MORE > DISTINCT
By Calvin Samuel
IVP. 92 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978 1 783 597 086
The principal of London School of Theology has written a book aimed at removing the ‘stigma’ of holiness, instead commending it as something healthy for believers to aim for. It’s a short book for any Christian, written in a relaxed style.
Does it succeed? I’m not sure. A relaxed style ought not to mean sacrificing clarity or accuracy; but in this case that is often what has happened.
Mixed up
Samuel has a number of good things to say; but they are so mixed up with niggles that trouble me, or points poorly expressed, that I found it difficult to truly benefit. A sample: God sent Jesus to ‘give us some clues’ about who he is and what holiness looks like; Leviticus is like an eccentric aunt with Tourette’s syndrome; a good way to discover the power of God’s holiness is to watch Raiders of the Lost Ark (he really means that); you get a ‘hint’ of God’s intolerance of idolatry in the law (?!); and it took God ‘two attempts’ to compose the Ten Commandments. Really? Does he truly mean all this? It’s hard to glean even what’s good when it sits in and among all this and more like it.
My biggest concern: in one chapter, Samuel says that because Jesus’ holiness purified what was unclean, rather than being defiled by it, neither should we be concerned about keeping our holiness away from potential stains, and instead get involved with the world. Once more I kind of understood what he was trying to say, but then the risks involved in how he said it were very great. And then he took it a step further: he made all this an argument for why we should admit unbelievers to the Lord’s Table. When that is where you end up, one starts to wonder whether the problem here is simply an over-relaxed style, or actually something more worrying. Difficult to recommend.
