith naturally results in faith-filled
actions (i.e. works):
What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith
save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to
him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical
needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is
dead. But someone will say, ‘You have faith; I have deeds.’ Show me your faith without
deeds, and I will show you my faith by what I do. You believe that there is one God. Good!
Even the demons believe that – and shudder. (James 2:14-19)
Any spirituality can be understood in terms of attitudes based upon worldview beliefs – the
combination of belief that with belief in which constitutes ‘faith’ – (which corresponds with the
broader definition of ‘the heart’ used by Naugle and Sire[60]) that in turn jointly result in
various spiritual actions (i.e. ‘works’).
As C.E.M. Joad affirms:
Action always presupposes an attitude of mind from which it springs, an attitude which,
explicit when the action is first embarked upon, is unconscious by the time it has become an
habitual and well established course of conduct. When I act in a certain manner towards
anything, I recognize by implication that it possesses those characteristics which make my
conduct appropriate… If I cannot find good grounds for my beliefs, I shall certainly not
persuade myself to act in conformity to them; thus, if I do not accept the attribution of
personality to God I shall not succeed in inducing myself to act towards him as if he were a
person… Thought, in other words, precedes action in the religious as well as other spheres,
and the practical significance of the precepts of religion is not separable from the
theoretical content from which they derive. It is, then, because my intellect is on the whole
convinced that I made such shift as I can to live conformably with its dictates… intellect,
faith, will and desire … co-operate to produce religious belief and the endeavour to act
conformably with it.[61]
Apologetics is itself a spiritual practice that involves the whole person (cf. 1 Peter 3:15; 2
Corinthians 10:4-5; Colossians 4:5-6). For the true ambassador of Christ: ‘an accurately
informed mind, an artful method [strength]; and character, an attractive manner [heart] – play
a part in every effective involvement with a non-believer.’[62]
Elizabeth A. Dreyer and John B. Bennett comment that:
Much of [a person’s] worldview is inherited from family, education, society,
relationships. But as adults, we have the opportunity to name, reflect on, and shape these
values in freedom. No authentic spirituality is simply a ‘construct’ that we have mindlessly
appropriated from the world around us – whether from a religion or our consumer culture.
Nor is genuine spirituality coerced in any way…[63]
Hence we must distinguish between ‘intrinsic’ and ‘extrinsic’ spirituality. Intrinsic
spirituality is self-consciously accepted and internalised by an agent as an end in itself (rather
than as a pragmatic means to an end) and is hence far more transformative than an extrinsic
spirituality that’s a matter of mere external conformity.[64] Sociologist Steve Fuller suggests
that ‘most people rarely decide to believe anything in particular, simply because it is more
convenient to move through a world already equipped with default beliefs. Active rejection
takes work, passive acceptance does not.’[65] Nevertheless, personal integrity demands an
intrinsic spirituality; for any spirituality that’s merely ‘extrinsic’ will produce cognitive
dissonance (lending itself to Schaeffer’s process of ‘taking the roof off’).
How integrative or disintegrative one’s spirituality is depends in part upon whether it is an
intrinsic or an extrinsic spirituality. However, it also depends upon the extent to which a) one’s
spiritual practices cohere with and flow from one’s spiritual attitudes and the extent to which b)
one’s spiritual attitudes stand in a positive or negative relationship to one’s worldview beliefs. A
fully integrative spirituality is an intrinsic spirituality in which all one’s practices naturally flow
from (and hence cohere with) a positive affective relationship with one’s worldview beliefs. A
disintegrative spirituality, by contrast, is one in which dissonance is engendered by conflict
within or between the three elements of spirituality (i.e. mind, heart and strength). For
example, the person who believes that God exists but who reacts to this belief with an attitude
of resentment and deliberate malfeasance will have a disintegrative spirituality. The tension
generated by this lack of spiritual integration can be resolved either by removing (or repressing)
the belief that God exists, or by changing the orientation of the heart. The danger in seeking
spiritual integration is thus that we will resolve spiritual tension by aligning our beliefs with our
actions and / or attitudes, rather than aligning our actions and / or attitudes with our beliefs,
thereby flouting our epistemic responsibilities by prioritising personal comfort and convenience
over truth (cf. Psalm 14:1 & 53:1).
With these distinctions in place we can state that the ideal goal of Christian apologetics is:
• A strong, central and epistemically virtuous self-conscious internalisation of a specifically
Christian integrative spirituality.[66]
Intrinsic spiritual integration has no permanent value unless it is built upon the rock of
truth (cf. Acts 17:24-29; Matthew 7:24-25). Nevertheless, the apologist should bear in mind the
need to engage with people at the level of their spiritual attitudes and practices. This point can
be better appreciated using categories derived from Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, which
Alister McGrath suggests ‘provides both a stimulus and a framework for more effective
apologetics.’[67]
The Art of Rhetoric
Aristotle formally defines rhetoric as ‘the detection of the persuasive aspects of each
matter,’[68] although in practice rhetoric obviously encompasses the principles of how best to
communicate such objective observations to an audience: ‘For a speech is composed of three
factors – the speaker, the subject and the listener – and it is to the last of these that its purpose
is related.’[69] Aristotle explains that rhetoric encompasses three inter-related areas: ‘Of those
proofs that are furnished through the speech there are three kinds. Some reside in the
character of the speaker, some in a certain disposition of the audience and some in the speech
itself, through its demonstrating or seeming to demonstrate.’[70] These three aspects of
rhetoric are referred to by the Greek terms ethos, pathos and logos:
Ethos – how the character and credibility of a speaker influences people to consider
them to be believable
Pathos – the use of emotional appeals to affect an audience’s judgment (e.g. through
storytelling, or otherwise presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong affections in the
audience)
Logos – the use of reasoning to construct arguments
Ethos relates to the apologist’s character (a matter of both ‘heart’ and ‘strength’, but one
known to the audience through the apologist’s actions) – cf. Galatians 5:22. Pathos relates to
the affections of the apologist’s heart (communicated by word and deed). Logos relates to the
apologist’s beliefs communicated by rational argumentation (‘mind’). Reason is part and parcel
of rhetoric, not something to be contrasted with it.
