Moral defilement affects the land. It is not contagious, but it is long-lasting and may be permanent. Moral purity is difficult to rinse away; it does not go away at sundown after one washes his clothes.
In the case of the suspected adulteress Num. It also appears that Israelite murderers sought sanctuary in the sanctuary Exod. Moral impurity does indeed defile the sacred precincts e. But the effect of moral impurity does not penetrate the holy realm by the entrance of sinners into it. Moral impurity defiles because of the sanctuary but it registers on the holy land, the land Yahweh has claimed for His own, the land where He dwells.
There are no rites of cleansing for land defilement. God alone can cleanse, by sweeping Israel away. Again terminology provides a clue to the distinct areas of concern. It is commonly used for the sorts of natural processes that cause ritual defilement, but it is also used to describe the effect of morally defiling sins. The land becomes defiled by sexual sin and idolatry , and that is a danger because it was the defilement of the land with these sinful practices that caused the land to drive the Canaanites out.
Some terms, though, are used only of moral defilement. Abominations cause the land to vomit the inhabitants. Leigh Trevaskis Holiness, Ethics, and Ritual in Leviticus has argued that the rituals symbolized moral faults. Rituals were part of a pedagogy that is not simply liturgical, but provided a guide for the life of the covenant people in general. Forbidden foods, for instance, are not arbitrarily chosen but teach Israel what kinds of things they are to avoid taking into their lives.
Unclean animals are serpent-like creatures, and Israel, the new Adamic people, is to refuse to eat those animals that represent the serpent.
Leviticus makes an unusual reference to an adam who contracts skin disease, a reference, Trevaskis argues, to the original adam in the garden. In the laws of skin disease, the focal point of uncleanness is the exposure of flesh.
That is not a departure from Torah but a fulfillment. Get newsletters and updates Close. Also, send me the Evangelical Newsletter and special offers. Also, send me the Evangelical Newsletter. Toggle navigation. Home About Publications Archive Index. Are you catching that? We will see later that an important part of the process of becoming ritually pure was to bathe in a MIKVAH ritual bath.
Now once a person reached the 2nd rung of the Holiness Ladder, his next target was to get himself back into a state of acceptable holiness, the top rung of the ladder! This was achieved by performing the appropriate sacrifice at the Tabernacle. Are you catching all of this?
Are you getting this? So this was the reality your typical Hebrew faced daily. It was like he was on an elevator that constantly travelled up and down the holiness ladder.
One who has been chosen, equipped, and consecrated for the service of humanity against the might of the demonic powers that brought disease and madness by taking possession of the bodies of men.
This was regarded in contemporary Jewish thought as a function of the Messiah. No feature, however, of the consciousness of Jesus in the Johannine Gospel is more marked than the emphasis on the idea that Jesus in His essential nature transcends the ordinary Messianic categories.
Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen , Leipzig, , p. It is the source of His unique filial consciousness, and in this sense He is set apart by God for His mission, and perfectly carries it out. It is extremely questionable if the Johannine writings ever contemplate the metaphysical notion of the essential oneness of the Father and the Son, however justifiable it may be to deduce that conception from the main position adopted, viz.
John Deuteronomy , 2 Samuel , etc. Kirkpatrick, Psalms , Cambridge, , Appendix, note I. This is also frequently the case in classical usage. Of the latter usage there is no trace in the NT. In all the uses of the word In the NT, even in the semi-technical applications to Messiah quoted from Acts, the reference is to moral conduct, considered as fitness for the service of God cf. In Romans St. There is, however, here no accurate and definite theological distinction between the Divine and the human nature of Jesus.
Hebrews ; Hebrews The Resurrection of Jesus is the signal acknowledgment by God of the fact. The idea is part of a Messianic apologetic against current Jewish notions. The holiness of Jesus is His complete response to the choice of God in sending His Son to be the Saviour of men, and evokes an equivalent response on the part of God in the miracle of the Resurrection. It is the holiness of men, as constituting an indestructible relationship with God, that is the basis of the flickering hope of immortality in the sense of an endless life with God that we find here and there in the OT.
Men have committed themselves to Him, with all that the step involves for conduct, and the promise of the future rests on His faithfulness and power cf. In one or two of these e. This usage is much more common in the OT than in the NT. Over these things and places, as specially related to the redemptive economy of God, God is represented as exercising a watchful care.
This is a very common term, especially in the writings of St. Paul, Hebrews, and Revelation, for the ordinary member of the Christian community. All these are so spoken of, primarily, as those who have been or are the special instruments of the Divine will and in intimate fellowship with God in the work of revelation and redemption. It is a state of alienation from God, a rupture of the relationship between God and man, or God and the nation, which can be restored only by on act of expiation.
In one passage St. Feine, Neutest. Theologie , p. Ephesians , Hebrews ; Hebrews Pfleiderer, Paulinism , Eng. Two Pauline passages call for special mention: Romans and 1 Corinthians ; 1 Corinthians cf. Ephesians In both of these the conception is that the sanctification of the part involve the sanctification of the whole.
In the one case St. Paul is stating the grounds on which he bases his confidence in the future of Israel. He bases it upon the holiness of the Patriarchs v. The thought is on the analogy of Numbers The result attaches to the children also. Only such marriages are contemplated as have taken place before conversion 2 Corinthians At the same time, it is not going beyond the actual thought of the Apostle to say that the effect of his words on the believer would be to create a new conception and a new sense of moral and spiritual responsibility for the unbelieving partner.
At the same time, the emphasis on physical descent in Romans shows that St. Paul has not completely transcended materialistic and ceremonial notions in the conception of holiness; and a similar emphasis may be detected in the passage from 1 Corinthians. The idea is still present that holiness can be transferred by physical contact cf. Wherein, then, consists the significance of the fact that the primary meaning of a relationship to God or to Christ is always dominant?
Why is it so pre-eminently a religious rather than an ethical conception?
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