5. Ethical Content of "Holiness"
of Yahweh is his
name and his being as
God of Israel and of the world,
"Holiness." and since this being is regarded as
ethical in essence, the conception of
holiness is that of ethical purity. When, then, in
Amos iv. 2
God swears by his holiness, it does not mean by
his majesty; and when, in vi. 8, he swears by himself
he must swear at least by his ethical majesty and
sublimity. Similarly, in
Hos. xi. 9
God is represented
as asserting the difference between himself and man
as the ground why he will not utterly destroy
Ephraim. This ethical content must exist also in
the passage
Isa. vi. 3
sqq., where the prophet as a
sinful man fears lest he be consumed by the holy
God, because as a sinful man he has come near to
the ethically pure and sublime Being. The idea
of the unapproachability
of God remains, but it is
epiritualized and totally changed. So in the speech
of the seraphim a difference is expressed in the words
" holy " and " glory " (kabhodh); the first expresses
the essence of God's being, the second the external
manifestation of His holiness. Similarly the prophet
speaks of the "Holy One of Israel" when
he wishes
to express the inner essence of God as related to
Israel, while, as suggested by Ps. xviii., the expression "glory of Israel" is available to convey
the idea of his external manifestations. Yet the
two ideas of holiness and glorification are brought
together in
Lev. x. 3,
in which God is sanctified to
the priests and glorified to the people. The people
see the glory of Yahweh, the priests
have closer
access and know more of his essential character.
When Israel began to express the idea of God
in an emphatic exposition of his ethical and spiritual
character, the growth of the notion of
6. Holiness holiness in this sense became more
as Tran- extended. This took form in the idea of
scendence. transcendence and sublimity, and is
found especially in Ezekiel and the
Priest Code
expressing itself not merely in the
ethical, but also in the cultic and ceremonial purity
of mankind. It is this thought which dominates
the legal provisions, that Israel is to exemplify the
holiness of God. And the sense of the sin of man
enhanced the emphasis upon the transcendence and
supermundane essence of deity and the recession of
deity to a distance from man. So it is at this point
that the idea of separateness reenters. And the
separateness of Israel from the Gentiles butmirrors
that of God from the world, viewed in this aspect
(
Lev. xx. 26).
But the ethical remains dominant.
Dishonoring of parents is forbidden, not because
to do it is heathen, but because it is unethical. The
same point of view comes out in Ezekiel, though not
with the same emphasis. Thus in xxxvi. 25 sqq. the
purification from all defilement and the renewing of
the heart through the spirit of God is the essence
of the sanctifying activity of God.
A review of the entire case as presented in the
Old Testament makes evident that it is not a proper
conclusion to assert that the idea of the holiness of
God is but one side of his essential
being;
rather
it is the comprehensive designation for the total
content of the divine Being in his relation to the
external world. So that the "holiness" of .God
expresses all that is implied in the word
kabhodh,
" glory "; while the latter expresses in particular
the divine majesty. The development of the thought
therefore shows first an extension from the popular
idea of unapproachableness to that of
sublimated
ethical purity which sinks again to a partial ex
pression of externalized or transcendental separation.
(R. Kittel.)
Several words are used to convey the idea of holiness
in the New Testament-hagios,
hagnos, and
derivatives from these.
Hagiazein
signifies to cause
to share in God's holiness,
whether
the act is re
ferred to God or to men.
Hagiasmos
