New post on Theology in Overalls: "Holiness for the MP3 generation- Part 3" by Gregory Crofford for Wednesday, 10 May 2017

New post on Theology in Overalls:   "Holiness for the MP3 generation- Part 3" by Gregory Crofford for Wednesday, 10 May 2017

Use the word "holiness" and - for some - memories of campmeetings and old-time revival preachers come to mind. Yet for those born since 2000, such things mean little. For a new generation more comfortable with social media than altar calls, new methods of communicating a timeless message are needed.
In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, we looked at biblical and historical perspectives on holiness as described in Diane Leclerc's Discovering Christian Holiness: The Heart of Wesleyan-Holiness Theology (Beacon Hill, 2010). In this the final installment, we turn to what Leclerc calls "Holiness Theology for Today." Leclerc succeeds in mining the Wesleyan-Holiness theological heritage then bridging from the 18th century Methodist Revival and the 19th Century Holiness Movement to the 21st century, freshening up teachings on the Fall, full salvation, and five other holiness motifs (purity, perfection, power, character, and love).

Let us look at two themes from the latter portion of the book, namely, sin and God's nature of holy love.
Sin
Chapter 6, "Created and Fallen Humanity," addresses what may be termed the "problem" prior to later chapters exposing God's gracious solution. Leclerc is correct to note the divergent definitions that Wesleyans and Calvinists use for "sin":

...Wesleyans and Calvinists argue over the issue of sin. Their arguments are based on two very different understandings of what sin is. According to John Calvin, sin is falling short of the glory of God, or missing the mark. Thus any non-Godlike qualities or imperfections in humanity are considered sinful. Understandably then, a Calvinist could claim that we sin in thought, word, and deed daily. Most would simply say that we are sinful because we are not God (Leclerc, 160).

Leclerc does well to elucidate the reasoning behind the Calvinistic pessimism regarding sin. When seen in this way, it may be questioned whether John Wesley is very far from John Calvin on this point considering that Wesley admitted "infirmities" remain no matter how deep the sanctifying work of God in the human heart. Where we as Wesleyan-Holiness people sometimes go wrong, however, is excusing wrong attitudes or actions with the catch-all "I'm only human" rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to scrutinize and correct them.

Diane LeClerc
God's nature as "holy love"
A second discussion that Leclerc engages is the question of God's nature. Some - such as Ray Dunning and Ken Collins - have argued that the phrase "holy love" is an apt summary of God's character. In Collins' The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Abingdon, 2007), every chapter title incorporates in the phrase "holy love," and Collins quotes Wesley's repeated use of the phrase "holy love" to sustain his thesis. Thomas Jay Oord, however, has argued that the phrase "holy love" is tautological, a needless piling up of words. If the nature of holiness is love of God and neighbor (Mark 12:28-31) - as Wesley taught- then saying that God is "holy love" adds nothing since "holy" is already contained in the idea of love.* (For more on love as the "core of holiness," see Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl, Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love [Beacon Hill, 2005], 70-72).
It is apparent that Leclerc is familiar with the debate between these two theologians. To her credit, she attempts to steer a middle course:

'God is love,' John says simply and profoundly. We may modify God's love with the word 'holy.' But this adds little to an understanding of God because by nature God's love is holy. The modifier 'holy' does remind us, however, that God is beyond us as other than us. God is holy and always different from us in nature (Leclerc, 274).

Leclerc has put her finger on an important duality in the doctrine of God. The LORD is both "high and lifted up" (Isaiah 6) and in Christ, God is "Emmanuel, God with us" (Matthew 1:23). There is both transcendence and immanence in God. To say that God is love underscores God's immanence, but to say that God is holy love maintains in tension God's transcendence and immanence, as does the whole tenor of Scripture. The truth of 1 John 4:8 must be balanced with passages like Isaiah 6, otherwise our view of God may become skewed.
Summing it all up
Though strong overall, one weakness of Discovering Christian Holiness is the lack of an index, a frustration for readers trying to locate specific passages in a hefty volume. Hopefully future editions will remedy this unfortunate aspect. Yet whatever its shortcomings, Diane Leclerc has written an excellent book that will serve both church and academy well for years to come.
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*from a conversation with Dr Oord
Gregory Crofford | May 10, 2017 at 9:51 am | Tags: holiness, holy love, Ken Collins, LeClerc, Ray Dunning, Thomas Jay Oord | Categories: book reviews, The Wesleys and Wesleyan theology | URL: http://wp.me/p1xcy8-1Em
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