THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF THE HOLY
“I am the LORD your God; sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy for I am holy”
Therefore, prepare your minds for action, keep sober in spirit, fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior, because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY” (1 Peter 1:13-16)
Preface
Providentially we are all attending a church rooted deeply in the Wesleyan holiness tradition. Our immediate spiritual ancestors are the 18th century John Wesley, the 19th century Holiness Movement, and the rise of the Church of the Nazarene in the 20th century. The “Forward” of our Manual states that “the primary objective of the Church of the Nazarene is to advance God’s kingdom by the preservation and propagation of Christian holiness as set forth in the Scriptures.”
Yet in our day in many of our churches, we almost never hear the language of our heritage distinctly pronounced. On the other hand, however, much of the substance of the holiness ethos is present in our contemporary emphases on discipleship and spiritual formation. Interesting is the popularity and use of its forty day program in our churches of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? Although not written from within the holiness tradition, the book is Wesleyan in emphasis in that it seeks to lead new Christians into the development of a holy life and character. There remains a hunger for holiness among us!
In 1993 the Nazarene Publishing House published the second of two volumes entitled Biblical Resources for Holiness Preaching: From Text to Sermon, edited by H. Ray Dunning. His comments in his “Introduction” are instructive. He writes that because of their disillusionment with the rise of academic study of the Bible, the holiness people of the late 19th and early 20th century turned more to testimony and experience as the fundamental authority for their particular beliefs in relation to Christian experience. This rejection of the established methods of biblical studies “led away from the openness to Scripture that characterized John Wesley and toward a fortress mentality that looked with suspicion on trained biblical scholarship.”
This led in turn to the sometimes tension between the tradition of the church and its younger scholars, a tension that “occasionally appears in the college classroom where students frequently encounter an academic approach to the Bible that is different from what they have become accustomed to hearing from the pulpit and the Sunday School classroom.” Contemporary students, however, from holiness churches demonstrate less and less awareness of the biblical and theological issues. At this point we need to quote Dunning precisely:
This may be accounted for in part as the result of an evacuation of holiness teaching from the sources that should be giving them instruction and partly from constant exposure to topical preaching that does not develop sermons biblically. This writer believes that the first of these factors is due to the fact that many perceptive pastors recognize the inadequacy of “scholastic holiness teaching” and, since they have not been educated in the methods of good biblical interpretation, simply keep silent on the subject since they know of no other way to address the issue.
Dunning comes to the strange concluding conviction “that the preservation of the holiness message in the contemporary setting is dependent in large part upon the academic classroom of the holiness educational institutions, and it is in fact being done there. . . . a thesis contrary to the popular concept of the way a church strays from its origins.”
Dunning’s suggestions for, or observations on, future holiness interpretation is threefold: (1) it must take seriously the historical nature of Scripture, (2) the doctrine of sanctification must be based not on proof texts, but “more broadly in terms of the major thrust of biblical teaching,” and (3) “the proper interpretation of Scripture lays much more stress on the content of holiness in human life than on the structure of Christian experience.” This, he writes, “has led the contemporary holiness scholar back to John Wesley, who also made his greatest contribution in this area.”
In addition to Dunning’s observations is the impact of our postmodern culture on the evangelical ecclesiastical scene and in particular on the ministry of the Church of the Nazarene. Herb and I have attempted to talk from time to time in class about the nature and influence of postmodernism. The culture appears to contribute to the transformation of the holiness proclamation into a more generic evangelicalism for the purposes of evangelization. In relation to our historical heritage, is this good, bad, or both?
In the light of these observations I want to take some Sunday sessions to share with the class the lectures I worked with over the years in my “Life of Holiness” course at Point Loma/Point Loma Nazarene College on “The Biblical Concept of the Holy.” I trust you will find the presentations helpful.
Introduction
Dennis Kinlaw, a Methodist minister, Old Testament scholar, sometime President of Asbury College, and an evangelist for many years with a frequent ministry among us, in his Preaching in the Spirit, observes:
As I read the biblical biographies of mighty preachers, I'm convinced that ultimately there is no great preaching unless the preacher partakes of the divine holiness in some measure. While worldliness may make a preacher clever, it will never make him powerful. The Bible illustrates repeatedly that in preaching, as in anything else a servant of God endeavors to do, "the Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing" (John 6:63). The Spirit of the Lord within us can reach someone else with the gospel far more effectively than we can reach that person in our own persuasive eloquence. Our ministry must come out of our walk with God.
A. W. Tozer (1896-1963), noted Christian author, teacher, and pastor, in The Knowledge of the Holy, begins his chapter on "God Incomprehensible" with the prayer,
Lord, how great is our dilemma! In Thy Presence silence best becomes us, but love inflames our hearts and constrains us to speak. Were we to hold our peace the stones would cry out; yet if we speak, what shall we say? Teach us to know that we cannot know, for the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. Let faith support us where reason fails, and we shall think because we believe, not in order that we may believe.
We remember that theology was defined centuries ago by Anselm (1033-1109), Archbishop of Canterbury as "faith seeking understanding."
Later in the chapter Tozer writes:
That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as
Darkness to the intellect But sunshine to the heart. Frederick W. Faber
What is God like?" If by that question we mean 'What is God like in Himself there is no answer. If we mean, "What has God disclosed about Himself that the reverent reason can comprehend?" there is, I believe, an answer both full and satisfying. For while the name of God is secret and His essential nature incomprehensible, He in condescending love has by revelation declared certain things to be true of Himself. These we call His attributes.
Sovereign Father, heavenly King, Thee we now presume to sing; Glad Thine attributes confess, Glorious all, and numberless." Charles Wesley
The British Methodist pastor during World War II in London, “a preacher of great power and popularity,” W. E. Sangster (1900-1959), opens his classic, The Pure in Heart, with the remark that the word “holiness eludes precise definition even among scholars.” To this he adds two quotations about the word: holiness is “the deepest of all the words that defy definition” (Morely), and “Holiness is the great word of religion; it is even more essential than the notion of God” (Soderblom). The Old Testament scholar Norman W. Snaith adds that holiness “is the most intimately divine word of all.”
I. Holiness in the Old Testament
A. Holiness is fundamentally a religious concept
"The Holy as an A Priori category.”
The word “category” denotes "a class or division in a scheme of classification." So “the holy” is the religious category before all other religious categories, the "given" with which we start! It is not under something else, nor is there anything above it. It is A Priori! Snaith concludes that
The chief and proper Hebrew word for 'holiness' is qodesh. This is the most intimately divine word of all. It has to do, as we shall see, with the very Nature of Deity; no word more so, nor indeed any other as much. . . . [The language of the holy came into being to express] the primary, elemental reactions of man to that mystery with which in the first days he felt himself surrounded.]
The German theologian Rudolf Otto (1869-1937) in his influential The Idea of the Holy writes:
“HOLINESS”—“the holy”—is a category of interpretation and valuation peculiar to the sphere of religion. . . . There is no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name. It is preeminently a living force in the Semitic religions, and of these again in none has it such vigour as in that of the Bible. Here, too, it has a name of its own, viz. the Hebrew qadosh, to which the Greek [haqios] and the Latin sanctus, and, more accurately still, sacer, are the corresponding terms.
Rudolph Otto analyses "the holy" in chapter IV of his The Idea of the Holy as follows:
‘Mysterium Tremendum'
THE ANALYSIS OF ‘TREMENDUM’ The Element of Awefulness The Element of ‘Overpoweringness’ (‘majestas’) The Element of ‘Energy’ or Urgency
THE ANALYSIS OF 'MYSTERIUM' The 'Wholly Other' The Element of Fascination
On the "Wholly Other" Otto writes:
that which is mysterious is the 'wholly other' (. . .), that which is quite beyond the sphere of the usual, the intelligible, and the familiar, which therefore falls quite outside the limits of the 'canny', and is contrasted with it, filling the mind with blank wonder and astonishment.
In relation to “The Analysis of ‘Mysterium’” he quotes a hymn writer,
Ein begriffener Gott ist kein Gott "A God comprehended is no God" TERSTEEGEN
John Wesley translated one of Gerhard Tersteegen’s hymns from German into English. Its first verse as Wesley put it reads:
Thou hidden love of God, whose height, Whose depth unfathomed, no man knows, I see from far thy beauteous light, Inly I sigh for thy repose: My heart is pained, nor can it be At rest, till it finds rest in thee.
