The Paradox of Holiness; Faith in Search of Obedience

By Bloesch and Donald G.

For more than forty years, beloved American evangelical theologian Donald Bloesch published scholarly yet accessible works on Protestant beliefs and practices, while remaining in the mainstream of modern Protestant theological thought. Within these pages are his last two previously unpublished works. The Paradox of Holiness is how to live the spiritual life, and Faith in Search of Obedience is how Bloesch himself sought to live that life.

The Paradox of Holiness is a book of devotion as well as theology. It is a venture into the theology of the spiritual life (theologia vitae spiritualis), which flows out of a theology of the Word of God. We need to rediscover the paradox that only those who believe can become holy, but only those who make progress in holiness can believe in the giver and author of holiness—Jesus Christ.

Faith in Search of Obedience is Donald Bloesch’s spiritual autobiography—a theology based on a “faith in search of obedience.” Although we are converted when we are awakened to faith, this conversion must continue as we labor to realize the demands of faith in daily life. As Christians, we are called not only to articulate the faith but also to remain true to it on our earthly sojourn. The Christian life might be depicted as a pilgrimage of faith toward its transcendent goal—the perfection of love through the Spirit.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Hendrickson Publishers
• Release date: Feb 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781683070412

Book preview

Bloesch

THE PARADOX OF HOLINESS

Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor,

but we give spiritual riches to others.

We own nothing . . . yet we have everything.

—Paul (2 Corinthians 6:10 NLT)

The glory of God is humanity fully alive.

—Irenaeus

The more humility aims at the depths, the higher

it climbs on the path to the summit.

—Gregory the Great

Rest assured of the truth of a saying that seems paradoxical, that he who hurries delays the things of God.

—Vincent de Paul

Christians live with a constant paradox. They have

come home, but they are on a journey. They are freed

from sin’s power, yet daily confess their sins. They have

received eternal life, yet wait for the age to come.

—Charles R. Ringma

Foreword by Gerald R. McDermott

Michael McClymond has remarked that the only theologians worthy of deep study are those who are also saints. One thinks immediately of Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Jonathan Edwards. I would add Donald Bloesch.

I first met Bloesch when I was in graduate school at the University of Iowa. I remember being one of several PhD students invited by Dr. Bloesch and his lovely wife Brenda to their home for dinner, and then to hear him lecture at a nearby college. One of my friends struggled with his advisor and committee at Iowa, and Dr. Bloesch, who had taught there for a semester, intervened on his behalf and shepherded him through a long ordeal. From my friends who had been to Iowa before me, I heard story after story of the kindness and sacrifices Bloesch had expended for students, colleagues, and assorted souls wrestling with the vicissitudes of life.

Bloesch helped me through my own theological vicissitudes. As I struggled to find the meaning of Christian orthodoxy, I turned so often to his Essentials of Evangelical Theology that my copies of those two volumes are now dog-eared. Shortly before his death, I asked him to write an essay on justification and atonement for The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology. As always, it was balanced and wise, advising that atonement in the Bible represents much more than the forgiveness of sins . . . [but also] liberation, acquittal, regeneration, satisfaction, expiation, propitiation, and certainly also sanctification. This was an important word when much of Protestant theology limited the meaning of justification to pardon.

Donald Bloesch unabashedly called himself an evangelical when it was unpopular in the academy to do so. When evangelicals themselves debated whether the term had clear meaning, Bloesch fought to reorient its meaning by teaching them and the wider world to return to the enduring visions of the Reformers and the church fathers.

These visions, recaptured by Bloesch, are timely for our troubled church and world. When some Christians reduce the gospel to a declaration of forgiveness, Bloesch reminds us of the inseparability of orthodox doctrine and holy living. As he put it (in one of his countless pithy and memorable expressions), Sin is behind us but righteousness before us.

But righteousness, he warned, must beware of being merely social, and it must not try too hard to be relevant. The gospel contains its own relevance. Faith, he urged, resists accommodating truth to social programs. God’s revelation might strike some as insensitive to today’s cultural orthodoxies, but Bloesch advised that altering the form of revelation risks altering its content. Truth must never be sacrificed at the altar of unity. Greater than the sin of disunity, he cautioned, is the sin of disloyalty to the Scriptures and the Lord of the church.

These words of wisdom, which run throughout these two last works of Bloesch’s fertile career (over four hundred publications, and without a computer!), are the perfect medicine for today’s ailing evangelicalism. The very last work is his spiritual autobiography, Faith in Search of Obedience. One of its recurring themes is the course evangelicalism must take if it is not to go the way of all flesh.

