That the conception of holiness clears itself of extraneous and unessential elements only gradually, and receives its full expression only in the New Testament revelation and especially in the life and work of Christ, should not blind us to the fact that the germs of the idea lie far back in the very beginnings of man's existence upon earth. Even then the sense of wrong within had for its correlate a dimly recognized righteousness without. So soon as man knows himself as a sinner he knows something of the holiness of that God whom he has offended. We must take exception therefore to the remark of Schurman, Belief in God, 231—“The first gods were probably non-moral beings,” for Schurman himself had just said: “A God without moral character is no God at all.” Dillmann, in his O. T. Theology, very properly makes the fundamental thought of O. T. religion, not the unity or the majesty of God, but his holiness. This alone forms the ethical basis for freedom and law. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology—“The one aim of Christianity is personal holiness. But personal holiness will be the one absorbing and attainable aim of man, only as he recognizes it to be the one preëminent attribute of God. Hence everything divine is holy—the temple, the Scriptures, the Spirit.” See articles on Holiness in O. T., by J. Skinner, and on Holiness in N. T., by G. B. Stevens, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary.
The development of the idea of holiness as well as the idea of love was prepared for before the advent of man. A. H. Strong, Education and Optimism: “There was a time when the past history of life upon the planet seemed one of heartless and cruel slaughter. The survival of the fittest had for its obverse side the destruction of myriads. Nature was ‘red in tooth and claw with ravine.’ But further thought has shown that this gloomy view results from a partial induction of facts. Paleontological life was marked not only by a struggle for life, but by a struggle for the life of others. The beginnings of altruism are to be seen in the instinct of reproduction, and in the care of offspring. In every lion's den and tiger's lair, in every mother eagle's feeding of her young, there is a self-sacrifice which faintly shadows forth man's subordination of personal interests to the interests of others. But in the ages before man can be found incipient justice as well as incipient love. The struggle for one's own life has its moral side as well as the struggle for the life of others. The instinct of self-preservation is the beginning of right, righteousness, justice, and law, on earth. Every creature owes [pg 269]it to God to preserve its own being. So we can find an adumbration of morality even in the predatory and internecine warfare of the geologic ages. The immanent God was even then preparing the way for the rights, the dignity, the freedom of humanity.”And, we may add, was preparing the way for the understanding by men of his own fundamental attribute of holiness. See Henry Drummond, Ascent of Man; Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ.
In further explanation we remark:
A. Negatively, that holiness is not
(a) Justice, or purity demanding purity from creatures. Justice, the relative or transitive attribute, is indeed the manifestation and expression of the immanent attribute of holiness, but it is not to be confounded with it.
Quenstedt, Theol., 8:1:34, defines holiness as “summa omnisque labis expers to Deo puritas, puritatem debitam exigens a creaturis”—a definition of transitive holiness, or justice, rather than of the immanent attribute. Is. 5:16—“Jehovah of hosts is exalted in justice, and God the Holy One is sanctified in righteousness”—Justice is simply God's holiness in its judicial activity. Though holiness is commonly a term of separation and expresses the inherent opposition of God to all that is sinful, it is also used as a term of union, as in Lev. 11:44—“be ye holy; for I am holy.” When Jesus turned from the young ruler (Mark 10:23) he illustrated the first; John 8:29 illustrates the second: “he that sent me is with me.” Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 51-57—“‘God is light’ (1 John 1:5) indicates the character of God, moral purity as revealed, as producing joy and life, as contrasted with doing ill, walking in darkness, being in a state of perdition.”
Universal human conscience is itself a revelation of the holiness of God, and the joining everywhere of suffering with sin is the revelation of God's justice. The wrath, anger, jealousy of God show that this reaction of God's nature is necessary. God's nature is itself holy, just, and good. Holiness is not replaced by love, as Ritschl holds, since there is no self-impartation without self-affirmation. Holiness not simply demands in law, but imparts in the Holy Spirit; see Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 79—versusRitschl's doctrine that holiness is God's exaltation, and that it includes love; see also Pfleiderer, Die Ritschlische Theologie, 53-63. Santayana, Sense of Beauty, 69—“If perfection is the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty. Beauty is a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and nature, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of the good.” We would regard nature however as merely the symbol and expression of God, and so would regard beauty as a ground of faith in his supremacy. What Santayana says of beauty is even more true of holiness. Wherever we see it, we recognize in it a pledge of the possible conformity between the soul and God, and consequently a ground of faith in the supremacy of God.
(b) Holiness is not a complex term designating the aggregate of the divine perfections. On the other hand, the notion of holiness is, both in Scripture and in Christian experience, perfectly simple, and perfectly distinct from that of other attributes.
Dick, Theol., 1:275—Holiness = venerableness, i. e., “no particular attribute, but the general character of God as resulting from his moral attributes.” Wardlaw calls holiness the union of all the attributes, as pure white light is the union of all the colored rays of the spectrum (Theology, 1:618-634). So Nitzsch, System of Christ. Doct., 166; H. W. Beecher: “Holiness = wholeness.” Approaching this conception is the definition of W. N. Clarke, Christian Theology, 83—“Holiness is the glorious fulness of the goodness of God, consistently held as the principle of his own action, and the standard for his creatures.” This implies, according to Dr. Clarke, 1. An inward character of perfect goodness; 2. That character as the consistent principle of his own action; 3. The goodness which is the principle of his own action is also the standard for theirs. In other words, holiness is 1. character; 2. self-consistency; 3. requirement. We object to this definition that it fails to define. We are not told what is essential to this character; the definition includes in holiness that which properly belongs to love; it omits all mention of the most important elements in holiness, namely purity and right.
A similar lack of clear definition appears in the statement of Mark Hopkins, Law of Love, 105—“It is this double aspect of love, revealing the whole moral nature, and turning every way like the flaming sword that kept the way of the tree of life, that is termed holiness.” As has been shown above, holiness is contrasted in Scripture, not with mere finiteness or littleness or misfortune or poverty or even unreality, but only with uncleanness and sinfulness. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 80—“Holiness in man is the image of God's. But it is clear that holiness in man is not in proportion to the other perfections of his being—to his power, his knowledge, his wisdom, though it is in proportion to his rectitude of will—and therefore cannot be the sum of all perfections.... To identify holiness with the sum of all perfections is to make it mean mere completeness of character.”