The Contributions of Pietism to Protestant Christians' Bible Study

 

The Contributions of Pietism to Protestant Christians' Bible Study

 

By Nak Moo Jun (194-B)

 

Introduction

 

When we study church history, we may find many differences in the Christian life between the present and the past. Such differences are not limited to cultural things but are even more significant in very essential elements such as Bible reading, pastoral duties, and attitude toward the work of the Holy Spirit. It has been my understanding that most of the dramatic changes in the Christian life were the results of the Reformation led by the great Reformers including Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Ulrich Zwingli. This understanding may not be totally wrong. My thought has been changed, however, since I studied about Pietism. Speaking figuratively what I have found, I may say that if Protestantism is Mt. Everest that is 8,848m (29,029 feet) high Pietism is the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench that is 10,994m (36,070 feet) deep. It is easy to see how high Mt. Everest is but it is not easy to see how deep the Challenger Deep is. In the same way, it is easily measurable how great the Reformation is but it is not easily measurable how deep influence Pietism had on Christians' life.

 

Many scholars attempted to define Pietism but with much frustration. Probably one of the reasons for the frustration comes from the extensiveness and intensiveness of the influence of Pietism on the churches and the Christian believers. Out of his capacious understanding of Pietism, Kierkegaard concluded: “Yes, indeed, Pietism is the one and only consequence of Christianity.”[1] In addition to this definition, Kierkegaard elucidated that Pietism is rooted in the example of Christ himself and in his attack upon the superficial legalism of the Pharisees.[2] If we accept the definition and elucidation, Pietism is not a reformation but a restoration and completion of true Christianity, the perfect form of which is found in our Lord Jesus the Christ. From a different viewpoint, Frederick Herzog understood Pietism as “The Reformation of the Reformation.”[3] According to Herzog, what Jakob Spener, the founder of Pietism, intended in his famous writing Pia Desideria was not the reformation of the church but the realization of church reformation, which had already been achieved by the great Reformers, in the reformation of individuals.[4] In other words, Spener wanted to apply the doctrine of justification by grace through faith to individuals’ lives and their daily practices so that they would bear fruit of justification, namely, sanctification.

 

With these understandings, I aimed through this paper to discuss Bible study as one of the great heritages of Pietism that we Christians are enjoying today as a matter of course. Of course, we cannot say that these heritages have been given to us only through the efforts of Pietists. Furthermore, the Pietist movement would not have been possible without the soil soaked with the Reformers’ blood, tear and sweat. Nevertheless, the Reformation was showing its limitation in the early 17^th century as evidenced by religious conflicts including the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). Summing up the limitation, Hans Schneider said, “The Reformation had not reached the heart.”[5] This short statement shows clearly that the protestant churches in those days were still in the grip of medieval formalism and institutionalism, emphasizing outward things and failing to minister the grace of the gospel to each individual’s heart. In this sense, Pietism and specifically the religious revival movement in the late 17^th and 18^th century provided a breakthrough by turning the churches from “dogmatics, polemics and institutional rigidity”[6] to “an individualized and spiritualized religious life emphasizing interiority and personal piety.”[7]

 

1.      What is Pietism?

 

Before discussing Bible study as a major means of spiritual growth advocated by Pietists, it may be appropriate to review Pietism in connection to its emphasis on the Word of God. In response to the antagonism of an opponent to the movement, Joachim Feller, a professor of rhetoric at Leipzig and a disciple of A. H. Francke, wrote a poem defining who a Pietist is, in which he declared, “Who is a Pietist? He is one who studies the Word of God and accordingly leads a holy life.”[8] This indicates one of the most prominent characteristics of Pietists. They were ‘Bible students’ or ‘Bible learners.’ Pietism gave the Bible the central place and represented a back-to-the-Bible movement.[9]

 

2.      Pietists’ View of the Scriptures

 

