Although holiness belongs to God, it may be imparted to objects, or even to people, which become the bearers of the holy.
The Holy Place
The men and women who first received the biblical revelation were acutely conscious of the ways ordinary things could take on an extraordinary, numinous quality as bearers of the sacred. The concept of the sanctuary, or holy place, comes readily to mind. The Old Testament records many occasions when the fathers of Israel worshiped at holy places. Some of these places were already sacred sites for the Canaanites, but they became Israelite sanctuaries as the result of a theophany of Yahweh God. When he appeared to one of the fathers to give or reaffirm the promise of the land, the patriarch would mark the site by erecting some holy object such as an altar or a memorial stone.
Altars. At Shechem Abraham “built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him” (Gen. 12:7). This location continued to be a holy place where Joshua later led the people in the renewal of the covenant with the Lord, erecting a stone as a memorial to this event (Josh. 24:1–8). Thus, the Israelite sanctuary was “a token of the covenant and a guarantee of its blessing” (Johannes Pedersen, Israel: Its Life and Culture, 2nd ed. [1959], Vols. III–IV, p. 214). A classic expression of the significance of the holy place occurs in the account of Jacob’s dream at Bethel, in which he sees a ladder reaching to heaven on which messengers of God are descending and ascending; the Lord appears and pronounces his promise of blessing, land, and descendants. Awakening, Jacob exclaims, trembling, “Surely the Lord is in this place.… This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven” (Gen. 28:16–17). Before leaving, Jacob sets up a sacred pillar, the stone on which he had been sleeping, and anoints it as a bearer of the holy, “God’s house” (Gen. 28:10–22). The sanctuary is a place where earth and heaven meet, where “angels ascend and descend”; for this reason, ancient temples were usually erected on hills or, in flat country, on artificial elevations. Ascending Zion in pilgrimage, the later Israelite worshiper cries, “I lift up my eyes to you, to you whose throne is in heaven” (Ps. 123:1). The sanctuary is a place bearing a numinous aspect where the divine can break through into the ordinary, where man can sense the presence of the holy and communicate with him.
Mount Sinai. The archetype of the holy place in the biblical narrative is the desert sanctuary of Sinai. Here, the Lord appeared to his people in full and fearful theophany, in a presence of such intensity that only the specially consecrated could approach the mountain. After the Lord had set forth the stipulations of the Book of the Covenant (Exod. 20–23), Moses and the priests and elders of Israel went up the mountain to meet with Yahweh and to eat the covenant meal; there, in a further manifestation of the numinous, they “saw the God of Israel. Under his feet was something like a pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself” (Exod. 24:10).
Ark and Tabernacle. These numinous aspects of the Sinai sanctuary were transferred to the ark of the covenant, where Yahweh was “enthroned between the cherubim” (Pss. 80:1; 99:1), and to the tent of meeting, as the place where Moses “entered the Lord’s presence to speak with him” (Exod. 34:34). Not only the sanctuary structure with its altar, but all its furnishings and utensils, as well as the offerings presented there, were consecrated as “holy,” set apart for the exclusive use and service of the Lord.
The Temple on Zion. Before Israel’s entrance into Canaan, Moses spoke of “the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling” (Deut. 12:5). This unnamed place turned out to be Jerusalem and Mount Zion, which David captured as a center for Israel’s worship (2 Sam. 5:7). Zion had long been a Jebusite holy place, the “Salem” where Abraham had paid a tithe to Melchizedek, the king and “priest of God Most High” or ’El ‘elyon (Gen. 14:18–20). But when David transferred the ark to Zion and when Solomon’s temple assumed the role of the tabernacle, the sanctuary on Zion became, in effect, a continuation of Sinai, where the Lord “appeared” in theophanic majesty in the worship of Israel. Several of the psalms celebrate the numinous appearance of the Lord in his temple or in Zion with imagery that reminds us of the giving of the covenant on Mount Sinai (Ps. 50:1–6). Exactly how the Lord “appeared” in the worship of the temple is not clear, but there are indications in the Psalms that the liturgical recitation of the covenant Law, associated with a procession of the ark of the covenant, was a high moment when worshipers might experience the Lord’s presence in an especially compelling way.
“Holiness adorns your house,” sang the Israelite worshiper (Ps. 93:5). Israel’s theologians understood, of course, that the sanctuary was inadequate as a bearer of the sacred. “But will God really dwell on earth?” asked Solomon. “The heavens, even the highest heaven cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” (1 Kings 8:27; cf. Isa. 66:1). In the New Testament we meet with the concept of the heavenly sanctuary, of which the earthly one is but a copy (Heb. 8–9; cf. 2 Cor. 5:1; Rev. 11:19). No human edifice can convey the fullness of the presence of the holy. As Jesus explained to the Samaritan woman, the deepest and most authentic worship of the Father could occur “neither on this mountain [Gerizim] nor in Jerusalem” (John 4:21). Although Christ spoke of Jerusalem as “the city of the Great King” (Matt. 5:35), he foretold the impending desecration and violent destruction of its sanctuary (Matt. 24:2), a judgment on a religious establishment that had violated the Lord’s covenant.
