Your Bible probably has a mistranslation in it at James 2:14.

n James 2:14. (Unless you read the Douay-Rheims, or the King James.) Here is James 2:14 in the NAB trans­la­tion that is read at Mass: “What good is it, my broth­ers, if some­one says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?

I empha­size the word “that” because it is wrong. It should not be there. Here is the same verse in the 1899 Douay-Rheims: “What shall it prof­it, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but hath not works? Shall faith be able to save him?

Notice that “that” does not appear here. But most mod­ern Bible trans­la­tions include it, or some vari­a­tion. The NIV uses “such faith.” The RSV-CE, only scarce­ly bet­ter, reads “his faith.” But they are wrong, and it mat­ters a good deal, as I will explain below.

First, take a look at Strong’s Greek inter­lin­ear for this text. This comes from Bible­Hub:

The Greek words in ques­tion are “hē pis­tis,” which are cor­rect­ly trans­lat­ed “the faith.” “Hē” is (see here) a def­i­nite arti­cle, not a demon­stra­tive pro­noun like “that” or “such,” nor even a per­son­al pro­noun like “his.”

Occa­sion­al­ly a trans­la­tor might replace “hē” with some­thing else for the sake of gram­mat­i­cal clar­i­ty, but there is no need for that here. The lit­er­al trans­la­tion would be “Can the faith save him?” but the arti­cle is extra­ne­ous in Eng­lish. A good trans­la­tor will drop it.

Before I at last get to the point of all this, take a look at Mounce’s Greek inter­lin­ear of the full text of James 2:14. This screen­shot comes from Bible Gate­way.

Do you see how the very same Greek word that Mounce trans­lates as a demon­stra­tive phrase (“that kind of”) in the sec­ond sen­tence is dropped alto­geth­er as extra­ne­ous in the first sen­tence? Why the dif­fer­ence in the sec­ond?

And that leads me to the point of all this. Protes­tant apol­o­gists know they have a prob­lem with James 2:14 because it very clear­ly says that faith alone can­not save with­out works. And so they try to finesse their exe­ge­sis of it in order to retain the false doc­trine of sola fide.

There­fore, they will say that James asks “Can that faith save him?”—meaning, the mere claim to faith referred to in the pre­vi­ous sen­tence. James, in oth­er words (so we are told), is not con­trast­ing faith with works but only true faith with false faith. It is still faith alone that saves—just not “that” faith. Only this faith.

Thus works, though nec­es­sary, are still faith alone. That is how a Protes­tant will exegete this text.

The Bap­tist schol­ar A.T. Robert­son was one of the first to argue all this in his clas­sic work Word Pic­tures of the New Tes­ta­ment: “The arti­cle ἡ here is almost demon­stra­tive in force.”

Robert­son admits “hē” is an arti­cle but claims it is “almost demon­stra­tive” and might as well be trans­lat­ed “that.” Why? Ipse dix­it.

It is not what the Greek text says. It says “Can faith save him?”—that is, faith alone, devoid of works. Protes­tant apol­o­gists try to res­cue sola fide based on a mis­trans­la­tion of James 2:14. It is sad to see that so many Catholic trans­la­tions have fol­lowed suit in this error.

Orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished at Epic Pew, Jan­u­ary 19, 2016.