First we should be reminded, he avers, that good theology is reflection on Scripture and that our best commentaries on Scripture come from the church fathers and the Reformers. Evangelicals can also learn from Pietism the necessity of costly discipleship and the need for life in the Spirit. But they should beware that rationalism and Pietism are not necessarily antithetical, for both are focused on the human response to God rather than God’s revelation. They should adopt a theology of Word and Spirit rather than a theology of experience (pietistic subjectivism) or moral commitment (liberal moralism).

Yet Bloesch was not uncritical of the Reformers. He believed that Luther was wrong to put law before gospel, for he learned from Barth that the law itself was a gift—after the gift of the Exodus. From Barth he also learned our need to subordinate subjective experience to God’s objective revelation. Yet at the same time, Bloesch warned that Barth wrongly taught an incipient universalism and could be perilously anti-sacramental.

From Reinhold Niebuhr, Bloesch learned the dangers of pacifism. As he put it so memorably, love without power surrenders the world to power without love. Niebuhr also taught Bloesch the importance of public theology. The voice of faith, Bloesch proclaimed, should never be excluded from the public square. Public policy must never impede the evangelical thrust of the church’s message.

In a day when the meaning of marriage is so sharply contested, these last works portray the beauty of biblical marriage. Donald and Brenda steered a way between patriarchalism and feminism. Holding a PhD herself (in French literature), Brenda was his helpmeet and theological partner. Both believed in women in ministry. She reproved and instructed her husband, and he instructed husbands to always listen to their wives.

Both Kierkegaard and Solzhenitsyn observed that courage is rare in the modern world. Yet Bloesch exemplified it. He was not afraid to present a paper on the reality and theological importance of the devil to a liberal faculty, one of whom walked out of the room. At a faculty-staff retreat he boldly lectured on the second coming of Christ, knowing this might not be appreciated by his colleagues. He regularly spoke at regional and national meetings dominated by liberal theologians on themes that challenged their presumptions. That same boldness characterized his ministry in the church. He insisted that godparents to a baptized child be God-fearing, and lost some church members as a result. Three times he walked out of evangelical services that he felt were exalting the preacher rather than our Lord.

Readers might notice in this autobiography a brief mention of Bloesch’s Jewish grandfather. Perhaps that is why he developed such a profound view of Israel in his book Last Things. There he suggested that Jews are hated because they are Christ-bearers, an irrevocable sign of divine light. They are a witness to Christ even in their rejection of him. Christ was and is Torah personified. Ethnic Israel still has a role to play in salvation history.

The first work within this volume is The Paradox of Holiness. I would call this a twenty-first century Imitation of Christ. More accurately, it is about the imitation of the saints, which St. Paul calls us to in 1 Corinthians 4:16 and elsewhere. It is in the tradition of spiritual theology, which is ordered reflection on the life of God in his ordinary saints. The Eastern churches call this theosis or divinization. They refer to St. Peter’s description of it as participation in the divine nature (2 Pet. 1:4). Bloesch calls this paradoxical because, as he puts it, only those who believe can become holy, and only those who make progress in holiness can believe in Jesus Christ.

There are many precious gems in this spiritual theology, but three stand out. First, Bloesch tells us rightly that holiness is the goal of the Christian life. In other words, escape to heaven should not be our goal. Second, this is the good news of the gospel, that we can share in the life of the Trinity. The third nugget is what I call Bloesch’s spiritual optimism—his confidence that the life of sanctity is wholly within the grasp of believers. This is a refreshing word when so many in the church are devoted to a so-called gospel that neglects or ignores the gospel’s call to holiness. Bloesch teaches us that rather than being legalistic and burdensome, a gospel of justification and sanctification is good news. It proclaims that we can become free to live a life of holiness by the indwelling Spirit of God.

Finally, both of these treatises testify to joy. Bloesch writes in Paradox that joy is a hallmark of genuine faith. His wife Brenda tells us that in his dying days, while suffering excruciating pain, Donald Bloesch sang gospel hymns at the top of his voice. As he lay dying, he was filled with praise. That is gospel joy.

Gerald R. McDermott

Anglican Chair of Divinity

Beeson Divinity School

Preface by Frederick R. Trost

There are books that ought to be read. And then there are books that must be read. The Paradox of Holiness and Faith in Search of Obedience are books that must be read by those among us who seek to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ proclaimed in language we can understand—language that has the power to lift up our hearts, encourage our spirits, and strengthen our backbones. These books present us with a vision of God who is truly God; not a hobby or an image of ourselves, but God who—in love deeper, richer, and more demanding than we can imagine—reaches out to embrace all of us living amid the fractures, violence, and heartache present in the world today.