We may think that every Christian is naturally a Bible learner. Throughout many different periods of church history, however, lay people’s access to the Scripture and their study of the Book were highly limited or even prohibited. The laity were mostly preached and edified by the clergy who monopolized the handling of the Bible, and the interpretation of the Bible was regarded as ‘impious’ if it was done by someone other than the church and its properly authorized agents. Even after the Reformation that advocated the priesthood of all believers as one of its principles and translated the Bible into vernacular languages, Bible reading and study was a job limited to theologians and ministers as evidenced by Calvin’s belief that not everyone was equally qualified to administer the word and sacraments.[10] Most of the theologians, pursuing ‘Protestant scholasticism,’ exerted their efforts not in preaching the Word of God but in producing closely worded doctrinal statements of faith and communicating systematic doctrinal treatises to the laity through sermons and catechisms.[11] With regard to the history of Scripture handling, Johann Bengel (1687-1752), a Lutheran Pietist clergyman and Greek-language scholar, said as follows:

 

The handling of Scripture has displayed a variety of periods and modes from New Testament times t the present. The first mode can be called the natural and genuine one; the second, the ethical and moralizing; the third, the barren; the fourth, reviving again; the fifth, polemical and argumentative, culminating in dogmatic formulae and certain general useful applications; the sixth, the critical sermon-centered mode cosmetized with many languages and antiques. Up until now, there has not yet emerged in the Church that scriptural experience and knowledge which is carried by Scripture itself.[12]

 

This suggests that until the days of the Pietist movement there had been no period when the Word of God was carrying the knowledge of life directly to the believers. This statement also supposes that Scripture itself is living and working on the readers. This idea is paralleled with Bengel’s view of the Bible as follows: “The Scripture, therefore, of the Old and New Testaments, form a most sure and precious system of divine testimonies. For not only are the various writings, when considered separately, worthy of God, but also, when received as a whole, they exhibit one entire and perfect body.”[13] This means that by studying the Scriptures and receiving them as a whole, one is surely able to reach the entire and perfect knowledge of God’s testimonies. In other words, the Word in the Bible is, as it is, perfect food that the believers can eat, digest and get nourishment from.

 

3.      Pietists’ Approach to Bible Study

 

This view of the Bible again resulted in the most conspicuous distinction of the Pietists from their contemporaries. That is, they exalted the Bible as the supreme authority over doctrinal interpreters and opened the way for the Word to reveal itself to the readers without the help of such interpreters. This change, which was radical in those days, was one of major reforms promoted by the Pietists. In his writing Spiritual Priesthood, we can see how Spener encouraged the lay people to read and study the Bible diligently. In connection to Bible reading and study, the writing contains a number of crucial statements as follows:

 

-          Does not the name “priest” belong only to ministers? …. The name “priest” is a general name for all Christians and applies to ministers not otherwise than to other Christians (1Tim. 3:1,2, 5:17).[14]

-          Are not the Scriptures too difficult for the uneducated to understand? No, for already in the Old Testament the divine Word was given to instruct the simple (Ps. 19:7, 119:130), and fathers were required to teach it to their children (Dt. 6:6, 7) ….. Christ thus did not direct his doctrine to the wise and intelligent of this world, but to the simple (Mt. 11:25,26). ….[15]

-          Whence do simple pious Christians receive the understanding of the Bible? From the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, by whose inspiration the Scriptures were first recorded, so that they cannot be understood without his light (2Pet. 1:21; 1Cor. 2:12). ….[16]

-          How shall believing Christians use the divine Word among their fellow men? The Scriptures have been given for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for discipline in righteousness (2Tim. 3:16), and also for all comfort (Rom. 15:4). Accordingly, believing Christians are to use the Scriptures to all these intents and to teach, convert from error, admonish, reprove, and comfort, as the Scriptures themselves everywhere indicate.[17]

-          Have not spiritual priests (believers) the right to judge their ministers? Yes, in so far as that they should examine their teaching faithfully, whether it is in accordance with the Word of God. …. If they perceive it to be erroneous and the ministers …. persist in it, they should thereafter guard themselves against such false teaching (Acts 17:11, 1John 4:1).[18]

 

From these statements, we can derive Pietists’ unique approaches to Bible study. The most remarkable instruction is about the major participants in Bible reading. According to the Spener’s instructions above, the Scripture is “God’s Word Spoken through the Holy Spirit to His Children Who Are All Spiritual Priests.” Thus, Bible study involves the Trinity and the believers, and no one between them. In the context of Protestant Scholasticism, the Bible was believed to be spoken to the theologians who again played the roles of interpreter, illuminator, and preacher to the believers. In the Pietist paradigm, however, the Father speaks the Word directly to the Children through His Holy Spirit. Spender makes the new paradigm plausible by lifting all the believers to the position of “spiritual priests,” by redefining the Scripture as the Father’s plain talks to His children who are poor in understanding, and replacing the interpretive work of theologians with the enlightening work of the Holy Spirit.

