Holiness is the state of being holy, that is, set apart for the worship or service of God or gods. It is most usually ascribed to people, but can be and often is ascribed to objects, times, or places.

The concept is found in almost all religions, especially those with a degree of formal organization, so that there is scope for special people, places etc to be devoted to worship.

In non-specialist contexts, the term "holy" is used in a more general way, to refer to someone or something that is associated with a divine power, such as water used for Baptism.

Holiness in Judaism

---

The Judaic tradition conceives 'holiness' (from the Hebrew root qds) in various ways, but most distinctive and central to the Torah is the priestly system, legislation for which comprises the majority of the law delivered at Sinai. It essentially involves the division of time and space into the spheres of the divine and the common. The word used in Leviticus for this separation, hivdil, is that used for the process of Creation in Genesis. Creation is a matter of proper ordering, which involves not only land and water, light and darkness, but also holy and profane, clean and unclean. It is the role of the priesthood, and Israel as God's priestly nation, to maintain this order in accordance with the guidelines set out at Sinai. The safety and stability of each individual, the nation, and ultimately the whole world, depends on it.

The division seems to be understood as a gradual one, with different behaviour appropriate to the merely 'holy' and the 'most holy'. The Mishnah therefore lists concentric cirles of holiness: Holy of Holies; sanctuary; vestibule; court of priests; court of Israelites; court of women; temple mount; Jerusalem walls; all the walled cities of Israel; and the borders of the holy land. Distinctions are made as to who and what are permitted in each area. Likewise the calendar is divided so that the eve of the Sabbath to the end of the day is holy time, and certain feasts, such as the Day of Atonement, are most holy. Both holy time and holy space are rooted in Creation, with the Sabbath as its culmination, and the Garden tradionally on the site of the temple.

So holiness denotes the sphere of the divine, which is to be set apart, and is manifest in power particularly when its separation is not properly maintained. There are various stories in the Hebrew Bible of disease and destruction resulting from improper contact with or handling of holy things such as the Ark. This dynamic power is divine, and so the holy is very much associated with the divine Presence. The relationship between holiness and Presence is unclear: holiness seems to be a precondition for the manifestation of the Presence, but is not to be equated with it. In practical terms, holiness can be measured and managed by priestly legislation, while Presence is entirely dependent upon God's action. The priestly conception of holiness expresses the distinctively scriptural perception of God as both transcendent (utterly separate) and powerfully immanent in His relationship with the world.

For a summary essay, see: Philip Jenson, 'Holiness in the Priestly Writings of the Old Testament' pp.93-121 in Holiness Past and Present ed. S.C. Barton (T&T Clark, 2003)

People ascribed with holiness in Judaism are known as Tzadik.

Holiness in Christianity

---

Holiness in Roman Catholicism

Traditional Roman Catholicism has adopted much of the Jewish vision of the world in terms of holiness, with certain behaviour appropriate to certain places and times. The calendar gives shape to Catholic practice, which tends to focus on the Eucharist, in which the Real Presence of Christ is manifested. Many features of the Jewish temple are imitated in churches, such as the altar, bread, lamp, incense, font, etc, to emphasise the extreme holiness of the Eucharistic elements, which are reserved in a tabernacle. In extension of this focus on the Sacrament as holy, many objects in Catholicism are also considered holy. They are called sacramentals and are usually blessed by a priest. Such items include rosaries, crucifixes, medals, and statues of Jesus, angels and saints (Virgin Mary).

People in a state of grace are also considered holy in Catholicism. A central notion of Catholicism as articulated in contemporary theology is the "^* call to holiness," considered as a vocation shared by every Christian believer. Profound personal holiness has traditionally also been seen as a focus for the kind of contagious holiness primarily associated with the Sacrament. So the cult of saints in Catholicism is not only the acclamation of their piety or morality, but also reverence for the tangible holiness that flows from their proximity to the divine. Hence the places where saints lived, died, performed miracles, or received visions frequently become sites of pilgrimage, and notable objects surviving a saint (including the body or parts of it) are considered relics. The holiness of such places or objects, resulting from contact with a deeply holy person, is often connected with the miraculous long after the death of the saint.