In The Paradox of Holiness, Donald Bloesch reflects on the faith, hope, and love of the church catholic with wonderful insights into the witness of Scripture and the writings of many of the saints and martyrs who believed before any of us were born. In eloquent language and with deep passion for the truth to which they lifted their voices and in some cases offered up their lives, Professor Bloesch takes us on a journey through the ages. The voices of the early church mothers and fathers blend with those of the Reformers of later centuries and with servants of the Word in our own time, helping us understand the importance of sound teaching as the church seeks to move with integrity into the joys and sorrows that await true discipleship in the twenty-first century. This is a book in which word and deed come together. It is a book of convictions, not merely opinions. At its heart is a belief, deeply rooted in our biblical heritage, that the outcome of peace with God in Christ is reconciliation with humanity. It includes love of neighbor and a devotion to the divine purpose for the whole of creation. The Paradox of Holiness is a beautiful invitation to all the baptized to live the truth of our many confessions in public and in private.

In Faith in Search of Obedience, Donald Bloesch reflects on his life of teaching; the roots that have nourished him, the hopes that have accompanied him; struggles endured, hopes fulfilled, promises kept, and the remarkable companions who helped shape his theology and challenged him along the way, including his devoted wife, Brenda, and her ability to inspire. We hear of his love for the church and his struggles with it, his devotion to social justice, his fascination with country music, his joy in singing hymns, and learning to play the guitar. Professor Bloesch bares his soul for all of us to see and with an intimacy as rare as it is remarkable. This book is a gift to all of us, critics and soul mates alike, who have been enriched by the life of this humble servant of the Word and by his witness to the things that matter.

At the Isenheim altar in Europe, there is a famous painting by Matthias Grunewald called The Crucifixion. At the center of this painting is the figure of the crucified Jesus; to the right the figure of John the Baptist, with his index finger pointing away from himself to the Lord of heaven and earth. The life and witness of Donald Bloesch includes a love of God that has consistently pointed away from the theologian and teacher to the one Word of God which we have to hear, and which we have to trust and obey in life and in death. Thanks be to God!

Pastor Frederick R. Trost, President (Retired)

Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ

Acknowledgements

As the widow of Donald Bloesch, I have had the privilege of preparing his last books for publication. In this task, I gratefully acknowledge the help I have received from Pastor Gerald Sanders of Beck’s Reformed Church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and Dr. Craig Nessan of Wartburg Theological Seminary in investigating details in the life of Pastor Paul Schneider, and from Dr. Ralph Quere of Wartburg Seminary with his insight on Martin Luther. As always, my husband I are indebted to the staff of the University of Dubuque Library for their unfailing assistance in procuring needed books, and to Debra and David Lovett for their expert typing of the final copy of the manuscript. Finally, I want to thank my sister-in-law Ethel Bloesch and my nephew Peter Bloesch for giving me advice and enabling me to locate various books not readily accessible.

Brenda Bloesch

Abbreviations for Biblical Translations

KJV   King James Version

NEB   New English Bible

NIV   New International Version

NLT   New Living Translation

NJB   New Jerusalem Bible

NKJV   New King James Version

NRSV   New Revised Standard Version

TNIV   Today’s New International Version

NASB   New American Standard Bible

REB   Revised English Bible

LB   Living Bible

(Note: Bible references not otherwise indicated are from the Revised Standard Version)

Prologue

In my opinion, we in the West may well be on the eve of a new Pietism, an erupting spiritual explosion, standing both in remarkable continuity and in poignant contrast with the great awakenings of the past. It appears that the overarching theme in theology today is no longer the work of God outside us in Jesus Christ and in the sacramental rites provided by the church, but now the work of the Spirit within us—making us holy even as he is holy.

Holiness indeed is the goal of the Christian life, and it is also the means by which we move toward this goal. In the perspective of biblical faith, holiness is an ideal but it is also a command. Moreover, it is not only a command; it is incontrovertibly a gift—a surprising work of grace. The road to holiness is based on God’s road to us, and sanctification by the Spirit of God follows justification by the living Word of God—Jesus Christ.

