Bernie A. Van De Walle - Rethinking Holiness: A Theological Introduction

2017 by Bernie A. Van De Walle

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Ebook edition created 2017

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

ISBN 978-1-4934-0949-5

Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

Bernie Van De Walle presents a readable, engaging, and theologically sound conversation that is absolutely necessary. Approaching a subject that has fallen out of popularity within the contemporary Christian church, Van De Walle offers a much-needed corrective to the misrepresentations of holiness that have arisen over the past several decades. By connecting the lines between Gods nature and Gods intention for creation, Van De Walle invites us to embrace the genuine liberty to participate in the divine nature and to be conformed to the image of Christ. He reminds us that holiness is neither something we achieve nor a matter of behaviorof being sinlessbut is rather something God creates within individuals and the church. For pastors and theological educators who have lamented the current state of holiness among our parishioners and students, Rethinking Holiness provides an excellent resource for reigniting conversations about genuine holiness with those to whom we are called to minister.

Estrelda Alexander , William Seymour College

Van De Walle has pulled off a small miracle: he has written a book of theology thats also a page-turner. He has a gift for rendering complex ideas in lively prose with lucid argumentsand presenting it all as nourishment for the soul. In Rethinking Holiness he employs this gift on a topic the church urgently needs to rediscover: holiness. I am going to recommend this book widely in the hope that it reintroduces to the church (and to the world) the staggering beauty of Gods holiness and invites us again to delight in the good news that God shares Gods own holiness with us in order to makes us holy as God is holy.

Mark Buchanan , author of The Rest of God

The message of holiness has been proclaimed throughout the centuries, though at times it has been distorted by legalism and misunderstanding. Bernie Van De Walle brings this important understanding of Gods character back into the center of conversation in the life of the church. Rethinking Holiness provides a necessary, contemporary expression of a vital doctrine.

Carla Sunberg , Nazarene Theological Seminary

Van De Walle strikes at the heart of what God desires for the church and what Christians have always yearned forholiness. He eloquently unravels the complex meaning of holiness and persuasively argues that Christians and non-Christians alike have a deep desire and need to be holy. Rethinking Holiness challenges those who have dismissed holiness as an antiquated and uninteresting topic to rethink their dismissal. This book offers deeply theological yet practical insights from a scholar who is passionate about helping ordinary Christians rediscover the essence of holiness.

Antipas L. Harris , Regent University; author of Holy Spirit Holy Living: Toward a Practical Theology of Holiness

For Jean, Bunty, Michael, and Deanie,

each of whom taught me the values of dedication, hospitality, and family,

and each of whom was gone long before I would have preferred

Contents

Preface

A number of years ago, the president of my denomination, The Christian and Missionary Alliance in Canada, invited me to lead a seminar on the doctrine of holiness at one of our denomination-wide assemblies. At first I thought that he was simply seeking to have us tip our hats to our denominational heritage, a history related to the wider Holiness movement that grew out of the late nineteenth century. I fully expected that the seminar would be populated only by the gray hairs or those with an overdeveloped sense of historic obligation, which is to say that I expected the attendance to be small. After all, it seemed to me that the topic of holiness, even in those circles where sanctification has historically played a significant role, was out of fashion. Much to my surprise, there was a large turnout to the seminar, and many wanted to linger long after the allotted time to talk further and more deeply about holiness. Consequently, I proposed a course on the theology of holiness at Ambrose University, where I have served on the faculty since 1999. As with the seminar, I have been surprised to find enrollment in this course consistently about four times as high as any other elective course that I teach. This is true even though the other courses examine topics that would seem more provocative and popular than the topic of holiness. Together these experiences led me to conclude that there is a widespread hunger for knowledge and experience of the holy, even though it is often presented as being pass.

One of the major hurdles that I have encountered in teaching a course on holiness is a fundamental and popular misconception regarding the nature of Christian holiness. For the greatest majority of my students, holiness is understood to be a commodity, a lifestyle, or an ethic that one is expected to attain. My students thus assume that the course will be a how-to course designed to give them the steps or secrets to attaining holiness. Yet I have always been convinced that this is not the direction that the course should take but that students instead need to rethink their assumptions about theology before moving to practical matters. Thus we investigate the nature of Christian holiness. In time, students become intrigued and energized by the thought that holiness or the holy (as Rudolf Otto called it) is not primarily a code of conduct or kind of behavior but more basically a reference to God himself and only derivatively a reference to ethics. Rather than approaching holiness as a moral or legal category, we explore it as a divine, theological, or theocentric category. It has to do with God and what he is like. We can correctly understand the relation of holiness to ethics and morality only when we first understand it theologically.

This book is written out of that conviction. If the reader is looking for a how-to book or a book on ethics and morality, the market is replete with those. This book instead presents holiness as a category of theology proper. It is a what-is book. At the same time, rather than writing as if this were a highly technical theological treatise, I have written in a style that I trust will be more accessible to students, pastors, and the interested person in the pew. (Those who desire to dig deeper into this topic can consult my endnotes, which include the majority of my interaction with secondary literature.) My broader goal for the book is to aid the seeming renaissance of interest in holiness both inside and beyond the walls of the church.

To that end, I begin the book by identifying signs that indicate that there currently exists a broad desire and a great need for holiness. Somewhat surprisingly and perhaps counterintuitively, these signs can be found among Christians and among those outside the church. Yet, as I also discuss in chapter 1, a number of hurdles need to be overcome within the church and in wider society if holiness is to experience a true renaissance.