BibleProject - What’s the Christian Ideal? Part 1: Defining Holiness

Episode Date: September 16, 2017

This is the first episode in a two part discussion on the Christian “Ideal.” What is the Christian Ideal? That’s exactly what we ask. Why does it seem that humanity has an inner drive to find something transcendent? What is it that we’re all searching for and hoping to attain? In other words, why aren’t things a little more rad in our day to day? The ancient Hebrew authors of the Bible also wrestled with these questions. They often used the word “holiness” to describe the quest for the ideal life. But today “holiness” is a confusing and loaded word. Spoiler alert: The way the Hebrews understood holiness is not how we do in modern times. Tim, Jon, and a special guest, Paul Pastor hold an honest discussion asking why we all strive for something that seems just out of reach, and what that might have to do with God’s holiness. Thank you to all our supporters! None of this would be possible without you. Show Resources: The Bible Project Theme Video on Holiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9vn5UvsHvM Dictionary of the Old Testament by IVP: Holiness: J.E. Hartley. New International Dictionary of Old Testament Theology and Exegesis: Jackie Nowdeh (Rudolph Otto) Show Music: Where’s Love: Jackie Hill Perry Defender Instrumental: Rosasharn Music

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at the Bible Project. We've been working on a lot of things here at the Bible Project. And one of those things that you might be familiar with is a series of videos on YouTube called Theme Videos. Theme videos are biblical motifs, biblical ideas that you could take and trace from the beginning of scripture all the way to the end.

It's a theme that develops, it has its own story arc, and it always culminates in Jesus and finds its climax in him. We have about a dozen theme videos on our YouTube channel now, and we have plans for another dozen to complete that series. These themes are so deep and rich that we can't cover all of it in a five minute animated video. These podcast conversations help fill those out. But another project we want to do is to make workbooks that accompany every single theme video. We've been working on this project. We made a beta workbook on the theme of heaven and earth. We printed about 5,000 of those and we sent them out to some of our supporters to test them out with groups.

We're getting feedback on those right now. So thank you if you're doing that. And we're also starting to lay the ground works for another workbook on the theme of holiness. And that's what this podcast is going to be about. As we thought about this workbook on holiness and what the big takeaways were, we decided we needed to have a conversation to flesh it all out. So we turned on the mics and recorded that conversation.

You're going to hear a new voice on this podcast. His name is Paul Pastor. He's a colleague of ours and he's an author and he's helping us write this workbook on holiness. So why holiness? Well, holiness is a confusing and loaded word. It's a word we don't use in common English, at least I don't, but it's a word we constantly use in religious settings. God is holy. I want to be holy. Holy, holy, holy. What do we actually mean when we're saying holy?

There's a negative connotation to holiness where someone's holier than now, detached, stuffy and stuck up. Is that what we mean or is it something else entirely? Most humans have an intuitive sense that there is something transcendent or beautiful that we sometimes attain to. So what we want to focus on is not just morality and not just being set apart, but that all those things are really ways the Bible is saying we can participate in something transcendent and beautiful,

like that thing that it's only God, but that is something that God wants to invite people into. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. Thanks for joining us. Here we go. So, if I remember correctly, the reason why we're having this conversation is, we're writing a workbook. And so, actually, first, I should introduce a new person in the conversation. Paul Pastor. Hi, everybody. I'm not a pastor. This is just my name. So, I guess I am a pastor. He is a pastor. You are a pastor.. I'm not a pastor, this is just my name. So I guess I am a pastor. He is a pastor. You are a pastor, not a pastor.

But I'm not a pastor. Yes. You're Paul Pastor. I'm Paul Pastor. Paul Pastor is an author. And he's helping us write a workbook. We're gonna try to write workbooks. Yes.

This is the idea. For all the theme videos. All the theme videos. Well hopefully one day have a couple of workbooks. We tried our hand at Wando already. Yeah. Had a good learning experience and decided we wanted to help if somebody who could write better.