Kenneth Leech, a British Anglican Priest and prolific writer, notes in his Soul Friend that
the knowledge of God is not, and cannot be, a conceptual grasp of a reality perceived through the mind. God is not known in the head. God is the hidden God who is known in the process of inner purification and transformation of consciousness. To believe otherwise is to be an idolator, and idolatry is no mere moral lapse but a heresy, a mistaken view of how things are. The true God is beyond conception and beyond knowledge.
This reminds us of the anonymous English fourteenth mystic in the Cloud of Unknowing, who suggests that
no man can think of God himself. Therefore it is my wish to leave everything that I can think of and choose for my love the thing I cannot think. Because he can certainly be loved, but not thought. He can be taken and held by love but not by thought.
Evelyn Underhill quotes John of the Cross to the effect that “it is those who know most of God, who understand most clearly the infinite reaches of His being which remain uncomprehended by us.” She comments: “That is why the theologian always has plenty to say about God; whilst the contemplative can hardly say anything at all.”
An Old Testament scholar of a generation past, James Muilenburg, summarizes for us the biblical presentation of holiness:
In the Bible "holiness" is related, e.g., to the world of nature and of history, to the realm of human experience and conduct, to the election-covenant life of Israel, to the psychophysical life of the individual, and even to the destiny of nations. There it is the revelation of a holy presence which gives rise to the impulse of worship; where the Holy One manifests himself in the hieros logos as in the theophanies, altars and sanctuaries are erected to bring the event and word to holy immediacy and realization. Wherever God's presence is felt, there men encounter the wonder and mystery of holiness.
Nahum M. Sarna, Emeritus Professor of Biblical Studies at Brandeis University (a Jewish scholar), commenting on Exodus 3, Moses at the burning bush, and other Old Testament instances, concludes that “always, the unique, transcendent, supernal holiness of the Divine Presence is an experience felt to be almost beyond the human capacity to endure.
As Snaith sums up the presentation of the holy (qadosh) in the Old Testament for us, it is a concept that "refers positively to what is God's and not negatively to what is not man ‘s. God is separate and distinct because He is God.” Biblically Holiness is an A Priori category. God himself is the first and prime definition of the Holy. Thus we begin with the affirmation that
2. "the Lord only is holy, Holy per se."
Hosea 11:9: "I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath" (see vv. 1-11).
Exodus 15:11: "Who is like Thee among the gods, O LORD? Who is like Thee, majestic in holiness? Awesome in praises, working wonders?" (see Psalm 89:3-8).
1 Samuel 6:20: "Who is able to stand before the LORD, this holy God?"
Psalm 99:3: “Let them praise thy great and awesome name; Holy is He.”
Amos 4:2 & 6:8: “The Lord God has sworn by His holiness. . . . The Lord God has sworn by Himself.” To swear by His holiness is to swear by His Deity, by Himself.
Isaiah 6:3: “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the LORD of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory.”
Isaiah 42:8: “I am the LORD, that is my name; I will not give my glory to another, Nor my praise to graven images.”
Isaiah 43:3, 11: “For I am the LORD your God, The Holy One of Israel, your Savior. . . . I, even I, am the LORD; And there is no savior besides Me.”
Isaiah 44:6b-7a: “I am the first and I am the last. And there is no God besides Me. And who is like me? Let him proclaim and declare it.”
In the prophecy of Isaiah God’s “holiness denotes His innermost and secret essence.”
The holiness of all else is derived from contact with Him who alone is holy.
Therefore in the Old Testament ”the use of qodesh and its derivatives is extended to places, things, and persons, in so far as they belong, or have come to belong to Jehovah.”
Exodus 3:5: “Then he said, ‘Do not come near here; remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.’”
Sarna, explaining “holy ground,” informs us that
the underlying concept of holiness presupposed in these two accounts represents a radical break with accepted pagan notions. In the world of paganism, the holy is such by virtue of the intrinsic "natural" mysterious quality of the object or place that is so revered. In Israelite monotheism, with its fundamental insistence on a God who is outside of and wholly apart from nature, who created nature and who is sovereign over it, there is no room for any possibility of an independent, immutable, and inherent holiness. That which is holy, be it temporal or spatial, possesses that quality solely by divine will.
So Yahweh through Moses at Mount Sinai in Exodus 19:4-6:
"You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings, and brought you to Myself. Now then, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be My own possession among all the peoples, for all the earth is Mine; and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation."
B. Holiness is a developing ethical concept.
Rudolf Otto writes of this development, repeating a little of what we have quoted above:
There is no religion in which it [the holy] does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name. It is pre-eminently a living force in the Semitic religions, and of these again in none has it such vigour as in that of the Bible. Here, too, it has a name of its own viz. the Hebrew qadosh, to which the Greek hagios and the Latin sanctus, and more accurately still, sacer, are the corresponding terms. It is not, of course, disputed that these terms in all three languages connote, as part of their meaning, good, absolute goodness, when, that is, the notion has ripened and reached the highest stage in its development. And we then use the word “holy” to translate them.
But this “holy” then represents the gradual shaping and filling in with ethical meaning, or what we shall call the “schematization,” of what was a unique original feeling-response, which can be itself ethically neutral and claims consideration in its own right. And when this moment or element first emerges and begins its long development, all these expressions (qadosh, hagios, sacer, etc.) mean beyond all question something quite other than “the good.” This is universally agreed by contemporary criticism, which rightly explains the rendering of qadosh by “good” as a mistranslation and unwarranted “rationalization.”
As this works out in the Old Testament
1. The God who alone is holy reveals himself in Israel’s history as a God of Righteousness:
Isaiah 5:16: “But the LORD of hosts will be exalted in judgment, And the holy God will show Himself holy in righteousness.”
Sarna describes the Creator-God of the Bible as
An unqualifiedly moral Being, He insistently demands human imitation of His moral attributes. He imposes His law on the human race, and He judges the world in righteousness.
It was the great eighth century prophets who “gave a new content to the idea of Holiness by their association of it with the idea of Righteousness as a distinctive content.”
Thc demand of a holy God on those who belong to him by redemptive action is
“You shall be holy, for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). The Holiness Code, Leviticus chapters 17-26, in its concern for holiness is both cultic and ethical, both priestly and prophetic, that is, it calls both for right worship and for right conduct. It has to do without our relation to God and then to our fellow humans.
Moses near the end of his life was commanded by the LORD to ascend Mount Nebo, and look over into the land of Canaan, and then die there: The LORD said to him, “you shall see the land at a distance, but you shall not go there, . . . because you broke faith with Me in the midst of the sons of Israel at the waters of Meribahkadesh, . . . because you did not treat Me as holy in the midst of the sons of Israel” (Deuteronomy 32:51-52; see Numbers 20:8-13).
Sarna, discussing the behavior of the midwives in Exodus 1, notes that
the motivation of these women in defying the promulgated law of the sovereign is given as “fear of God.” This term is frequently cited in biblical texts in relation to situations that involve norms of moral or ethical behavior. . . . In short, the consciousness of the existence of a Higher Power who makes moral demands on human beings constitutes the ultimate restraint on evil and the supreme incentive for good.
Persons are to be holy primarily because God is holy. The ethical content of the demand of the holy is therefore the revealed moral character of a holy God. This holy character of God was revealed to Israel in the torah, the instructions given to Israel in their law:
Micah 6:8: “He has told you, O man, what is good; And what does the LORD require of you But to do justice, to love kindness, And to walk humbly with your God?”
This is why the Psalmist extols the law, the torah, as God’s revealed instruction for living in his presence (Psalms 1, 19, and 119)--A few excerpts make this clear:
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, And in His law he meditates day and night. And he will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, Which yields its fruit in its season, And its leaf does not wither; And in whatever he does, he prospers (1:2-3).
The law of the LORD is perfect, restoring the soul; The testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple, The precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; The commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes. The fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; The judgments of the LORD are true; they are righteous altogether. They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold. . . . Moreover by them Thy servant is warned; In keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Acquit me of hidden faults. Also keep back Thy servant from presumptuous sins; Let them not rule over me. . . . Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart Be acceptable in Thy sight, O LORD, my rock and my Redeemer (19:7-14).