 

Going further, Spener gives the believers the right to judge their ministers’ teachings based on the Word of God. This indicates the shift of the base or source of authority from dogmatic doctrines to individual believers’ faith in and commitment to the Word of God. For example, Martin Luther stood against the absolute authority of the Pope by maintaining that all church doctrines and practices should be grounded on the Scripture and those without the support of the Bible should be discarded. Luther’s resistance relying on the Scripture was powerfully authoritative. Did the authority come from the Bible or from the person Martin Luther? The answer is ‘Both.’ With regard to this authority, Ernest Stoeffler said:

 

With the Church in all ages Pietists realized that the Christian faith must be based upon an unassailable source of authority. Like all the masters of the devotional life in the history of Christianity, beginning with the apostles and coming down through Augustine, the mystics, and the Reformers, Pietists had the further insight that the kind of authority which alone makes the Christian faith individually significant is always experiential. Such authority, they held, cannot be based on external standards, whether they be doctrines of infallibility, or succession, or creedal correctness. It comes to be exclusively in the “I-Thou” relationship and ….[19]

 

This statement suggests that each individual may have spiritual authority not depending on his ecclesiastical title or doctrinal knowledge but depending on his “I-Thou” relationship with God based on his faith in the Word experienced personally through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.

 

Another important aspect of Pietist Bible study is its purpose. From the Pietists’ viewpoint, the purposes for the believers to study the Scriptures are comfort and discipline. This means that the goal of Bible study is inseparable from individuals’ piety. This is geared with the general tendency of Pietism, the interest of which was focused upon deepening and strengthening the devotional life of people rather than upon correctness of theological definition or liturgical form.[20] According to Stoeffler, furthermore, Pietism is the revival of pastoral work implemented by works such as catechization, home visitation, and the deep concern of the pastor for the spiritual and moral problems of the people.[21] Within Dr. Rosell’s lectures of Church History, we may find an example in the ministry of Richard Baxter[22] who, although categorized as a puritan, may be called a Pietist in terms of ‘spirit.’ He preached with an aim to evangelism and, in addition to preaching, he passed out catechisms to all of the people in his town, encouraged them to read Mark, visited their homes, and asked them questions from the catechism and the Bible.

 

4.      Criticisms on Pietists’ Approach to the Word of God

 

    The biggest criticism on Pietists’ approach to the Word of God was that their exaltation of the Bible as the supreme authority and lifting the laity to the position of spiritual priests would undercut the authority of the church. Pietists were also criticized for weakening the respect for ecclesiastical exegetes and, consequently, undermining the authority of the Bible itself.[23] Protestant theologians, particularly in the Lutheran Orthodox, were obsessed with the purity of doctrine and they believed that the church’s mission was maintaining the purity of the doctrine and guiding people to correct faith based on the doctrine, which was, in fact, monitoring and controlling their parishioners. This was because the Lutheran church was the true church “according to her outward confession” of the pure doctrine.[24] Seeing abuses in every social class, however, Spener postulated an additional distinguishing mark of the church: the practice of piety in a godly lifestyle that shows visible fruits of faith.[25]

 

    Although Spener admitted the necessity of established sound doctrines, he deplored dogmaticians for their unintelligible dogmas in Pia Desideria, saying, “Subtleties unknown to the Scriptures usually have their origin in the case of those who introduced them, in a desire to exhibit their sagacity and their superiority over others, to have a great reputation, and to derive benefit therefrom in the world.”[26] This shows that dogmas and confessionalism cannot and should not replace the Word of God and in-depth Bible study. What God wants his children is not verbal confession of a long list of dogmatic niceties but our careful listening and inward response to God’s Word in the Bible. In this sense, unintelligible dogmas are useless at least and harmful at worst when they confuse the clear messages of the Scriptures.