Who actually knows how to write. And that's Paul. So Paul has been talking with us about the next workbook, which is going to be on the theme of holiness. And as we were getting ready, we wanted to have a discussion about one aspect that we think will kind of ground the conversation, which is,

well, we were calling it the ideal. So, this idea of God's holiness, I mean, let's back up. Holiness is a really abstract term. And for our purposes, the shorthand is we're talking about it as God's otherness, as uniqueness. I don't know Tim why don't you actually give like the summary. Yeah sure. Yeah sure. Well so yeah holiness in the Bible it's a foreign concept to modern western people's view.

Yeah. And it doesn't matter vocabulary. Or many concepts we already have in our heads. So in the Bible, if most religious people, if they know the word, they connect holiness with moral behavior. Or if they've made it through Leviticus, and internalized it some, they'll connect holiness with something about being set apart or God or people being set apart from common use.

And so holiness, essentially, I think in most people's understanding is about being a good person and being set apart from bad things, which is one of those things where yeah, okay, that's part of it, but that's just one part. And that one part actually doesn't really even make very much sense without a much bigger picture and within a larger story. So that's what we did in the Holiness video. And then we wanted to unpack what it means for God to be holy and then what it means for people to participate in God's holiness and how Jesus fits into

that. So there you go. It has something to do with being set apart. Yeah. Actually just before this conversation, Tim and I were perusing some things he saw in a Bible dictionary and we noted that a lot of people quickly define holiness as the absence of something, like the absence of sin or the absence of impurity. And that's certainly included in the biblical narrative. But there's something more there. There's the presence of something. And that's what we're working to stretch towards here.

What is that present thing? How do we best name it? And what does that tell us about God and ourselves? Yes. Yeah, so I've got open in front of me, the dictionary of the Old Testament, University Press. So they're big, fat dictionary,

just on the Pentateuch. God bless them. God bless them. So they have a great entry in holiness. And he had right at this exactly at the beginning, who wrote this article? J.E. Hartley. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know who that is. So he goes on to say, holiness is often defined as one, either one separation, objects consecrated for use in the temple or tabernacle are removed or set apart. And then he says, however, separation doesn't get us to the essence of the meaning of holiness,

because it fails to provide any content to what it means for something to be holy or set apart in the first place. And then he says, second, holiness and morality or ethics are often so equated that people use the terms synonymously. Like, and this is where we get the phrase holier than now in English, where holier than now usually refers to a religious person who thinks that they live more morally than other people. Yeah.

And so he says, yes, God is described as holy in terms of his moral character, but God's moral character isn't just his holiness, it's his righteousness, his goodness, his generosity and so on. So then he says this, he says in Israel's Canaanite neighbors, they wrote lots of literature and their gods are often called holy.

And then he notes this, it's fascinating. He says, in Canaanite literature, things that are not divine, but connected with the divine or the spirit realm are often called holy, like trees or streams or burial grounds. Sacred objects that are closely related to the gods and the spirit world. And then he talks about how in many of the Psalms in the Old Testament, gods, holiness is used and described along with adjectives like majestic, glorious, awesome, awe-inspiring, and beautiful. And he says, that's where we should

start. It's this idea of beauty and power and goodness. Got it. As the core meaning of holiness. So, okay, cool. And that brings us back to, I think, what we wanted to focus on for this conversation is to say, what is that? What is like this ultimate good? What is an ideal kind of state of perfection is a word we probably will start throwing around in a way. But if God is holy because He is these things, He is a manifest, awesome goodness. Like, and if He created creation, the universe to be that, what does that, what does that look like? What does that state? What is this ideal? What does the Bible have

to say about what it means to be in a state of perfection? Yeah. One of the few times we made focus on this in the video, the only time in the Old Testament, God's called Holy, Holy, Holy, which is in Isaiah's vision, where he's inside the temple. Thrice, Holy. Thrice, Holy. Isaiah chapter six.