In the wider biblical vision there is no shortcut to holiness, no guarantee of victory over the powers of sin and death. Yet we live in the enduring hope that Christ will conquer in the future just as he has conquered in the past. There are no easy steps to virtue, but there is an unremitting command to lead a virtuous life, even a life that transcends the parameters of human virtue. Moral conformity to the will of God does not lie in the mastery of spiritual techniques, but is itself a product of faith engendered by the Holy Spirit. Faith is the key to holiness, but the fruit of holiness is bearing the cross in lowly discipleship. In the Christian worldview, faith and obedience are inseparable. Both are anchored in love, not in our love for God but in God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. As P. T. Forsyth so brilliantly phrased it, In Christ God did not send a message of his love which cost the messenger his life, but himself loved us to the death, and to our eternal redemption.[1]

The outcome of Christian faith is peace—first of all with God and then with our neighbor. But this is not the peace of popular piety or the peace of mystical achievement. As Forsyth writes, it is not the calm of absorption, of losing ourselves in the ocean of God’s love, but the peace of believing, of forgiveness assured and foregone in Christ, and trusted even amid repeated and cleaving sin.[2]

In delineating a doctrine of the Christian life, we must steer clear of various temptations. One of these is moralism, resting our spiritual status on good works. No less threatening is antinomianism, appealing to the gospel alone as normative for life and thought and not to God’s law as well. Again, we must be wary of perfectionism, any premature assimilation of God’s truth that supposedly lifts us above the plane of sin. Similarly, we must resist triumphalism, the mistaken idea that we ourselves can bring in the kingdom of God through moral exertion. Finally, we must warn against moral defeatism, the perilous belief that in this life we as finite human creatures cannot gain mastery over sin, even with the help of the Holy Spirit. In these circles, the Christian life is a failed hope that eclipses the good news that the indwelling Spirit of God is more powerful than the backward pull of our sinful heritage.

In some popular ministries today, it is assumed that the gifts of the Spirit are immediately available to all people of good will and that the Christian life is a matter of upward progression only. But as Calvin keenly observed, there is no vivification apart from mortification.[3] There must be a descent into the valley of the shadow of death before we can taste of the transformative experience of new life in Jesus Christ.

This is a book of devotion as well as theology. It is a venture into the theology of the spiritual life (theologia vitae spiritualis), which flows out of a theology of the Word of God. With the Reformers, I insist that God’s grace takes precedence over the human pursuit of holiness. But I also insist that God’s grace does not reach its goal until holiness becomes a part of our very being. We need to rediscover the paradox that only those who believe can become holy, but only those who make progress in holiness can believe in the giver and author of holiness—our Lord Jesus Christ.

As opposed to the purely anthropocentric spirituality in vogue today, we must strive for one that is incontrovertibly theocentric, but without canceling or jettisoning the human contribution. Charles Ringma, an au­thority on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, expresses it well: If we simply live to please others, we will be despised; if we live for ourselves, we will be lost; if we live for God, we will live for ourselves and for others.[4] The greatest commandment is that we love God most of all and first of all (Matt. 22:34–40). Yet, if genuine, our love for God will drive us to minister to the poor and rejected of the world, for in meeting human need we thereby give glory to God.

In forging a biblical, evangelical spirituality we are obliged to bring together the role of divine initiative in the moral life and that of human responsibility. We must take seriously Christoph Blumhardt’s admonition:

You can be meek, you can be self-denying, you can be kind and patient, you can control yourself. If you cannot, then be quiet about your faith and your piety. We can do everything! Though it will not come all at once, yet in time we can do more and more, and finally everything. God be praised and thanked that this is so![5]

By fixing our hope upon Jesus Christ who died for our sins and rose again so that we might live, we can draw upon the fountain of eternal life, the living Word of God, who will keep us on the straight and narrow way to victory over sin, death, and the devil. This is why we as Christians can shout hallelujah: Christ has come, he is now coming, and he will come again in glory!

Notes

---

[1]. P. T. Forsyth, Faith, Metaphysic, and Incarnation, Methodist Review 97, no. 5 (September 1915): 708. See Leslie Charles McCurdy, Attributes and Atonement: The Holy Love of God in the Theology of P. T. Forsyth (PhD thesis, University of Aberdeen, January 1994), 144.

[2]. P. T. Forsyth, Rome, Reform and Reaction (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1899), 147.

[3]. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), III.3.8.

[4]. Charles R. Ringma, entry November 23, Seize the Day (with Dietrich Bonhoeffer): A 365 Daily Devotional (Colorado Springs, CO: Pinon Press, 2000).

[5]. Emmy Arnold, ed., Inner Words (Rifton, NY: Plough, 1975), 30. Cf. R. Lejeune, ed., Christoph Blumhardt and His Message (Woodcrest, Rifton, NY: Plough, 1963), 101, 184–85, 203.

1. The Road to Holiness

Our bodies had no rest but we were afflicted at every turn—fighting without and fear within.

—2 Corinthians 7:5

Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

—Philippians 2:12–13

When God makes alive, he kills; when he justifies, he imposes guilt; when he leads us to heaven, he thrusts us down into hell.

