Today, I read an immensely sad article, How We Forgot the Holiness of God, in an email from Christianity Today (5/20/14). The article should lead to the emotion of grief, not to the emotion of joy. Once again an author makes a plea for the Rudolph Otto kind of holiness that inspires fear and awe. Hey, those are necessary emotions in the right context, but there is the possibility of emotional manipulation going on in this plea. There is no concern for logical exegesis in the article, only getting people like you and me off our chair or couch and instead being fearful of being a sinner in the hands of an angry God. But this is not like Jonathan Edwards' sermon that has an authentic basis for fear. This instead comes off as a rather shoddy and cheap way of dealing with fear as an emotion. Holiness for me means a lot of more than this author in Christianity Today is implying. A great deal more. For me it means ultimately moving from an emotion of jealousy (I don't want to be like you) to an emotion of emulation (I want to be like you).
I'll show you how much more holiness means to me by pointing out all kinds of errors in the article. Perhaps before the author suggests we all fear, the author should fear more than anyone else. You see fear is a great emotion, when it is understood properly. But only when understood properly. It cannot be used for manipulation or without emotional intelligence. You have to have the latter to also avoid the former, even when by accident and not purposeful.
Let me illustrate. When I was young and first learning to use a table saw my dad taught me to fear it, because it did not only cut off inches but also fingers. That was good. I haven't cut a finger off due to a healthy respect. But he did not leave me stuck in fear. He also taught me how to confidently avoid cutting off a finger so that my hand and fingers remained attached. You need to move people from fear to confidence. You don't start off with the silly idea of walking up to a table saw and using it fearlessly without lessons. My dad was not manipulating me, but he was training me. He made me a person confident in how to do what I wanted. I wanted to accomplish the result ofcutting a board to the right length with a square cut end. So he gave me a lesson in the emotions of fear and confidence, but also in the logic of how and why.
So let's look at the errors. Keep in mind that I have been writing on holiness for around 10 years. This blog has a link to some of my earliest beginnings in a separate blog. I have read nearly everything that pertains to the topic that is worthwhile.
THE FIRST MISTAKE
So why is this author so confident that Rudolph Otto's right and the prior 400 years of Protestant exegesis is wrong? My dad taught me to fear a table saw. Why is this author not afraid that he's wrong in his definition of holy? My dad taught me to fear a table saw, because a saw CAN do things. I think we should be a little more fearful that Luther, Calvin, Cranmer, Wesley, and Spurgeon COULD do things. I am a lot more fearful of their abilities than I am of Otto's CANNOT.
Otto's own weakness and can't do attitude is revealed by himself in his study of holiness' meaning. He gets to a point where he is not sure of the meaning of the word for holy, so he chooses the one which fits better with his preferred philosophy. Doesn't that scare you? It scares me, like working with a table saw carelessly. Otto is careless and carefree which means he is what is otherwise known as fearless. I am confident, but I am not fearless as a result. I know when to fear and when to be confident. Don't let me ever get careless at the table saw. But let's use it how it is to be used confidently.
THE SECOND MISTAKE
It is great to bring in Isaiah 6 as Otto uses this too as a central passage. That makes perfect sense. So it is true that Isaiah experiences fear in the passage. But that does not define holy. It is funny how the author misses other parts in the context. He wants to go with Otto's definition having to do with fear and awe, but he ignores the concept of "whole" in the "whole earth is full of his glory". He misses the argument for "moral wholeness" that Jonathan Edwards, Johann Bengel, and many others make from other contexts for their definition. He skips past it. Perhaps he has a historical bias about conclusions based on time and place. Otto comes later, so he's correct. He does not test Otto's view with other witnesses to see what they witnessed. He does not ask famous commentators for their testimony. One testimony in a real sense is enough. The author and Otto experience no sadness in their testimony separating from leaders over a four hundred year period. He misses out on the joy of finding the same conclusions with others. No shared joy over a 500 year period to celebrate. He's not worried about joy and connections with others.
THE THIRD MISTAKE
He takes the second mistake still further as far as emotions are concerned. Not only is he not saddened by his break with past testimonies, he is also not afraid of going forward without an act of experimentation.
Let me illustrate. Just yesterday I could not find my coffee mug that I uses on a regular basis. I was not confident where it was. I decided that rather than dilly dally in my brain, I would instead start to experiment with the different possible locations by going to them and seeing if the cup was there. If it was, then I could be confident where it was. If I did not find it, at least my confidence would grow from eliminating possible locations. So off to my car I went. It was not in the passenger's seat though I knew I had in the car the prior day. So I went back to the most obvious, the kitchen where I normally kept it. Not on the counters nor in the cupboard. So off to other rooms in the house beginning with the most likely to the least likely. Not there either, so I returned to the most obvious location again, the kitchen. And there it was. I couldn't see it yet, but there was my lunch container. I was pretty sure my cup was inside it, because I recalled placing something in there that normally I did not. I had forgotten to empty it the night before like I usually did. So I opened it - I experimented with the idea that the cup was in my lunch container - sure enough there it was.
