Christ's Spotless Bride -- Holiness as an Attribute of the Church (Part Seven)
The Second Attribute in the Nicene Creed: Holiness
While the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and perhaps the Eastern Orthodox Church (EOC) have some claim to an outward unity that the Reformed do not have, they certainly have nothing of the sort when it comes to holiness. The Roman Catholic Church may be externally the Roman Catholic church, but it’s not externally the holy catholic church. This fact raises the question: “If the Roman and Orthodox churches need to look to an objective gift of holiness rather than focus on a visible holiness, does not this bolster the Reformed case that this is true for unity too?
Michael Horton makes an interesting big-picture comparative observation:
In both Roman Catholic and free-church ecclesiologies . . . . the church’s visible holiness is inherent, although for the former it flows from the one to the many and for the latter from the many to the one . . . . In both paradigms . . . , the means of grace employed . . . are oriented first of all toward an infused, inherent, and inward holiness . . . . Covenant theology has taken a different route than either of these paradigms. Regardless of the personal holiness of its members, the church . . . is holy because it is the field of divine activity, in which the wheat is growing up into the likeness of its firstfruits, even though weeds are sown among the wheat.[1]
The Reformed Understanding of the Church’s Holiness
The Belgic Confession (BC), Article 27, speaks of the one universal church as “a holy congregation and gathering of true Christian believers, awaiting their entire salvation in Jesus Christ being washed by his blood, and sanctified and sealed by the Holy Spirit.” This grounds the church’s holiness in Christ’s atonement and the Holy Spirit’s work, although the appeal to sanctification points to its subjective expression being fully realized gradually.
The Heidelberg Catechism (Q & A 54) asks about the holy catholic church, but does not define holiness per se.
What do you believe concerning “the holy catholic church”? A. I believe that the Son of God through his Spirit and Word, out of the entire human race, from the beginning of the world to its end, gathers, protects, and preserves for himself a community chosen for eternal life and united in true faith. And of this community I am and always will be a living member.
The HC associates holiness with “a community chosen for eternal life and united in truth faith,” through the “Spirit and Word.”
The Westminster Confession of Faith (WCF), chapter 25, does not address this explicitly, although note 25.4-5 on various degrees of purity, also 26.2 on the saints’ obligation “to maintain an holy fellowship.”
Herman Bavinck notes:
Inasmuch as the Reformation again made known the church as the communion of the saints, it looked for holiness not first of all in the supernatural character of the salvific institution, but in the spiritual renewal of the members of the church. The church is holy because it is a communion of saints . . . . . And believers are called saints, first of all, because they are objectively counted as saints in Christ by virtue of God’s imputation to them of the righteousness of Christ.[2]
And then second because of their renewed lives.
According to Louis Berkhof, Protestants . . .
maintain that the Church is absolutely holy in an objective sense, that is, as she is considered in Jesus Christ . . . . In a relative sense they also regard the Church as being subjectively holy . . . . Hence she can truly be called a community of saints . . . . Consequently, holiness is also attributed, secondarily, to the visible Church. That Church is holy in the sense that it is separated from the world in consecration to God, and also in the ethical sense of aiming at, and achieving in principle, a holy conversation in Christ.[3]
What Is the Case for the Church’s Objective Holiness?
We are saints (Ephesian 1:1; Philippians 1:1; Colossians 1:2) and called to be saints (Romans 1:7; 1 Corinthians 1:2). This is an objective declaration made about the people of God, and is grounded in God’s decree to save a people who will be Christ’s eschatological bride
The one who calls us is holy (1 Peter 1:15)
Christ’s atonement makes us holy and pure (Ephesians 5:25-27). It has purified the heavenly temple for us (Hebrews 9:15-28)
The Spirit who indwells us is holy (1 Corinthians 6:19)
What About the Church’s Call to Holiness?
A key text in this regard is 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1:
Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.
This text connects the indicative and imperative: We are the temple of the living God (cf. 1 Corinthians 6:19) and God makes his dwelling among us. Therefore we should be separate from unbelievers, touching no unclean thing. “Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.”
1 Peter 1:16 echoes Leviticus 11:44: be holy as I am holy. But it does so because the one who calls them is holy (1:15), and they already are a holy priesthood (2:5) and a holy nation (2:9)
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[1] Horton, People and Place, 194-95.
[2] Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, 4.321.
[3] Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 574-575.