Actually, Paul, what there is now is some new scholorship of Pietism. Why post this diatribe from twenty years ago?

There are too many types of Pietism spread over the years (since 1675) to speak as the above does.

Eric Andrae and Ray Kibler wrote recently on reappraising Pietism in Lutheran Forum. We each come at it a little differently.

My research led me to ask people to quit passing on false pictures of Pietism. I get into it a little in the conclusion of my book. Here is an excerpt from the beginning and a link to the publisher. You can also go to Ama zon and take a peak inside.

Peace adn all the best.

http://ejswensson.posterous.com/a-childrens-revival-a-tale-of-hope-and-prayer

I’m not sure that this is the correct understanding of the decline of Lutheranism at this time. Spener’s pietism arose precisely because Lutheranism had already declined into dead orthodoxy. It just hadn’t yet descended to the point of Unitarianism. The answer is not pietism but to keep the faith vibrant and alive from generation to generation and not let it decline into mere mental assent to a set of doctrines, however correct they may be.

Yes, Robin Leaver does hit the nail squarely on the head, and what he says is more timely now than when it was written, as are Walther’s words re the “New Measures”, the latter day pietism of that day not essentially different than the measures now advocated in some quarters.

I suggest the model is not so bipolar, true and authentic Lutheranism, which, taking a cue from the literal title of Concordia, is Christianity itself, and the wrong guys on the other. A dead orthodoxy is as much at odds with true and authentic Lutheranism as pietism, Spener’s or anyone else’s.

Both dead orthodoxy and pietism have a point, and they exist all to often only in reaction to each other, each thinking they are right, and worse, each thinking the other is the opposite. The fact is, both exist not as polar opposites, but as poles at opposite extremes from true and authentic Lutheranism, which needs to be as mindful of the pole at the one opposite extreme as it is of the other, and above all, not become one or the other of those poles in reaction to the other.

I see pietism and antinomianism as being two sides of the same coin. They both appear to embrace the Gospel but in practice their theologies tend to defeat the Gospel in the long run. Unfortunatly the catholic Church has tended to swing from one extreme to the other.
On another note, did Robin Leaver (great author!) really claim that Bach was NOT a pietist?! I detect strong streaks of both pietism and mysticism in his music. Striking is his criticism in the one cantata of all the bowing and kneeling one might do in church. He then asks the rhetorical question “Does this make a Christian?” “Nein!” declaims the tenor narrator. The rest of the cantata develops the theme of Christ’s indwelling in the believer. Bach NOT a pietist? It doesn’t diminish my opinion of him, though.

What I detect in Bach’s music is music. For the glory of God and the permissible delight of the human spirit, as Bach himself put it.

The great Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner edited a book in the late ’80s entitled Judaisms and their Messiahs in the Beginning of Christianity (New York, 1987: Cambridge University Press). It is unfortunate that, to my knowledge, there isn’t a similar work on pietisms.

The trouble in speaking about pietism, especially but not exclusively in Anglo-Saxon Lutheranism, is that it gets called Pietism, der Pietismus: a monolithic, more or less uniform heresy that destroyed or is destroying the church. What is easily forgotten is that pietisms came in many forms, and in different waves, as Eric Swensson pointed out. The sort of pietism that has been plaguing American Lutheranism has its roots strongly in Wesleyan Arminianism, which has nothing to do with the sort of Orthodox Lutheran pietism that in Finland, for example, alone kept translating and publishing Luther and the Confessions, and was instrumental in keeping the Scriptures and the Confessions at the heart of the church’s constitution.

Bo Giertz’s The Hammer of God is an interesting case in point. In the three novellas, the protagonists come to terms with various sorts of rationalism and legalism. Pietisms, if you like. But what an English-speaking reader must remember is that the author, and the protagonists at the ends of their roads, are also pietists of one sort: Orthodox Lutheran pietists.

In short, the historical picture is very much more complicated than the term Pietism allows for.

None of which is to deny that Prof. Leaver has a very important point to make. Pietisms of various forms were highly damaging to the Church in Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries; and pietisms of various sorts are doing immense damage to the Church today. But it’s not Pietism (Der Pietismus, pace Hermann Sasse). Because there ain’t no such thing.

On another note, I know it’s fashionable and sort of witty to talk about Dead Orthodoxy. It’s hard to find any substance behind the accusation. Could someone supply it, please? If what is meant is rational dogmatism, or Christianity as a purely intellectual system, fine. But that’s no longer orthodoxy, just dead. It’s good to remember that the same Gerhard who wrote the Loci also wrote the Divine Meditations.

