Why did Martin Luther want to remove the book of James from the Bible?

 

Because the Epistle of St James clearly contradicted Luther's newly invented doctrine of solafideism: that all we have to do is believe and then we are saved.

James speaks about practical Christian living. Lip service, simply claiming faith but doing nothing, is insufficient for salvation. “Faith without works is dead.” (James 2:26).

Luther made several serious mistakes in his novel theology. It is not faith alone which saves us. That puts the effort on us. It is the grace of Christ which saves us. We receive that grace by asking in faith and by being baptized in water and the Holy Spirit.

That accomplishes our initial justification. However the work of sanctification must follow. Faith to move mountains will do us no good if we lack charity (1 Cor 13). Our life must be fruitful in good works, lest we be like the lazy servant who buried his one talent in the ground, and was severely punished and deprived of all he had.

The heresy of solafideism was unknown to the previous fifteen centuries of Christianity.

Luther wanted to dump the Epistle of St James from the NT, along with Hebrews, Jude and Revelation, but his followers dissuaded him from doing so. James proves that Luther was wrong. Luther wanted to cut out of the Biblical canon those books which contradicted his heresies. He did cut out seven OT books and parts of Daniel and Esther.

I have stood at Luther's grave in the Wittenberge Schlosskirche. At the grave or shrine of the most obscure Catholic saints, God works miracles and healings. At Luther's shrine, nothing. He was no man of God, no saint, but a schismatic and heresiarch. And furthermore, an appalling anti-Semite who urged the destruction of synagogues, the burning of Jewish books, and the herding of young J