Isaiah chapter six, and God's holiness in the next line of what they say is connected to his status as the creator. The whole earth is full of his glory. So it's God's status as the creator of this world that itself is beautiful and amazing and awe-inspiring. And it's just a manifestation of how much more amazing and awe-inspiring the beautiful mind that designed it is. So that's yeah, the idea is God's the ultimate of everything. Right. And so what we want to focus on is not just morality and not just being

set apart, but that all those things are really ways the Bible is saying we can participate in something transcendent and beautiful. Like that thing that it's only God, but it is something that God wants to invite people into. And so that's what we want to get at. That's where we're going to start the workbook. It is to be in touch with most humans have an intuitive sense that there is something transcendent or beautiful that we sometimes attain to or something ethical and good and noble the right thing to do but that I only sometimes do or only halfway do. So I think we that's where we want to start it is to say we actually all have a concept of holiness even if we don't use that word. Yeah, that's where we want to try. That's the win. If we can do that, maybe it's not the right

move, but can we start with this general idea of we all hunger for the sense of completeness? Where everything is firing on all cylinders, things are connected, things work together, things don't decay, relationships are healthy, relationships don't fall apart. This sense of Shalom, This is something that deep in our guts we desire and we long for which is very to the, you brought up Tim, the CS Lewis. Oh yeah. Is it?

Yeah, many, many places where that theme comes out. Yeah. But I forget the inconsolable longing. This is a famous passage and I forget. I don't remember either. Yeah. But it strikes me how quickly this conversation gets pastoral, like immediately intersecting our life where it hurts, yeah, pain and pleasure.

Just how quickly we see the broken aspect of that through pain or through suffering and that feeling, this isn't how it should be. Yeah, I like starting there because this idea of holiness as it pertains to just some ethic that I'm supposed to have. It sounds challenging. It sounds isolating in the sense that, you know, the holier than now, like, I gotta be the holy person.

And so it's gonna make put me on some different Level that I'm gonna look down at people that all seems really Yeah, that's the like the ethical side. That's it excited But what the other one is like oh god set apart. It's a set of partners and he's the holy one Yeah, some abstract ideas interesting. Yes, it's very interesting. It's like a thought experiment But is that where we want to start to help us really grasp this idea? But what Paul just was talking about is this very practical, this thing that we all wrestle with, which is why aren't things a little more rad, but we're right now. Or if this is how they were supposed to beat, why am I feeling so messed up about it?

Right. Like, how would I have this emotion if it didn't point me to something greater than what we're experiencing? And so what we're longing for there, can we say that what we're longing for there is holiness? That's a really good question. Or is holiness the byproduct of some third thing? or is holiness the byproduct of some third thing? Yeah, we should find an analogy to sort out our vocabulary probably. So holiness is a adjective that describes the status

of God who is set apart because he is the ultimate embodiment and definition of beauty, goodness, awesomeness. So holiness is an adjective. Holiness is what we attribute. Is the way we talk about the gap between me and the ideal. If something, if God is that ultimate, everything, then there's a gap that make, what do I call that distinction? Because I'm not all those things. And so the category of something that is more the ideal

than I am right now. That thing is holy. That is holy. Got it. And so that's what's something connected to the ideal. Correct. But the word doesn't describe what the ideal is. The word is just describing the status God has as the embodiment of the ideal. Yes. And I think that's why I wanted to start the workbook, where this idea, what this thing is. We need an analogy, but also we need a vocabulary for what that thing is. We're calling it the ideal. Is there a better word? Well, yeah.

In Isaiah 6, 3 3 it's called glory. Glory. It's God's, Carvode and Hebrew. Yeah, Carvode, which is just God's significance as the beautiful mind that generated the universe. Brown driver and Briggs, the kind of the key Hebrew dictionary, also includes abundance as one of the possible translations of Carvode. Yes, that's right.