Thy word I have treasured in my heart, That I might not sin against Thee. . . . Open my eyes that I may behold Wondrous things from Thy law. . . . For Thy law is my delight. . . . O how I love thy law! It is my meditation all the day. . . . Thy word is a lamp to my feet, And a light to my path. . . . Those who love thy law have great peace, And nothing causes them to stumble (119:11, 18, 77, 97, 105, 165).
The law, the torah, was not intended to be a maze of exasperating legalistic rules, a burdensome straight jacket, but as truly a “means of grace.” In Exodus 20:20 Moses interpreted the giving of the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments, as “God has come . . . that the fear of Him may remain with you, so that you may not sin.” The torah was intended as a means for experiencing God’s presence!
3. In summary the “You shall be holy” of the Old Testament involves
3.1 A religious reality—a relation of exclusive allegiance to God:
Exodus 20:3: “You shall have no other God’s before Me” (see vv. 3-6).
Deuteronomy 4:24: “For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” Significantly the New Testament also reminds us that “our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29).
Deuteronomy 6:4-6: “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! [or “the LORD alone”!] And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart.”
Leviticus 10:1-3: “Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, took their respective firepans, and after putting fire in them, placed incense on it and offered strange fire before the LORD, which He had not commanded them. And fire came out from the presence of the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘It is what the LORD spoke, saying, “By those who come near Me I will be treated as holy, and before all people I will be honored.”’ So Aaron, therefore, kept silent.”
Holiness is first a religious reality, and then secondly
An ethical reality—a response in life that seeks to exclude all that is contrary to the above allegiance, exclusive of all that is contrary to the moral character of the holy God to whom one exclusively belongs.
Isaiah 6:5: “Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts” (see vv. 1-8).
“I am the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery,” precedes the giving of the Ten Words, the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20:2ff.
Reading this week The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman (1865-1933), I found the following:
WHAT GOD WANTS in this world is what is BEST. Not physical beauty, of person or landscape, Not beauty of poetry or music, Not happiness of men (that is afterwards), Not beauty of intellect, But beauty of action, ethical beauty.
So to be holy we are to become what we are through what Yahweh has done! A tension exists between gift and commandment (Gabe und Aufgabe) indicative and imperative
The demand to be holy is a grace-ethic! (Like marriage—always seeking to act what we are?)
“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under a bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:14-16).
APPENDIX #1: HOLINESS IN THE OT AS PURITY
John G. Gammie, Holiness in Israel, argues that
the holiness of God in the Old Testament impressed itself on the three major classes of Israelite leaders [priests, prophets, wisemen] in a similar yet diverse fashion: . . . To the authors of the priestly tradition, the Holy God clearly extended a call to ritual purity, right sacrifices, separation. To the prophets, holiness clearly issued the summons for the purity of social justice and equity in human relations. It is less clear whether or not the Hebrew Scriptures teach that any particularly distinctive vocation was issued to the sages and wise.
Investigation into the wisdom psalms and the Book of Job yielded the positive answer that for the sapiential traditions as well the holiness of God calls forth cleanness; the particular stress of the wisdom tradition is that holiness requires the cleanness of individual morality.
APPENDIX #2: THE HOLINESS OF GOD AND PURIFICATION
An unknown Monk in The Hermitage Within: Spirituality of the Desert, writes:
If modern spirituality lays stress on the immanence of God and the sweetness of his intimate relationship with man, it cannot, without tilting into error, ignore the demands of God's transcendence. Only superficial minds, strangers to the real problems of the interior life, can suppose that God's mercy has disarmed his justice. Mercy consists in this: that to unite a soul to him, in this world God exercises all rights of justice over that soul, throwing it into the purging fire of ordeals which some theologians consider equivalent to those of purgatory. The passive purification of the mystics is no joke, . . . God's forgiveness is not a cloak thrown over our uncleanness: all must be washed, restored, returned to innocence. . . . The crucible is not other than contemplation, testing as it progresses. Experience will teach you how much more demanding perseverance is in frequent, prolonged prayer, than action is. Passivity under God's industrious hand is repugnant to nature; our faculties fret with impatience. But let God act. If your sense of God's transcendence were stronger, your taste for contemplation would develop faster. Beg the Lord to grant you this: this is why you are here. With Moses, humbly say to him:
"Please let me see your glory" [Ex. 33:18]. II. Sanctification in the New Testament “Father, hallowed be your name” (Luke 11:2)
When we pray, “hallowed be your name,” we are acknowledging “the priority of Holiness,” its power when acknowledged in our lives. Evelyn Underhill writes that
Thus the four words of this petition can cover, criticize and reinterpret the whole of our personal life; cleansing it from egoism, orientating it towards reality, and reminding us that our life and work are without significance, except in so far as they glorify their God to whom nothing is adequate though everything is dear.
The “sanctification” language in the New Testament is based firmly on the Old Testament’s understanding of the holy. Its usage flows in two complementary streams:
First is the priestly or cultic stream. This appears primarily in the Epistle to the Hebrews and occasionally in the Gospel of John. At times it appears to characterize Paul's usage as well as some of its other occurrences in the New Testament. The first thrust of this stream is relational involving the heart, to be related authentically to Him who alone is holy per se! It has to do with the access of the unholy into the very presence of the holy.
Second is the prophetic stream. This appears primarily in Paul’s letters, particularly in Romans where he seeks to prevent his teaching on justification by faith from being perverted in such a way as to license sin (cc. 3-6). Paul's understanding of sanctification serves to keep his proclamation of justification in balance. The first thrust of the prophetic is thus ethical, asking for a response in life that takes seriously the character of the Holy One as its touchstone for life and character.
The basic premise of the New Testament witness to the holy is that . . .
A. The “holy” now finds its first definition in the person of Jesus Christ “whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world” (John 10:36; see vv. 34-38).
1. In the New Testament God remains still the “Holy One” par excellence.
At the highest point in Jesus’ teaching of the disciples he taught us all:
“When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Thy name’” (Luke 11:2).
The apostle John reports Jesus as praying in John 17:11:
"And I am no more in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to Thee. Holy Father, keep them in Thy Name, the name which Thou hast given Me, that they may be one, even as We are."
In Revelation 4:6-10 the four living creatures around the throne of God ceased not to say:
"HOLY, HOLY, HOLY, IS THE LORD GOD THE ALMIGHTY, who was and who is and who is to come."
The apostle Peter reminds the New Testament Church that the Old Testament call to holiness still applies:
"be holy yourselves in all your behavior; because it is written, 'YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY'" (1 Peter 1:15-16).
Just as in the Old Testament the holy was defined in God's self-revelation through Moses and the prophets, now in the New Testament the person and character of the holy God is to be seen supremely in his only Son Jesus Christ: “God . . . has spoken to us in His Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2).
At the moment of Jesus' death Matthew records that the
“the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom” (27:51), symbolizing a new avenue of access to the presence of a holy God.
It is as the writer to the Hebrews interprets for us more explicitly:
Since therefore, brethren, we have confidence to enter the holy place by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way which He inaugurated for us through the veil, that is, His flesh, . . . (10:19-20).
Other New Testament Scriptures in various ways stress the same amazing truth:
No man has seen God at any time; the only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him (John 1:18).
Thomas said to Him, 'Lord, we do not know where you are going; how do we know the way?' (John 14:5-7). Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him." Cf. vv. 1-11.
“But when He, the Spirit of truth, comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak; and He will disclose to you what is to come. He shall glorify Me; for He shall take of Mine, and shall disclose it to you. All things that the Father has are Mine; therefore I said, that He takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you” (John 16:13-15).
2. While God remains the “Holy One” par excellence in the New Testament, Jesus now becomes known as "the Holy One of God"
In Mark 1:24 the demons on encountering Jesus cry out,
"What have we to do with You, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!" (Cf. Luke 4:34).
Although holiness is only infrequently ascribed to Jesus by the New Testament there are several significant instances of this use of the sanctification language.
In Luke 1:35 the angel announces to Mary,
“The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for the reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God.”
In John 6:69 Peter confessed in a crisis moment in the lives of the disciples,
"And we have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God."
Peter continues this way of speaking of Jesus both in Acts and in his first letter,
"But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you" (Acts 3:14).
"For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel" (Acts 4:27; cf. v. 30).
"As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior" (1 Peter 1:14-15).
