Holiness - the "Forgotten Fundamental"

In the latest edition of Christianity today (CT, Jan 2007) the writers ran an editorial titled "Reviewing the Fundamentals: Ted Haggard's fall raises crucial questions about holiness".

It is a great article. While not being about the "Fundamentals" as associated with the Fundamental Movement, it rightly centers on the generically fundamental basics of the faith. What struck me about the article was the seriousness with which it took the matter of sin. Note the following quotes:

"Many Evangelicals, having fled from churches characterized more by judgment and hypocrisy than by grace and holiness, have no interest in condemning Haggard. At the same time, we must not unwittingly encourage misconduct."

"How do we treat sinners (that is, one another) with compassion, while still taking sin seriously?"

"The Bible never divorces grace from holiness."

"True grace not only treats sinners with compassion, but it also calls and enables them to live a life of holiness."

"Holiness is indeed God's indisputable call to us."

"Phoebe Palmer, the influential 19th century holiness leader, put it this way: 'If you are not a holy Christian, you are not a Bible Christian.'"

"'Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you', Puritan theologian John Owen warned..."

The funamentalist movement, in its best & historic expression (and not to be confused with the modern legalistic perversions of the movement), rightly concentrated on the importance of right belief. Of course, over time, various parties began to lift secondary doctrines to the status of essential orthodoxy (dispensationalism, pre-tribulation rapture, forms of church government, etc). That notwithstanding, the nascent movement underscored the importance of right belief.

However, I think the movement was understandably naive. The held, according to the best advice of old Princeton Common Sense Philosophy, that 'right belief leads to right living'. Of course, there is some truth in that statement, but there is also much error. Does a right heart produce right belief? Or does right belief produce a right heart? Every seminary & college professor I had firmly insist upon the latter. But I am no longer convinced.

It is at this point that fundamentalists and conservatives get a little nervous (or some just skip right to 'angry'). They cry, "Pastor, are you saying belief doesn't matter"? No, of course not. Belief is essential. But I think we have misordered the process. By lifting the understanding of 'data' so high, we have asked it to carry a weight it was never intended to hold. It becomes the sole bearer of the weight of right living.

Frankly, I have known too many Christians who hold right beliefs but who are not living rightly.

But I don't want to go to the other extreme and say that full holiness comes first, and then produces right belief. But think of it this way, Christ produces holiness in us. This holiness leads us to dig deeply into Scripture. This "digging" then produces in us a deeper holiness, which in turn prompts us to dig even dipper, which in turn produces greater holiness.

It must begin with holiness, and it can never begin with belief. I did not fall in love with my wife because I understood many right facts about her. I fell in love with her, which prompted me to discover right facts about her. In the discovery of these facts, I come to love her even more.

Perhaps the "First Fundamental" should be that holiness comes first. By changing the order, holiness becomes the "product" or "effect", when it reality it is the "cause". No wonder we constantly fail - we are asking the "effect" (belief, knowledge, doctrine) to produce the "cause" (holiness). Belief enhances holiness, but it can never create it. Holiness is a gift from God, which produces right belief. Right belief in turn nourishes and strengthens holiness.

"Holiness First" should become the rallying cry of the fundamentalist movement.