Jesus and the Holy Place. Nevertheless, Jesus understood and accepted the concept of the holy place in its deepest sense. He questioned the focus of the Pharisees, who swore by the gold of the temple or by the offering on the altar—in other words, by the products and symbols of man’s religious commitment. To the contrary, said Jesus, it is the temple that sanctifies the gold and the altar that sanctifies the offering (Matt. 23:16–19). Jesus’ language, incomprehensible as it may seem to us, was not incomprehensible to the early church, which continued to respect those places where God had manifested his presence in a numinous experience. Thus Peter speaks of that time when the apostles were with Christ “on the holy mountain,” by which he meant not Sinai or Zion but the Mount of Transfiguration (2 Pet. 1:16–18). The proliferation of holy shrines in the Orthodox and Catholic traditions, however fanciful it may seem in Protestant perspective, is a witness to the persistence of this biblical concept.
The Numinous Aspect of the Church
When we appreciate the importance of the sanctuary in biblical worship, we can understand why the New Testament authors draw upon the imagery of Jerusalem and its temple to convey the significance of the church. Addressing Christian believers as a body, the apostle Paul asks, “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him; for God’s temple is sacred, and you are that temple” (1 Cor. 3:16–17). Again he declares, “we are the temple of the living God” (2 Cor. 6:16). (In both these passages he uses the plural form, speaking not to individuals but to the church collectively.) As a temple, the church of Jesus Christ is “a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit” (Eph. 2:22). These are not simply moralistic expressions; they point to a reality that transcends the idea of the church as a mere human association.
John the Revelator most fully develops the picture of the church as “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Rev. 21:2). As the bride of the Lamb, the new sanctuary displaces the harlot “Babylon,” the old temple, and its religious establishment. The appearance of the new holy place brings a renewal of the covenant, in the declaration that “the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people” (Rev. 21:3), words that echo the covenant formula of the Israelite prophets. The sanctuary is a picture of the covenant God living among his own, enthroned on the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3). As John takes the concept further, we are brought face to face with the numinous brilliance of the Holy City (Rev. 21:10–11), “for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:23). So overwhelmed is John by the vision that his description strains at the limitations of language. The Holy City is a temple yet not a temple: “I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev. 21:22). There is a numinous, awesome aspect to the church as a bearer of the holy, a vehicle through which we may encounter the fearful presence of the King of kings.
Holy People
The mortal who would trespass into the territory of the sacred runs the risk of wrathful outburst and sudden destruction. It is paradoxical, then, that human beings can serve as bearers of the holy, vehicles through whom the numinous makes its presence felt. Study of the history of religions brings to light many instances of “holy” men and women, people whose presence is “larger than life,” awesome, commanding, not to be trifled with. In such personages, the worshiper senses the workings of the divine. Biblical faith, too, is familiar with the concept of people as bearers of the holy.
Priests. The Pentateuch takes pains to spell out the procedures of vesture, sacrifice, anointing, and life-style by which a priest may become and remain consecrated, in order to enter the Lord’s presence (Exod. 28–29; Lev. 8; 21). Through his consecration, some of the holiness of the Lord is imparted to the priest, enough to “inoculate” him against an outbreak of the wrath of the numinous. A special aura of holiness rested upon the high priest. He alone could enter the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctuary containing the ark of the covenant, on the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16). A person accused of manslaughter was protected from the avenger of the deceased, provided he remained in a city of refuge until the death of the high priest then in office (Num. 35:25–28).
Prophets. The Scripture often calls the prophet a “man of God”; the term is applied to Moses (Deut. 33:1), Samuel (1 Sam. 9:6), Shemaiah (1 Kings 12:22), Elijah (1 Kings 17:18), Elisha (2 Kings 4:40), David (2 Chron. 8:14), and to a number of unnamed prophets or messengers of the Lord (Judg. 13:6; 1 Sam. 2:27; 1 Kings 13:1). In these instances the term man of God (or woman of God) does not mean a righteous person but one of special endowment, a bearer of the numinous, even one to be feared. The people’s reaction to Moses when he returned to them after speaking with the Lord was one of great fear because “his face was radiant” (Exod. 34:29); as a result, he had to wear a veil whenever he came out from before Yahweh. The biblical narrative ascribes miracles to prophets such as Elijah and Isaiah as the distinguishing mark of the “man of God” (1 Kings 17:24). Especially noteworthy is the numinous aura associated with the person of Elisha; he raises the dead son of the Shunammite woman by lying upon him, body member to member (2 Kings 4:32–37), and even after his death a corpse, thrown hastily into his grave, returns to life upon contact with Elisha’s bones (2 Kings 13:20–21). The earlier prophets seem to have been distinguished by special appearance, having a tonsured head in a manner similar to later Christian monks (1 Kings 20:35–42; 2 Kings 2:23). A man or woman of God can make mistakes, disobey the Lord, and pay the penalty but still be known as a man or woman of God (1 Kings 13:26; 2 Kings 23:17). Samson was consecrated to God by the Nazirite vow (Judg. 13:7) and was moved by the Spirit of the Lord (Judg. 13:25); even when he turned away from the Lord, he remained an awesome man, capable of exploits larger than life.
