Dr Paul Allen

Cover of The Idea of the Holy C. S. Lewis called modern Christians to recovery of reverence for God —who, in the now-famous Chronicles of Narnia image of the lion Aslan, is depicted as good but not safe. Likewise, evangelical mystic A. W. Tozer complained in the early 1960s that “in the majority of our meetings, there is scarcely a trace of reverent thought … little sense of the divine Presence, no moment of stillness, no solemnity, no wonder, no holy fear. But always there is a dull or a breezy song leader full of awkward jokes.” The first reference to “ fear of God ” in the OT is Genesis 20:11, where the Mesopotamian Abraham complains that there is no “fear of God” in Philistia. It is against this backdrop that “fear of God” (yir’at ’elohim), “fear of the Lord ” (yir’at yhwh/’adonay), and “fear of the Almighty” (yir’at shadday) are to be understood throughout the OT itself.  Indeed, yir’ah alone is sometimes used in the sense of “piety” (Job 4:6; 15:4; 22:4) o...

Cover of The Idea of the Holy Our father in heaven, hallowed be your name ( Matthew 6:9 ). In the first petition of the Lord’s Prayer , we ask that God’s name be regarded as holy. What exactly does the Bible mean by the word “holy”? We tend to use “holy” as a synonym for moral righteousness or purity. This is not wrong, but it can be misleading. In the Bible there are primary and secondary meanings for holiness. The secondary meaning of the word “holy” refers to moral righteousness, but the primary meaning is “separate.” If something is “holy” then it is “other than” or “different from” something else. When the Bible speaks of God’s holiness, it refers preeminently to His transcendence. God is superior to anything in the created realm. All religions have holy places and holy times, specific locations and periods set apart from the normal course of life for religious purposes. But why is it that human beings are drawn to set certain things apart? It is because they have a specia...