faith and action

"You know I have the Lutheran curse. Conviction without action has no meaning for me. Yet what is conviction? How do we identify it? Is it to be found in the heart, or in the intellect? And what if it is only to be found in the one and not the other? ... I had no conscious faith, but if I acted, then the faith would surely follow. ... Perhaps that is how faith is born, I thought: by action and not by contemplation." Absolute Friends by John le Carre

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. It seems sort of like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg? As James said (James 2:17) faith without works is dead and as the author of Hebrews implies (Hebrews 11:6) works without faith is not pleasing to God.