The Apostles. Although the New Testament uses the expression “man of God” more in the sense of a godly person equipped for the service of the Lord (1 Tim. 6:11; 2 Tim. 3:16–17), it also portrays the apostles, like the prophets, as bearers of the numinous. People laid their sick friends in the street in the hope that Peter’s shadow might fall on them (Acts 5:15); it was enough for Peter to confront Ananias and Sapphira with their duplicity, and they fell dead at his feet (Acts 5:1–11). The people of Lystra acclaimed Paul and Barnabas as gods and were prepared to sacrifice to them (Acts 14:11–13). Handkerchiefs or aprons from Paul’s body were carried to the sick, and they were healed (Acts 19:11–12). In recording such incidents, Luke is not simply chronicling the ignorant superstition of ancient peoples. The awe-inspiring aspect of the apostles, despite their lack of formal education, is a recognizable quality in their lives, the result of the fact “that these men had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13).
Jesus Christ. The powerful, wondrous impact of the holy is evident throughout the gospel portrait of Jesus Christ himself, from his birth to his resurrection and ascension, and requires no lengthy demonstration here. To those already mentioned, we would add only a few examples. As a woman, suffering from a persistent hemorrhage, touched the hem of Jesus’ garment, Jesus immediately sensed that “virtue,” or power (dunamis), had gone out from him (Mark 5:25–34). Led to the edge of a cliff at Nazareth by a mob angry at his indictment of their lack of response to the love of God, Jesus was able simply to pass through their midst and go on his way. When soldiers came asking for Jesus the Nazarene to arrest him, Jesus replied, “I am he,” and “they drew back and fell to the ground” (John 18:6). The first preachers of the Resurrection referred to the miracles of Jesus, familiar to their audience, as acts that attested him as specially endowed and set apart by God (Acts 2:22). In his own preaching, Jesus spoke of the kingdom of God, a realm breaking into present time and space in supernatural manifestation. We can understand much about the principles and operation of the kingdom of God when we view it as another expression for God’s covenant with his people. As to its inner dynamic, however, the kingdom is a mystery. It cannot be completely comprehended in rational argument and detail; its principles of growth can only be hinted at through picture and comparison, its power suggested through miracle and sign. Above all, it is present in the person of Jesus himself, as the bearer of the holy.
Like the prophets before him and the apostles afterward, Jesus was opposed, vilified, and persecuted by those who could not, or would not, look beyond the external to the reality of the unseen. Yet the final vindication of Jesus’ identity as the incarnate revelation of the holy is that most awesome of all events, the Resurrection, which not only displays the workings of the Creator in the person of his Son, but releases in his worshipers some measure of that same quality of sacred and mysterious power. Thus, the New Testament frequently refers to the body of believers collectively as “the saints” or “the holy ones” (Greek hagios, equivalent to Hebrew qadosh). Scripture makes it clear that the entire covenant community is “a kingdom of priests” (Exod. 19:6), “a royal priesthood” (1 Pet. 2:9), consecrated to approach the Presence in worship. The awesome encounter with the living God is not the preserve of a spiritual elite but the inheritance of all who call on him.
Conclusion
This survey has attempted to demonstrate that in biblical worship there is a numinous dimension of awe, dread, majesty, transcendence in the presence of the Holy One. The worship of God is not confined to the flatness of the rational, the sentimental, or the moral. The error of much of both orthodox and modernistic Christianity is that it has tried, by default or by design, to constrain worship within these limits. Religion has been reduced, in the words of the nineteenth-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, to a “feeling of dependence,” or more crudely, to “morality tinged by emotion” (On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers [New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1958]). Or it has become a matter of words and statements, precise definitions, carefully crafted confessions. Or it has degenerated into a mere social ritual, an exercise in group identification. In such a domesticated form, it lacks the intensity, depth, mystery, and abandon of biblical worship and so fails to speak to the deepest instincts of the soul.