43. Chapter 39: More Moderate Departures from Historic Protestantism

CHAPTER 39 More Moderate Departures from Historic Protestantism

1. Pietism Is a New Movement in the Lutheran Church The father of Pietism was Philip Jacob Spener. He was born in western Germany on January 13, 1635, and was therefore a con­temporary of Bunyan and Fox in England. He belonged to the Lu­theran Church. In Spener’s time dead orthodoxy had come to prevail in the Luther­an Church. All emphasis was on purity of doctrine, and defense against any departure from Lu­theran doctrine. There was no ap­peal to the emotions — no call to conversion and Christian service and a devoted Christian life. All that was expected of church mem­bers was that they should know their Catechism, attend church service, listen to doctrinal sermons, and partake of the sacraments.

They were not asked to take part in church work. Nothing was ever said about the inner Christian life and warm religious experience. Some members of the clergy did not lead lives worthy of their sacred office. Many of them were not converted men. Among the members of the Church there was much drunkenness and immorality.

Such was the religious atmos­phere in which Spener grew up. But in his early years influences of another nature began to mold him. He read a book called True Christianity, written by the Ger­man mystic Johann Arndt. The im­pression produced by this book was deepened by the study of de­votional works of certain English Puritans, notable among them Richard Baxter. While a student in Strassburg Spener became ac­quainted with church discipline and a system of catechetical in­struction such as were not found in the Lutheran church. For a time he lived in Geneva and other Swiss cities, where he associated with ministers of the Reformed Church. All this time he remained a loyal Lutheran, however. At the age of thirty-one years Spener became chief pastor in Frankfort. He soon made improve­ments in catechetical instruction. When he had been pastor there for four years he introduced something new. In his own house he gathered a small group of people who, like himself, were not satisfied with merely formal religion. In these meetings they read and studied the Bible, prayed, and discussed the sermon Spener had preached the previous Sunday. The purpose of these meetings was to foster a deeper and warmer spiritual life. To these meetings was given the name collegia pietatis, or gather­ings for the purpose of fostering piety. Because of that name the movement in the Lutheran Church started by Spener became known as Pietism.

2. Spener Believes Christianity Is a Life As a means of promoting a warmer and more spiritual Chris­tianity, Spener proposed the estab­lishment of ecclesiolae in ecclesia, little churches within the church. These were to be circles of people in the local churches for the study of the Bible and for watching over each other and helping each other. Christianity, he taught, is more a life than an intellectual knowledge. Doctrinal controversy is unprofit­able. The training of ministers should be improved. He wanted ministers who personally had Christian experience, and who lived in a way befitting their high call­ing. Preaching should not be doc­trinal or controversial, but should be designed to build up the Chris­tian life of the hearers. Only that Christianity is genuine which re­veals itself in a life of devotion and service. It has its beginning in a conscious new birth and con­version.

Like the English Puritans, Spener also was against theater going, dancing, and card playing, while the Lutherans generally looked upon these practices as be­longing to the "indifferent things." He also favored moderation in eat­ing and drinking and in dress.

3. Spener Meets Opposition

Spener’s activities called atten­tion to the unwholesome conditions prevailing in the Lutheran Church of that day. He met bitter opposi­tion. So he was glad to accept a call to Dresden as court preacher. But there too his path was not strewn with roses. The other minis­ters gave him a cold reception. The universities of Leipzig and Wit­tenberg opposed him. The elector took offense when Spener, as his pastor, reproved him for his drunk­enness. When therefore the Elector of Brandenburg invited him to come to Berlin, he did not hesitate to accept the invitation. There he labored until the day of his death, February 5, 1705. The last years of his life were the happiest.

4. August Francke Takes Over At this time one of the younger instructors in the University of Leipzig was August Hermann Francke. In 1687, when he was twenty-four, he experienced what he regarded as a new birth. He went to Dresden, spent two months with Spener, and joined the Pietist movement. In 1689 Francke went to Leipzig and began to lecture to the students and townspeople. He soon had a large following. But trouble started. The students began to neglect their regular studies and started criticizing the other pro­fessors and the local ministers. Op­position made Leipzig an uncom­fortable place for Francke. He moved to Erfurt, where he also ran into trouble. Spener then se­cured for him an appointment to the newly founded university at Halle. Francke now made the Uni­versity of Halle a center of Pie­tism. There he labored until the day of his death in 1727.

5. Francke Proves to Be an Able Organizer

Francke was a man of tremen­dous energy who had also a talent for organization. In 1695 he founded a school for poor children, to be conducted in the spirit of Pietism. He also established a home for orphans.

