“From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?”
What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? — the opening questions (ti ... pōthen) establish the source of conflict not in external circumstances but in the internal warfare of disordered desires (hēdonē, pleasures/lusts). The 'desires that battle within you' (strateuontai en tois melesin hymōn) use military language to describe the internal conflict between competing drives. James traces social discord back to individual spiritual pathology.
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