Holiness is Wholeness: According to Protestantism's Soft Spot of Comprehensiveness


Former Miami Dolphins quarterback Bob Griese once said: "There's no great mystery to quarterbacking. You move personnel around in various formations looking for the defense's particular patsy and then you eat him alive." I am afraid that the enemies of God and his people have found our particular soft spot and are now eating us alive!

That weak spot is Anglican or Episcopal comprehensiveness. The reasons for this are many, but the main reason is because the meaning of comprehensiveness has been cut loose from its clear biblical origins. Another reason is that Anglicanism has never had a clear primary leader like has other Protestant traditions. It has Cranmer, Hooker, Jewel, Simeon, etc. as its chief leaders rather than one clear champion like Luther. Richard Hooker is the one who I understand to have defined holiness by the English word comprehensiveness. But knowledge of this and clarity on this seems to be lacking when I write or speak to contemporary Episcopalians. I cannot say that when I speak to a Lutheran about justification the same thing happens. Instead they are quite clear on its biblical origins.


J. I. Packer wrote an excellent little booklet titled: A Kind of Noah's Ark? The Anglican Commitment to Comprehensiveness. As an Anglican, he and C. S. Lewis represent what is right about Anglicanism. In this booklet he writes: "ONE ingredient in today's Anglicanism ... is ... its claim to be comprehensive in a way that other traditions are not, and its confidence that this comprehensiveness is a fine thing." But, not everyone agrees that it is a fine thing. Packer sees this problem and points out that comprehensivenss has been "paraded as an Anglican excellence from at least four points of view."


The four points of view are: 1) inclusiveness (or calculated inclusion), 2) integration ( or integrative practice), 3) tension (inner tension) and 4) relativism (inescapeable theological relativism). The problem as Packer sees it is that "there is no common mind on how the current breadth of doctrinal toleration should be regarded." For Packer, part of this is caused by all of these views parading themselves as excellent views of comprehensiveness. I agree.

Yet let's add to Packer's insight. I believe that these four views mainly emerged because Anglicanism has not been clear on its greatest strength which is holiness. Comprehensiveness was originally a definition for holiness. In the hands of the best Anglicans like Hooker it brought good things to the church like a more comprehensive or whole list of 5 solas in contrast to Luther's partial 3 solas: faith alone, grace alone, Scripture alone. It also saw the place for Scripture, tradition, reason and ... as informative parts of a whole schema for grasping the meaning of Scripture. These ideas were in fact more comprehensive in a way that fits with being more whole than other Protestant perspectives.

Holiness is the root of comprehensiveness is in contrast to the many meanings that Packer suggests that have been given to comprehensivness. Sadly, it seems that Anglican scholars like Wescott and Hort at the end of the 1800s may have been duped into some soft version of comprehensiveness in some of their perspectives that has led many to fall into a type of relativism in more recent church history.

Holiness is the root for comprehensiveness also means that Anglicans in particular should have been the first to grasp the wholeness of God's character in the major parts of what makes up holiness. I am surprised that someone following in the tradition of Richard Hooker did not grasp the character traits of righteousness, truth, love and goodness as chief parts of God's character in contrast to those who want to stress only his love. The same could be said for the chief parts of God's forgiveness in his mercy, grace, compassion and longsuffering in contrast to stressing only his grace or mercy.

Because comprehensiveness is Protestantism's soft spot, I believe it is the hill, or the valleys that connects the hills, we must retake. We must reform ourselves and realize that comprehensiveness is rooted in holiness or wholeness before we can enjoy the fruit of revival. William Tyndale realized that the Word of God needed to get to the people in their own language. He decided to take that hill or die doing it. We need to decide with the same level of conviction to retake the hill of holiness is wholeness. Comprehensiveness must originate again from holiness. Then Packer's confidence that comprehensiveness is a fine thing can be restored. May God keep reforming us and then may the reviving of us be the fruit of reform.

In Christ,

Pastor Jon