The difference between an evangelical and a non-evangelical understanding of holiness can be seen well in a difference between the 17th-century Puritans and their contemporaries, the high-church Caroline Divines. Perhaps the most influential of the Carolines was William Laud (1573–1645), Charles I’s Archbishop of Canterbury.
Laud loved what he called “the beauty of holiness”, by which he meant liturgical orderliness. He strictly insisted that the clergy must follow all the rubrics of the Church of England’s prayer book, and was deeply concerned with clergy attire and the maintenance of church buildings and their physical beauty. And it was a particular sort of building he preferred: despising the Reformation – or “Deformation,” as he called it – he preferred new churches to be built in the pre-Reformation, Gothic style, with an architectural emphasis on an altar instead of a Communion table. For, he said, “the altar is the greatest place of God’s residence upon earth, greater than the pulpit; for there ’tis Hoc est corpus meum, This is my body; but in the other it is at most but Hoc est verbum meum, This is my word.”
All of this was most revealing of his theology. William Laud’s preference for altars over pulpits always tended toward an emphasis on the necessity of ongoing priestly mediation by the clergy, as opposed to an emphasis on the completed work of Christ. But also, that emphasis on ceremony, architecture, and correct liturgical procedure reflected the Caroline idea that we change from the outside-in. The stress, then, would not be placed on the need for personal faith, but on the need for external things to be done rightly. Right dress, right act, and right behaviour were the prime concern.
Puritan Richard Sibbes. See full picture caption below.
In contrast, while the Puritans valued liturgy (it was, after all, a Reformer who had written their first prayer book), and while they never wanted their actions to be misconstrued, they were less concerned with ritual because they saw that the gospel works in another way. Our first need, they would emphasise, is not correct behaviour, but a new birth and a new heart that loves God. Conversion of the heart, the Puritans held, was more vital than maintenance of a particular practice, for the Spirit changes us not from the outside-in, but from the inside-out.
As a result, the Puritans prioritised preaching that would win hearts away from sin and to Christ. For them, therefore, pulpits took priority: pulpits where the gospel that is the power of God to turn hearts could be proclaimed. One of their number, Richard Sibbes, explained: “The outward is easy, and subject to hypocrisy. It is an easy matter to rend clothes and to force tears, but it is a hard matter to afflict the soul. … We must rend our hearts and not our clothes, when we come into the presence of God.”
Outward and visible holiness they wanted, but only if rooted in the heart, not if it was a superficial show.
Jesus knew how sin collapses religion into a hollow, outward show that fails to deal with the deep issues of the human heart. In Mark 7, quoting Isaiah 29v13, He said to the Pharisees: “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’” (v.6). And just a few verses later, Jesus pushes into that theme of our hearts: “There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him” (v.15, see also vv.21-23). To be evangelical, then, is to be highly wary of this Pharisaical hypocrisy in which our lips may be orthodox, but our hearts are not.
So how do we seek true holiness? We cannot make ourselves holy, inside or out. Our problem lies too deep. What we need is not more superficial self-improvement but a radical renewal: a new heart that will freely love and be pleased with God.
Picture caption: Puritan Richard Sibbes. He is pictured wearing a form of academic cap which indicated he was an Oxbridge graduate - in his case, Trinity and St John's Cambridge. It was standard dress in the 17th century for such men.
