The Pietists, 1898. Creator: Venny Soldan-Brofeldt

A few years ago, I was at a regional ETS theology conference. A theologian friend of mine was there giving a paper. Afterwards he, and myself, and others got together for a little theology talk. In that talk my Lutheran theology friend said: “you’re a Pietist, and I’m an Anti-nomist.” And yet, I was wondering what exactly my friend had in mind by calling me a Pietist (some make take this as derisively as being called a Pelagian). The thing is, there are many expressions of a Pietism, all the way from the Puritans down to Zinzendorf and Spener, and further down to Schleiermacher, and then the Revivalists and the Keswicks, and as far down to someone like a Lewis Sperry Chafer. So, where does my friend see me on this continuum of Pietists? And what in fact is a theological Pietism?

I think a shared and uniting theme that might unite all Pietists together is that there is a concern and focus on the inner-spiritual life of the Christian; as if this focus is the sine-qua-non of what being a Christian entails. To generalize: a Pietist, denotatively, might be someone who is simply focused on being in love with Christ, and hoping to cultivate that marriage relationship with Him, in ways that entail a deeper growth and trust in the One they love as Christians. Conversely, while that would be a good thing mutatis mutandis this type of mood might come with a sinister and de-spiritualizing flipside. That is, the critique of Pietism is that it methodologically so focuses on “my love relationship with Jesus, with the triune God,” that it gets stuck with an inward focus on the self, rather than an a priori outward/upward look to the God who first loved us, that we might love Him. And so, the critique is that Pietism in all of its forms suffers from a methodological misstep where the starting point, in a God-human relationship, starts from a center in ourselves, rather in the center of God’s life for us in Jesus Christ. So, if this is the way my friend thinks of me as a Pietist, I would reject that label. If at a base level the label was simply meant to denotate someone who has a deep love of Christ—in the right theological ordering—then I will gladly accept that nomenclature.

In the spirit of the above discussion, I want to share for us the way that Eberhard Busch characterizes the German and European Pietists of the 1930s juxtaposed with Karl Barth. Indeed, Busch is describing the way the Pietists of the 30s were attempting to pushback against young Barth’s critique of them (and his critique is basically of the same material I just described above; i.e., in regard to a disordered methodology vis-à-vis who comes first in the ‘loving movement’ between God and humanity). Busch writes (in extenso):

Likewise W. Hützen defines the concern of Pietism as the “clearly articulated biblical doctrine of the inner life as the personal experience of the living God who really lives and works in us through his Spirit.” He adds that this understanding of the Pietistic concern is not controversial “among those who consciously move in the thought patterns of Pietism and approve of them.” According to F. Mund, it is the manifest working of the Spirit which constitutes the essence of our community movement and for whose sake we speak of the mission of the community movement. Our mission is to awaken natural, “church people” from the sleep of death so that they “come to faith, are spiritually alive, born again, converted and receive in their heart the Holy Spirit who comes directly from above. All of these things are facts experienced a thousand fold and noticeable to others.” According to L. Thimme, an interest in living “religious possession” is characteristic of Pietism. “The new possession of the community movement was their victory in aggressively laying hold of the assurance of salvation as well as of sanctification. This led to a revival of genuine, early Christian community life as well as the spirit of evangelization.” And according to W. Knappe, Pietism is at the same time concerned to emphasize the whole Bible and activate a practical life of faith. The latter is clearly not a second concern alongside the former. Knappe sees Pietism’s emphasis on the whole Scriptures in the way it rediscovered and advocated the “forgotten truths of Scripture: the personal laying hold of salvation, the assurance of salvation and sanctification.” This is the central concern of the community people in their own view.

It is important to notice that as a rule this understanding of its concern is linked to a particular evaluation of the movement. On the one hand, this concern is claimed as a special gift of Pietism in contrast to other manifestations of the church. This gift identifies it as Pietism. On the other hand, at the same time they resist an interpretation of this special insight as a special find made by Pietism. Rather they are inclined to identify it with the whole Bible, with mere biblical Christianity. Pietism’s representatives boldly conclude from the fact that it has faithfully upheld the concern described above not only that it is not just any “school of thought” but that “the community movement is . . . a work of God,” not made by human beings “but accomplished by God.” And they further conclude from this that it not only has a right to exist in the church but that it is absolutely “essential” for the “health” of the church. Pietism is basically God’s action, Christ’s offer of grace to the modern church, and fighting against it is tantamount to “fighting against God.” Therefore the history of Pietism can be depicted in correspondingly vivid colors. The older Pietism emerged against the dark background of the eighteenth century, for which “the dissolute spirit of the French in fashion and morals and the dead orthodoxy of the church” were typical. In Pietism “the spring water of the apostolic and Reformational witness suddenly bubbled up again in a barren time.” In the view of G. F. Nagel, the names of Francke, Bengel, Zinzendorf, Tersteegen as well as Spener shine “on the tablets of history in a light that has its source in Jesus’ abundant light.” Likewise, “streams of light and salvation flowed into the believing church” from “the men of the revivalist movement in the 19^th century.” And in the same way, vital spiritual power is pouring into human lives from the community movement of the present day which again is a time of “decadent laxity” and “moral decline.” In short, “time and again the waves of the Pietistic movement have carried death-overcoming life into the world.”[1]

In my view, Pietism’s heart (pun intended) is in the right place, it’s just that the order (taxis) of their spirituality is grounded in the wrong direction. If we were to refer to Thomas Torrance, he might detect what he calls the ‘Latin heresy,’ in and among the Pietists. That is to note, that the Pietists presume upon theological anthropology wherein humanity and God are thought in terms of a competitive relationship; wherein the bridge between humanity and God is conceived of through mechanisms like pactums, covenants, promissos, or even Pietisms. In other words, there is a ditch between God and humanity, and something is needed to bridge that ditch. As a matter of methodological priority, Pietism essentially looks inward first, before they look upward to find a way to be in union with God; at least, this is the spiritual function that inheres for the Pietist’s way to God. Ultimately, it is an inert navel-gazing that has become the absolutized way of making your way from yourself to God. Barth would say the opposite is the case; as of course, would the Apostle Paul.

So, am I a Pietist? I’d say in letter, nein! In spirit, yes. The Pietists have the right spirituality, as far as intention, but the wrong theological superstructure to properly get them there. They need something like what we have identified in Evangelical Calvinism (after Barth) as a Christologically Conditioned Supralapsarianism wherein the movement between God and humanity starts as a prius in God’s free election to be God with us, not without us, in His choice to become us in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. Pietists need this type of fertile theological soil to have a proper ‘feeling’ towards God; a feeling that has first come from God’s heart for us in Jesus Christ.

[1] Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth & the Pietists, trans. by Daniel W. Bloesch (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2004), 137–38.