Holy: Understanding it Better Through Staying on Course

"There is no shortcut. But there is a path. The path is based on principles revered throughout history. If there is one message to glean from this wisdom, it is that a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency. It's much more a matter of what you do and why you do it than how fast you get it done."  This quote on wisdom and method is from Stephen R. Covey.  I quote it, because the path to understanding holy is filled with pitfalls that can be described as shortcuts.  But also I am convinced that there is a very reliable path to understanding holy that will raise the level of certainty about its meaning to a new level. 

In this entry, I will outline the five steps in that process and follow up with short descriptions.  I have mentioned these steps before, but I now understand them better and I have a new commitment to this method after hearing and then reading Covey's quote.  They are: 1) Translating, 2) Transfering, 3) Totaling, 4)Training, and 5) Teaching. 

Please don't get overly hung up on terminology.  These five could also be called the following names, based on terminology drawn from biblical study and linguistics: 1) Comparing translations, 2)  Textual displaying, 3) Exegesis 4) Action and Post-Action charting, and 5) Universal classifying of words.  I have tried to use the most everyday language and the most principle centered language that I found in the literature of biblical exegesis and interpretation or in the literature of linguistics (the scientific study of languages).  To varying degrees, the steps are universal to all the major books on exegesis. 

Let me use one book as a specific example from the field of linguistics.  It is: Translating the Word of God by John Beekman and John Callow.  On the contents page (p. 7), they outline their principles of translation.  I would like to grade their book like a teacher does an assignment based on each of the five steps above. 

1) Translating: C+  (reason why: they do not balance both meaning and clarity as equals)

2) Transferring: B+ (reason why: they add to the traditional science of sentence diagramming)

3) Totaling: C+  (reason why: this is largely left implict rather than explicit, but they do practice it)

4) Training:  C+ (reason why: this is not covered in any real depth in this book)

5)  Teaching: A (reason why: the analysis of the universal classes of meaning is superb)

The book's overall score is: B.   It has for years been a very valuable addition to my library.  I could even upgrade it's overall score to B+, based on the fact that the teaching portion could be given an A+ (if I added that to my scale). 

Let's look again at the purpose for this entry on my blog.  It is to clarify and commit to how I am going to approach the meaning of holy.  It is only fair that my readers understand the principles of the method that I am using to get the results that I will arrive at. 

There are many tempting short cuts to avoid. The first is reading a greater volume of contemporary lexicons on Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek to be sure the meaning of holy is correctly understood.  The second is to read the greats of church history to make sure that the meaning of the word holy has not been lost in moving from a period of revival to a period of decline.  The third is to keep digging deeper into the etymology of the word for holy in Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek.  These are all good, but they can become the enemy of the best method for determining the meaning of holy. 

So going forward, even while I will use these other methods on occasion, I have to make sure that my focus is on the 5 step method that I proposed at the beginning.  Again, the terminology may differ, but the method is universal.  This method may also be better in some books than others.  Again, what matters most is staying with the method rather than getting side-tracked.  I feel like I could have used my blog entries better in the past with the 5 steps being more of a primary focus.  Again, this does not say the other methods are bad, though it may still mean they are enemies of the very best.  So while I will still use these methods, I hope to use them more sparingly. 

In addition, I think each passage I write about will have to be broken up into each of these 5 steps, so that my each of my entries is not too long.  That is one of the limitations in communicating by blog rather than by article or book.  So please be aware that in the near future that I may be dividing my entries up in this way in order to keep things short enough for those who want a quick answer, but also long enough through labeling for the person who wants to go into greater depth. 

Returning to part of my earlier quote: "If there is one message to glean from this wisdom, it is that a meaningful life is not a matter of speed or efficiency. It's much more a matter of what you do and why you do it than how fast you get it done."   Reading lexicon entries is fast, dictionaries entries are even faster; but I am in this to solve the problem of a fair level of uncertainty, and not to gloss over any uncertainty.  Here we go in embarking on a path, rather than on a short cut!

In Christ,

Pastor Jon 

 

Holy: Understanding it Better Through Its History

My primary purpose in this blog is to provide direct evidence for meaning of holy.  But also, to deal with emotional hang ups that some people have, there are a number of my entries in this blog that indicate the history of the interpretation of the word that is translated as "holy".  That is the driving force behind this entry.  It is to deal with people's fear. 

The history of the interpretation of holy does not prove the meaning of the word, but it does help us overcome fear.  There is danger in assuming that the present prevalent view on the meaning of holy as "set apart" has been the only meaning of holy that interpreters have assigned to the word.  With that assumption, the problem becomes that people are fearful of any another option.  So I hope this entry might help some people to alleviate any fear of other options for the meaning of holy. 

But also in some very recent entries, I describe how to handle practically the element of uncertainty for the meaning of holy that might also lead to fear.  In this one, I want to quote dirrectly from an important author from the 1800s, who elsewhere I mention as among those, who see holy as moral wholeness or the sum of all God's atributes (character traits).  In Baptist circles in the 1800s, he was a significant theologian in the United States. 

Quoting directly, J. L. Dagg, he says:



GOD IS IMMACULATELY HOLY.

Goodness, truth and justice, are moral attributes of God.  Holiness is not an attribute distinct from these; but a name which includes them all, in view of the opposition to contrary qualities.  It implies the perfection of the assemblage; - the absence of every thing that is conrary to the properties included.

Men are unholy.  Even the purest of men have their spots.  It is useful to contrast the character of God, in this respect, with that of men.  It increases our admiration and love, adds fervor to our devotion, incites to worship him in the beauty of holiness, and to imitate him in our character and lives.  "Be ye holy, for I am holy." 

His footnote of verses dealing with the topic of holy are: Ex. 15:11; Lev. 11:44; 1 Sam. 2:2; Job 4:18; Ps. 5:4,5; 22:3; Isa. 6:3; Hab. 1:13; 1 John 1:5; Rev. 4:8.



This quote comes from the following book:

Dagg, J. L. Manual of theology: A Treatise on Christian Doctrine and A Treatise on Church Order.  (New York: Arno Press, 1980), p. 86.   [It was originally published in 1857]


The most important words to pay attention to from the quote are these about the meaning of "holy": "a name which includes them all" with the "all" referring to "goodness, truth and justice".  (He also could have included love.)  The idea that holy inclues them all is an allusion to the idea that holy is the sum of all God''s attributes.  For an American and as a Baptist, he may have been familar with the works of Jonathan Edwards, who held this view, and he also may have been familiar with very popular Baptist and contemporary in England, Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892). 

The difficulty is that neither of these two people were strictly speaking biblical scholars.  One was more of a theologian, the other more of a pastor.  What is more interesting is what scholars they were using to get this meaning and what was the argument supporting the meaning?  Those questions are a lot harder to answer. 

I am in the early stages of trying to uncover that history, but more importantly the basis for the meaning of holy that they proposed.  I am particularly interested in the work of Johann Reuchlin at this juncture, because of his influence on Christians in the area of studying Hebrew at the time of the Reformation. 

So J.L. Dagg's view is another example that might alleviate a few people's fears about considering another option beyond the one that they are popularly taught.  But beyond all this is the desire to then consider the evidence from the biblical text directly.  So hopefullly some of you can go from fear to confidence to evidence to boldness regarding the actual meaning of holy in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. 


In Christ,

Pastor Jon