NOTES for Jam 3:1-2

The ministry of teacher in the first Christian Church was above all a ministry of the word. The teacher, or rabbi, in the church community took upon himself the careful study of the Torah and the teaching of the Torah to others, first of all in practical terms.

Of course, this practical teaching in the Church took place in the context of Christian interpretations of the Torah. And here the question of the teacher's own spiritual condition became fundamental. The ministry of teacher-rabbi, like no other, easily and quickly revealed the gap between knowledge, and even understanding, of fundamental things connected with the Torah and with spiritual life in general, on the one hand, and awareness of these same things, on the other.

To learn and even understand what, for example, the inner Torah is, is far easier than to become aware of its presence in one's own life and accordingly to change that life itself. Awareness presupposes inner changes in the person corresponding to what he knows theoretically. Then the person's whole life changes, and not only his views and worldview. The criterion of inner change is precisely speech.

Here James is not original; he only recalls what should have been quite well known to his readers from the aphorism collections popular at that time, included in the books we today call wisdom books. It is enough to open, for example, the Book of Proverbs to find there a whole series of sayings describing how a wise person guards his mouth and bridles his tongue, unlike a fool who cannot do this.

James merely reminds them of these fairly obvious things. Indeed, for nothing of that sort to "slip" from the tongue, a person must change seriously within. The changes must touch his psyche so deeply that even the subconscious stops living its own life. Knowledge and understanding alone are not enough here; that very awareness is needed. And if it is absent, then it is better not to become a teacher: the gap between knowledge and awareness is extremely dangerous and spiritually destructive. Sometimes not only spiritually.