You see, it is very important to experiment with ideas by doing something with them, not just assuming the outcome from some hypothetical action. I did something. In this case of exegesis (reading a passage from an insider's perspective, not an outsider's), nothing is done except a connection between Isaiah's dread and what holy means. That is a very sloppy experiment. In my experiment above, I experimented with all the possibilities until I arrived at one that ruled out any others. Is this kind insisting they found the thing they were looking for immediately without any failed experiments? Did they even consider other possibilities at all?
The problem with Otto and this author is they try one possibility for fear - God's holiness - and stop there. They don't consider other possibilities. Maybe Isaiah had read how no one can see God's face an live and he thought he had seen his face and that regardless of holy or not, you die. Or maybe the main issue was his uncleanness and he was ashamed of himself before such a clean assembly. Like a wedding guest attending a wedding feast without proper clean attire. He nor Otto does even look at that as a possibility in itself as a reason for fear. Jesus was holy and yet it did not automatically lead to dread. The Holy Spirit is in us, yet it does not lead automatically to dread. I think fear and dread come in certain instances to us. I don't think that is the constant state before holiness. I would think the great emotion there is that of emulation - I want to be like Him.
An added problem inside the text that is not considered from an insider's perspective is that 'the whole earth is full of his glory" is much closer in the context to "holy, holy, holy" than the material on fear and dread. Maybe what should be experimented with is the idea that God's "moral wholeness" is reflected in a view of the "earth's wholeness". It possesses the glory that God has even if only a reflection of it as the moon is a reflector of the light of the sun.
So my question is why the author does not feel fear? Why is he so cavalier and fearless as to make illusion to Otto's sloppy exegesis? Why doesn't he have a goal of preferring the more immediate context over the more distant?
It appears he does not possess the skills of an exegete. If he does not, then he should fear and stay away from exegetical comments based on an outsider, who admits his exegesis was built on an outsider philosophical perspective.
Holy, Holy, Holy is Yahweh God Almighty,
the whole earth is full of his glory.
Those words are the immediate context. That is where the test is. The testimony has to come from the most immediate. The ones with the eye witness kind of testimony. Not from the second rate witness in the next room or the larger context beyond that. Stick to the most immediate.
Likewise, experiment. Don't just show up with one option as a place to find the lost. Check around until you find what you are looking for. But don't stop short or you will end up like "U2" and "still trying to find what you are looking for".
THE FOURTH MISTAKE
I dislike it when people set up a straw man argument or a wet paper sack argument. In other words, they make it so easy to win by having no competition. I see this every year, when some college team rolls over some weakling and the polls move that team up to #1, only to see them get trounced three weeks later. What this author is arguing about is supposed to be why holiness is forgotten, not about whether people are afraid of God or not. I was expecting an emotional and logical argument. I only got the former.
Here's his straw man argument. People don't know the definition of holy, because they are not afraid of God's holiness. People when asked for God's attributes don't mention holiness, because they want to avoid an attribute that leads to fear. He even illogically treats love not as a requirement, but as a kindness or gift. He is illogical here. The commandment (requirement) is love. How is that like compassion? It is mixing demands with gifts.
Listen, I have gone to churches with public sharing. That is not a good forum for deciding whether the church teaches holiness or not. As for the definition, they don't know it, because there are too many options. Who's fault is that? To blame it on the common people not fearing enough from their pews is to set up a straw man argument. The sad thing is the argument he gives cannot fight its way out of a wet paper sack (weakling!) either.
CONCLUSION
There are more errors, but suffice it to say, "Why is this author asking others to fear God, when he does not fear his own lack of ability?" Lack of ability is the basic reason to fear. Its counter part is another's ability to do what I cannot.
Take the table saw again. The table saw CAN cut off a finger. My finger CANNOT stop the table saw blade from doing just that, if it is in the wrong place at the wrong time. So you bet I fear God. I fear him more than this author in Christianity Today does.
But God has also given me good teachers, so that I am not just caught up in God's alien nature (as Luther called it), but I am caught up more in what I can do through God's compassion and God's heaven sent instructors on exegesis. May God's children have more confidence and may this erring child of many mistakes realize what he CANNOT do and have greater fear. Don't instruct others in what you yourself do not possess - healthy fear and a definition for holiness.
In Christ,
Jon
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