John in Revelation 3:7 is instructed to write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia,
He who is holy, who is true, who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens, says this, “. . ."
It is noteworthy that the singular adjective “holy” in reference to a specific person is applied primarily to Jesus in the New Testament. When disciples or Christians are in view the reference is normally plural or generic. Only Jesus perfectly represents the holy, it takes all of us together to show fully what the holy is all about!
At a supreme moment in the New Testament’s usage of the language of the holy Jesus as the Son of God prays: “And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth” (John 17:19).
Therefore Paul can later write to the Corinthian Christians as
“those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus” (1:2), and of
“Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and (or “that is, our”) righteousness, sanctification, and redemption” (1:30). Note the threefold dimensions of the Christian’s existence—all that we need
in relation to our sinful past Christ is our “righteousness” in relation to our present obedience Christ is our “sanctification” in relation to the future judgment Christ is our “redemption”
The definitive category of sanctification is that of relation— the quality of our relationship to Jesus Christ
Sanctification consists then first of all in a personal relationship of radical loyalty and single obedience to Jesus Christ in the full redemptive bearing of his life and ministry as climaxed in his passion and resurrection.
This brings us back to Jesus' high-priestly prayer in John’s Gospel where its central petition summarizes the meaning of Jesus’ ministry in 17:17-19:
"Sanctify them in the truth: Thy word is truth. As Thou didst send Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth." To interpret:
Jesus' sanctification was his utter submission to the cross as the will of the Father for him, thus our sanctification is our utter submission to his cross as the will of the Father for us.
This same truth Jesus put in quite different language:
"The lamp of the body is the eye; if therefore your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in you is darkness, how great is that darkness!" (Matthew 6:22-23).
The text above all texts is of course the Great Commandment:
Jesus answered, “The foremost is, HEAR O ISRAEL; THE LORD OUR GOD IS ONE LORD; AND YOU SHALL LOVE THE LORD YOUR GOD WITH ALL YOUR HEART, AND WITH ALL YOUR SOUL, AND WITH ALL YOUR MIND, AND WITH ALL YOUR STRENGTH" (Mark 12:29-30).
Sin can thus be defined biblically as essentially the lack of, or something lacking in, this relationship of totally belonging to God in Jesus Christ.
Peter when he saw, contrary to his experience, the boats overflow with fish, he fell down at Jesus' feet and cried out in confession of his failure of trust,
"Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" (Luke 5:8; cf. Acts 4:32--5:11).
Unbelief (lack of trusting obedience) is the primary biblical definition of sin, whether sin in the singular or plural, sin in acts or attitudes, or sin in behavior or state.
As Jesus spoke of the coming of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit,
"And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness, and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me" (John 16:8-9).
And this is so because as Jesus said,
"All things that the Father has are Mine, therefore I said, that He [the Holy Spirit] takes of Mine, and will disclose it to you" (John 16:15).
The writer to the Hebrews becomes very explicit:
Take care, brethren, lest there should be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart, in falling away from the living God. But encourage one another day after day, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. . . . And to whom did He swear that they should not enter His rest, but to those who were disobedient? And so we see that they were not able to enter because of unbelief (3:12-19).
The same writer’s crowning exhortation is,
Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin [unbelief] which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God (12:1-2).
Therefore sin is to be confessed, forgiven, and cleansed in any and all of its forms.
The key texts are 1 John 1:7, 1:9, and 2:1-2:
but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us [continually] from all sin. . . .
How does this continual cleansing take place?
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. . . .
But what about the reality of daily life with its temptations and fraility?
My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
The writer to the Hebrews carries through with the same thought in his summary use of the sanctification language, that is, by the use of the temple metaphor he presents the total salvation ministry of Christ in his role as the great high priest [2:17; 4:14-16; cc. 5, 7-10]):
Pursue peace [along] with all men, and the sanctification without which no man will see the Lord (12:14).
For both He who sanctifies and those who are [being] sanctified are all from one Father; for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren (2:11).
By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus once for all. . . . For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified (10:10, 14).
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever. Do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings; for it is good for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by foods. . . . We have an altar, from which those who serve the tabernacle have no right to eat. For the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy place by the high priest as an offering for sin, are burned outside the camp. Therefore Jesus also, that He might sanctify the people through His own blood, suffered outside the gate (13:8-12).
In yet different terminology the apostle Paul in Romans 6:1-11 concludes his presentation of deliverance from sin through the death and resurrection of Christ with
Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus (6:11).
And finally it is the cleansing presence of the Holy Spirit alone that makes for complete devotement to Jesus Christ.
Even the classical holiness theologian, H. Orton Wiley, writes that in our individual lives, "to bring about this full devotement" to God necessitates "a preliminary work of spiritual cleansing.”
At the climax of Peter's speech at the Jerusalem council where the issue was the freedom of the Gentiles to receive the gospel on the same basis of grace as the Gentiles (15:11) he announced:
"And God who knows the heart, bore witness to them giving them the Holy Spirit just as He also did to us [at Pentecost]; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith" (Acts 15:8-9).
We wrote years ago that
the context of Peter’s interpretative declaration is grace in opposition to those from Jerusalem who were seeking to compromise the freedom of the gospel (15:1). . . . From this perspective the cleansing of the heart by faith is understood as that operation of the Holy Spirit in our Christian existence that allows grace to be truly grace. It is the cleansing of our hearts all the way to grace, a cleansing of the will from all trust in the flesh before God. It is therefore a cleansing to faith alone in our relation to God.
To shift to the Apostle Paul who puts the same truth in the language of law and grace, flesh and spirit:
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did; sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit (Romans 8:2-4).
"Faith," writes Oswald Chambers, "is the whole man rightly related to God by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
The ethical content of sanctification is that of the life of Jesus by the indwelling of His Spirit.
An effective relation to Jesus Christ carries with it inherently the life of Jesus through the Holy Spirit as the dynamic of all spiritual life.
We are now brought to the openness of life to life, for faith joins us not just to the Christ who died for us, but to the whole person of the incarnate Christ, the Son of God both crucified and risen! The New Testament texts that speak of this are legion, so we will quote just a few and reference others.
For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by [or “in”] His life (Romans 5:10.)
“And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; that is, the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not behold Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you” (John 14:16-17).
"but you shall receive power when the holy Spirit has come upon you [the power which is the Holy Spirit coming upon you]; and you shall be My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth" (Acts 1:8).
Thus the holy life is the life lived in obedient response to the life of Christ within. And this response is consistent with the ethical character of him to whom we are responding, for our response is dependent on and effected by the power of his life.
Tom Oden sums it up well in four words in his study of grace in the early Christian Fathers, “grace elicits moral obligation.”
Again the Scriptures are many: Classic is Roman s 12:1-2
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.
The clause “be transformed by the renewing of your mind” Paul had explained well back in 8:5-11 as he writes about the “mind set on the Spirit” (8:6).
Again, too, the discourse of Jesus on the Holy Spirit in John 14-16 opens up to us beautifully the nature of the Spirit-filled life.
So our concluding prayer can be simply “Today, let my presence be Your presence!” It can be the presence of the Holy Spirit allowed to be effective in daily life through our sensitivity to it, and our obedience to what we sense.
So sanctification is relationally definitive—“For by one offering He has Perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Hebrew 10:14)—and ethically progressive—“Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 7:1; cf. 6:16-18).
One could read a multitude of Scriptures here, for example, Philippians 3:7-16, 2 Corinthians 3:17-18, 1 Thessalonians 3:11-13; 5:23-24; 1 John 1:7; 3:1-3.
A most thrilling way to put the truth before is with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1—7:29). For here Jesus is opening to us a way of living in which the values and joys of God’s kingdom, present and future, can be transformingly turned loose into the realities of our every day lives. The Sermon on the Mount witnesses to the good news of God’s grace and righteousness. In his kingdom-life we are left dependent on the mercy of God to us, and upon his life in us, as we deal with the troubling issues of real life (5:21-48).
Growth in Christlikeness is like hiking in the mountains, the top, the goal of a fully holy life in expression, is just over the next hill!
Conclusion
To be 'holy' means that we belong once for all and utterly to God by redemptive grace. The ethical or moral content of this relationship is determined by our conception of God and by the extent or quality of our dependence upon Him moment-by-moment in our daily lives before him in human society.
