Holiness of God...
I'm working on my Statement of Faith right now (so that I can graduate from Bethel), and a thought occurred to me. I would love to get feedback from others who like to wax theological.Are the attributes 'holy' and 'unchangeable' really just two ways of saying the same thing when used in reference to God?
After all, God ordered the universe and set it up according to the laws and principles which he deemed right/just/good. Thus, God's adherence to the maintenance of everything in accordance with rightness/justness/goodness which we often call 'holiness' is nothing more than consistent adherence to the system He created.
Basically, then, God's 'holiness' boils down to nothing more than this: God always plays the game by the rules.
It's just a musing...thought I'd cast it out there and see what ya'll think.
Labels: Bethel, Theological Musings
posted by timmer k. at
9:47 AM
3 Comments:
Interesting thoughts, Tim. And congrats on your pending graduation. Two questions for you: first, in terms of your statement of faith, why does the comparison matter?
Secondly, how do you see God "playing by the same rules" throughout Scripture or your life? It seems to me that part of God's way in the world is to constantly subvert and confuse us when we feel as though we've figured out how God must act. So while we may be able to point to an abstract "holiness" as a consistent move of God, I wonder how much we're able to understand what holiness means in our respective contexts. Thoughts?
By
Anonymous, at 12:06 PM
Hi Tom (just curious--which Tom are you? Do I know you or did you just randomly stop by?)
In regards to your first question, the answer is, "it really doesn't matter that much." I was just working on the 'attributes of God' section this morning and thinking about how a lot of our theological jargon seems somewhat different. Or, in the words of Death Cab for Cutie, "Different Names for the Same Thing."
As to the second question--My thoughts on this are admittedly very metaphysical, and not so much scriptural. Which is odd, because I tend to despise speculative metaphysics when it comes to the character of God...
The idea was spurred by the fact that our usual definition of the word "Holy" just didn't quite work for me. I had always been accustomed to thinking the term meant 'set apart'. Then I got to thinking--set apart from what? In terms of anthropology, I think the 'set-apartness' is in reference to all that which opposes God. So, if the same is true for God, he is holy because he is set apart from all that which opposes his purposes/will/ordering of the world/justice, etc. THEN I got to thinking, 'who set up the rules by which some things oppose God and others don't?' Wasn't it God? So, essentially, (to use the game metaphor) God created the game, defined the rules of that game, set us on the playing field with Him and played ball.
We tend to break the rules and try to cheat often, but God maintains inexorable consistency.
...
Again, all of this is (somewhat silly) speculative metaphysics--there's really nothing scriptural about it at all. It was just a morning brain fart.
Thanks much for the comments.
By
timmer k., at 7:52 PM
Well Tim, my initial thoughts are that your observation that holy and unchangeable are the same is both correct and incorrect. I ran into this in college when my theology class kept trying to make God into parts and then categorize those parts. The truth is, I think, we can't really do that. I mean we can talk about attributes of God in one sense in order for us to have some sort of grasp on who God is and this is perfectly valid and necessary. We can't ever really separate those attributes from other attributes though. You've made a valid connection with holiness (being set apart) and God being unchangeable but those are not necessarily the same thing.
A visual picture helps me to understand this. Imagine a gradient with two colors, say blue and yellow. At the extreme ends of the gradient you will clearly see blue and yellow. In the middle the two colors become indistinguishable and create green. Where does the yellow start and the blue end, or vice versa? I don't know. What I know is there are clearly two colors and also another which joins the two.
So yes, God's holiness is the same as his unchangeableness and no it isn't. Now take this with a grain of skepticism because in my college theology course it was shot down for a reason I forget. Good luck.
By
Jerod Lucius, at 1:33 PM
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