Holy: Understanding it Better through Avoiding Presuppositional and Historical Fallicies

"Don't confuse the unlikely with the impossible."  This is one of those great lines from the fictional character Sherlock Holmes.  Quite often when it comes to understanding the meaning of holy, people are guilty of decidiing against one definition rather than another, because that definition at this point in time looks "unlikely".  That is where presuppositions are dangerous.  We always begin where and when we are here and now.  We also have to understand that despite what we hear, we may be hearing reports that are an historical fallacy.  Another great line from Holmes is:  "It may be more possible than you think."   So what I want my readers to do is for a moment forget the presupposition you have about the meaning of holy and to also consider whether you have been hearing an historical fallacy about what holy means. 

Most visitors to this blog come with the presupposition that holy means "set apart".   They are likewise likely to have the presupposition that holy does not mean "whole".   They are generally convinced that the latter meaning is a result of what D. A. Carson calls "Word-Study Fallacies".  He talks about this kind of fallacies in his book Exegetical Fallacies.  But he goes beyond that and also talks about other fallacies as well including what he calls "Presuppositional and HIstorical Fallacies". 

In much of what I wrote in my early entries on this blog were efforts to overcome people's presuppositions about what holy could even possibly mean and also to overcome people's historical fallacies about what holy means. 

I had always presupposed myself, until I was nearly 44 years old, that holiness had no connection to wholeness.  It turns out that this may only have beem a presupposition on my part and not a proven fact.  That was the first obstacle I had to overcome.  It was to avoid confusing the unlikely with the impossible, as Holmes had warned in the quote above.  Every bit of new evidence I orignially gathered still left me a bit leary of what initially appeared so unlikely a possibility -- that holy could mean whole. 

I also had been guilty of an historical fallacy.  It did not at all seem likely that those who called themselves fundamentalists on the one hand or others who called themselves conservatives on the other, could be guilty of not being conservative.  If you are not conservative on the meaning of holy for the Protestant Reformers, how can you be called a conservative?  But they were not conservative!   They did not know or teach that for all the Protestant Reformers from Luther to Spurgeon, the primary meaning of holiness was the concept of a moral wholeness.  I was guilty of my historical fallacy, because I thought I could be sure a conservative was a conservative for sure on at least the big things.   And believe me holy is big!   It is the biggest of God's moral traits with steadfast kindness sitting directly across the isle from it!  Thank goodness for the latter, so I can be forgiven for my historical fallacy. 

Many of my early entries contain accurate historical quotes of past Reformers including a great number of conservatives.   It is a good thing for present day conservatives that they are not alive now.  They would be deeply critical of the historical fallacy that earlier Reformers taught that the primary meaning of holy was "set apart".  Check my early entries and you will see great quotes from Luther, from Calvin, from Edwards, from Wesley and from Spurgeon.  The historical truth is that they taught based on the scholarship of their day that holy meant whole (in a moral sense).   It was "the attribute of attributes" as some of them called holiness. 

The other problem is that on the liberal side of things there is a deep presupposition.  It is that exegetical reliability is equivalent to modern technological improvements.  We are told that like modern technology moving forward and surpassing past technology in at least some significant ways, that likewise biblical scholarship has moved forward in the same fashion.  I think this too is a presupposition that is not real helpful. 

I do think that one of the dangers of scholarship in Luther's days is that there are not very good "footnotes" on where the idea of holy meaning whole came from.  I cannot find who where the chief scholars behind these definitions.  It could be Kimchi, or Nicholas of Lystra, or Reuchlin, or Melanchton, or Erasmus, etc..  Trying to find the scholarship behind the meaning is like looking for a needle in a haystack.  It is there, but it is nearly hopelessly lost and it is likely not going to be too fruitful trying to recover where the idea that the biblical words for holy mean whole comes from in that time period.  So our footnotes today are clearly an advance over the past, even if sometimes they also can become clutter.  Hopelessly lost is the past scholarship compared to the present scholarship in this one area of technology.  So I am not anti-technology or anti-progressive.  It is just danger to presuppose it all the time!

So drop the presupposition that holy means "set apart" is the final destination in progressive improvements.  Also drop the historical fallacy that there is a direct connection between present day conservatives and the theologians from the 1800s and back when it comes to the meaning of holy.  There is not that connection.  They are building up a historical fallacy by being selective in their quotes.  Check any of my past entries for accuracy (I will provide footnotes if you ask!) and you will find my presentation of history is no fallacy!

Have a great season of Christmas cheer!  You now own two less fallacies.

In Christ,

Jon