Transcendental Values
According to Cicero: ‘the eloquent speaker is he who in the forum and in the courts will
speak in such a way as to achieve proof, delight and influence.’[72] These outcomes correspond
not only to the rhetorical elements of ethos (persuasion by moral influence), pathos (persuasion
by emotional delight) and logos (persuasion by proof), but to the traditional ‘transcendental’
values of truth (i.e. ‘proof’), beauty (i.e. ‘delight’) and goodness (i.e. ‘influence’). These
properties are ‘transcendental’ because they are ‘properties found in absolutely everything that
exists… Everything, in other words, is true, good and beautiful in some degree and in some
respect.’[73] Peter Kreeft elaborates upon the traditional understanding of the transcendentals:
Truth is good and beautiful; goodness is true and beautiful; beauty is true and good.
But there is an ontological (not temporal) order: it flows from Being to truth, truth to
goodness, and goodness to beauty. Truth is judged by Being, goodness by truth, and beauty
by goodness. The psychological order of our experience of them is the reverse: we are
moved to goodness by its beauty, to truth by its goodness, and to Being by its truth.[74]
I have argued elsewhere [75] for the classical (and Biblical [76]) belief that truth, beauty
and goodness are all objective values independent of our beliefs, desires and choices.[77] Given
the inter-related nature of the transcendentals (i.e. truth is good and goodness is beautiful), the
more commonly accepted objectivity of truth and goodness naturally carries over into
discussions of aesthetic value. As atheist J.L. Mackie acknowledged: ‘much the same
considerations apply to aesthetic and to moral values, and there would be at least some initial
implausibility in a view that gave the one a different status from the other.’[78] Indeed, G.E.
Moore argued that ‘the beautiful should be defined as that of which the admiring
contemplation is good in itself... the question whether it is truly beautiful or not, depends upon
the objective question whether the whole in question is or is not truly good.’[79] This move
makes beauty objective by definition, given that moral values are objective.[80]
The co-incidence between rhetoric and the transcendentals is no coincidence – the
transcendentals are precisely those categories by which all things are to be judged and are
therefore the only ways in which any subject matter (including spirituality) could have an
objectively persuasive aspect (truth, beauty, goodness) to be detected and communicated by
the apologist’s rhetoric in each dimension (logos, pathos, ethos).
Consider former atheist A.N. Wilson’s acknowledgement that: ‘When I thought I was an
atheist I would listen to the music of [Christian composer J.S.] Bach and realize that his
perception of life was deeper, wiser, more rounded than my own….’[81] Bach’s beautiful music
clearly played an apologetic function in Wilson’s life (one needn’t convince someone of the
objectivity of beauty before beauty itself can play an apologetic function in illuminating their
perception of reality). Peter Kreeft reports knowing ‘three ex-atheists who were swayed’ by
Bach’s St. Matthew Passion [82] (two are philosophy professors and one a monk).[83] Hence
the wise apologist will give some thought to the music played before their next public lecture.
Likewise, we should take note when Peter Hitchens (brother of the late Christopher Hitchens)
describes the role played in his return to faith by Rogier van der Weyden’s fifteenth-century
painting of the last judgement:[84]
Another religious painting. Couldn’t these people think of anything else to depict? Still
scoffing, I peered at the naked figures fleeing towards the pit of Hell, out of my usual faintly
morbid interest in the alleged terrors of damnation. But this time I gasped, my mouth
actually hanging open. These people did not appear remote or from the ancient past; they
were my own generation. Because they were naked, they were not imprisoned in their own
age by time-bound fashions… They were me, and the people I knew… I had a sudden strong
sense of religion being a thing of the present day, not imprisoned under thick layers of time.
A large catalogue of misdeeds, ranging from the embarrassing to the appalling, replayed
themselves rapidly in my head. I had absolutely no doubt that I was among the damned, if
there were any damned. And what if there were? How did I know there were not? I did not
know.[85]
Attracted by artistic beauty, Hitchens encountered a spiritual truth about his own deficit of
goodness. Hence the wise apologist will pay diligent attention not only to the words, but to the
images (and film clips) in their next power-point presentation. As Alister McGrath writes:
The use of arguments … remains an integral part of Christian apologetics and must
never be marginalized. However [older] Christian writers … placed a high value on biblical
stories and images in teaching the faithful … both of which make a significant appeal to the
human imagination. Anyone familiar with the history of Christian apologetics quickly
realizes that both of these were used extensively as gateways to faith by earlier generations
of apologists… We need to retrieve such older approaches to apologetics as we develop a
balanced approach to the commendation and defence of the Christian faith…[86]
