The following points are relevant to the understanding of Jas 1:4:
(i) In the LXX, τέλειος usually
translates שלם or תמ(ים) and means ‘unblemished’, ‘undivided’ or ‘whole’, as in
‘unblemished offering’ or ‘undivided heart’. In Gen 6:9; Deut 18:13; 2 Βασ 22:26; and Ecclus 44:17, undivided loyalty to
God is the meaning. This is surely part of what Jas 1:4 connotes. The ‘perfect’
are, unlike those who are double-minded and divided within themselves (1:7–8;
4:8), characterized by whole-hearted, undivided allegiance. One may compare Tg.
Neof. 1 on Gen 22, where Abraham has both a ‘perfect heart’ (6, 8: לבה שלמה) and an ‘undivided heart’
(14: לבי פלגו).
(ii) Deuteronomy 18:13 demands: ‘You must be perfect (תמים; LXX: τέλειος) before the Lord your God’; and 1 Kgs 11:4;
15:3, and 14 criticize several kings for not being ‘perfect’ of heart. So the
imperative to be ‘perfect’ is already embedded in the law and the prophets. It
is nothing new to James or the early church.
(iii) The notion of sinlessness is unlikely to
play a role here. Although the idea was not foreign to Judaism, Jas 3:2
confesses that all make many
mistakes. Moreover, the following words (‘lacking in nothing’) show that
‘wholeness’ or ‘completeness’ is the chief content; cf. Philo, Spec. 1.252: ‘even the τέλειος … never escapes
from sinning’. So the formulation of Burchard, 58, seems justified: James
demands perfection, but he is no perfectionist.
(iv) The Dead Sea Scrolls speak of ‘men of perfection’, a ‘house of
perfection’, and a ‘perfection of way’, and they regularly associate such
language with the faithful keeping Torah. A link to the law is also required in
James, where the Torah is the perfect revelation (1:25) which one must perform
(1:22–25).
(v) Some have thought that Mt 19:16–22 distinguishes between two sorts of believers, the ‘perfect’—those who give up all they have to follow Jesus—and those of lesser commitment. Whether or not that rightly construes Matthew, the Didache seems to make just this distinction (6.2; cf. 1.2), which became popular in later Christianity. James, however, shows no trace of this sort of thinking.
(vi) Given the mention of wisdom in 1:5 and its importance throughout
our epistle, it matters that a link between ‘wisdom’ and ‘perfection’ was
probably traditional. 1QS 4.22 speaks of God giving the Spirit so that ‘upright
ones may have insight into the knowledge of the Most High and the wisdom (חכמת) of the sons of heaven, and
the perfect in the way (תמימי
דרך) may receive understanding’. In 1QH 9(1).34–36, the wise (חכמים) are the ‘perfect of way’ (תמימי דרך). In 4Q525 5.11, those who
walk in ‘perfection’ (תמים) do
not reject Wisdom’s admonishments. In 1 Cor 2:6, Paul writes that he speaks a
‘wisdom’ (σοφίαν) among the
‘perfect’ (τελείοις). Colossians
1:28 depicts the teaching of ‘wisdom’ (σοφίᾳ) as the prerequisite for presenting everyone ‘mature’ (τέλειον) in Christ. Matters are similar in Jas 1:4,
where wisdom enables one to endure patiently, which in turn leads to a
‘perfected work’.
(vii) Patient endurance and its ‘perfected work’ depend upon wisdom, as
the next verse makes plain; and because wisdom is the gift of God (1:5, 17), it
seemingly follows that the one who is steadfast and perfect has been made such
by divine favor.
(viii) James’ use of τέλειος probably does
not have an exclusively Jewish background but also owes something to popular
Hellenistic philosophy. Philo uses τέλιος with reference
to moral perfection; so too the Stoics and yet others. The Stoic maxim
preserved in Stobaeus, Ecl. 2.7.11G,
supplies a good parallel to James: πάντα δὲ τὸν καλὸν καὶ ἀγαθὸν ἄνδρα τέλειον εἶναι λέγουσι διὰ τὸ μηδεμιᾶς ἀπολείπεσθαι ἀρετῆς. Further, the
combination of ὁλόκληρος and τέλειος is seemingly unattested in Palestinian
sources but common elsewhere (see below), and ὑπομονή is linked with moral perfection in Diogenes
of Sinope, Ep. 27.
(ix) Philo perceived the human goal as perfection, which he thought
could be obtained. For him, perfection included ridding oneself of anger, being
peaceable, and uniting word and deed: ‘we have found the perfect man cutting
out the seat of anger entirely from the wrangling soul, and so rendering it
gentle and submissive and peaceable, and cheerfully ready to face every demand
both in act and word’ (Leg. 3.140).
All this has its parallel in James, which condemns anger (1:19–20), promotes
peace (1:17), and insists on deed as well as word (1:22–25; 2:14–17).
(x) James 1:2–4 envisages a series and so a process. With this in mind,
one recalls Phil 3:12–16, where Paul calls himself ‘perfect’ (v. 15) and yet
declares that he has not yet obtained ‘perfection’ (v. 12), for that consists
precisely in moving ever forward (v. 14). James may similarly have imaged
‘perfection’ as an on-going endeavor, as the struggle to produce a ‘perfected
work’ acceptable to God at death or the parousia;
cf. Heb 6:1 (‘Let us go on to τελείοτητα’) and recall the
importance of the prokopton—the
individual making moral progress—for Panaetius of Rhodes and other Stoics.
(xi) As 1:4 belongs to the first paragraph of James, one should let the
rest of the book offer illumination; that is, what follows should clarify
‘perfection’ by bringing to the fore the virtues the author promotes most. To
judge from 3:17–18, for instance, the ‘perfect’ will be peaceable, meek,
willing to yield, full of mercy and good works, and bereft of partiality and
hypocrisy.
(xii) Although James, unlike Matthew (5:43–48), does not explicitly root
the imperative to be ‘perfect’ in the divine perfection, the text may take such
for granted. Not only was the imitation of God at home in James’ world—being
prominent in Plato, Philo, and the Jesus tradition—but it appears in Jas 2:5–6,
where God’s favoring of ‘the poor’ rebukes human beings who do not favor ‘the
poor’. Moreover, James presumably believed that God is ‘perfect’, and Matthew’s
Gospel, which otherwise shares so much with James, correlates human perfection
with divine perfection: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is
perfect’ (5:48). (Dale
C. Allison Jr., A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on The Epistle of James
[International Critical Commentary; New York: Bloomsbury, 2013], 154–158, emphasis in bold added)