4. It is an advance on this view when the attempt is made to define what this perfection of God is. A thing is perfect when it is in everything as it ought to be. It is easy thus to define perfection, but not so easy to define what the perfection of any special object is: this needs the knowledge of what its nature is. And we have to rest content with very general terms defining God’s Holiness as the essential and absolute good. ‘Holiness is the free, deliberate, calm, and immutable affirmation of Himself, who is goodness, or of goodness, which is Himself’ (Godet on John xvii. 11). ‘Holiness is that attribute in virtue of which Jehovah makes Himself the absolute standard of Himself, of His being and revelation.’ (Kubel.)
5. Closely allied to this is the view that holiness is not so much an attribute, but the ‘whole complex of that which we are wont to look at and represent singly in the individual attributes of God.’ So Bengel looked upon holiness as the Divine nature, in which all the attributes are contained. In the same spirit what Howe says of holiness as the Divine beauty, the result of the perfect harmony of all the attributes, ‘Holiness is intellectual beauty. Divine holiness is the most perfect beauty, and the measure of all other. The Divine Holiness is the most perfect pulchritude, the ineffable and immortal pulchritude, that cannot be declared by words, or seen by eyes. This may therefore be called a transcendental attribute that, as it were, runs through the rest, and casts a glory upon every one. It is an attribute of attributes. These are fit predications, holy power, holy love. And so it is [p289] the very lustre and glory of His other perfections. He is glorious in holiness.’ (Howe in Whyte’s Shorter Catechism.) This was the aspect of the Divine Holiness on which Jonathan Edwards delighted to dwell. ‘The mutual love of the Father and the Son makes the third, the personal Holy Spirit, or the Holiness of God, which is His infinite beauty.’ ‘By the communication of God’s Holiness the creature partakes of God’s moral excellence, which is perfection, the beauty of the Divine nature.’ ‘Holiness comprehends all the true moral excellence of intelligent beings. So the Holiness of God is the same with the moral excellency of the Divine nature, comprehending all His perfections, His righteousness, faithfulness, and goodness. There are two kinds of attributes in God, according to our way of conceiving Him: His moral attributes, which are summed up in His Holiness, and His natural, as strength, knowledge, etc., which constitute His greatness. Holy persons, in the exercise of holy affection, love God in the first place for the beauty of His Holiness.’ ‘The holiness of an intelligent creature is that which gives beauty to all his natural perfections. And so it is in God: holiness is in a peculiar manner the beauty of the Divine being. Hence we often read of the beauty of holiness (Ps. xxix. 2, xcvi. 9, cx. 3). This renders all the other attributes glorious and lovely.’ ‘Therefore, if the true loveliness of God’s perfections arise from the loveliness of His Holiness, the true love of all His perfections will arise from the love of His Holiness. And as the beauty of the Divine nature primarily consists in God’s Holiness, so does the beauty of all Divine things.’
6. In speaking of God’s Holiness as denoting the essential good, the absolute excellence of His nature, some press very strongly the ethical aspect. The good in God must not be from mere natural impulse only, flowing from the necessity of His nature, without being freely willed by Himself. ‘What is naturally good is not the true realization of the good. The actual and living will to be the [p290] good He is, must also have its place in God, otherwise God would only be naturally ethical. Only in the will which consciously determines itself, is there the possibility given of the ethical. The ethical has such a power in God that He is the holy Power, who cannot and will not renounce Himself, who must be, and would be thought to be, the holy necessity of the goodness which is Himself,—to be the Holy. The love of God is essentially holy; it desires and preserves the ethically necessary or holy, which God is.’ (Dorner, System, vol. i.)
7. It was felt in such views that there was not a sufficient acknowledgment of the truth that it is especially as the Holy One that God is called the Redeemer, and that He does the work of love to make holy. This led to the view that holiness and love are, if not identical, at least correlated expressions. ‘God is holy, exalted above all the praise of the creature in His incomparable praise-worthiness, on account of His free and loving condescension to the creature, to manifest in it the glory of His love.’ ‘God is holy, inasmuch as love in Him has restrained and conquered the righteous wrath (as Hosea says, xi. 9), and judgment is exercised only after every way of mercy has been tried. This holiness is disclosed in the New Testament name, as exalted as it is condescending, of Father.’ (Stier on John xvii.)
8. The large measure of truth in this view is met by an expression in which the true aspects of the Holiness of God are combined. It is defined as being the harmony of self-preservation and self-communication. As the Holy One, God hates sin, and seeks to destroy it. As the Holy One, He makes the sinner holy, and then takes him up into His love. In maintaining His love, He never for a moment loses His Divine purity and perfection; in maintaining His righteousness, He still communicates Himself to the fallen creature. Holiness is the Divine glory, of which love and righteousness are the two sides, and which in their work on earth they reveal.
‘Holiness is the self-preservation of God, whereby He [p291] keeps Himself free from the world without Him, and remains consistent with Himself and faithful to His Being, and whereby He, with this view, creates a Divine world that lives for Himself alone in the organization of His Church.’ (Lange.)
‘The Holiness of God is God’s self-preservation, or keeping to Himself, in virtue of which He remains the same in all relationships which exist within His Deity, or into which He enters, never sacrifices what is Divine, or admits what is not Divine. But this is only one aspect. God’s Holiness would not be holiness, but exclusiveness, if it did not provide for God’s entering into manifold relations, and so revealing and communicating Himself. Holiness is therefore the union and interpretation of God’s keeping to Himself and communicating Himself; of His nearness and His distance; of His exclusiveness and His self-revelation; of separateness and fellowship.’ (Schmieder.)
‘The Divine Holiness is mainly seclusion from the impurity and sinfulness of the creature, or, expressed positively, the cleanness and purity of the Divine nature, which excludes all connection with the wicked. In harmony with this, the Divine Holiness, as an attribute of revelation, is not merely an abstract power, but is the Divine self-representation and self-testimony for the purpose of giving to the world the participation in the Divine life.’ (Oehler, Theol. of O. T. i. 160.)
‘Opposition to sin is the first impression which man receives of God’s Holiness. Exclusion, election, cleansing, redemption—these are the four forms in which God’s Holiness appears in the sphere of humanity; and we may say that God’s Holiness signifies His opposition to sin manifesting itself in atonement and redemption, or in judgment. Or as holiness, so far as it is embodied in law, must be the highest moral perfection, we may say, “holiness is the purity of God manifesting itself in atonement and redemption, and correspondingly in judgment.” By this view all the above elements are done justice to; [p292] holiness asserts itself in judging righteousness, and in electing, purifying, and redeeming love, and thus it appears as the impelling and formative principle of the revelation of redemption, without a knowledge of which an understanding of the revelation is impossible, and by the perception of which it is seen in its full, clear light. God is light: this is a full and exhaustive New Testament phrase for God’s Holiness’ (1 John i. 5). (Cremer.)
This view is brought out with special distinctness in the writings of J. T. Beck. ‘It is God’s Holiness which, taking the good which was given in creation in strict faithfulness to that good and perfect will of God, as the eternal life-purpose of love, in righteousness and mercy carried out to its completion in God Himself to a life of perfection. God does this as the Alone Holy. In the world of sin Divine love can only bring deliverance by a mediation in which it is reconciled to the Divine wrath within their common centre, the Holiness of God, in such a way that while wrath manifests its destroying reality, love shall prove its restoring power in the life it gives.’ (Beck, Lehrwissenschaft, 168, 547.)