On the Word for Holiness.
The proper meaning of the Hebrew word for holy, _kadosh_, is matter of
uncertainty. It may come from a root signifying to shine. (So Gesenius,
Oehler, Fürst, and formerly Delitzsch, on Heb. ii. 11.) Or from another
denoting new and bright (Diestel), or an Arabic form meaning to cut, to
separate. (So Delitzsch now, on Ps. xxii. 4.) Whatever the root be, the
chief idea appears to be not only separate or set apart, for which the
Hebrew has entirely different words, but that by which a thing that is
separated from others for its worth is distinguished above them. It
indicates not only separation as an act or fact, but the superiority or
excellence in virtue of which, either as already possessed or sought
after, the separation takes place.
In his _Lexicon of New Testament Greek_, Cremer has an exhaustive
article on the Greek _hagios_, pointing out how holiness is an entirely
Biblical idea, and 'how the scriptural conceptions of God's Holiness,
notwithstanding the original affinity, is diametrically opposite to all
the Greek notions; and how, whereas these very views of holiness exclude
from the gods all possibility of love, the scriptural conception of
holiness unfolds itself only when in closest connection with Divine
love.' It is a most suggestive thought that we owe both the word and the
thought distinctly to revelation. Every other attribute of God has some
notion to correspond with it in the human mind: the thought of holiness
is distinctly Divine. Is not this the reason that, though God has so
distinctly in the New Testament called His people holy ones, the word
_holy_ has so little entered into the daily language and life of the
Christian Church?