"If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" (1 John 1:7).
But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and [or "that is"] righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, that, just as it is written, “LET HIM WHO BOASTS, BOAST IN THE LORD" (1 Corinthians 1:30-31).
For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are [being] sanctified (Hebrews 10:14).
thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57)
Such a holy life is the content of Jesus’ invitation in Matthew 11:28-30:
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (NRSV).
Thus
THE HOLY LIFE IS A REST AND A QUEST!
The Holy Life is a Rest (Decisive! At the level of one’s basic commitment)
The rest of a forgiven life–a rest in the Giver of Grace
“all you that…are carrying heavy burdens” “I will give you rest”
The rest of a forgiving life–a rest in the Gift of grace (Matthew 6:12; 16:19; 18:18; John 20:23)
“all you that are weary” “Take…and you will find rest for your souls”
We can commit ourselves in principle once and for all to a forgiven and a forgiving life!
The Holy Life is a Quest (Life-long!)
The exploration of the ethic of Jesus
“take my yoke upon you” “my yoke is easy”–“the easy way to live!” 3. “learn from Me for I am gentle and humble in heart”
The exploration of the grace of Jesus
“my burden”–understood in the context of one’s relationship to God –open-ended “is light” Because of the grace of Jesus–gentle, humble Receive–“I will give you rest” We are all always beginners!
Conclusion: “The world of his kind was shut out; he was a man alone, because unforgiving and unforgiven” All the walls are up! Theologically
the rest of a forgiven life is God’s work of justification. the rest of a forgiving life is God’s work of sanctification.
Both are decisive and life-long.
APPENDIX # 3: THE BIBLICAL ETHIC The Ethic of the Holy: Sinai and the Kingdom
No escape—the reality of the Holy! Isaiah 6:1-13
The sanction of a sovereign, transcendent mystery The inevitability of judgement (Mark 1:15; Luke 11:20, 17:21)
No compromise—the ideal of the Holy! Matthew 5:21-48
The concerns of creation in the image of God An impossible possibility (Exodus 20:1-21; Matthew 5:1-48; Mark 12:28-34; 1 John 2:6, 3:16)
No despair—the grace of the Holy! Hosea 11:1-9
The mystery of utter forgiveness Now the concerns of the ideal—compromise them upwards (Exodus 34:11; Luke 15:1-32; etc.)
Conclusion: an enduring presence a radical standard a total forgiveness
SOME TRENDS IN CONTEMPORARY HOLINESS THEOLOGY “love excluding sin”
In our introduction to this series of lessons we quoted H. Ray Dunning to the effect that “the preservation of the holiness message in the contemporary setting is dependent in large part upon the academic classroom of the holiness educational institutions, and it is in fact being done there. . . . a thesis contrary to the popular concept of the way a church strays from its origins.” Today we will attempt to see what scholars are doing since Dunning wrote.
Dunning’s suggestions for, or observations on, future holiness interpretation are threefold: (1) it must take seriously the historical nature of Scripture, (2) the doctrine of sanctification must be based not on proof texts, but “more broadly in terms of the major thrust of biblical teaching,” and (3) “the proper interpretation of Scripture lays much more stress on the content of holiness in human life than on the structure of Christian experience.” This, he writes, “has led the contemporary holiness scholar back to John Wesley, who also made his greatest contribution in this area.” We called attention at the time to the impact of our postmodern culture on the evangelical ecclesiastical scene and in particular on the ministry of the Church of the Nazarene. As we approach the work of scholars we need to add the challenge that postmodern thinking makes to all serious contemporary theological thinking.
It will be interesting to keep the above criteria in mind as we examine some of the trends are in the work of holiness scholars since Dunning. What follows is by no means comprehensive, but we trust somewhat representative. Also we need to remember that we are examining works that are written by scholars for scholars. Therefore their assumptions and terminology may be at times strange to some of us. We proceed in chronological order looking first at
Embodied Holiness: Toward A Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth Edited by Samuel L. Powell & Michael E. Lodahl, 1999
This book is a series of essays by Wesleyan scholars on the subject of holiness. To add to Dunning’s statement that “the preservation of the holiness message in the contemporary setting is dependent in large part upon the academic classrooms” we enter the present world of holiness scholarship with Powell’s comments in his “Introduction” to the book: this book on holiness
does not presuppose or imply that only Wesleyans have an understanding of holiness or even that Wesleyans have the best understanding of holiness. On the contrary, it signals that holiness has become a problematic topic in Wesleyan circles. As is well-known, John Wesley’s theology made a prominent place for the doctrine of Christian perfection, better known in the American Wesleyan tradition as holiness. What may not be as well-known is that Wesleyans have been as contentious about how to define holiness as they have been reticent to actually pursue holiness. As a result, the Wesleyan tradition has witnessed repeated, unedifying arguments of the who-has-the-correct-view-of-holiness? variety.
Because of its variety of authors and its academic level, or shall we say its “rarified atmosphere,” we can only point in the direction the book takes, with a little help from its editors. Sam Powell in his “Introduction” begins by pointing out the connection between Wesleyan theology and “embodied” holiness. First, he writes,
there is John Wesley’s own insistence on the practical character of holiness. By this is meant that holiness is a matter of practice. It is not merely a status that one attains upon justification or some other moment; it is instead something that is lived and that shapes our lives.
Second,
“embodied” can also be taken to imply the ecclesial character of the Christian life, the fact that there can be no Christian life apart from the life of the church. . . . As Wesley himself put it, there is no holiness except social holiness, by which he meant a holiness that occurs in and through the church.
Michael Lodahl in his “Conclusion” to the book characterizes the essayists of Embodied Holiness as
providing a sustained exploration of the doctrine of Christian holiness (especially as espoused by John Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition) from the vantage point of the postmodern recovery of embodiment and radical sociality.
Flowing from the general thrust of the book Lodahl suggests two possible directions for further reflection:
One of them begins with the book’s dual theme of embodiedness and community and zeroes in on the question of the individual person; the other begins with the same emphasis but travels in the opposite direction by expanding the ideas of body and community in more universal and inclusive, and less anthropocentric, directions.
We list the titles of the various essays to complete our attempt to indicate what the book is about: “The Sanctified Body: Why Perfection Does Not Require a ‘Self’;” “The Human Person as Intercessory Prayer;” “Tacit Holiness: The Importance of Bodies & Habits in Doing Church;” “Holiness as the Renewal of the Image of God in the Individual & Society;” “Paying Attention: Holiness in the Life Writings of Early Methodist Women;” “The Once & Future Church Revisited;” “’And He Felt Compassion’: Holiness Beyond the Bounds of Community;” “A Contribution to a Wesleyan Understanding of Holiness and Community.”
Guatemala Nazarene Theological Conference April 2002
The most significant thing about this conference was that it was international in scope. It involved scholars not only from the US and Britain, but from every geographical area of the Church of the Nazarene. Also the conference majored on the discussion of papers already written and read, not on the reading of papers. Tom Noble, Professor of Theology at Nazarene Theological Seminary, was assigned the task of summarizing the papers and deliberations both before and after the conference.. His pre-conference review was entitled “Purity, Wholeness and Christ,” and he called his post-conference essay “Endnote on Holiness.” In the later paper he focuses on the issues of “Theology and Culture,” “The Doctrine of Entire Sanctification,” and “Ecclesiology” (the doctrine of the Church).
Commenting first on “Theology and Culture” he views Wesleyan theology as a three legged stool: “Doctrine is the round seat of the stool; tradition, reason and experience the three legs; and scripture the floor on which it stands.” In this light he stresses two implications:
We have a variety of cultures, a diversity of experiences, a diversity of ways of reasoning and a diversity of cultural influenced traditions. Therefore in the multi-cultural Church we have to recognize diversity and yet maintain unity. And that applies particularly to the doctrine of holiness. Different aspects of the doctrine, different models, will speak significantly in different cultures with different ways of thinking and reasoning and experiencing God and the world.
The second implication is that we have to make sure that the stool is standing firmly on the floor, that is, the whole of canonical scripture. We need a ‘full-orbed’ biblical theology of holiness. And so it has to include unfashionable biblical models such as purity, cleansing, separation, judgment and wrath, as well as the more likeable models such as love, compassion and grace.
