Edmond La B. Cherbonnier
In Dictionary of the Bible, ed. by James Hastings, rev. ed. by Frederick C. Grant and H. H. Rowley (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1963)
1. The Unique Biblical Conception. – The kind of perfection which chiefly concerns the Biblical writers is, in the broadest sense, moral – the perfection of human character. In order to understand their use of the term, one must first divest it of meanings imported from other kinds of perfection. One of its common, non-moral meanings, for example, is ‘conformity to a prescribed pattern,’ as when a dancer executes a ‘perfect’ pirouette, or a student answers a question ‘perfectly.’ Some moralists have attempted to conceive human perfection in the same way. In their view, human beings qualify for virtue like animals in a livestock show. The champion is the one that most nearly approximates the ideal model. Candidates for this kind of perfection are obliged to eliminate every mark which might differentiate them. Any residual, private characteristic constitutes a blemish. As all converge toward perfection, they become progressively indistinguishable from one another, like coins struck from the same die. Following its logic to the bitter end, advocates of this view have condemned individuality itself as an obstacle to perfection.
For the Bible, on the contrary, differentiation is a positive good (e.g. 1 Co 12, Eph 47, 12-13). The Biblical writers complain that, instead of fulfilling their true destinies as unique, unrepeatable personalities, men yearn for stereotypes with which to mask themselves, from the totem of primitive tribe to the blue print of academic moralist. The stereotype thus usurps the role which belongs to God alone; it provides the frame of reference for the individual's whole life. According to the psalmist, men become as impersonal as the false gods they worship (e.g. Ps 1158 13518), whether the cycles and rhythms of nature, symbolized by the cult of Baal; the sophisticated abstractions of philosophy; or the leviathans of scientific technology.
The Biblical God, however, is Himself a Personality. Indeed, as has often been remarked, His is the most vivid of all he graphic portraits in OT. Bearing a proper name (see NAME), the sign of uniqueness, He likewise addresses each man by name: Samuel (1 S 3 4-10), Elijah (1 K 199), Amos (Am 78), Mary (Jn 2016), Saul (Ac 94). To respond is to abandon the security of anonymity and venture, like Abraham, into unknown territory (Gn 121). One is promised in partnership with God, a personality in one's own right; not a copy, but a ‘new creation’ (2 Co 517).
2. Relation to Rules. Perfection of a non-moral kind can generally be achieved by following certain rules. Many thinkers have plausibly concluded that moral problems may be approached in the same way. Benjamin Franklin, for example, tells in his Autobiography how he hoped to arrive at moral perfection by adding one virtue to another, until the list was complete. Such a conception appears somewhat stultifying in comparison with that of the Biblical writers, who correlate perfection with life, in the fullest sense (e.g. Dt 3015, Mt 1917). Their answer to all such legalistic systems is: ‘If a law had been given which could make alive, then righteousness would indeed be by the law’ (Gal 321). Hence they carefully limit the role of moral laws as guides to perfection. Taken as ends in themselves, such rules are all lumped together as ‘the letter that killeth’ (AV 2 Co 36), and the actions issuing from them are branded ‘dead works’ (He 61 914). Although NT is more emphatic on this point than OT, the difference between them is often exaggerated. The NT polemic against` ‘works of law’ (see LAW [NT]) is really against a contemporary Jewish legalism, which itself missed the spirit of OT. NT writers make their case by appealing to OT itself.
The Hebrew word torah, generally translated ‘law,’ might better be rendered ‘ways of the Lord’ (see WAY). When the psalmist sings, ‘Teach me thy ways,’ he is not asking for legislative enactments but for acquaintance with his Maker. The ‘morals’ of OT are really more like manners. They can be transposed into extended adverbial clauses with a two-fold function: first, to disclose what ‘manner’ of Person God is; and second, to infer what ‘manner’ of life is appropriate to a living relationship with such a God: ‘What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?’ (Mic 68). The ‘good works’ which the Bible enjoins have the same purpose as all manners. Negatively, they protect society from carelessness and ill will. Positively, they can become sacramental: a joyful participation in the life of God Himself.