—Martin Luther

The Church will win the world for Christ when—and only when—she works through living spirits steeped in prayer.

—Evelyn Underhill

Holiness is not something alien to human nature, a transcendent ideal. On the contrary, it is rooted in an insatiable yearning within human nature for fellowship with God. The psalmist declares, My soul thirsts for God, for the living God (Ps. 42:2; 63:1; 143:6; Matt. 5:6). Augustine confesses that his quest for truth led him to seek to realize the passionate desire within him to know God and to live for God.[1] Kenneth Woodward rightly notes that to aspire to holiness is to aspire to something other than a ‘complete’ life, or even a morally ‘good’ life.[2] It is to aspire to communion with the divine source of our life and hope—the God of holiness and peace, who revealed himself definitively and irrevocably in Jesus Christ.

The enigma in human life is that the search for holiness is at the same time a flight from God. Because of sin, our longings for holiness become directed toward gaining security for ourselves rather than giving glory to God in service to our neighbor. All people are claimed for holiness, but only some actually become holy because only some open themselves to the grace of God revealed in Jesus Christ. We all thirst for holiness, but only some actively seek for holiness. Original sin deflects our spiritual aspirations from their God-centered goal to the goal of self-aggrandizement. Unregenerate people do not seek for God (Ps. 14:1–3; Rom. 3:10–12); instead they conspire to hide from God by fixing their attention on meeting their own spiritual and material needs rather than serving their neighbor for whom Christ died.

Scripture challenges us to embark on a quest for holiness (Lev. 11:45; 19:2; 1 Pet. 1:14–16), though we cannot answer this call until we are confronted by the holiness of Jesus Christ, which takes away our self-esteem but promises the realization of our innermost desires through faith in the living God. All mortals are summoned to be holy even as God is holy, but only grace can direct us toward this goal. We are all set on the road to holiness; yet only some are empowered to walk this road because only the outpouring of the Holy Spirit can root out the sin within us.

The Meaning of Holiness

Holiness and love comprise the essence of God and also the core of the Christian life. When we speak of holiness in relation to God we mean majesty, purity, awesome glory. Holiness is not so much moral faultlessness as separateness and transcendence. The moral life is not negated by the call to holiness but is raised to a higher level. Holiness both in God and in the saints of God evokes reverence and awe.[3]

Only God and his incarnate Word are unconditionally holy. Our holiness as the people of God is derivative and symbolic. Holiness means being separated by God for service to his glory. Holiness connotes nearness to God and separateness from the world. The essence of holiness is not morality but transparency—to the Wholly Other.

To be holy in the Christian sense is not to be morally perfect; it is to be a sign of the passion and victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. It means to be baptized into the death of God and to rise again with Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom. 6:3–4). A holy person is necessarily a godly person. Holiness signifies wholehearted consecration to the living God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Holiness is not something we acquire, but something we receive. Yet paradoxically it is also something to work at. We do not create holiness, but we can manifest it by cooperating with the Spirit of God in his cleansing and purifying work leading to our glorification. It is not something we gain, but something we participate in through faith in Christ. The Holy Spirit reproduces the character of Christ in us as we repent, believe and obey. We are sanctified by grace alone, yet not apart from works, which attest and confirm our sanctification. We do not contribute to the procuring of our sanctification, but we can manifest and demonstrate this work of interior renewal in our daily life.

The Lutheran tradition in this connection refers to passive sanctity and active holiness.[4] We passively receive what Christ offers in the gift of faith, but we are challenged to demonstrate our faith through works of love. Justification and sanctification are given together as something accomplished by Christ. Our task is to live out a holy vocation in gratitude for what God has already done for us in Christ.

The Paradox of Holiness

Holiness cannot be reduced to a moral command that is readily comprehensible; instead it is a divine promise that both defies and uplifts the moral imagination. Holiness is a paradox that transcends reason rather than a proposition that reinforces reason. In this context a paradox is an affirmation that appears to be contradictory but makes some sense when it is more thoroughly examined.[5] Even when we discern the nuances of meaning that a paradox embraces, there is still a residue of mystery that can never be rationally assimilated. In the themes that I am probing in this book there always remains a tension between the two sides of the polarity in question—one that is never fully resolved.

Holiness is paradoxical because it is both God’s work and our work. It is God’s work in and through and sometimes over against our efforts and labors. Holiness is God coming down to our level and at the same time humanity being raised to God’s level. Moreover, the way of ascent is also the way of descent. We find God not by aiming for the highest, but by descending to the lowest.