HOLINESS AND CONTEMPORARY EMPHASES
ON COMMUNICATION
(Towards a Contemporary Expression of
the Experience of
Holiness in the Life of the Christian
Believer)
Arthur M. Climenhaga
Western Evangelical Seminary
This paper
is presented as the result of an assignment in which several suggestions and concerns were
expressed, as follows:
1. Since the
paper will be the finale to a well-packed agenda of scholarly papers and discussions, try
to combine some thought-provoking concepts with a spirit of challenge. Do not just preach,
but get some preachment into the paper.
2. Feel free
to regard the subject as the jumping-off point for a narrower delimitation of your own
choosing in the spirit of the overarching theme: Communicating the Wesleyan Message.
3. If
possible, develop the presentation in the light of any significance ensuing from the July
16-25, 1974, International Congress on World Evangelization, which convened in Lausanne,
Switzerland. The Congress in its acronym form came to be known as ICOWE and more
familiarly as "Lausanne '74."
The
suggestions, as you can well see, represented quite a diversity and some spread in content
and context. The movement of the paper will therefore be from the third suggestion back
through to the first one.
To present a
broad report on "Lausanne '74'~ with an adequate treatment of both the historical and
contemporary perspectives is another subject and not necessarily germane to the
development of the theme. However, certain aspects of ICOWE have something to say to us.
Were we to be studying the processes of forms of communication, reports on the workshop
presentations involving audiovisual methodologies, and verbal forms of preaching (e.g.,
expository preaching), there would be much of significance in the
ICOWE
program even though such workshops represented "how to" concepts rather than
scientific analyzing of communication. These presentations were of significance
particularly to the Third World participants. We are not, however, entering here into the
details of communication expertise.
The question
that really arises is, Did "Lausanne '74" have anything to say to the concepts
of the experience and life of holiness and to the communication of the same? In the larger
sense, the Congress was not aimed strictly at theological areas having to do with crisis
and process (growth) in the Christian life. The theme of the Congress, "Let the Earth
Hear His Voice," honed in on the emphasis of the word evangelization in the title,
ICOWE. Evangelization in the sense of action rather than evangelism as the essence of
concept was
the thematic core of the Congress's title.
This did not
preclude theological discussions and workshops which dealt more specifically with
questions of revelation, inspiration, the salvatory framework of calling men to
repentance, discipling believers, church growth, human or social concerns, and the
mandatory implications of the gospel to go into all the world. Such considerations and
especially the discussions on the salvatory plan of God and its relationship to judgment
and eternal damnation took note of modern theologizing and movements embodying a
new
universalism and syncretism in the current theological arena.
Again, in
view of the mandatory implications of Christ's Great Commission, attention was paid to
recent calls for a moratorium on the sending of missionaries, calls coming from "Singapore 1973" and the current June gathering of the All-Africa Conference of
Churches, June, 1974, in Lusaka, Zambia. Emphasized also was the need for an appropriate
balance between concern for the "souls of men" and the "bodies of men" in evangelization programs. However, none of the position papers or Congress workshops had
to do specifically with issues involved in the deeper life of the Christian or questions
of sanctification and holiness.
This is not
to say that "Lausanne '74" was without any concern for the spiritual quality of
the believer. Congress participants cannot soon forget the Sunday morning message of
Gottfried Osei-Mensah, a Baptist pastor in Nairobi, Kenya, in which his verbalizing of the
need for the Spirit-filled life was so consonant with much of the manner of speaking one
hears in Wesleyan circles today on the same subject. Others as well in short devotional
and reportorial testimonies gave evidence of concern for the deeper dimensions of
Spirit-filled and -directed living. But in most of these presentations, there was no
evident attempt to interpret or promote a view of holiness or sanctification in the terms
of one of the major theological schools of the day.
Thus to this
participant at "Lausanne '74" the question of modes of contemporary
communication of the holiness message from a Wesleyan perspective goes beyond ICOWE and
its theme. What we mean is this: Hopefully as a result of ICOWE, a great wave of
evangelism, evangelization, and church growth will take place in all sectors of the
evangelical world. It is true that some of us were disappointed with the sparsity of
participation at "Lausanne '74" by general leaders of the holiness movements and
churches. We are grateful for the quality, if not quantity, of those who were there.
