Abstract
This study by a Czech patrologist explores the concept of holiness in the sources of Christian tra- dition, namely Scripture and the Church Fathers. It examines the formation and transformation of the concept of holiness in biblical theology and the earliest Christian tradition back to Augustine.
What does "holiness" actually mean? Is it something that a person can acquire? And if so, how? How imagine it? Testimonies from ancient times can reveal what the biblical challenge to "be holy" means, but they can also make us think of what is emphasized in various streams of Christian tradi- tion and what, on the contrary, has been lost or remained in the background. It also deals with the caricatures of Christ and holiness in the heresies of the first centuries (Docetism, Monophysitism, Arianism).
It calls us not to think of holiness only in terms of the intercessions of the saints, or in terms of a vision of a distant, eschatological future when, perhaps - with God's grace - we will ob- tain holiness, but to reconsider this view and to focus our attention on the fact that we have already been joined to the saints by baptism.