Commenting next on “Entire Sanctification” Noble begins by asking “How important is the concept of ‘secondness’ to entire sanctification?” He notes first that he finds only one reference to secondness in William Greathouse’s Wholeness in Christ. On page 117 Greathouse quotes Mildred Wyncoop’s comment on the “second work of grace” that “second is depth.” Greathouse adds that ”to be truly sanctified is not to be a super Christian (there is no such thing); it is to be a true Christian.” To this Noble adds the fact that in Wesley himself there are only four occurrences of the phrase, “the second blessing,” none of which occur in Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection. But the terms that Wesley
used again and again and again and again were ‘perfect love’, ‘loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength’, ‘purity of heart’, ‘walking as Christ walked’, ‘the single eye’, ‘purity of intention’, ‘love excluding sin’. We are on impossibly weak ground exegetically when we try to persuade others of ‘secondness’, but we stand on the strongest platform of biblical theology when we speak of ‘love excluding sin’. That is where Wesley’s focus was, and that is what Wesleyans want to preach and teach and live, and it is thoroughly biblical.
But Noble concludes that ‘subsequence’ is built into the above and suggests that it is a more appropriate word than ‘second’. He explains:
Spiritually and theologically regeneration is unique, sui generis, the beginning of spiritual life, while the adjectives ‘entire’ or ‘full’ or ‘perfect’ indicate (as Wesley plainly said) that the later stage is a difference in degree. It was his clear opinion that the saints passed into this degree of ‘perfect’ love (that is, full or undivided love) instantaneously even where this moment was not consciously noted. The idea that this is ‘subsequent’ to regeneration has been explicit in the great tradition of Christian spirituality at least since Clement of Alexandria with his two levels of ’perfection’
As for “Ecclesiology” there are two views of the Church in debate among us. The first Noble calls “a form of the doctrine of the Believer’s Church.” This view is very individualistic; it begins with the individual’s conversion and then sees the Church as a collection of these individuals who voluntarily come together to share their stories or testimonies. “This ecclesiology takes a very ‘low church’ view of worship and the sacraments,” formed usually by people who react against “formality” or “dead liturgy” and nominal “churchianity.” Prized is spontaneity in worship, which is identified as “the liberty of the Spirit”
The second view he calls ‘catholic’ in the older sense of universal, but certainly not Roman! This view begins with the corporate—the whole Church as the body of Christ. The younger folk who have a passion for this view are asking, “What does it mean for our institutions and power structure and practices of administration to be holy?” Some, however, “who take this view of the Church seem to be reacting so strongly against modernity’s individualism that they refuse to talk about the personal, and particularly about our interior life.” Noble insists that “this view should go on to talk about the personal” There are some who do make the move from the corporate to the personal, a more biblical and patristic way of thinking than moving from the individual to the corporate.
Most interestingly Noble reports that this “historically called ‘high church’ view of worship and the sacraments” appeals to many Nazarenes who find that for them
‘free worship’ has become dead. It is now too affected by individualistic consumerism, lacking in depth and structure and biblical content, too much influenced by the entertainment industry, too open to the manipulation of dominant personalities, too sentimental and too subjective. And they have found participation in liturgy more Christian, more biblical, more Christ-centered and more spiritually dynamic.
Those affected are Nazarenes of every generation who go out the back door of the Church because a deep spiritual need is not being met: “For this and other reasons we lose them in droves.” He concludes that
these two ecclesiologies need each other. . . We need the emphasis that holiness is a matter of the body—not just the individual soul. . . . It is a matter of practices and of relationships (. . .) within the body of Christ and beyond. That is what Wesley called ‘social holiness’. But we also need the doctrine and experience of ‘purity of heart’. You cannot have one without the other. It is also an interior and motivational matter, a matter of cleansing of the thoughts and intentions of the heart. That too is Wesley. And that too is biblical.
The conclusions in Noble’s first paper are also helpful. First is positive:
we need to insist that what we have to say is not the invention of some eighteenth century English cleric, nor some nineteenth century American revivalists, but is the doctrine of Scripture, developed and explored in every generation of the Church catholic by the Fathers and Medieval theologians and in the modern era.
His second conclusion is negative, his conviction that we do not pay sufficient attention to the theology of the cross, the central message of the Gospel of “Christ crucified,” which is the focus of all Christian theology and life. He reminds us that
the evangel of ‘Christ crucified’ has not shaped and does not shape our understanding of holiness as it should. Our theology is not sufficiently evangelical, in the true sense of the word. And we will always be on the periphery of the life and ministry of the Christian Church until we put that right.
“Proclaiming Entire Sanctification in Europe” European Nazarene College Leadership Conference, 2003 Opening Paper by Antonie Holleman
Antonie Holleman, professor of theology and pastoral ministry at EuNC, is Dutch. His father, Cor Holleman, was the pioneer minister for the Church of the Nazarene in Holland, now a thriving Church. Holleman’s paper was designed to set the stage for the conference. He first stressed that given the fact that the Church of the Nazarene is an American and British and therefore foreign import into an area that has its own rich heritage of Christian traditions, yet a culture haunted by the spirit of pessimism after two world wars and the fall of Communism, a severe challenge faces the holiness message in this setting.
Holleman then proceeds to state that the objective of the conference is
to reflect on the way entire sanctification is articulated and experienced by European Nazarene and to explore ways in which this doctrine can be communicated more effectively to the European people of the 21st century. . . . It wants to help our European churches in proclaiming what we consider to be the essential call of Scripture: a call to holy living. For effective proclamation we need to know how to talk about entire sanctification in light of Scripture, our heritage and the culture in which we live.
Holleman attended the Guatemala conference and observes that Jim Bond’s expressed concerns relating “to ‘subsequentness’ and ’secondness’ of the experience of entire sanctification and how they are currently understood and taught,” is accurate and relates to our situation in Europe as well. In the light of this, however, he insists that the aim of the conference is not a debate between crisis and process, but it
is rooted in a strong desire to see the lives of believers transformed by the power of God. Its intention is to help our churches in proclaiming entire sanctification in such a way that the people are encouraged to seek this transformation Scripture talks about, and that their lives will reflect this. To use plain words of the past: our prayer for the outcome of this conference is a holiness revival.
I have had no access to any concluding papers such as Tom Noble wrote for the Guatemala conference. I will contact Antonie to see if there are any.
Holiness Today: Celebrating Our Nazarene Roots, the Wesley Tercentenary (June 2003)
This issue of Holiness Today contains four feature articles on our Wesleyan roots by Nazarene scholars. Editor R. Franklin Cook comments that “if someone were to ask me to define and describe holiness as Nazarene understand it,” staple these together “and ask the inquirer to read them. You won’t find a better balanced explanation.”.
These feature articles begin with Herbert McGonigle, “Theology Taproots: The Teachings of Wesley.” Under thee headings of “The Love of God,” “Salvation by Faith, “The Witness of the Spirit,” and “Entire Sanctification” he summarizes what Wesley himself called “’the grand fundamental doctrines’ of real Christianity.
The second article, “In Step With the Spirit: A Wesleyan Vision of the Spiritual Life,” by Wesley Tracy, describes the Spirit-led life as journey into disciplines of community, service, and devotion.”
Stan Ingersol, “Firmly Rooted: The Debt Nazarenes Owe John Wesley,” roots the emerging Church of the Nazarene in the Wesleyan-Arminian Tradition, stemming in part from the reaction against Dutch Calvinism led by James Arminius in the 17th century. He then sketches the rise of the Wesleyan-Holiness churches out of their various converging streams.
One whom many of you know, Michael J. Christensen, presents the compassionate ministry aspect of our heritage as he moves from “Practical Divinity” through “Revivalism and Social Reform” to “The Urban Poor:” These three “comprise our spiritual DNA.”
The above articles are not written by scholars for scholars, but by scholars to instruct and edify the laity of the Church.
Relational Holiness
Two contemporary scholars, cousins, Thomas Jay Oord from Northwest Nazarene University and Michael E. Lodahl from Point Loma Nazarene University, commenting on “A Doctrine in Crisis” in a recent book proposal, entitled Relational Holiness, speak to our topic. As they attempt to build a rationale for the need for the book, designed for the lay reader, they make the following observations:
Today, both those inside and outside the movement can easily get the impression that holiness has become an irrelevant or extra dimension to contemporary Christian life. . . . Today, students raised in the holiness tradition arrive at colleges and universities having heard little if anything about holiness and sanctification. And those who have heard the terms typically identify them with some negative aspect of religion they want to avoid. At least in America, those denominations with ties to the holiness tradition are in danger of becoming theologically unrecognizable from the Evangelical Christian mainstream. . . . A General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene summed up well the present state of affairs at a recent global theology conference: ‘We believe that our denomination is currently in a theological crisis.”
