While it is de rigueur for commentators to contrast the epistle of James with the epistles of Paul on matters of faith and works,E.g., Martin Dibelius, James (Hermeneia; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975) 174–80; Ralph P. Martin, James (WBC 48; Waco: Word, 1988) 82–84; cf. Richard Bauckham, James (New Testament Readings; London: Routledge, 1999) 113–40. it is often overlooked that both writers also found occasion to delve into the mysteries of “the human problem,” of how it is that sin corrupts human existence. In fact, comparison of the two reveals a number of basic similarities.For the latter, see, e.g., David E. Aune, “Two Pauline Models of the Person,” in The Whole and Divided Self (ed. David E. Aune and John McCarthy; New York: Crossroad, 1997) 89–114. They agree, for instance, that the failure of human moral experience is attributable to a struggle between competing elements of the human personality, a struggle understood to be in some fashion continuous with a more pervasive conflict between antithetical metaphysical realities, conceived in terms familiar from Jewish apocalypticism. Given this mutual impingement of the psychological and the cosmological, it follows for both authors that the inner structure of the human personality is susceptible to the deceiving, destructive power of certain quasi-personal entities (sin, flesh, desire) associated with supernatural evil, while the solution to this predicament resides in the possibility of participation in a reality that is determined by a divine victory over evil, again conceived in apocalyptic terms.