This fullness. Yes, yes, yes. Complete fullness. I like that. Maybe fullness, abundance, completeness. Those are interesting words. Yes. Because there's a sense of limitlessness to that.

That's really intriguing when you think about the character of God as somebody who's always giving, always creating. And that's part of where his glory and his uniqueness comes from is in the fact that he is limitlessly abundant. Okay, so we have a state which is abundance. Yeah, fullness. Foleness. We have a discrepancy, we have a state to describe the discrepancy between something that's more connected to fullness and abundance than everyday life, which we call holiness. And then we have just kind of everyday life state, which is what? Yes, the biblical word, whole, common, common.

Common. Whole. Yeah, I thought you were saying the word whole. Like, whole, whole, is the Hebrew word, whole, whole. Whole foods market. Yeah, yeah. So there's sacred,

holy, kadoch, and then there's what is not sacred, what is common, and that's whole. And then that maps on to another set of vocabulary, which is pure, the thing that is close to the holy and therefore more like the ideal. That thing is pure. And then the opposite of being in a state of purity is being impure, or English translations often have unclean clean and then how do you become unclean we talked about this in the video you touch something dead you

yourself have deadness on your skin like mold or skin disease or you're leaking reproductive fluids male or female okay and though I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here yeah that's right but I'm just saying those things that render you impure. So this is interesting mapping where there's the sacred and the common, and there's the pure and there's the impure. So the sacred is the wholeness. The common is impurity and just everyday life. Yeah, that's right.

And when you are living in the common and you encounter something that's connected to the sacred in the holy, you would describe that thing as being, I'm sorry, sacred or full, you would describe that thing as being holy. You describe it as holy. And then if somebody asked you,

what is it that makes God the ultimate you would use words like, well, like Isaiah, I saw God sitting on a throne and he was awesome. He was majestic. He was beautiful. He was completely other. He was and and completely good. That common rhetorical question, who is like God? I think there might be a military analogy in this, maybe. Like your, what is it called when you're civilian or you're a... Oh, interesting. You're enlisted, I don't know, what do I do?

Yeah, sure, sure. What is it called? Commoner. Well, the civilian is the commoner. Civilian is the commoner, yeah. And then you've got the person, just commoner. The civilians, the commoner. Yeah. And then you've got the person, just like an officer or,

yeah, dad what's the, my dad's sitting here. You don't know, okay. Okay. Oh. Yeah, but that's, yeah, that's about status. Okay, it's about status. And so, if a civilian, the purpose, status and purpose.

Yeah, this is, they're set apart for something. Yes, right. Good. Okay, keep going. Okay, so what then would be the word when a civilian encounters someone in the military? Yeah, high-ranking officer. Especially a high-ranking officer.

When you notice that that person is a lot more high-ranking than you, what's the word you would use to describe that? Well, I have a word to describe the proper way to encounter that. And that's protocol, right? Like if you meet a government official, you are told to go through a series of protocol, which are the manners that you use to show respect. Sure. Not just for the person, but for the position of the person.

That's right. Right. So perhaps there's this element of protocol that we could think about, like, if we were to meet, say the President of the United States, say the Queen of England, say any sitting dignitary, there are ways we would move and not move, ways we would approach them. And if you were to take them out of context

and ask about the purpose of those behaviors, they might seem ridiculous or even irrational. So we're connecting that to like purity laws right now. Correct. Yeah. Yeah. Is it like a analogy to, yeah, I've heard purity laws or kosher food laws. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, that's great. That's great. That's a good analogy. So now I just need that word that is the analog to holy.

Well, maybe we can just use the word holy. And then, yeah. But otherness. I mean, I guess that's where the the now the now the now due breaks because yeah, the military general isn't the embodiment of all fullness. Beautiful beauty. Beautiful beauty and goodness.