Francke had no money, but he believed in answers to prayer. It was not long before donations be­gan to pour in from every part of Germany. Although Francke de­pended on prayer, he did not neg­lect means. He used every means of publicity, and knew how to in­terest others in his enterprises. His school soon became known, and from a small beginning it grew into a large educational institution. Both the school and the orphanage are still functioning today. In 1710 Francke induced a friend to establish a Bible Institute for the publication of Bibles in inex­pensive form. This work, too, is still being carried on.

6. Francke Encourages the Work of Missions From the beginning the Protes­tant churches did not entirely neg­lect the work of missions. Yet for the first two hundred years after the Reformation their strength was consumed largely in the struggle with Catholicism and the Wars of Religion. With the dawn of the eighteenth century a new era opened in the history of Protestant missions.

Frederick IV, king of Denmark, wished to establish mission posts in his colony in India. Pietism with its interest in the salvation of souls naturally was favorable to the work of missions. Francke as pro­fessor in the University of Halle had aroused missionary zeal in the hearts of many of his students. So when the Danish king looked around for missionaries to send out to his colony in India he found them among Francke’s students in Halle. The young men who went to India were Bartholomew Zie­genbalg and Heinrich Pluitchau.

During the eighteenth century no fewer than sixty missionaries went forth from the University of Halle to the foreign field. The most famous of these was Christian Friedrich Schwartz. He preached the Gospel in India from 1750 to the end of his life in 1798.

7. Pietism Has Serious Defects When Francke died in 1727 Pie­tism had reached its height. After that no leaders equal to Spener and Francke appeared. The pietists did not separate from the Lu­theran Church; consequently we do not know how large their number was. Without question, however, the movement did much to arouse the Lutheran Church in Germany from its spiritual coldness.

Although Pietism in many ways was a blessing to the Church in Germany, it had certain serious defects. Before the appearance of Pietism, Lutheranism suffered from a one-sided intellectualism (emphasis on knowledge). Pietism was a reaction against this cold and inactive religion. But Pietism too was one-sided. It was ascetic, and emphasized severe self-denial. Francke allowed the children in his institutions very little opportunity for play. Pietism was critical and uncharitable; it condemned as ir­religious everyone who was not a Pietist. It denied the name of Christian to all those who could not tell a story of conscious conver­sion through an intense struggle. Pietism had but little regard for doctrine. The Lutheran Church of the seventeenth century laid one-sided emphasis on doctrine; Pie­tism laid one-sided emphasis on life. By under-estimating the value of sound doctrine, it helped to ease the way for Liberalism and Mod­ernism.

8. Followers of Huss Organize the "Unity of the Brethren"

Persecution in Bohemia had driven the Hussites into hiding, but had not completely destroyed them (ch. 22, sec. 7). They sepa­rated from the national Church, and deep in the dense forests of their native land they formed an organization for which they adopted the name Unitas Fratrum, which means "Unity of the Breth­ren." They increased rapidly. When Luther appeared the Unitas Fratrum had grown to number four hundred churches with 200,000 members. This church in Bohemia engaged in evangelism and education. In 1501 it adopted a hymnal; it was the first church to do so. The leaders of the Unitas Fratrum made contact with Luther and Calvin, and as a result their doctrinal views became more clear and sound.

Through the Counter Reforma­tion (ch. 31, sec. 6) and the Thirty Years War this church was almost wiped out. Only a remnant sur­vived. The last bishop of the origi­nal Unitas Fratrum, Comenius, who is famous in the history of education, called this remnant the "Hidden Seed." And such it later proved to be.

9. A Pietist Youth Witnesses for Christ

Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf, descendant of an ancient Austrian noble family, was born in Dresden in the year 1700. His father was a high court official in Saxony and a close friend of Spener, who be­came the boy’s godfather. The father died early, and the son was brought up by his grand­mother, the baroness von Gersdorf, who was an ardent Pietist. As a child von Zinzendorf showed strong religious feeling. A picture of Christ on the cross, with the words, "This I did for you. What do you do for me?" made a profound and lasting impression on him. His en­tire life was controlled by love for Jesus and a burning desire to save souls by winning them for Christ. When he was ten years old he was sent to Francke’s school in Halle. Here he soon displayed gifts of leadership. He organized among the boys a club which he called "The Order of the Grain of Mus­tard Seed." The purpose of this club was the promotion of personal piety and the evangelization of the world. Even before he came to Francke’s school, when he was a boy nine years old, he had read a missionary paper about the East Indies. "Then and there," he told later, "the first missionary impulse arose in my soul." When he was fifteen years old, he and some of his schoolmates made a solemn promise that they would on every occasion confess Christ, and seek the conversion of all sorts and con­ditions of men. But his family did not wish him to become a missionary. They wanted him to enter the service of the government. In obedience to their wishes he studied law at Wit­tenberg University from 1716 to 1719. He was a decided Pietist, but while in Wittenberg he learned to appreciate the orthodox Luther­ans. After he had left the univer­sity and had returned from two years of travel, Francke offered him the position of director of the Bible Institute. He reluctantly turned this down and entered the service of the government of Sax­ony. The next year he bought from his grandmother the large estate of Berthelsdorf seventy miles east of Dresden.

