Executive Summary — James 1–5 Language Package (Czech)

The bottom line: The James curriculum can reuse ~90% of the Romans baseline’s risk-management infrastructure for Czech, but two theological fault lines — one internal to the curriculum (James 2 vs. Romans on justification) and two external cultural collisions (Catholic last rites; Catholic auricular confession) — demand new, non-negotiable safeguards not present anywhere in the Romans baseline.

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Why it matters

James 2:14–26, this curriculum’s core passage, states that “a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (2:24) — using the identical Czech verb (ospravedlnit) the Romans baseline already locked to a Critical-risk doctrine of justification by faith alone, apart from works. For a Czech readership with very low baseline biblical literacy (the Romans baseline’s central finding), there is no inherited framework to catch and correct this apparent contradiction. Get this wrong, and the curriculum appears to reverse its own foundational teaching in its very first lesson.

Key findings

• 28 doctrines analyzed, full-book coverage confirmed. Every chapter of James (1–5) contributes load-bearing doctrinal or terminological content; none was silently skipped.
• 2 Critical-risk and 11 High-risk doctrines require mandatory human theologian review (13 of 28 doctrines total) — identical proportion of theologian-routed doctrine to the Romans baseline, confirming this Language Package’s risk-management model transfers well.
• 12 Critical-risk and 24 High-risk terms in the James-specific term registry (36 terms total mandating theologian review), on top of 20 inherited Critical/High baseline terms (víra, ospravedlnění, spasení, sláva, Pán, Bůh, Otec, Duch svatý, and others) that must be reused verbatim, never re-translated.
• The risk pattern from Romans mostly holds: for the great majority of James’s new vocabulary (wisdom, worldliness, patience/parousia, favoritism), the danger is an absent conceptual framework, requiring active teaching from the ground up — not a competing wrong idea to correct.
• Two genuine exceptions break that pattern: James 5:14 (anointing with oil) and James 5:16 (confession of sins) collide with live, still-practiced Czech Catholic sacraments (poslední pomazání, zpověď). Unlike almost everything else in this Language Package, these require active correction of a specific wrong association, not merely explanation of an absent one.

Risks

• Highest risk in the whole package: James 2:21/2:24/2:25 (ospravedlnit) read in isolation, without the mandatory harmonizing note, will appear to contradict the Romans baseline’s core soteriology — undermining trust in the entire curriculum series.
• Sacramental misdirection: an unglossed “mazat olejem” or a noun-form “zpověď” would import specific Catholic institutional associations (imminent death; priestly absolution) that are the opposite of James’s own pastoral intent (hopeful healing; mutual congregational confession).
• Silent qualifier loss: “moudrost shůry,” “vytrvalost” vs. “trpělivost,” and “zkouška” vs. “pokušení” are all pairs/qualifiers that ordinary editorial tightening could quietly erase, each time collapsing a deliberate theological distinction into generic secular Czech vocabulary.
• False-friend contamination: “psychický” as a rendering of ψυχικός (James 3:15) would import a clinical-psychological register with zero warning signs to a reviewer not specifically briefed on this false friend.
• Undocumented capitalization drift: James 4:5’s disputed πνεῦμα reference intersects the Critical-risk Duch svatý term; an undisclosed default capitalization choice would silently assert or deny a Trinitarian claim the Greek text itself leaves genuinely open.

Opportunities

• Abraham as a cross-book anchor: James 2:21–23 cites Genesis 15:6 verbatim, the same verse Romans 4:3 cites — this is the single strongest available proof text that James affirms rather than rejects Pauline imputed righteousness, and can be taught as a harmonizing highlight rather than merely a risk to manage.
• James’s concrete, proverb-like style is a strong fit for this audience. Its vivid, everyday imagery (bit and bridle, rudder, mirror, farmer awaiting rain) matches the Romans baseline’s target reading level (general-interest magazine register) more naturally than most of Paul’s more abstract argumentation.
• Two low-risk chapters exist for calibration: automated-review-only doctrines (James’s self-identification as servant, and suffering/rejoicing in prayer, 5:13) confirm the risk model is appropriately graded, not uniformly alarmist.
• The Job and Elijah case studies offer accessible, low-doctrinal-risk entry points for teaching endurance and prayer to a low-literacy audience, requiring only narrative background glosses rather than conceptual scaffolding from scratch.

Recommended actions

1. Lock the Faith-and-Works harmonizing note verbatim and require it at every occurrence of ospravedlnit in James 2:14–26 across all Phase 2 documents — mandatory human theologian review, no exceptions.
2. Lock the two sacramental-distinguishing notes verbatim (anointing, confession) and treat any drift toward poslední pomazání or zpověď as an automatic escalation trigger, on par with the baseline’s Critical-term forbidden substitutions.
3. Load both the Romans baseline and James translation_memory.json for every Phase 2 session; never process a James segment against the James file alone.
4. Enforce the three fixed-pair vocabulary locks (zkouška/pokušení; vytrvalost/trpělivost; moudrost + shůry) as non-negotiable, matching the rigor already applied to the baseline’s forbidden-substitution list.
5. Route James 2:14–26 as a single review unit, not as independently scored segments, given its doctrinal integrity depends on cross-segment note consistency rather than term-by-term accuracy alone.
6. Carry forward the NWT (Jehovah’s Witnesses) Lordship-diminishment escalation rule into every κύριος-of-Christ occurrence in James, extending the baseline’s existing vigilance to this book’s five additional chapters.

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This summary synthesizes 04_comparative_theology.md, 05_translation_landscape.md, 06_linguistic_gap_analysis.md, 07_semantic_analysis.md, 08_core_glossary.md, 11_doctrine_analysis.md, 12_ai_translation_requirements.md, translation_memory.json, bible_term_registry.json, and doctrine_risk_registry.json for the James curriculum. All figures are drawn directly from those documents’ risk_summary fields and term counts.