But if it was, if it wasn't military, because I because I defend and fight and so like that. That's right. But it's a military because I defend and fight. So like that. But it's a status because I represent complete fullness. What was the other word we're using? Abundance. I represent those things. Then the discrepancy would be referred to as holy.

That's right. So when biblical characters like Moses and the burning bush, people in the temple, Moses trying to go into the tabernacle, Isaiah and the temple, these different Psalms that open up describing God's holiness, all of these biblical texts describe the encounter as encountering light, you know, like brightness, light, power, overwhelming beauty. They encountered a sense of fire and danger to it. But also, yeah, there was that double edged that the goodness is so good that it can be

dangerous to you. But yeah, all of it revolves around this idea, this overflowing embodiment of all that is good and beautiful and powerful, located in a person, a being. So I have a question then. If that's what we were made for, why the discrepancy? Why do we need to learn how to re-approach that? I understand sin and the story of corruption. But it seems complicated. Well, yeah, that's true. I guess we didn't, I'm just thinking through the biblical narrative. The way that Genesis 1 and 2 gets us this is through the image. The humans are the image of God. So humans are. Yeah, like a like a we're meant to be embodiments of all that is good and awesome about. It shouldn't be a foreign thing. Yeah. So humans are made as these mirrors that are to reflect the goodness that puts God in the status of holiness. And then the story of the rebellion and all that, Genesis 3 to 11.

So I guess you do have to say it in narrative terms. Humans are made to be holy because we're mirrors of the divine. So abundance is kind of our natural habitat then? Yeah. Right. Yeah, as the story goes, then we are living a subhuman existence. That's an interesting way to think of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The fully human is to be connected to to that, to abundant, full, complete life.

Life. Life. Yeah. And our creator and therefore our purpose. Yeah. Yeah. And therefore to be holy. Yes. Probably the one place where this gets explored.

What's the Hebrew word for holy? Kadoch. Kadoch. Yeah. Holy is just such a loaded word for me in English. I just, it's so hard. Yeah. Anyways.

Well, but again, that holiness describes the set of partners of a being that is the ideal. So we wouldn't use that word if we were connected to abundant fullness. We wouldn't say like, oh, that's holy because we wouldn't need to describe the discrepancy. Correct. It's the same kind of thing going on on the last page of the Bible. There is no creation. There's no temple. Because all creation is the temple.

Everything's holy because it's just, it's the new creation. And God's character is described as light. That's why there's no need for the sun or moon, all this kind of thing. So he's everywhere. Yeah, sort of like it's everywhere and that and John there in that passage is riffing off of shish, ezekiel 47, 48, Zechariah 14, all these things to talk about the new creation. Oh, yeah, there's this in Zechariah 14 where he has a vision of the new Jerusalem and the new creation. Oh yeah, there's this Inzeka Raya 14 where he has a vision of the New Jerusalem, the New Creation, and he says, even the even the little pots in people's kitchens or the bells on horses' bridles will be holy. He tries to think of like the most common, most common, under-remarkable things of everyday life. Even those will be kadoosh. Like your hubcaps and tin cans. Sorry. Even your toothbrush.

We'll be holy. Yeah, something like that. That's the idea. So what we want is both a word and to describe this ideal and then to say most of the human experience, as most humans know it, is in both an awareness of things ought to be better. I ought to be better. That there is this. There is something. There is something.