I agree with several of your points, Paul. First, few want to learn what Pietism truly is. Most us it as an epithet or use it in some way to promote their own agenda of what Lutheranism should be, which is rather ironic. Second, I also agree that people should read Valentin Ernst Loescher’s book Timotheus Verinus. I did several years ago on your urging and glad I am I did.

For those of you who call Pietism heretical you need to know that Loescher did not. One of the things that stuck with me in my research and writing period is that Loescher and the Pietists made peace and joined together when they perceived their real theological enemy was the Enlightenment. That tidbit is at the end of the translators introduction in the Northwestern Publishing House edition.

I have to agree with Pr Simojoki. He is looking at it as the scholars do internationally.

It is only in America where the Pietists are not understood to be of historical interest and rather as something that needs to be fought.

I decided to post a larger section of my conclusion where I address these issues. If you want more than that you can get the book.

http://pietist.blogspot.com/2010/04/original-reason-for-condemnation-of.html

I do not think Pietism can “save” a denomination. I do think that one can easily glean lessons from studying them that does make ministry more helpful and effective.

However, if one’s take is “Inherent in Pietism is a dislike for formal creeds, formal dogma and an external and objective set of doctrinal standards. Pietism is always urging people into an interior life of self-absorption with one’s feelings, emotions and reactions to matters spiritual” it is understandable why you would not approve of it.

Rev. McCain,
You said that, “Inherent in Pietism is a dislike for formal creeds, formal dogma and an external and objective set of doctrinal standards.” I would be interested to hear your thoughts about a group such as the Association of Free Lutheran Congregations who understand themselves to be “orthodox pietists” and have the following statement posted on their website concerning their seminary: “Free Lutheran Seminary, as an institution of the AFLC, is in full agreement with the creeds and confessions of historic Christianity. The Apostolic, Nicene and Athanasian Creeds are confessed as faithful expositions of the truths of Scripture. Furthermore, the seminary is in hearty and enthusiastic agreement with the Unaltered Augsburg Confession (1530) and the Small Catechism (1529) of the Lutheran Reformation. There is full subscription to these documents because they are faithful and correct statements of Bible truths. The Seminary rejoices in its Lutheran heritage but is deeply concerned because of the inroads of liberalism and apostasy in parts of the Lutheran Church at the present. It desires to stand with those who would call the Lutheran Church back to the Bible and back to the Confessions in order to faithfully and fully minister to the needs of this generation.”

Rev. McCain,

My point is that there were/are Lutherans (individuals and congregations and church bodies) who self-identify as pietists (AFLC) and are identified by others as pietists (such as John Arndt)—who lay claim to the creeds, dogmas, and doctrinal standards of the Lutheran Church as their own confession. I demonstrated that with the quote from the AFLC website.

Another example is John Arndt, who, in his preface to “True Christianity” wrote: “I also affirm, that this book, as well as in all other articles and points, as also in the articles of Free Will, and of the justification of a poor sinner before God, is not to be understood in any other manner than in accordance with the Symbolical Books of the churches of the Augsburg Confession, namely, the first Unaltered Augsburg Confession, the Apology, the Smalcald Articles, the two Catechisms of Luther, and the Formula of Concord.”

In your response, you said that “a Lutheran Church that does not accept the entire Book of Concord of 1580 is not to be considered an orthodox Lutheran church.” But of course there were Lutheran Churches and theologians who were orthodox Lutherans before the Formula of Concord was written because they held fast to the Augsburg Confession during the years between the two documents. In addition, weren’t there Lutheran Churches in the Scandinavian countries that never adopted the Formula of Concord for historical reasons and yet were still considered (at least at the time) orthodox Lutherans?

My point in all this is not to be an advocate for pietism! Not only am I firmly opposed to it for theological reasons but also for aesthetic reasons as it makes me nauseous to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and I would rather be shot than “share”. The cure for pietism–both within our circles and without–and my reasoning in taking seriously the pietists’ claim of a doctrinal standard–is to use that standard that we (pietist and orthodox) both lay claim to and demonstrate why pietism is such a mistaken view of genuine, Lutheran piety which is not focused inward (pietism) but outward (Christ in Word and Sacrament).

Thank you very much indeed for a thought-provoking blog.