Their book is in “process” and Tom has graciously shared with me the first three chapters and given me permission to make use of the material with the “Come and Go” class. We will briefly attempt a description of their approach.
They begin with the assertion that many people in our postmodern world view their world as “relational.” Things and persons are integrally related, in fact “it belongs to the nature of existence to be related and for those relations to affect the fundamental nature of existing things.”
They believe that “Christians should find relational postmodernism particularly helpful for talking about a relationship with God.” They believe “ that the postmodern idea of a moment-by-moment existence provides the key to a contemporary Christian conceptions of life.”
In their scheme, “persons are relational through and through.” And “in the midst of it all, God acts relationally as well. . . . God is open to others and is affected by others in mutual openness. God is relational as both transcendent and immanent.”
Holiness belongs to the basic issues of our lives, and therefore a “relational view of holiness—relational holiness—might affect the way we think, talk, and act as Christians in a postmodern world.”
How they work this out, we will have to leave for a later time, or, when it is published, buy it!
Conclusions
The impact upon us of the present postmodern culture and thinking is inescapable. The result can be either good or bad. Good if we are enabled in the life of the local church and in scholarly articulation to present our message in a more understandable idiom at every level of society. Bad if it compromises the substance of the Gospel message, or subtly disguises it in a form that is misleading as to its essence.
My concluding observations on our brief survey are three. First, in general, scholarly work is following Dunning’s three suggestions for holiness interpretation in the future, although there is danger of compromise of the first: “it must take seriously the historical nature of Scripture.”
Second, Tom Noble’s warning is apt for the proclamation of the Church at all levels. When he calls for a ‘full-orbed’ biblical theology of holiness he insists that “it has to include unfashionable biblical models such as purity, cleansing, separation, judgment and wrath, as well as the more likeable models of such as love, compassion and grace.” As I sense it this is a most serious concern. Are we doing justice to the whole of the biblical text, and therefore to a significant aspect of the biblical witness to the holy?
Finally, the Church and its scholars are taking seriously the natures of the various cultures in which we minister around the world. In the case of this presentation the renewed emphasis on the corporate and the social as well as a relational approach to holiness reflects a meaningful encounter with some aspects of our western postmodern culture.
Frank G. Carver San Diego, California September 22, 2003
Need to add Sam’s recent book and a report from the December KC Theological Conference. Although this wss taken in large part from the lecture in the Life of Holiness, I am not sure what the ocassion for this particular form was. Leviticus 11-44-45: “I am the LORD your God; sanctity yourselves therefore, and be holy for I am holy. . . . I am the LORD who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God; you shall be holy for I am holy.” This language reverberates all through Leviticus chapters 19-26, known as the Holiness Code. Not insignificant are the influences that went into the making of John Wesley as an 18th century Anglican, including the Reform and Lutheran traditions as well as the impact of the early Christian Fathers. Manual 2001-2005 Church of the Nazarene (Kansas City, Missouri: Nazarene Publishing House, 2001), 5 See “Historical Statement,” 14-24. Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What On Earth Am I Here For? Zondervan, 2002. Rick Warren, a Southern Baptist, is pastor of Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest, California, with an attendance of over 17,000 in their weekend worship services. Recently an article about him by Ted Parks was in the The San Diego Union-Tribune, “Author-pastor Warren strives for clarity” (August 14, 3003), E-4. The hermeneutic at work, however, is a little more rationalistic than many Wesleyans are comfortable with. H. Ray Dunning, Biblical Resources for Holiness Preaching: From Text to Sermon, Volume 2 (Kansas City, Missouri, 1993). Our use of him will consist of paraphrase as well as quotations. Ibid., 8. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid, 8-9. See the June and July 2003 issues of Holiness Today, subtitled Celebrating Our Nazarene Roots, the Wesley Tercentenary (300 year anniversary of Wesley’s birth), and The Training Wheels of Holiness containing articles on the subject mostly by holiness scholars. Here he graciously cites my “Biblical Foundations for the ‘Secondness’ of Entire Sanctification,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 22, no. 2 (Fall 1987), 7-23. Dunning, Biblical Resources, 9-10. I retired from the college in 1996. It changed its name to Point Loma Nazarene University in 1998. Since I ceased to teach this course a comprehensive, well written, and biblically sound treatment has been written by a Wesleyan scholar and retired General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene. For further study I recommend highly, William M. Greathouse, Wholeness in Christ: Toward a Biblical Theology of Holiness (Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1998). Dennis F. Kinlaw, Preaching in the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Francis Asbury Press of Zondervan Publishing House, 1985), 18. A. W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy: The Attributes of God, Their Meaning in the Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1961), 9. So Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 2. Anslem wrote “I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe that I may understand: for this I also believe, that unless I believe I will not understand.” C. Peter Williams, “Anselm of Canterbury (c. 1033-1109),” J. Douglas, ed., The New International Dictionary of the Christian Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1974, 1978), 45. Ibid., 16. Frederick W. Faber (1814-1863) was an English hymn writer. Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), Mysticism (New American Library, Meridian Books, 12th edition 1930, original, 1911), 351, observes that “the contemplative act, which is an act of loving and self-forgetting concentration upon the Divine--the out-pouring of man's little and finite personality towards the absolute personality of God--will, in so far as it transcends thought, mean darkness for the intellect, but it may mean radiance for the heart." Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy, 17-18. W. E. Sangster, The Pure in Heart: A Study in Christian Sanctity (London: The Epworth Press, 1954), xi. Norman W. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (London: The Epworth Press, 1964), 21. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, tran. John W. Harvey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923), 129. Das Heilige, 1917. Literally, “that which is prior,” that is, “in the mind prior to experience.” Snaith, Distincitve Ideas, 21f. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 19f. Rudolf Otto taught at the Universities of Goettingen, Breslau, and Marburg. He never married. Ibid., 5 Ibid., 40. Ibid., 39. The dates of Gerhard Tersteegen were 1697-1769. “Inly” is not a typo! The Methodist Hymnal (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1905), 345. Kenneth Leech, Soul Friend: The Practice of Christian Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 155, James Walsh, ed., The Cloud of Unknowing: the Classics of Western Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1981), 130, Chapter VI. Evelyn Underhill, ABBA: Meditations on the Lord’s Prayer (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., ), 21.. She cites The Spiritual Canticle, 2nd Version, Stanza xii. But I cannot locate the passage in more recent editions. Ibid. Her full comment following her quotation of St. John reads, “Here, as in every approach to Reality, to Holiness, to Beauty, it is those who see much, not those who see little, who realize how much remains unseen. That is why the theologian always has plenty to say about God; whilst the contemplative can hardly say anything at all. The fluent teacher, with his sharp outlines and his neat list of attributes, is only the man with the telescope, not the Alpine guide.” James Muilenburg, “Holiness,” The Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), E-J, 616f. Nahum M. Sarna, Exploring Exodus: The Heritage of Biblical Israel (New York: Schocken Books, 1986), 45. Snaith, Distinctive Ideas, 30. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, 29. Sangster, The Pure in Heart, 12. Snaith, Distinctive I43. TDNT, 93. Snaith, Distinctive Ideas, 43. