HOLISTIC
28/12/24 11:06
holistic, adj.
a. Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts.
b. Concerned with wholes rather than analysis or separation into parts as in holistic medicine and holistic ecology.
The Fee Dictionary
For the humanist who does not acknowledge God or sin, the knowledge of good and evil with its dualistic dichotomies and resultant scape-goating/political correctness is their obsession. At present ‘colonialism’ is seen as the evil it isn’t. For fundamentalist Christians with their moralistic dualism it’s the same thing. Real righteousness is Christ as us - which is ours if we live the eucharist rather than seeing it as a religious rite
A law gospel is as un-holistic as one could get.
HOLISTIC
A hologram is a three-dimensional image. When we talk of something being ‘holistic’ we mean ‘wholeness’ as in an entity that is greater than the sum of the parts. Thus, Paul does not promote the law. His Gospel is Christ in you and Christ our life – incarnation. The Gospel of Jesus and the apostles is a holistic gospel because it leaves behind the bits and pieces of the law and the knowledge of good and evil. Confusion is exchanged for Christ in us. Now Christ has become us. To live in Christ our life is to live in the holistic gospel of the Kingdom that makes whole and real sons and daughters of God.
The notion that the law makes for a whole-person approach is nonsense.
HOLY AS GOD IS HOLY
Bits and pieces do not make us Godly but incarnation does.
The etymology of ‘holiness’ is that is more to do with joy than it is with stuff that should be done. The reality of God is that He is more about fun than many Christians think. An actual study of the New Testament will reveal to all that Jesus did not come to promote the law and its contradictions and dualism. He came to multiply Himself in us.
Don’t waste your life as a pastor trying to put a good face on a bent gospel. In the law you will never become your true self. With Christ as your life, you will always be more than you are. The latter is like a room that is larger on the inside than it is on the outside.
NOTHING TO DO WITH THE LAW
There is a whole person approach to life in God. John called it Christ come in our flesh. ‘Putting on Christ’ must not be thought of as putting on Christianity. It means agreeing with Jesus that we have been drawn into His life of communion with Himself, our Father and Holy Spirit. It means that with Christ in our being we grow as the expression of Him.
UNION OF BEING THAT IS OUR POSSESSION
Myk Habets following Thomas Torrance writes, “Knowing God requires cognitive union with him in which our whole being is affected by his love and holiness. It is the pure in heart who see God. This seeing or knowing is a personal participation in the triune relationship of the Father’s love for the Son by the Holy Spirit and the Son’s love for the Father by the Holy Spirit. Knowledge is fundamentally relational, not merely cognitive; it is a personal knowing that comes only by personal participation.” (1) We participate in Christ, which for many of us means that we need to actively agree with Christ that He has included us in Himself – and live from this.
IT’S NOT OF THE LETTER THAT DULLS
We may deduce the following from this description of a holistic gospel. “Knowing God’ is more than ‘thinking’ information and a reliance on proof texts. Knowing God involves union with God. This union is ours in Christ because He has made us one with Himself. ‘Purity in heart’ affords knowing God well. It means knowing God as He presents Himself, knowing God as God is rather than living from the double objective of claiming Christianity while promoting our own gospel. The pure in heart see God. The double minded see nothing clearly.
SHRUNKEN GOSPEL
In the Last Battle, C. S. Lewis has a monkey dress in a lion skin and pose as Aslan. This is an apt image of a distorted gospel. While we are not exactly monkey’s in the law, we are not fully human either and not filled with spirit and life. Teachers steeped in a law epistemology are conditioned to reduce everything in the Spirit to the letter. An example of this is the attempt to move in the gifts of the Spirit through formulae and keys. Don’t live from an inverted cross. The law led to the cross but the cross does not lead to the law. It leads to Christ our life, aka incarnation.
CHRIST COME IN YOU
Christ our life is the ultimate whole person approach. It’s a contradiction to posit a holistic life while living from the law. Anything derived from the knowledge of good and evil is fragmented and contradictory. To maintain, on the basis of law-keeping, that Godliness is ‘the harmonious development of the physical, the mental, and the spiritual powers’ is an oxymoron. It is to reduce our post cross life in the Spirit to the letter that kills. It undoes the cross and ignore the incarnation. Such harmony is a myth, a contradiction and an impossibility. There is no harmonious life in the law, no whole person approach in the knowledge of good and evil because it is a mindset of separation from God. Its basis is the abstraction of the law when the treasure of Christ our life is on offer for all as our life.
(1) Habets Myk, Theosis in the Theology of Thomas Torrance. P96.