Co-missioners,
For the past two weeks, our Thursday Theology contributions have consisted of the first two parts of an essay by Dr. Robert Kolb on “Discipleship in the Lutheran Tradition,” originally presented as a lecture during the 2012 Crossings Conference.
So far, we have followed Dr. Kolb as he traced the ways in which the first generations since the Reformation understood the connection between faith and works (see part 1) and how this tradition was adapted in more or less helpful ways in the following centuries, sometimes drifting off into individualism or over-spiritualization, yet usually remaining at least somewhat connected to a very active life of neighbor-love in one’s vocations. (see part 2)
This week, Kolb finishes with a nod towards the father of Lutheran pietism, Philip Spener, and confessing his neglect of non-German representatives of this tradition. In so doing, he wraps up his lecture by directing his gaze forward to our time and scanning across the globe, where we see a variety of Lutheran traditions emerging. He wonders “why in the last two hundred years, and particularly in the last fifty years, have Lutherans not done a better job at the task of the cultural translation of our understanding of the pious Christian life into the world of today” and gives some suggestions for how this might be remedied. I especially recommend reading this final section closely. You might, as I do, find it counterintuitively brilliant.
Peace & joy,
Co-editor Robin Lütjohann
for the Crossings Community
Discipleship in the Lutheran Tradition
(part 3)
by Robert Kolb
Dr. Robert Kolb
These examples from “Orthodox” church leaders remind us that the work of Philip Jakob Spener, who regarded himself as Orthodox and was so regarded by many who claimed the title themselves, did not inaugurate concern for abuses of the gospel in the people’s and the clergy’s way of life. Many “Orthodox” preachers and professors anticipated Spener’s hope to enlighten “eyes of understanding to discern what is the hope of our calling, what are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance for his saints, and how boundless is God’s strength in us who believe that his mighty power is effectual,” to foster “diligence and zeal to be of good cheer and to strengthen others who may grow faith,” as well as “ strength and courage “ to pursue the Christian life and “blessing and success to observe with joy that the Word that goes for from God’s mouth … shall not return to God empty but shall accomplish that which he purposes and prosper in the thing for which he sent it.” [1] Spener criticized civic leadership, clergy practices, and “defects in the common people,” especially lovelessness, unfaithfulness in hearing and reading God’s Word, drunkenness, resort to law courts to gain advantage over one another, selfishness and exploitation of the poor, and neglect of public worship. Spener believed that he was reviving the “reformational” program of Luther and his colleagues. Indeed, that program continued to be reflected in a variety of ways and combinations in Lutheran churches throughout subsequent generations. As with many of the representatives of the tradition mentioned throughout this essay, Spener understood the various elements of Lutheran piety or discipleship in his own way, but he did strive to deliver God’s Word in oral, written, and sacramental forms to call sinners to repentance and to comfort and console the repentant, and to move them to service to God and the neighbor in their various callings.
The Enlightened cultural domination of the Lutheran churches in Germany and, in milder form, in the Nordic lands, during the eighteenth century considerably weakened Lutheran piety because it altered perceptions of Christ, sin atonement, and the nature and power of God’s Word. It at least partially gave way to the confessional revival of the nineteenth century. Both periods demand more study.
A few disconnected observations about these more recent eras in Lutheran history. In this lecture we have ignored Nordic church life. It reflected many of the same tendencies of the German scene, but especially in the nineteenth century the history of efforts to cultivate faithful living in daily life cannot be written without taking into account the varied efforts of Hans Nielsen Hauge and others in Norway, Carl Olof Rosenius and his Swedish comrades in the revival of Lutheran piety, figures like Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig or Johann Vilhelm Beck in Denmark, and Lars Levi Laestadius, whose influence crossed into Finland, where Fredrik Gabriel Hedberg and others led comparable revivals of the faith and life in the Lutheran tradition.
Such movements emphasized foreign and domestic mission, outreach with the gospel to those outside the church and outside the faith. They often cultivated small group Bible study and prayer, as did Wilhelm Löhe, for they followed Luther and Spener in their belief that faithful hearing and reading of Scripture lay at the heart of the cultivation of piety or discipleship.
Another stray observation about this later period: It is easy to misrepresent Lutheran views of the active participation of the Christian in society in the nineteenth century, for it is such a multi-faceted topic. As in many other sectors of European society, some who had earlier advocated a loosening of royal power turned against political Liberalism in the wake of the revolts of 1848. [2] Despite the efforts of those such as Johann Hinrich Wichern (1808-1881) and others, congregations in the larger, industrializing cities failed to minister to the boys and girls from peasant villages who came to better themselves in the new factories of the burgeoning manufacturing areas or in the homes of their managers and owners. The church’s failure to address the social and spiritual needs of these internal emigrants from the villages produced the turn to Marxist labor unions that significantly reduced the Christian role in central and northern European lands.
