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    The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World
    The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World
    The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World
    Ebook66 pages1 hour

    The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World

    By Timothy C. Tennent

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    About this ebook

    The word holiness comes from the Hebrew word, kadash, which

    means “to separate” or “to set apart” or “to distinguish.” Holiness is

    central to the Christian understanding of the gospel, and we

    are called to be holy because of the simple fact that God is holy.

    The meditations in The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God

    for the Love of the World explore how God’s holiness is manifested

    within the larger framework of His self-revelation as found in

    the Bible and in our lives. These short reflections demonstrate that

    holiness—along with all of God’s other amazing attributes—always

    informs who He is in all of His dealings with us. An examination

    of this important doctrine will lead us to a deeper relationship

    with God and one another, and ultimately, will affect how we live

    in the world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAsbury Seedbed Publishing
    Release dateNov 5, 2014
    ISBN9781628241662
    The Call to Holiness: Pursuing the Heart of God for the Love of the World
    Author

    Timothy C. Tennent

    Timothy C. Tennent (PhD, University of Edinburgh, Scotland) is President, Professor of World Christianity at Asbury Theological Seminary.  He is the author of Building Christianity on Indian Foundations and Christianity at the Religious Roundtable. Dr. Tennent and wife, Julie, reside in Wilmore, Kentucky, with their two children, Jonathan and Bethany.

    Read more from Timothy C. Tennent

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    • 3/5
      Asbury Theological Seminary president Timothy C. Tennent offers a volume on Wesleyan views of holiness. The book's vocabulary seemed a bit more advanced in places than a typical lay reader's comfort although I think he designed the book for use in churches. Calvinistic adherents view holiness under a slightly different lens. The book concludes with a beautiful hymn written by the author's wife.
    • 3/5
      This book by the president of Asbury Theological Seminary was a conference freebie. It’s about the Wesleyan doctrine of holiness. I am not Wesleyan so the book didn’t have as much to offer me as it would to adherents of that denomination. Chapter 8, “Holiness as the Church Bearing Fruit,” made it worth the read for me, as did the hymn that concludes the book, “Make Us Holy,” written by Tennent’s wife, Julie.

    Book preview

    The Call to Holiness - Timothy C. Tennent

    HOLINESS

    ONE

    Holiness and the Attributes of God

    Introduction

    This little book is a series of reflections on the doctrine of holiness. Holiness is central to the Christian understanding of the gospel because the gospel does not begin with us or with our response to God. It begins with God Himself, who has revealed Himself as a holy God. One of the most repeated phrases in the Old Testament describing the nature of God is His statement, I am holy. The same declaration is found in the New Testament: But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy’ (1 Peter 1:15–16). We are called to be holy because He is holy. To be in relationship with God is to be brought into the household of holiness. The word holiness comes from a Hebrew word, kadash, which means to separate or to set apart or to distinguish. It is, therefore, a word about God’s position in relation to us and to a world that occupies the household of sin. However, before we can even begin to explore the biblical doctrine of holiness, we must first understand the nature of all of God’s attributes, and how our contemporary perspective on holiness has become distorted.

    The Nature of God

    If you were asked to write down a list of the attributes of God, what would that list look like? If you are like most people, you would write down such adjectives as almighty, powerful, loving, full of grace, merciful, all-knowing, righteous, sovereign, and titles such as Creator, Judge, Lord, King, Heavenly Father, and so forth. If you had time to really think about it, you might include attributes such as omnipresent (present everywhere), eternal, infinite, and so forth. You might also include the word holy on the list. If we spent enough time and thought on the list, I am sure that it could get very long, indeed. We might eventually begin to include things like self-existent, uncreated, immutable (unchangeable), and immanent (present with us right now).

    Even if we have never taken time to sit down and make such a list, we all have some sort of list in our minds, don’t we? We have a certain inner sense about what God must be like and certain actions that we are quite sure God should do or, perhaps, would never do.

    I want to devote this first meditation to the two main problems we have in thinking about such a list, whether we have written it down or not. Then, I want to propose an alternative approach that avoids the two problems. Let us examine these two problems briefly.

    Our Experience with Attributes

    First, whatever attributes we have ascribed to God, we should realize that we have only experienced these attributes in fragmentary and imperfect ways. In other words, we have only a vague human idea of what mercy or love or holiness is, but we have never really experienced any of these attributes in their perfect form. For example, if someone says, God is our heavenly Father, we might naturally think about our own fathers, and this might make some wonder if this really is a good description, especially if our fathers were aloof or uncaring. If we have only known corruption in human judges, then it can really influence how we might think about God as Judge. Other attributes, like omnipresence or self-existence, can become almost like theoretical ideas since we have never experienced anyone who is present everywhere, or who is not created. So, right at the threshold we are already in difficulty if we think about God’s attributes only in terms of our own experience of them. What we can only know partially or, perhaps, only theoretically, God embodies in full perfection.

    Putting God’s Attributes in a Hierarchy

    The second problem we have in thinking about God’s attributes is that we tend to place them in a kind of hierarchy. In other words, we tend to see some attributes as trumping others. We think some attributes are better than others. It is not unusual, for example, to hear someone say that the God of the Old Testament is a God of judgment, whereas the God of the New Testament is a God of mercy. Statements like this are often used to imply that grace is a more important attribute or a more God-like attribute than judgment. In the Old Testament God says, I am holy whereas in the New Testament, the apostle John says, God is love. Therefore, we reason, God’s love must be greater than God’s holiness. We end up actually pitting some of God’s attributes against others and leveraging one

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