The Epistle Luther Called Straw

James took longer than most New Testament books to secure universal acceptance; Eusebius in the early 4th century listed it among the disputed writings, and its apparent tension with Paul on faith and works kept it a live question well into the Reformation, when Martin Luther, reading it as undermining justification by faith alone, privately called it "an epistle of straw" and questioned whether it belonged in the canon at all, though he stopped short of removing it and it has remained canonical in every Lutheran and other Protestant Bible since.

The dispute over James's relationship to Paul has generated one of the most durable exegetical conversations in Christian history, and most modern interpreters across traditions now read the two as complementary correctives to different failures rather than as opposed theologies, a settled scholarly consensus even where popular impressions of a conflict persist.

James also carries particular weight in Catholic and Orthodox sacramental theology, since its instruction to call the elders of the church to anoint the sick with oil and pray over them is the primary New Testament text underlying the sacrament of anointing of the sick, distinct from the general instruction on prayer for healing that other traditions draw from the same passage.