In a sense,
though, how many did or did not participate is beside the point. Cross-fertilization in
the spirit of evangelism is the order of the day, and we are convinced that as and when an
evangelistic explosion takes place, it will affect the holiness movement profoundly with
numbers as well. Therefore, we may be faced with an unprecedented challenge to expound the
doctrine and experience of biblical holiness which will speak to the spiritual walk and
needs of an enlarged community of the faith both within our own
borders and
in the larger evangelical ecumenicity where we associate with others. That to me is what "Lausanne '74" (ICOWE) has to say to us here today.
II
From this
point, then, we progress in the consideration of the assigned subject, "Holiness and
Contemporary Emphases on Communication," to the second suggestion above, that of
deliminitation of our field of inquiry.
An
appropriate negative statement is in order. Development of the theme will not be an
attempt to approach analytically the science of communication as such or to study the
various techniques of communication being employed fruitfully today. We are aware of
several of these techniques which go beyond the bounds of monological preaching. The
possibilities of dialogical sermons, speaking with such appropriate audiovisual tools as
the overhead projector, getting concepts across by role playing in the sermonic or address
section-these are but selected forms of various contemporary developments in communication
with which we have had varying degrees of experience. Yet in it all one feels that the
monological sermonic form is still a most potent way of communicating what we hope to get
through to our audiences.
Therefore
this will be one of those arbitrary points of narrowing the parameters of the subject.
Contemporary emphases are taken to mean not so much "modes of expression in
communication" as "concepts of expression in communication." A subtitle is
thus stated, "Towards a Contemporary Expression of the Experience of Holiness in the
Life of the Believer." The axiomatic understanding is that this will be approached
from a Wesleyan
perspective.
It is
precisely at this point that we are still doing battle with our terms. To those of us with fairly long memories, our
contemporaneity is but a reflection of some of the verbal joustings of the yesteryears. We
have, for example, our perplexities in our ability to communicate just what we mean by
holiness, entire sanctification, perfect love, Christian perfection, and other allied
terms. We define the terms, exegete the passages, phrases, and words in the Greek New
Testament from which they are derived, and still run into the question of what is actually
being heard by the hearer. One is reminded of the problem of communication expressed in a
proverbial statement: "If what you heard me say is what you think you heard me say,
then what you heard me say is not what I said."
Thus with
our usage of the terms stated above, the listeners so often apparently hear us say, "I have absolute holiness; I am so entirely sanctified I cannot sin anymore and thus
enjoy now and forever on a static plane sinless perfection; I never exhibit any human
signs of personality embodying temper, expression
of moods, etc."
Now, of
course, we did not say that. A past generation wrestled with the same problem in their
way. Some of us can remember preachers who in speaking of Christian perfection started
their messages with such disclaimers as: "I am not speaking of absolute perfection,
angelic perfection, glorified perfection." But despite the disclaimers, that is
precisely the way the receptors too often heard them. And all too often one fears that is
the way the receptors are hearing us today.1
On the one
hand we must be very careful that we have sound theological constructs or propositions
which elucidate the faith by which we stand. One of the theological dangers of the day is
an existential mood which plays up emotional experience to the derogation of propositional
truth. Thus we need to be well founded in what we understand the biblical teaching and
systematic construction to be on such terms as entire sanctification, the baptism/filling
of the Holy Spirit, the fillings/anointings of the Holy Spirit, holiness, inbred sin, the
crucifixion of the old man, putting off the old man and putting on the new. In the
discipling and teaching of the Church, adequate attention must be given to these areas,
lest we find that our preaching and teaching of a most important portion of biblical truth
is atrophying.
However,
could it be that in an evangelistic communication of the message of holiness and its
concomitants as an experience for the Christian believer, we have too often put the cart
before the horse? For example, reflection on much of the preaching on holiness, the
Spirit-filled life, the experience of entire sanctification seems to reveal a doctrinal
delineation and then an invitation to seek an experience based on the systematic theology
involved.
It is there
that the hearer may form concepts presumably out of line with what was intended. The
person then seeks for an emotional/existential relationship with Jesus Christ through the
Holy Spirit quite possibly out of line with the emotional/spiritual norm for which the
Scriptures call in daily living. A once-for-all emotionally explosive and static
experience becomes the ardently desired achievement rather than a firm faith in a biblical
experience resulting in a daily relational life with Christ. And this happens because the
receptor of the preachment thinks that is what he is called on to seek. As
a result he
either lives a defeated, frustrated life, anemic in ecclesiastical and spiritual
relationships, or he follows a type of ministry of another theological school which at
least does not cause him to feel such emotional dissonance.
