A Theological Retrieval of Stephen Charnock's Discourse of Divine Holiness

This study retrieves Stephen Charnock’s (1628–1680) theology of divine holiness, as developed in his Discourses upon the Existence and Attributes of God. In a period when Reformed orthodox theology was giving renewed attention to the divine attributes, Charnock offered a distinctive and extended account of holiness. He described it not only as God’s moral purity, but also as the intrinsic integrity and beauty of the divine nature — the attribute that links together and glorifies all others. The study first situates Charnock within his historical and theological context, considering his doctrine of holiness in relation to two themes: God and evil, particularly divine concurrence with sin and the greater-good purposes; and divine simplicity, specifically the unity and diversity of the divine attributes. It then develops and retrieves Charnock’s theology for contemporary systematic theology, arguing that holiness understood as integrity informs a framework for a compatibilist response to the logical problem of evil and provides an ontological foundation for understanding God’s unity and diversity as coinhering.