Ideal or something that I'm supposed to be, but that I'm perpetually not. And there's something this world ought to be, but that it's not. And what is that thing that should be? And that's the. That's. And then coming into contact with that thing, what it would, it would appear to be holy. Yeah. That thing from this vantage point, the vantage point of the common, yeah. The ideal is other holy, unique. Yeah. You know,

yes, maybe here I'll share it personally. I just had this experience at the Oregon coast recently, whereas there was my kids and we were building, actually we weren't even building sandcastles. We were there for like four days. And so every day we had shovels and we would try and make in the section of sand that's getting like every eight, every eighth wave comes up, you know, so you have a couple minutes and we would

try to build the biggest heap of sand possible to withstand the wave as the tide was coming in. And my, my kids just loved it. We did it for like two hours, just keeping piles of sand, only to watch them get crashed. And then after, I don't know, half an hour, I started to have this transcendent moment of this is the universe. Like the waves would start coming, you know the tide would be coming in

and I was just like, we're just making this thing. And there's nothing we can do to make this thing withstand the power and energy of the waves and the course of time. And then I was just this, you know, the ocean's roaring in my face as we're out there, you know, in the surf and so on. And then I'm just going like, oh my, we're here. We're on a space rock in the middle of the universe I was having one of those moments. Yeah, and then I was envisioning us here on the planet

Building cities building cities and civilizations. Yeah, you know, it's one of those moments Yeah, of like the surf and then the wave of time just yeah, and evidently Yeah, that's right. I'm gonna wipe them out and I just had this such a heightened awareness of my mortality of the shortness of my life Of my dated activities are a lot like making the sandpile. Yeah, yeah, yeah, bigger. But then, which was, but I wasn't depressed. I was just awe inspired by the power of the ocean. And it's like it put me in my place.

And so really it was, I was just overwhelmed by the power of the ocean and the waves and how it's the majority of our planet. It's like the ocean works on a different level than you. It will be there. It's been there long before you would be there long after you. It's got a power that's completely different. And so to you you you live in a very common space and it lives in this very like yes grand intense Abundance of abundance. Yes. It's an abundance of space of energy Yeah, light influence of power and of longevity like the ocean's been here long for me

It'll be a lot but that's what I was having that moment with the ocean. Yeah, and it was overwhelming to me And so there's a really feeling you had was the feeling of the ocean's holiness ocean. Yeah. And it was overwhelming to me. And so there was a really powerful feeling you had was the feeling of the ocean's holiness. Correct. Yeah, that's right. But my ex, yes, I would say it's other than me, it's holy. But what I'm really describing is all of these qualities that the ocean has that I do not.

Well, you're describing the feeling that you're getting, the sense of the difference between you and the ocean is the sense of the holiness. But then all the qualities you could call it something else, its grandness, its awesomeness, its glory. If you were to use those words. That's right. It's also interesting with this metaphor that the ocean can destroy you.

Very quickly. And we teach our kids about that. Yes, you don't approach it with your back. Right, there's a main call of approach. Yeah, that's what it comes to the end. That same afternoon, my son wanted to drag a big driftwood log out into the surf and ride the log. Oh. And I was trying to tell him, dude, that's such a bad idea.

Especially on the Oregon coast. Oh, yeah, because these waves would just totally just lift it up and drop it on your head. Yeah. Kind of thing. Here's one thing I'm thinking about. The workbook is on holiness, but if holiness is just one term to describe like this moment of realizing the otherness of something that you're in the presence of. Then it's really just one approach to begin talking about a much bigger set of ideas. And so I sometimes wonder, is this workbook really on holiness?

You know, or is it on this bigger idea of being made for something grand, the ideal, longing for it, and experiencing it sometimes, and that experience being the sense of holiness and then a call to our lives to participate in it. Yeah. And a sense of awe and reverence for for the author of it. All of these ideas are what we're really going to be talking about possibly. And so holiness just becomes one way to begin the conversation. Or are we strictly going to be just talking about the term, the word, the vocabulary of holiness? Or perhaps the image of holiness, pictures of holiness. It strikes me, we've had conversations about this before, but the Bible, a specific intervals throughout its story, gives the people of God an image that they can see.