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 40. Ibid, 1. Snaith, Distinctive Ideas, 52, see 51-78. Sarna, Exploring Exodus, 25-26. Bold type is mine. NRSV. Also Deuteronomy 5:6. Dom Roger Hudleston O.S.B., ed., The Spiritual Letters of Dom John Chapman, O.S.B. (London: Sheed and Ward, 2nd ed., 1946 [1935]), 222. See Otto Zimmerlee, Old Testament Theology, 142. John G. Gammie, Holiness in Israel: Overtures to Biblical Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 1f. The Hermitage Within: Spirituality of the Desert, tran. Alan Neame from the French (New York: Paulist Press, 1977), 56-57. See Psalm 33:21: Our heart is glad in him, because we trust in his holy name.” Evelyn Underhill, ABBA: Meditations based on the Lord’s Prayer, 32. Ibid., 22-23. Hebrews 2:11 (2), 9:13; 10:10, 14, 29; 12:14; 13:12; John 10:36; 17:17; 17:19 (2). Romans 15:16; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 6:11; 7:14 (2); 1 Timothy 2:21. Examples may be Matthew 23:17; Acts 20:32; 26:18; 1 Peter 1:2; 3:15. “Heart” in biblical psychology is the whole person, willing, thinking, feeling. Romans 6:19, 22; 1 Corinthians 1;30; Ephesians 5:26; 1 Thessalonians 4:3, 4, 7; 5:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 1 Timothy 4:5. Lit., “in a Son” stressing the mode of God’s speaking or revelation. John the Baptist in Mark 6:20 is the only exception. Colossians 3:1 2 is an example of the first and Revelation 22:11.of the second. See Romans 8:18-25 for the futuristic reference of this term in Paul. See also Hebrew 4:1-0. The Hebrew background of “peace” is the concept shalom which indicates not only the full welfare of the person, but in some contexts reaches out to embrace messianic salvation. I take it the latter way here, thus understanding it in parallel with and defining ”sanctification.” H. Orton Wiley and Paul T. Culbertson, Introduction to Christian Theology (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1945), 370. See Acts 2:38, the concluding exhortation of Peter’s Pentecost sermon. Frank G. Carver, The Cross and the Spirit: Peter and the Way of the Holy (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2n. ed., 1987, 1973), 81. It is interesting that J. Kenneth Grider in a review criticised this way of putting it. Oswald Chambers, Not Knowing Whither: The Steps of Abraham’s faith: A Series of Studies in the Life of Abraham (London: Oswald Chambers Publications Association; Marshall, Morgan and Scott, “reprinted” 1957), 14. See Romans 6:4-11, 15:22; 7:4-6; 8:1-14. See John 14:18-27; 20:22; 1 John 3:24; 4:13. Luther translates, “Ihr werdet die Kraft des heiligen Geistes empfangen, welcher auf euch kommen wird” [You will receive the power of the Holy Spirit, Who will come upon you]. See Acts 2:4, 32-39, simply chapters 1-15. Tom C. Oden, The Transforming Power of Grace (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 187. See Romans 6:1-14. Here is the place for the crisis, the will decision as to the fully accepted first principle of our Christian lives, that is, any secondness or “subsequentness” in Christian experience. Here is the place for “growth in grace,” that is, we work at Christlikenss throughout our entire lives. What follows is the brief outline of the devotional lecture with which I usually began the class on “The Life of Holiness.” George MacDonald, On Tangled Paths, ed. Dan Hamilton (Wheaton, Illinois: Victor Books, 1987), 246. See sermon #579 for the full text.. My memory says this phrase came from Kevin Newburg, now pastor in Tecomah, Washington. By that he meant that the ideal is always above us, so we “compromise” our lives upwards ever nearer to it. John Wesley, Works, 2:160, 167. Dunning, Biblical Resources, 8-9. Ibid., 9-10. Both are professors at Point Loma Nazarene University. Sam Powell is professor of philosophy and religion, Michael Lodahl is professor of theology. Of the seven contributors, three are Nazarene, Craig Keen in addition to the editors, and the other four are not. Dunning, Biblical Resources, 8. Samuel M. Powell & Michael E. Lodahl, eds., Embodied Holiness: Toward a Corporate Theology of Spiritual Growth (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 13. Even as astute a theologian as William M. Greathouse, retired General Superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, told me recently (9/14/03), that he found reading the book hard going at times! Powell & Lodahl, Embodied Holiness, 13-14. Ibid., 14. Wesley’s words were, “The gospel of Christ knows of no religion, but social holiness.” Works, 14:321. Ibid., 191. Ibid. Stanley Hauerwas, Duke Divinity School. Craig Keen, Azusa Pacific University. Rodney Clapp, editorial director of Brazos Press. Theodore Runyon, Emory University. Joyce Quiring Erickson, Seattle Pacific University. Michael G. Cartwright, University of Indianapolis. Michael E. Lodahl, Point Loma Nazarene University. Samuel M. Powell, Point Loma Nazarene University. Dr. Noble is British, trained in Theology at the University of Edinburgh. The Noble family were members of the Parkhead Church of the Nazarene in Glasgow, Scotland, during the 25 year pastorate of Sydney Martin. During our time at the University of Edinburgh, 1958-1961, we often traveled to Glasgow by train to stay with the Martin’s on weekends and attend the Parkhead. One Sunday we took dinner with the Noble’s when Tom was just a young boy. I have not had occasion to work through the paper submitted for the conference. This is in contrast to the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral—Scripture, Tradition, Reason, Experience. Credit for the analogy is given to Timothy Smith. Tom comments, “The fundamentalists don’t believe in the stool. They think they are sitting on the floor! The liberals believe it’s a four legged stool, but it’s floating in mid-air. But ‘classic Christianity’ (. . .) – orthodox and evangelical Christians – actually sit on this three-legged stool.” The four occurrences are in Letters 3:212, 4:133, 5:315, 6:116. There are five other occurrences of such phrases as “second change” or “second awakening.” Clement’s dates are 155-220. Noble reports in his first paper that there was general agreement in the conference that what matters is the “substance” (the “what”) rather then the “circumstance” (the “how” and “when”). But, he says, Jim Bond “still has a reluctance to let the traditional ‘secondness’ go. He has a sense that the ‘what’ is best promoted trough the ‘how’ and the ‘when’; and he has a fear that doubts about the ‘how’ and ‘when’ ultimately erode convictions about the “what’ and the ‘why’.” This Noble says, has broadly been the view and practice of the Church of the Nazarene in Britain, Canada, and the United States, but “we haven’t really thought deeply about our doctrine of the Church at all.” As in the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy catholic church, . . .” It is of interest to note here that Tom Noble took his graduate theological training at New College, the University of Edinburgh, under Thomas Torrance, the leading English speaking Barthian. See Samuel Powell, “A Contribution to a Wesleyan Understanding of Holiness & Community,” Embodied Holiness, 176-179, his section on “A Barthian Meditation on Jesus Christ and Holiness.” American influence on the form of the Church of the Nazarene in Europe is more evident than that of the British Church. Dialogue and cooperation are on the increase between the Church in Europe and Britain, particularly on the educational level. The 300th anniversary of Wesley’s birth. A fifth article, not part of the series but relevant here is by Alex Deasely, retired Professor of New Testament at Nazarene Theological Seminary after 25 years of teaching. His biblical exposition is entitled “Holy God—Holy People—Holy World.” . See also the following July 2003 issue of Holiness Today, subtitled The Training Wheels of Holiness. R. Franklin Cook is also the Director of the Eurasia Region of the Church of the Nazarene. Herbert McGonigle is principal and senior lecturer in historical theology and Wesley studies at Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, England. Wesley D., Tracy is a former teacher at Nazarene Theological Seminary and served as editor of Herald of Holiness and Preacher’s Magazine. Stan Ingersol is manager of the Nazarene archives at the International Headquarters of the Church of the Nazarene. Michael J. Christensen, the founding pastor of Golden Gate Community in San Francisco, currently teaches practical theology and spirituality at Drew University where he directs the doctor of ministry program. Jim Bond To interpret the holiness message relationally is not new. It’s modern form was inspired by the rise of the biblical theology movement in the first half of the 20th century with its emphasis on the dynamic character of the biblical witness. One can add to that the impact of theologians Karl Barth and particularly Emil Brunner. A pioneer work among us was Mildred Wyncoop’s A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill Press, 1972). Many Wesleyan Scholars contributed among whom are Rob Staples, William Greathouse, John A. Knight, and H. Ray Dunning. Perhaps the fullest statement is in the latter’s Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology (Kansas City, Missouri: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1988). Opponents of such a view among others include J. Kenneth Grider, Donald Metz, and to some degree Richard S. Taylor. The present work of Oord and Lodahl is the first attempt, in my knowledge, to utilize openly some of the concerns of postmodernism for a “Relational Holiness.” Dunning, Biblical Resources, 9. See Appendix #3 above.
6.4.2, 1 DATE \@ "MM/dd/yy" 07/22/10 TIME \@ "h:mm AM/PM" 10:19 AM FGC