1. The Holiness of Theology
I
What follows is a set of reflections on the holiness of God from the standpoint of Christian dogmatics. Dogmatics is often caricatured as the unholy science that reduces the practices of piety to lifeless propositions. But far from it: dogmatics is that delightful activity in which the Church praises God by ordering its thinking towards the gospel of Christ. Set in the midst of the praise, repentance, witness and service of God’s holy people, dogmatics – like all Christian theology – directs the Church’s attention to the realities which the gospel declares and attempts responsibly to make those realities a matter of thought. The task of this short study is to try to learn how the gospel orders our thinking in the high matter of the holiness of God.
As we approach the topic, it is imperative that we keep in mind two basic requirements for thinking Christianly about God’s holiness. The first is that we need to understand that theological thinking about holiness is itself an exercise of holiness. Theology is an aspect of the sanctification of reason, that is, of the process in which reason is put to death and made alive by the terrifying and merciful presence of the holy God. Without sanctification – without being caught up by God and cleansed for the service of God in the fellowship of the saints – the work of theological reason is profitless. The second requirement for thinking Christianly about the holiness of God is that we need to make sure that we are thinking about the true God, and not about some God of our own invention. Theological talk of the holiness of God stands under the same rule as all theological talk, namely, that it is truthful only to the extent that it attempts to follow the given reality of God. That given reality is God’s glorious and free self-presentation as Father, Son and Spirit, the Holy One in our midst, establishing, maintaining and perfecting righteous fellowship with the holy people of God.
In line with these two basic requirements, this first chapter addresses the question of what kind of thinking we are engaged in when we think theologically about the holiness of God. Following from this, subsequent chapters consider three primary themes: the nature of God’s holiness as Father, Son and Spirit; the holiness of the Church; and the holiness of the Christian. These latter chapters will thus cover holiness in connection with the doctrine of God, the doctrine of the Church, and the doctrine of Christian sanctification. That these three themes cannot be isolated from each other is a point crucial to our understanding of them, for the holiness of the triune God is a holiness which directs itself to God’s creatures as fellowshipcreating holiness. God the thrice Holy One is the Holy One in our midst; and so holiness is a relational concept, a way of confessing that we encounter the Holy One in his works as Father, Son and Spirit or not at all.
With these thoughts in mind, we move directly to the first theme, which is the holiness of theology. To give some shape to our thinking, I offer a proposition as the basis of our reflections:
A Christian theology of holiness is an exercise of holy reason; it has its context and its content in the revelatory presence of the Holy Trinity which is set forth in Holy Scripture; it is a venture undertaken in prayerful dependence upon the Holy Spirit; it is an exercise in the fellowship of the saints, serving the confession of the holy people of God; it is a work in which holiness is perfected in the fear of God; and its end is the sanctifying of God’s holy name.
What follows simply works through the proposition, in order to unfold for us how the gospel may order our thinking.
II
A Christian theology of holiness is an exercise of holy reason. Christian theology is an aspect of reason’s sanctification; the founding condition for theological reason is reason’s separation by God and its being taken by God into his service. Like all other aspects of human life, reason is a field of God’s sanctifying work. Reason, too – along with conscience, the will and the affections – must be reconciled to the holy God if it is to do its work well. And good Christian theology can only happen if it is rooted in the reconciliation of reason by the sanctifying presence of God.
To speak in this way is to fly in the face of some deep intellectual and spiritual conventions of modern culture. Modernity has characteristically regarded reason as a ‘natural’ faculty – a standard, unvarying and foundational feature of humankind, a basic human capacity or skill. As a natural faculty, reason is, crucially, not involved in the drama of God’s saving work; it is not fallen, and so requires neither to be judged nor to be reconciled nor to be sanctified. Reason simply is; it is humankind in its intellectual nature. Consequently, ‘natural’ reason has been regarded as ‘transcendent’ reason. Reason stands apart from or above all possible convictions, all particular, historical forms of life, observing them and judging them from a distance. Reason does not participate in history but makes judgements about history; it is a transcendent and sovereign intellectual legislator, and as such answerable to none but itself.
Such conceptions of reason have become so deeply embedded in modern culture and its most prestigious intellectual institutions that they are scarcely visible to us. But for the Christian confession, these conceptions are disordered. Above all, they are disordered because they extract reason and its operations from the economy of God’s dealings with his creatures. To think of reason as ‘natural’ and ‘transcendent’ in this way is, by the standard of the Christian confession, corrupt, because it isolates reason from the work of God as creator, reconciler and perfecter. Once reason is thought of as ‘natural’ rather than as ‘created’ (or, to put it differently, once the category of ‘the created’ is collapsed into that of ‘the natural’), then reason’s contingency is set aside, and its sufficiency is exalted in detachment from the divine gift of truth. Or again, when reason is expounded as a natural competency, then it is no longer understood as fallen and in need of reconciliation to God. Again, when reason is considered as a human capacity for transcendence, then reason’s continual dependence on the vivifying Spirit is laid to one side, for natural reason does not need to be made holy.