Right, yeah. God's holiness, the temple of meeting the tabernacle, the temple, and then of course that's reinterpreted later as Jesus and then the body of Christ. So we get all of these reminders of what that space of Christ, so we get all of these reminders of what that space of abundance imaged as the Garden of Eden, really, in Genesis, of what that is like to actually see it in our lives, to actually be able to encounter it, to be able to experience it. Yeah, Exodus,

Leviticus, Numbers, we get one contextualized response of the ancient Israelites. It was the set of symbolic behaviors to participate in holiness through these ritual purity. But all of it was aimed at removing myself from things associated with death and mortality and dedicating myself to life or purity. And the way that their culture conceived of it. This is from a different dictionary entry, the new international dictionary of Old Testament theology

and ex-Jesus, that's the title of this dictionary. Does it have an acronym that goes on? N-I-D-O-T-T-E. An-I-D-O-T-T-E. So ridiculous. They don't. Anyway. In their entry on Cuddo's, her holiness,

this is Jackie Nadeh, who wrote this essay, but he cites a Theologian Rudolph Otto, which I don't know that much about him, but he wrote a book called The Idea of the Holy, or Concept of the Holy. And he's summarizing the Old Testament on holiness. And he summarizes these characteristics of the holy or concept of the holy. And he's summarizing the Old Testament on holiness. And he summarizes these characteristics of the divine in this way,

ah, majesty, vitality, otherness, and compelling fascination. Or the way he summarizes the character traits in the Old Testament that make God holy. And then, wait, the trait is fascination. Compelling fascinations. What he's saying is when people have these encounters

with the Holy God, like Isaiah or Moses, compelling fascination, so they're fascinated, I think there may be in a technical sense of that word. Yeah, almost like hypnotized. Yeah, yeah, totally, yeah. Yeah, that's it. They're held there. They're attentions. It's kind of like what you're talking about with the ocean.

Yeah, that's it. I was compellingly fascinated. And then he says this. He says the pre- A whole and fascinated bewitched, comes from enchanted, is the Latin fascinatus. That's great. To enchant, yeah. Yes.

A charm. Yeah, for something else to hold power over your attention. Yeah, that's it. That's good. So then he goes on and he says, different sections of the Old Testament call for a different response to this God. The priestly tradition, and he means here,

Exodus, Lovetticus, numbers, requires a response of purity and cleanness. But then he says, the prophetic tradition demands a response of social justice, a social cleanness, or social purity. The wisdom books stress the cleanness of our inner integrity and individual moral acts. That was kind of helpful to say different parts of the Bible call towards a different realization of the ideal. It's not a catch all. So what is it again? So in the precepts, it's the symbolic, spiritual, spiritual purity. And the prophetic books, it's a cleanness or purity of social behavior.

It's like a righteousness. Think Amos, but righteousness flow like a river, that kind of thing. And then in the wisdom books, it's about a cleanness of inner integrity and moral decision. Okay. That's not that was very helpful. So we're isolating. God is the abundant, whole, complete one. Codosh.

And different parts of the Bible are going to use different vocabulary and different environments, practices to push humans to be more better image bears of that God. And a whole bunch of the Bible uses the language of purity and holiness to do that. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Bible Project podcast. Next week, we'll finish this conversation on the Christian ideal of holiness. If you'd like to check out our theme video on holiness, there's a link to it in our show notes. We also have lots of other videos on our YouTube page.

It's youtube.com slash the Bible Project. You could find our entire library there. You could also find videos on our YouTube page. It's youtube.com slash the Bible project. You could find our entire library there. You could also find it on our website, thebiboproject.com. If you're enjoying this podcast, feel free to leave us a review. It's actually really helpful and other people discovering this podcast. Also, Tim now has his own podcast, a compilation of his lectures and sermons over the years.

It's called Exploring My Strange Bible. And a really great episode to start with, if you haven't listened any of Tim and sermons over the years, it's called Exploring My Strange Bible. And a really great episode to start with, if you haven't listened any of Tim sermons, is an episode called Science and Faith. Make sure to check that out, and thanks for being a part of this with us. 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1 %, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, you you