All too
often he is quite prepared to believe that he must live with an emotional complex that
will be a "habitation of dragons"; that he sins in thought, word, and deed every
day; and that, regardless of his sinning, he is eternally secure in his positional sonship
with Jesus Christ. He may bifurcate scripture to do this, but that is of no consequence to
him. He now feels at peace with himself, not realizing that "peace with God's
demands" is more important.
What then
can be done to present in a contemporary mode an expression of the Wesleyan message and
interpretation of being filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18), entirely sanctified (1 Thess.
5:23, NASB), and following after that holiness "without which no man shall see the
Lord" (Heb. 12:14)? This brings us to the first suggestion at the beginning of this
paper as the third point of discussion-a personal testimony as to the speaker's wrestling
with the question.
III
To a major
extent many of the observations above have been autobiographical. I have no question as to
the Sunday night in a little white church in western Oklahoma when I passed from death to
life and became a newborn teenager in Christ Jesus. I also know the Sunday evening the
next week when, in response to what I had heard preached and taught, I sought the filling
of the Holy Spirit. I know the results of my faith then, the type of emotional experience
I had, and I have no question of the quality of the
sanctifying
experience of the Spirit of God at that point.
But I was
one of the group who found that Mondays were not always emotional highs, that 4 years
later I still had to wrestle through God's plan for my social life, that 13 years later I
would still face the sharp implications of God's will for me to go to Africa when I wanted
to stay in the college administrative position where I was, that at different times since
then I have had to wonder how and why God was moving in His providences in my life. And in
that period I faced the sharp dilemma of what the "death of the old
man"
and "no more carnal strivings within" meant in the context of such wrestlings
and moods.
I faced the
question of personal honesty in what I preached as an interpreter of the Word. Where once
I preached sermons which I strove to fashion after the theological constructs wh4ch I had
been taught and which I still believe, I began to see others seeking for a static plateau.
That was not my life; I did not see it in the Scriptures, nor did I see it happening in
the greatest of holiness saints with whom I associated.
At that
point the essence of the message and essence of holiness and entire sanctification came
through in the words of Jesus, "As my father hath sent me, even so send I you"
(John 20:21); or in the parallel words of the Apostle Paul, "Let this mind be in you,
which was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil. 2:5). As the disciple learns what is meant by
the Father sending the Son, he will see what the Lord Jesus Christ demands of him.
The words in
Mark 10:45, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to
give [to sacrifice] His life a ransom for many" (NASB), illustrates effectively the
manner of the Father sending the Son. Three things stand out in the verse in alliterative
detail: surrender, service, sacrifice.
In the word
surrender lies the history of redemption and return to holiness. Against the background of
prophetic utterances concerning the fall of the son of the morning (cf. Ezekiel 2~28 and
Isaiah 10-14) and the apocalyptical phrase of the Lamb slain for those written from the
foundation of the world (Rev. 13:8), one can see the creation of man with the power of
choice between good and evil, holiness and depravity. Created man did not create evil as
opposite to good by his choice; he was seduced by the evil one
who in his
fall had so created the actuality of evil.3 In the fall of man and the Lamb slain from the
foundation of the world, we see the principle of surrender. The Logos, the Second Person
of the Trinity, subordinates himself to the Father.
If created
man falls and sins, he not only will lose his holiness; he also will come under the
judgement of a holy God-totally lost. The word of the Second Person of the Trinity in
surrender comes at that point, "If he falls, I will surrender myself to be sent by
the Father at His bidding." The Father says, "I will send My only begotten Son
in the fullness of time, that whoever believes on Him shall have everlasting life"
(John 3:16). And the Holy Spirit says, "I will be the Divine Agent, the Paraclete,
the Vicar to be sent by the
Father and
the Son to perform the accomplishment of this redemptive act and bring man back to his
estate of holiness" (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13). In the fullness of time it was so.
There is a
dual aspect to what follows. The Son became flesh (John 1:1), and the Holy Spirit
descended on Him at His baptism (Matt. 3:16). This is the mystery of the holiness of God
unfolding itself in the Incarnation act.
There can be
no such thing as a vacuum in the experiential fact of the holiness of God. Thus when the
Son emptied himself, took off the cloak of His deity glory (see Phil. 2:5-10), He in
essence was saying what He finally articulated in the Garden of Gethsemane: "Not my
will, but thine, be done"; or what He taught His disciples to pray, "Thy will be
done."
But the very
essence of praying such a prayer meant that the seal of God had to be on the act of total
consecrative surrender, and this seal was the visitation of the descending Dove-the Holy
Spirit (Matt. 3:16). The holiness of God in Christ in surrender meant the act of
submission to God no rebellion resulting in the filling, the anointing of the Holy Spirit
on Him as He went out into the steps of service and the life and death of sacrifice.
