Monday, August 04, 2008

My working definitions of sanctification and holiness

I'm teaching an online class for IWU these next few weeks, and posted my working definitions of "holiness" and "sanctification" for them this morning at the end of a workshop.

By the way, I'm thinking of proposing an online grad class in the Spring "Preaching Paul's Life and Letters." If God and accreditors smile on our undertaking, we may be approved to offer an MDiv by then, and this could give a person a head start on electives. If all goes well, we'll be looking for 30 brave members of the "first seminary class" in Fall '09--one cohort of 15 online and one cohort to meet once a week onsite. Be looking for more information if all goes well.

Anyway, this online course for the Spring would run for 14 weeks in the Spring from January to early April. One day a week would be a lecture/discussion of content by way of Adobe Acrobat (I would do it somewhat differently from Hebrews last Spring--we would actually meet online at a specific time like a normal class). The rest of the class would meet on Blackboard in online class format. Everyone would preach at least once, maybe twice. The content would include both Acts 13-28 and all of the Pauline letters.

Anyway, here's what I posted this morning for the class:

To sanctify means "to make holy," to "holy-fy." So "sanctification" would mean the process of becoming holy or the state of having been made holy. The harder thing to define is what it means to be or become holy.

Holiness has as its basic sense being set apart to GOD as GOD's. I put God in all caps because a cognitive definition just doesn't cut it. The sentence should be said with some trembling and nervousness. You should fall on your face in the manner of Isaiah 6 when you speak of God's holiness, for to say God is holy is to say that God is GOD! To touch His stuff, to get near His presence is like stepping close to an electricity relay station where the voltage is so high you can feel the tingling on your skin and you get a little nervous because you know this stuff can fry you alive!

To be holy or to be made holy is thus to be God's or be made God's. It means that other people better be careful what they do to you because you are God's property. You are drawn on His side of the line. And it means that you'd better be careful how you live as well, because you're set apart as His. Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 should suffice as an example of what happens when you mess around with the holy.

The idea of purity of heart and life is thus secondary to what holiness is, but it is a natural by-product of the fundamental idea. We act appropriate to something that belongs to GOD. It makes perfect sense that we would become holy by the "sanctification of the Spirit," since having God possess us fits with God's Spirit within us.

We are holy from the time we receive the Spirit, which is the defining moment of becoming God's or in popular Christianese, "getting saved." I personally don't think it makes sense to become more or less holy, at least not in the biblical sense of the word. Either you belong to God or you don't.

7 comments:

Jared Calaway said...

I like your comparison to an electrical current--it makes holiness a dynamic and not a purely static concept.

But I would take issue with it not making sense for something to be more or less holy, at least biblically. The Priestly tradition constantly makes gradations of holiness in terms of place, time, and people. So, in Priestly thought, the land is holy, but the altar is more holy, the temple as a whole is even more holy, and the inner chamber, the devir, is the most holy. In time, most holidays are holy, the holidays of the seventh month are more holy, while the Day of Atonement (and the Sabbath, I would add) are the most holy. Same goes in terms of people. The Israelites are holy, set apart from other people by God and they must maintain their holiness (by obeying his commandments and maintaining their separateness), but the priesthood is a bit more holy and the high priest is most holy.

Now, if you want to argue that Jesus, Paul, or whoever flattened holiness out, or provided a different model of holiness, I would be very willing to hear it. At the very least, the Bible would have multiple conceptions of holiness, and at least one of them (the one the Priests followed) made distinctions and gradations.

Ken Schenck said...

Good point, Jared. I was thinking more in terms of the tendency of certain contemporary holiness traditions to speak of degrees of "internal" sanctification in some introspective sense.

I do think that Jesus and Paul flatten out the notion of holiness to some extent just as they abolish the associated idea of clean and unclean. I find 1 Thessalonians 5:23 in that sense a more exceptional than typical passage.

But non-Christians can be holy in proximity to Christian spouses (1 Cor. 7). Carnal Christians can be holy (1 Cor 1), etc.

Anonymous said...

What about "Entire Sanctification" and the Second Work of Grace? Are you going to go there?

Ken Schenck said...

I affirm these doctrines as a Wesleyan, but I've retrofitted them to my interpretations. I think so much orthodox and traditional theological discussion can be mapped to the Bible even though I find so much of it "beyond" the Bible, so to speak...

I know you're just trying to get me in trouble, in Christian love :-)

Jared Calaway said...

Thanks for the clarification, Ken. Sometimes I feel like I live and breath antiquity so much that I forget about later (or more recent) traditions--you know, anything post Charlemagne. ;)

I drive many of my friends mad when I speak of the Reformation in terms of "recent events."

Anonymous said...

How do you bring out the ideas of theosis and deification in preaching. The idea of current is a form of dunamis but is one that is short-lived in living the life of God as a Christian. Being in Christ from Paul may be a useful interpretation. I know the above terms are not Weslyan but are Catholic Christian. I am interested how someone from a Protestant tradition interprets these terms

Anonymous said...

I love the way you dance! I have often wondered where the doctrine of a 2nd work of grace is found in the Bible. Maybe from observing the lives of those who have had their sin nature removed? I would love to hear your retrofitted perspective and follow the mapping of this subject in the Bible:)