Christian theology, however, must beg to differ. It must beg to differ because the confession of the gospel by which theology governs its life requires it to say that humankind in its entirety, including reason, is enclosed within the history of sin and reconciliation. The history of sin and its overcoming by the grace of God concerns the remaking of humankind as a whole, not simply of what we identify restrictively as its ‘spiritual’ aspect. And so reason, no less than anything else, stands under the divine requirement that it be holy to the Lord its God.
Christian theology is a particular instance of reason’s holiness. Here, too – as in all truthful thinking – we are to trace what happens as reason is transformed by the judging, justifying and sanctifying work of the triune God. The sanctification of reason, moreover, involves a measure of difference: reason’s transformation goes hand-in-hand with nonconformity. Holy reason is eschatological reason, reason submitting to the process of the renewal of all things as sin and falsehood are set aside, idolatry is reproved, and the new creation is confessed with repentance and delight. And, if what Paul calls the renewal of the mind (Rom. 12.2) is to be visible anywhere, it has to be in Christian theology, in which holy reason is summoned to address the great matter of God and of all things in God. Thus we move to ask: What is involved in undertaking a holy theology? How is this singularly demanding occupation to be characterized?
III
A holy theology has its context and its content in the revelatory presence of the Holy Trinity. The holy God is not merely some subject-matter entertained by the all-surveying theological mind; he is the majestic one, the one whose communicative presence makes theology possible, the one who is theology’s conditio sine qua non.
A holy theology is responsible to revelation. That is to say, Christian theology is possible only because of the selfcommunicative character of the holy God of the Christian confession. That revelatory, communicative presence forms the context in which theology undertakes its service as holy reason; and that presence also determines the content of Christian theology.
Revelation may be defined as the self-presentation of the holy Trinity. It is the free work of sovereign mercy, in which the holy God wills, establishes and perfects saving fellowship with himself, a fellowship in which humankind comes to know, love and fear him above all things. We may tease this apart a little. Revelation is the self-presentation of the holy Trinity. Revelation, that is, is a way of talking about those acts in which God makes himself present. This means that the content of revelation is God’s own proper reality. Revelation is not to be thought of as the communication of hidden truths, as if in revelation God were lifting the veil on something other than his own self and indicating it to us. Revelation is divine self-presentation; its content is identical with God. To speak of revelation is simply to point to God’s speaking of his own most holy name. Moreover, the agent of revelation is God himself; in revelation the holy God presents himself. The making real of the presence of God is not an undertaking of an agent other than God; God is not inert or inactive but eloquent, ‘speaking out’ of himself. As such, revelation is a free work of sovereign mercy. God’s revelation is God’s spiritual presence. God is the personal subject of the act of revelation, and therefore revelation can in no way be commodified. As spiritual presence, the presence of the holy God is free: it is not called forth by any reality other than himself, but is majestically spontaneous and uncaused.
As the holy God’s self-presentation in free mercy, revelation is the establishment of saving fellowship. Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride, and their replacement by knowledge, love and fear of God. In short: revelation is reconciliation. Barth writes:
This is what revelation means, this is its content and dynamic: Reconciliation has been made and accomplished. Reconciliation is not a truth which revelation makes known to us; reconciliation is the truth of God Himself who grants Himself freely to us in His revelation.1
As the gracious presence of God, revelation is itself the establishment of fellowship. It is not so much an action in which God informs us of other acts of his through which we are reconciled to him; rather, talk about revelation is a way of indicating the communicative force of God’s saving, fellowship-creating presence. God is present as saviour, and so communicatively present. This means, on the one hand, that fellowship with God is communicative fellowship in which God is known. And, on the other hand, it means that knowledge of God in his revelation is no mere cognitive affair: it is to know God and therefore to love and fear the God who appoints us to fellowship with himself. Revelation is thus not simply the bridging of a noetic divide (though it includes that), but is reconciliation, salvation and therefore fellowship. The idiom of revelation is as much moral and relational as it is cognitional. Revelation is the self-giving presence of the holy God which overthrows opposition to God, and, in reconciling, brings us into the light of the knowledge of God.
Such is a brief sketch of what is meant by revelation. What does it mean to say that divine revelation, so understood, is the determinative context of Christian theology as an exercise of holy reason? Most basically, it means that Christian theology is enclosed by, and does its work within, the sphere of the revelatory presence of the holy God. Christian theology is not a moment of intellectual detachment, a point at which the theologian steps aside from the presence of revelation and the practice of faith and adopts a different – more abstract or critical – stance towards the Christian confession. The theologian does not withdraw from the field of revelation, repentance and discipleship; indeed, he or she cannot, because there is nowhere to which the theologian can withdraw. No less than any other sphere of Christian practice, Christian theology is governed by the commanding, revelatory summons of God’s presence. It takes place within the sphere marked out by that presence; and, if it withdraws from that presence or falls into an attitude of anything less than fear of the holy God, then it has simply stumbled into absurdity.
Once again, therefore, we find ourselves running up against the contradictory character of theology as an exercise of holy reason. One of the grand myths of modernity has been that the operations of reason are a sphere from which God’s presence can be banished, where the mind is, as it were, safe from divine intrusion. To that myth, Christian theology is a standing rebuke. As holy reason at work...