Abstract: The prime subject of religion is to acquire the holiness of God and practice it in religious and ordinary activities. This essay attempt to elucidate the chief subject, the concept of holiness, specially within the Wesleyan-Arminius theological tradition focused on the understanding of sanctification. It is needless to say that there have been numerous attempts to explicate the Biblical concept of holiness and sanctification in various ways in the history of Christianity, and so many extraordinary fruits have been produced by those endeavors. However, this essay pays heed again to the concept of holiness to illuminate the nature of Wesleyan theory of sanctification particularly in relation to the milieu of East Asian religious tradition. In general, sanctification is regarded as the work of Holy Spirit as eliminating(καθαριζω) the negative, both the acquired and inherited depravity, and accentuating the positive, love, light, and life in the believers. Sanctification has two stages: intial sanctification to deal with the acquired depravity and entire sanctification to deal with the inherited depravity. The initial sanctification is a moment experience by faith at the time of justification and regeneration obtaining a forgiveness of the acquired depravity. Afterward, gradual sanctification follows in process, and then the entire sanctification occurs as a crisis experience with the Holy Spirit to the inherited depravity. It happens as a crisis, because it is the baptism with the Holy Spirit, the experience of sealing, and the term sanctify used as aorist tense (αγιασου) impling a single definite act. The inherited sinful nature is regarded as the egoistic tendency of carnality in human nature, so that it could claim the entire sanctification denotes primarily to have a right relationship with God without egocentric trends. Calvinistic theological tradition believes that as long as we have the physical body, we are not able to eradicate the inherited depravity by any means, and it is possible only at the moment of escaping from the physical body for glorification. East Asian religious tradition, particularly Neo-Confucianism, believes that the complete detachment of human desire is indeed possible through the practice of investigation of principle abiding in reverence. To become a sage is not easy one but possible for ordinary people in the practice of discarding human desire and acquiring the heavenly principle. However, what lacks in the sanctification theories of East Asian Religions is the life (ζωη) within the practices of self-cultivation for becoming a sage in Confucianism and washing heart for reaching Nirvana in Buddhism. What this essay precisely claims is that Wesleyan theological tradition believes that believers are able to reach the level of entire development which God has set for us to achieve. It is a teleological perfection (τeλοζ, end) of the relationship with God, which is generally called Christian perfection. The perfection or entire sanctification essentially implies a detachment of egoistic desire of carnality (ααρξ) in human nature, and to have pure intention` and holy courage in those willful activities of life. Yet, it is not the absolute perfection but a relative perfection, because the infirmity of human being still remains in human nature even after the experience of entire sanctification. Finally, this essay proposes a further development of the theory of sanctification as seriously demanded in a new emerging postmodern epoch to deal with those cross-cultural and ecological issues.
Publication Year: 2000
Publication Date: 2000-09-01
Language: en
Type: article
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