Holiness in Protestantism

The Protestant Reformation stood in opposition to the beliefs of tangible holiness in the Catholic Church and rejected most of its teachings regarding devotional practice, language and imagery. The early Reformers, who were often scholars of ancient Greek and also borrowed from Jewish scholarship, recognized that holiness is an attribute of God, and holiness is always part of the presence of God. Yet they also recognized that practical holiness was the evidence of the presence of God in the converted believer. Martin Luther, oddly cerebral in his grasp of sin, redemption, grace, and practical holiness, viewed God's grace (and therefore God's holiness), as an invasion of the life. Actions that demonstrated holiness would spring up, not premeditated, as the Believer focused more and more on his or her relationship with Christ. This was the life of faith, according to Luther, a life in which one recognizes that the sin nature never departs, yet grace invades and draws the person after Christ.

Calvin, on the other hand, formulated a practical system of holiness that even tied in with culture and social justice. All unholy actions, Calvin reasoned, resulted in suffering. Thus he proved out to the city fathers of Geneva that dancing and other social vices always ended with the wealthy oppressing the poor. A holy life, in his outlook, was pietistic and simple, a life that shunned extravagance, excess, and vanity. On a personal level, Calvin believed that suffering would be a manifestation of taking on the Cross of Christ, but suffering was also part of the process of holiness. He expected that all Christians would suffer in this life, not as punishment, but rather as participation in union with Christ, who suffered for them. And yet, socially, Calvin argued that a holy society would end up as a gentle, kindly society (except to criminals), where the poor would be protected from the abuses of the wealthy, the lawyers, and others who normally preyed upon them.

In Protestantism, especially in American branches of Protestantism of the more Pentecostal variety, holiness has acquired the secondary meaning of the reshaping of a person through spiritual rebirth. This process is described in the Bible, in Paul's Epistle to the Romans, chapter 6, verses 19-22, among other places. The term owes its origin to John Wesley's concept of "scriptural holiness" or Christian perfection.

The Holiness movement began within Methodism in the United States, among those who thought the church had lost the zeal and emphasis on personal holiness of Wesley's day. In the latter part of the 19th century revival meetings were held, attended by thousands. In Vineland, N.J in 1867 a camp meeting was begun and the National Holiness Camp Meeting Association, which went on to establish many holiness camp meetings across the nation. Some adherents to the movement remained within their denominations; others founded new denominations, such as the Free Methodist Church, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Church of God (Anderson). Within a generation another movement, the Pentecostal movement was born, drawing heavily from the Holiness Movement. Around the middle of the 20th century, the Conservative Holiness Movement was born - a conservative offshoot of the Holiness movement.

In the contemporary Holiness movement, the idea that holiness is relational is growing. In this thought, the core notion of holiness is love. Other notions of holiness, such as purity, being set apart, perfection, keeping rules, and total commitment, are seen as contributory notions of holiness. These contributory notions find their ultimate legitimacy one when love is at their core (Thomas Jay Oord and Michael Lodahl).

See also

---

• Sacred
• Blessing
• Charisma
• Imparted righteousness
• Righteousness
• Sanctification
• Theosis
• List of holy cities
• His Holiness

External links

---

• Romans 6:19-22 in the New International Version
• A Plain Account of Christian Perfection by John Wesley
• Holiness of Heart and Life (John Wesley's teachings)
• Holiness for a New Millennium by John Oswalt
• Phoebe Palmer, Holiness preacher, writer, hymn writer (Mother of the Holiness movement)
• Christian Holiness & the Option for the Poor by Donald W. Dayton
• Holiness In Mind by Gökhan Kaya

Religious behaviour and experience | Theology | Christian theology

Hellighed | Heilig | קדושה | Santità | ホーリネス教会 | Świętość | Pyhä | Helig