Holy Means Whole: According to C. H. Spurgeon

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the greatest Baptist who ever lived, was one of my college favorites. He had this and other things to say about the meaning of holy:


"In a word, we must labor for holiness of character. What is holiness? Is it not wholeness of character? A balanced condition in which there is neither lack nor redundance. It is not morality, that is a cold, lifeless statue; holiness is life. You must have holiness; ...." He said this in a sermon titled "Forward!" You can access this at: http://www.spurgeon.org/misc/aarm02.htm. You can also access other things he has said through the links I provide on the right margin of my blog.


He also had other things to say about holiness. He connects holiness with a sense of separation or being separate in other sermons. I would never deny this. This should not surprise us, since he felt such an affinity with the Puritans and their sometimes separatist cause. I don't want to misrepresent Spurgeon.


It is likely that Spurgeon followed the Protestant scholarship that preceded him that saw holiness as first wholeness and as second separation. Yet it also remains to be studied as to whether he may have forged a path connecting holiness and wholeness more strongly and more clearly than Protestants before him. He was as a Baptist very committed to knowledge and to discernment, after all is said and done. That is a core value of being a Baptist.


The thing that is very relevant for our time is how much minds forged in the twentieth century missed out on hearing Spurgeon's connection between holiness and wholeness. For all the talk of fundamentalists saying that they preserved faithfully the faith of our fathers, they clearly failed on the subject of holiness. Instead, they either in their eagerness to separate from critical scholarship fled to the meaning of separation exclusive of wholeness on their own or they bought into liberal scholarship's conclusion that holy means to be separate. I imagine more the former than the latter, though the latter later backed them up ironically.


Yet in the minds of many people, wholeness makes no sense as being connected with holiness. It instead carries with it an uneasy sense of resistance. I think it is important to understand how the brain works to understand this mental resistance.


According to some experts, the mind works in in four realms. It consists of the memory of things, the language of action, the thought of ideas and the emotions of clarity. All of this together weighs against the introduction of even reality.

First, many have no memory of hearing that holiness is wholenes, if they grew up in the twentieth century. Second, a person may never have used holiness that way in their use of language. Third, ideas of holiness would all connect with separation, but not with being whole. Finally, a person's emotions are tied up in all of this, because it seemed so clear that holy means to be separate.

Yet, if you go back to the memory in the minds of the Protestant tradition and likely other traditions too, then you must also consider that you are not dealing with just with your memory, but also with the other aspects of your mind. You don't just need to reconsider what you were taught and what you remember. You need to deal with more than that to change your mind about something.


To persuade your mind that it is right to say that holiness is wholeness, you will also have to deal with your emotions which thought previously of only the one definition of separation. Now, by nature of having two possibilities for the definition of holy rather than just one, things will not be so clear and your emotions not quite so settled.

I am warning you that if or when you consider that holiness is wholeness, then you may experience a roller coaster ride of sorts for some time period. Clarity is built on one option versus many options and emotions are built on top of those in our nervous system. The sequence proceeds from one (versus many) then to clarity and then to emotions. So be prepared for an emotional reaction or resistance.

Yet in the end, I have felt a peace of mind and emotions that I have never felt before. It is not a starting point for proving my point. But I am saying that there is peace on the other side of a sometimes fearful questioning of what your mind once considered settled. I began writing this blog to jog people's memories. Now I realize I have more to do, because I also have to deal with the emotions of the mind and nervous system as well. May God richly bless your day.



In Christ,


Pastor Jon