The beauty
of it is that the Lord says to His disciples, "So send I you." The ministry that
gets our people to surrender totally to God and His will, whenever and wherever known, can
lead us to urge them to believe that the Holy Spirit seals that avowal with His filling
presence. In the light of that kind of experience personally, we find it hard to
understand the penchant of some for a continuing dragon of rebellion against the will of
God as part of their daily living except to believe that that is the major evidence of
carnality
and "the old man" within. And to that point we affirm there is cleansing and
deliverance of that "old man" within.
When it came
to the expressions of moods and personality, two facts stood out in the Scriptures. First,
Paul's words concerning the mind of Christ in Phil. 2:5-10 clearly identified that mind as
(1) being posited in a distinct personality and (2) a complete submission to God's will so
as to be nothing. Thus (3) Christ was lifted up high and above all, under all, and in all,
so that at His name every knee should bow. Since this mind is enjoined on the believer, it
says that the life so sanctified is identified as being one of (1) continuing distinct
human personality, (2) total submission to God as to be
nothing in
one's own eyes, so that (3) Christ becomes everything. While points (2) and (3) fit our
traditional mold of holiness preaching, it has been amazing how a number of people have
responded so positively to the thought: Even though entirely sanctified, I can still be a
person, still very much "me. When one realizes that truth, it brings so many facets
of his daily reactions and moods into perspective in the life of holiness.
The second
fact has to do with the risen Jesus' words to His disciples in Acts 1:8 on the urgency for
power. That urgency can be understood only against the backdrop of the disciples to whom
it was spoken: Power to Peter never again to be a coward or to overcome running ahead of
the Lord; power to James and John to get rid of their temper as "Boanerges . . . The
sons of thunder"; power to James to die a martyr's death; to John to outlive his
peers and, exiled, be "in the Spirit on the Lord's day"; power to Nathanael
to get rid
of race or place prejudice; power to Matthew not to be overcome with the publican's
materialism again; power to Philip to be able to lead men to Christ without having first
to find an Andrew; power to Matthias not to be overcome by any temptation of vexation at
being a second rather than first choice; power to Simon, the Zealot, to keep his
church-state relations in proper scriptural perspective and his political priorities
straight; power to Thomas never again to doubt or to demand emotional, existential
evidence.
How one sees
the foibles and the temptations of Christian brothers and sisters in those men, in
ourselves! It helps us to realize that the message of the power of the Spirit-filled life
is one of cleansing of the traits that would make for rebellion against God, and one of
power over those human personalisms that could trip us up. It also helps us to realize
that so many of our traits are useful to the Holy Spirit and usable by Him in empowering
us
through such
to live out the sanctified life.
Here then
can be the contemporary message for this hour. Read Wesley and you read of a man who
preached in this vein for his day. God grant that we may be faithful to our day.
REFERENCE NOTES
1 . All one has to do is to teach a course on the theology of the Wesleyan movement in a
seminary partially Calvinistic in theological stance to discover the different wavelengths
of hearing of the spoken word and the caricatures of concepts arising concerning holiness
and entire sanctification as held by the holiness movement. This has been the writers
experience.
2. To a certain degree this type of problem and the ultimate result is seen in H. A.
Ironside's Holiness, the False and the True (New York: Loizeaux Bros., n.d.). The Wesleyan
reader of the book suspects that Dr. Ironside sought for a caricature he conceptualized of
holiness as a static, second, definite work of grace rather than a crisis of the will
resulting in a relational experience which the Scriptures both demand and
promise for
seeking believers.
3. In actuality, evil was created by the fall of Satan (cf. Luke 10:17-20 and see again,
Isaiah lo-14 and Ezekiel 26-28). God in His holiness created Lucifer (Satan) with the
power of choice, which could involve the creation of an actuality out of a potentiality.
This is the only way the writer can understand the expression of Isa. 45:7, "I form
the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these
things."
To understand concepts there must be the potentiality of opposites, e.g., light-darkness;
black-white; good-evil; holiness-sinfulness; truth-falsity. Lucifer (Satan) with his free
will created the actuality of evil out of the opposite potential to good. God created
Lucifer with that Dower of choice as a freewill avent. Here is the explanation of the
possibility of redemption for fallen man but not for fallen Satan and his angels. Man is
seduced by sin; Satan and his followers created the evil that formed the path for such
seduction. For such creation there never can be redemption.