10. The Brethren Establish Herrn­hut and Are Called Mora­vians

Through all these years a simple carpenter, Christian David, had been doing what he could to keep the remnant of the Unitas Fratrum together. In the meanwhile he had become a Pietist. He now begged Count von Zinzendorf to permit the Hidden Seed to take refuge on his Berthelsdorf estate. The count had only the haziest ideas about the Brethren, as the members of the Unitas Fratrum were also called, but he did know that they were being persecuted for religion’s sake, and this aroused his sym­pathy. In 1722 he gave permission to David to bring two families of the Brethren. By 1727 several hun­dred of the Brethren had come to Berthelsdorf. At this time Zinzen­dorf read a book by Comenius de­scribing the principles and the practices of the Brethren. The reading of this book gave him the conviction that he was called to devote his life to the reorganiza­tion of the ancient Unitas Frat­rum, so that its members might become the agents of a great mis­sionary enterprise.

He assigned to the Brethren a corner of his wide estate, where they built up a community which they called Herrnhut, or the "Lord’s Lodge." Zinzendorf re­signed his government post in Dresden, and he himself settled on his Berthelsdorf estate.

Because they had come from the province of Moravia next to Huss’s land of Bohemia, the Brethren, a mere remnant of the once flourish­ing and numerous Unitas Fratrum, from this time on became known to history as the Moravians.

11. The Moravians Organize as a Church

During a communion service in Herrnhut on August 13, 1727, the Spirit’s power was so strongly felt that that date was accepted as the date of the rebirth of the an­cient Unitas Fratrum under the name of the Moravian Church.

Zinzendorf with some of the Mo­ravians developed some strange and unique ideas. He laid extreme emphasis on Christ as the heart of religion. This led to great senti­mentality in sermons and in hymns. The sufferings of Christ occupied the mind of Zinzendorf a great deal. His ideas were often both fanciful and sentimental. This was especially true of his ideas concern­ing Christ’s wounded side. He loved to dwell on the idea that the Church had been drawn from the side of Christ as Eve from Adam’s. He also dwelled much on the fact that men must become as little chil­dren in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. This led him to indulge frequently in many childish expressions.

Gradually, however, Zinzen­dorf and the Moravians discarded many of these peculiar ideas.

Zinzendorf was a Pietist Lu­theran. He had wanted the Mora­vians to become members of the Lutheran Church on the basis of Spener’s idea of collegia pietatis (sec. 1) and ecclesiolae in ecclesia (sec. 2). In the end, however, the Moravians organized themselves as a separate church with bishops, elders, and deacons. Actually their form of church government became more Presbyterian than Episcopal. The Moravian church today is found in Germany, England, and America. Herrnhut in Saxony re­mains the center of administration. Every ten years a general conven­tion is held there.

12. The Moravians Lead the Way in the Work of Missions

Zinzendorf looked upon the mem­bers of the Moravian Church as soldiers of Christ, who were to go out to all parts of the world to conquer it for the King. To the Moravians belongs everlastingly the honor of being the first Prot­estant body to take seriously the great commission. Eventually they established missions in Africa, Asia, Greenland, Lapland, and among the American Indians. They were also very active in home mission work. Their most outstand­ing missionary was perhaps David Zeisberger. When in 1808 he reached the age of eighty-seven, he had labored among the North American Indians for sixty-three years. This is the longest mission­ary career on record.

Today the Moravians are carry­ing on mission work in Greenland, Labrador, Alaska, the West Indies, in South and East Africa, Victoria, Queensland, Tibet, and among the North American Indians. The Moravian church at present numbers only 43,000 members. But their influence upon other denomi­nations, especially in the way of arousing them to their responsibil­ity for carrying out Christ’s last commission, has been entirely out of proportion to the smallness of their number. It was the Mora­vians, under the leadership and in­spiration of the Pietist Zinzendorf, who first lighted the torch of Prot­estant missionary zeal.