 

    Another criticism is about Pietists’ emphasis on the internal testimony of the Holy Spirit. As evidenced by Spener’s Spiritual Priesthood, Pietists believed that it is the Holy Spirit who enables the dead letter of the sacred writings to become a living power within us and enlightens the mind of the believers in understanding.[27] Spener spoke of “true faith which is awakened through the Word of God by the illumination, witness, and sealing of the Holy Spirit.”[28] What the opponents of Pietism feared was that individual believers’ dependence on the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit would lead to the destruction of the objective validity of the written Word. In fact, the dichotomy between objectivism and subjectivism is found mainly in the imagination of the 17^th-century scholastics.[29] That is, personal experiential element was obvious in Lutheran and Calvinistic Protestantism, the theology of which was wholly centered in the written Word that has to be inwardly appropriated through the Spirit.[30] In the Bible, the Word is compared with a seed (Lk. 8:11) and when the seed is planted in a person’s heart God grows the seed through the Holy Spirit. In this sense, we can say that the work of the Word of God in each person is both objective (doctrinal) and subjective (experiential). Unlike the Quakers who emphasized the freedom of the Spirit,[31] Pietists affirmed that the Holy Spirit does not work without the Bible or outside the Bible but in the Bible and through the Bible.[32] This means that we must first study the Bible carefully and have the Word in our heart in order for the Holy Spirit to work on our souls. There is no work of the Holy Spirit where there is no Word. This is Pietists’ belief that was true and biblical.

 

Conclusion

 

This paper discussed Pietists’ approach to Bible study. Despite colleague Protestant theologians’ criticisms, Pietists’ Bible study was the realization of the major principles of the Reformation, which was justification by grace through faith, sola scriptura, and the priesthood of all believers. They emboldened the laity to access the Word of God with confidence as if a child comes to the father and hears his voice. Through reviewing the history of Pietism, we can see that Bible study that we are enjoying today has not been something given to us as a matter of course. In fact, it is the gift of God attained through the blood and tears of many sincere servants of God including the Pietists from Germany in the 17^th and 18^th centuries.

---

[1] Christopher B. Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2011, p. 4

[2] Ibid, p. 4

[3] Frederick Herzog, European Pietism Reviewed, San Jose, California: Pickwick Publications, 2003, p. 13

[4] Ibid, p. 13

[5] Hans Schneider, “Understanding the Church: Issues of Pietist Ecclesiology” in Pietism and Community in Europe and North America 1650-1850 (ed. Jonathan Strom; Boston: Brill, 2010), p. 23

[6] Dale W. Brown, Understanding Pietism, Nappanee, IN: Evangel Publishing House, 1996, p. 22

[7] Johannes Wallmann, “Pietism,” 10:112 of Religion Past & Present edited by Hans Dieter Betz, Don S. Browning, Boston: Brill, 2011

[8] Brown, Understanding Pietism, p. 13

[9] Ibid, p. 46

[10] Garth Rosell, Class Lecture Note, LO-2-4

[11] Barnett, Kierkegaard, Pietism and Holiness, p. 8

[12] Harry Yeide Jr., Studies in Classical Pietism: The Flowering of the Ecclesiola, New York: Peter Lang, 1997, p. 102

[13] F. Ernest Stoeffler, German Pietism during the Eighteenth Century, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1973, p. 99

[14] Philipp Jakob Spener, “The Spiritual Priesthood” in The Pietists (Selected Writings) (ed. Emilie Griffin and Peter C. Erb; San Francisco: Harper, 2006), p. 3

[15] Ibid, p. 7

[16] Ibid, p. 10

[17] Ibid, p. 15

[18] Ibid, p. 20

[19] F. Ernest Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1965, p. 14

[20] Ibid, p. 2

[21] Ibid, p. 4

[22] Rosell, LO-10-1

[23] Brown, Understanding Pietism, p. 47

[24] Schneider, “Understanding the Church,” p. 24

[25] Ibid, p. 24

[26] Philipp Jakob Spener, Pia Desideria, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1964, p. 56

[27] Brown, Understanding Pietism, p. 49

[28] Spener, Pia Desideria, p. 46

[29] Stoeffler, The Rise of Evangelical Pietism, p. 10

[30] Ibid, p. 10

[31] Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity: Volume II The Reformation to the Present Day, New York: HarperCollines, 2010, p. 254

[32] Brown, Understanding Pietism, p. 50