Yet “quietist” cannot describe all nineteenth century Lutherans. Lutherans were active in giving cultural and political leadership in some lands in the nineteenth century though not all were equally pious in terms of their personal faith. Louis Kossuth (1802-1894), a Hungarian nobleman and faithful member of his local congregation as well as the larger church, led the revolt of his people against Austrian Habsburg domination in 1848-1849. Kossuth escaped the clutches of the Habsburg government and lived in exile until his death. Another case of Lutheran cultural leadership took place in Hungary’s Slovakian domains. A Lutheran pastor, an opponent of a proposed merger of Lutheran and Calvinist churches in the Hungarian kingdom, the Slovak Jozef Miloslav Hurban (1817-1888), along with his brother pastor Michal Miloslav Hodza (1811-1870), and the author and politician Ludovit Stur (1815-1856), created literary Slovak through their linguistic and author and were active in opposition to Hungarian domination of their people. These Slovaks campaigned against the abuse of alcohol among their people as fiercely as did Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824) in Norway. These church leaders all took some latter-day version of Luther’s understanding of the callings of daily life, which had not been clearly passed on in the great theological works of the periods, seriously. They understood that God had placed them in positions of service to their societies and cultures.
We have not only ignored Nordic and eastern European Lutherans, but we have also neglected to mention that in the Majority World churches, both immigrant and mission, new forms of piety have developed among Lutherans, a mixture of their heritage brought by the missionaries and their own cultures. They have experienced and experimented with how to take Wittenberg theology seriously at the level of daily life in ways that can be helpful as those in the lands of historic establishment Lutheranism and their cousins in the lands of emigration, as we move into the new situations imposed upon us by the weakening of the Christian tone of traditional Western cultures.
Perhaps, however, the most important question we face as we look at the more recent history of Lutheranism is why in the last two hundred years, and particularly in the last fifty years, have Lutherans not done a better job at the task of the cultural translation of our understanding of the pious Christian life into the world of today. Many answers may be offered, from the power of media and our failure to capitalize on new developments as quickly as Luther did, to the demise of the culture and more immediate communities around us that supported that piety instead of undermining it. But the most basic reasons that command our attention lie at the foundation of our existence as believers, hearers, disciples, children of God in his congregation. We need to examine again the ways in which we deliver the promise of life from and in Jesus Christ to his people. We need to work on the ways in which both the law and the gospel speak to people who conceive of sin and evil and of life, its sources and its several dimensions in much different ways than their parents and certainly than their forbearers several generations ago.
From Lamin Sanneh we have learned that the church cannot help but be enculturated, by the very design of the Creator, just as the culture in which the proclamation of Christ is heard cannot help but be bent at least a little out of its old shape by the presence of the biblical message. These facts bring both blessings and dangers, especially since sinners seem sinfully naturally to tend to two false perceptions of fundamental reality. The first divides the spiritual and the material, the “sacred” and the “profane,” ignoring the more fundamental demarcation between Creator and creatures, often because there is no grasp of the personal and speaking nature of the Ultimate and Absolute. The second, perhaps because of the absence of the personal God who can be gracious and who likes to be in conversation, involves the focus on human performance of one kind or another as the defining action for humanity rather than recognizing that human actions only proceed from God’s performance as the Creator and Re-Creator, in the cross and resurrection. Apart from the Holy Spirit, we have no ears to hear that re-creative Word that proceeds from cross and empty tomb.
These false teachings are bad because they lead to false trusting and false living, that is, to false following, which bends the core of our persons and personalities out of shape. Bent personalities produce bent actions, twisted works, no matter how good they appear. In the face of that phenomenon Luther called good works detrimental to salvation and Gerhard Forde received his sweatshirt stating “weak on sanctification.” Both were avid advocates of discipleship, in fact, but discipleship just looks different in a Lutheran context. It begins with listening and it never stops listening, even as the words it hears from the mouth of the Lord drive it into action – common, ordinary ways of action in the midst of details of daily life that are the mechanics of God’s created order.
Therefore, our challenges include experimenting with how best to dedicate all the developing forms of communication and the cultural phenomena they foster and by which they are nurtured, so that the Word that kills and makes alive can do its tasks anew. We need to figure out how to speak with those whose sense of personal responsibility and desire to justify themselves on their own terms does not permit them to hear the law as accusing and killing. For them the conversation can still begin, in Luther’s language in any of its crushing and terrifying forms. Today’s hearers also need what Lutherans have not needed in most of their cultural settings previously: aid within God-forsaking societies to raise up their children in the ways that they are to go, in the footsteps of Christ, when the culture no longer helps point the way but designs detours through life that derail and disorient. For them the gospel of the forgiveness of sins, which they must finally hear, can be prefaced by the good news of God’s justifying those whom the world dedignifies and renders unworthy for any number of reasons. For Christ died and rose to give life and deliverance also from all that others do to us to make us victims of their sins. In a world in which speech is recognized as performative, the additional insight of how God’s speech re-creates and renews is one of our easier tasks. Luther’s affirmation of the God-pleasing goodness of life in this world, in all its realms and situations, is also tailor-made for adaptation to twenty-first century hearers. Like Luther, we follow in Christ’s footsteps, pushed along by the Holy Spirit, into the world that belongs to our Father, and we are moving to reclaim it and its inhabitants for the family.
End Notes
[1] Philip Jacob Spener, Pia Desideria, trans. Theodore g. Tappert (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1964), 30-31. The historical introduction to this edition is filled with errors and so must be used with caution.
[2] Angelika Dörfler-Dierken, Luthertum und Demokratie. Deutsche und amerikanische Theologen des 19. Jahrhunderts zu Staat, Gesellschaft und Kirche (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001).