Where Franklin's view of moral perfection was quantitative, the Bible's is qualitative - a style of life, rather than a sum of all the virtues. The most conclusive illustration is the Incarnation, which implies that God could put aside His infinite power and knowledge without altering His personality, and therefore without diminishing His perfection. A quantitative view of perfection, such as is implied by the Greek word teleiotes, connotes a static condition, a finished, completed state. The surest axiom of Greek thought declares perfection to be incompatible with change. Once the goal is reached, further progress is impossible. Any change would be a change for the worse. A person imbued with these Greek presuppositions easily misses the whole point of the Biblical concept of ‘walking in the ways of the Lord.’ He assumes that the only persons who ‘walk’ are those who have not yet arrived. The need to walk is a sign of imperfection.
He might support his interpretation by citing St Paul's statement: ‘Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect; but I press on … toward the goal’ (Ph 312, 14). Granted the element of ‘straining forward to what lies ahead’ (Ph 313) in the life of Jew and Christian, the crucial issue concerns the nature of ‘the goal’ itself. Is it a static, immutable state? The answer completely contradicts the Greek: God Himself is active. The words with which the Bible describes Him are nearly all verbs: create, love, promise, judge, redeem, forgive, speak. St. Paul's goal is to enter more fully into dynamic, living relationship with such a God. Indeed, as he explicitly says a few lines earlier, what impedes him is precisely the tendency to define perfection in quantitative terms. To attain the goal is to shed the last remnants of a static ‘righteousness . . . based on law’ (Ph 39).
3. Perfection attainable. Some interpreters of Christianity have concluded that the Bible, in common with many pagan philosophies, regards perfection as unattainable on earth. The very conditions of finite existence - space, time, and matter - are impurities which adulterate even the highest human achievement. Just as the champion show dog always bears some tell-tale imperfection, so human beings are doomed for ever to strive, and for ever to fall short. Perfection, being an ‘ideal,’ repels the ‘actual,’ by its very definition.
Here again, the Bible differs. Perfection is not beyond man's reach, but is ‘very near you, .... so that you can do it’ (Dt 3014). St. Paul, often cited in support of the post-biblical notion of ‘original sin,’ quotes this passage with approval (Ro 106-8). His purpose is to show that heaven and earth are not disjunctive, that perfection is compatible with finite existence. To be sure, no man is without sin (q.v.). But sin is far more serious when perfection is a live option. That it is a live option for St. Paul is clear from his injunction, ‘Be imitators of God’ (Eph 51), which simply paraphrases Jesus' own words, ‘You therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt 548). Since perfection is qualitative, a way rather than a state, a man can be progressively transformed ‘from glory unto glory’ (2 Co 318 AV). A foretaste of the resurrected life is possible here and now (e.g. Ro 823, 2 Co 122).
4. Relation to Love. If Biblical perfection has appeared to some as unattainable in this life, the explanation may lie in still another connotation imported from non-Biblical sources. Outside Biblical thought, it is nearly universally agreed that the highest perfection is completely sufficient unto itself. Since the Bible emphatically denies that a man can gain perfection by himself alone, it might seem to suggest an intrinsic weakness of human nature. The Bible's aim, however, is not to disparage human nature, but to redefine perfection. Biblical perfection is the opposite of self-sufficiency. It consists in a special kind of relationship between man and man, and between men and God, translated, for want of a better word, as ‘love’ (q.v.).
Love satisfies all the foregoing requirements of Biblical perfection. It is not an archetypal pattern, but the avenue to fulfilled, individual personality; not a quantitative accumulation of virtues, but an orientation of the heart; not attained by following rules, but rather the maker and judge of all rules; not static, but an active, living relationship; not self-sufficient, but mutual. To speak of attaining this kind of perfection by oneself alone is a contradiction in terms. It takes two to love. In fact, according to the Bible, it takes three. For when love is abandoned to purely human resources, without constant nurture and renewal by God, it disintegrates. The Bible therefore prefers to speak of perfection as something which happens to men, at the Divine initiative, rather than as a purely human achievement: ‘God's love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us’ (Ro 55). The perfection of man, though it requires his voluntary co-operation, is also the crowning handiwork of God.