Pietism: The Movement That Co-opted the Reformation

Summary

Podcast Summary: White Horse Inn

Episode: Pietism—The Movement That Co-opted the Reformation

Date: November 2, 2025

Hosts: Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Bob Hiller, Walter R. Strickland II
Summary Prepared by: [Your Name]

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Overview

This episode launches a new series, "Reformers vs. Radicals," diving into key spiritual movements that have shaped modern Christianity. The focus here is pietism—a movement that sought to reform Christianity by emphasizing personal devotion and transformation. The hosts discuss pietism’s historical context, main figures, theological shifts, enduring influence (both positive and negative), and its modern legacy in evangelicalism. Far from a dry jostle of doctrine, this is an engaging, spirited, and sometimes humorous exploration of piety versus pietism, head versus heart, and the tension between inner experience and outward confession.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Defining Pietism: Piety vs. Pietism

• Piety: Genuine, Reformation-rooted Christian devotion and living out one’s faith.
• Pietism: A distinct movement originating in late 17th-century Lutheranism, emphasizing emotional, internal spiritual experience and small-group devotion over doctrinal clarity and churchly structure.
  • "We have to distinguish between piety, which is just Christians living out their Christian life, and pietism. Which was a movement...kind of the radical version of it." – Justin Holcomb (03:34)
• Pietism sought a “universal Reformation,” shifting focus from "Christ for me" (external/objective gospel) to "Christ in me" (internal/subjective experience).

Historical Roots and Figures

• Origins: Rooted in late medieval mysticism (Meister Eckhart, Johann Tauler), further influenced by Lutheran and radical Reformation streams.
  • "The radical Reformation...was actually radicalizing the spirituality of Meister Eckhart and others." – Justin Holcomb (04:01)
• Key Players: Johann Arndt (“True Christianity”), Philipp Spener (“Pia Desideria”), August Hermann Francke.
• Transition from focus on justification (“courtroom of Christ for us”) to sanctification and visible fruit (“living room of Christ in us”). – Walter Strickland (05:05)

Theological Shifts

• Movement away from institutional, doctrinal faith to focus on internal transformation and moral progress.
  • "It’s a shift from justification as the engine to sanctification as the litmus test." – Walter Strickland (05:05)
• Pietism promoted small groups (“conventicles”), lay-led devotions, and an emphasis on spiritual warmth—sometimes at the expense of doctrinal ‘bullseye’.

Responses and Critique

• Confessional Lutherans and Reformed voices critiqued pietism for unintentionally undermining assurance (placing it within instead of outside oneself) and sliding toward a works-based or emotional faith.
  • "The Gospel has been done, justification is established. Now we need to focus on the internal life of the Christian and making real Christians." – Bob Hiller (10:42)
• Danger of reintroducing medieval/Roman Catholic ideas of salvation as inner transformation rather than external gift:
  • "Rome was saying justification is the inner transformation of the soul...the danger of pietism was that it returned to that kind of inner transformation." – Justin Holcomb (14:23)

Social and Cultural Impact

• Positive legacy: Modern missionary movement, philanthropy, founding of hospitals, orphanages, and democratization of lay involvement in ministry.
  • "Pietists were the pioneers of modern missions...forerunners of the scientific revolution...universal Reformation...focus this time not on doctrine, but on life." – Justin Holcomb (00:49; 29:57)
  • "It was philanthropy and missionary zeal for conversions. So it wasn’t one or the other." – Walter Strickland (31:03)
• Negative legacy: Tendency toward restless activism, recurring assurance struggles, spiritual elitism in small groups, marginalization of churchly confession and sacraments, and fueling later individualism.
  • "The fruit of righteousness became the root of righteousness...people began to shift their focus from, from Christ for me...to Christ the renovator of the world." – Justin Holcomb (40:06)
  • "Now people began to shift their focus from Christ for me and for us to Christ the renovator of the world..." – Justin Holcomb (40:06)

Connection to Modern Phenomena

• The inward, experiential emphasis helped lay groundwork for Enlightenment ideas—autonomy, individualism, and the "inner light."
  • "Paul Tillich said the Enlightenment dogma of inner reason is the child of the pietist doctrine of the inner light..." – Justin Holcomb (34:46)
• Seen today wherever subjective, therapeutic spirituality rises above historic confession—“turning the Scriptures into a mirror of my interior life as opposed to a window into God’s redemptive saving acts.” – Walter Strickland (37:37)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the core shift of pietism:
  • "What happens when the thermometer replaces the bullseye, the touchstone?" – Walter Strickland (05:05)
• On pietism’s social activism:
  • "If the news is this good and Jesus is making all things new, let’s dive in. And so you actually do have this real gain that comes from the tradition..." – Walter Strickland (31:03)
• Modern warning:
  • "Let’s not confuse a lot of spiritual enthusiasm and energy for genuinely knowing Christ as Lord..." – Adriel Sanchez (42:56)
• On healthy theology:
  • "Christianity is not about what you think or feel, but about what God says and does in Christ for you...So stop looking at your pious little belly and fix your eyes on Jesus." – Bob Hiller (44:27)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• What is Pietism? – 03:34
• Historical Background & Key Figures – 07:39–11:24
• Shift from Outward Assurance to Inward Experience – 11:24–16:01
• Small Groups, Lay Devotion, and Democratization – 19:04–20:07
• Impact of the Thirty Years War / Sympathy for Pietism’s Origins – 21:36–22:34
• Church within a Church, Radical vs. Churchly Pietism – 19:04–20:07
• Philanthropy and Missions as Legacy of Pietism – 29:56–31:03
• Pietism and the Enlightenment, Inner Light to Individualism – 34:46–36:26
• Modern Parallels and Dangers – 37:37–43:41
• Conclusion & Takeaway – 43:41–45:13

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Conclusion

The hosts agree that pietism was both a reaction to and a critique of dead orthodoxy, institutional rigidity, and theological abstraction. It revitalized missionary passion and lay engagement, but often at the risk of sidestepping the gospel's external assurance, and—at its extreme—displacing Christ with the self. The episode closes by urging listeners to hold fast to “Christ for us,” to avoid trading one idol (the head) for another (the heart), and to find lasting hope in the objective work of Christ rather than subjective experience.

Final word:
"Stop looking at your pious little belly and fix your eyes on Jesus. He’s the One who started, and he’s the one who finishes your faith." – Bob Hiller (44:27)

Transcript

[Dr. Michael Horton]

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[Justin Holcomb]

The Pietists were the pioneers of modern missions.

[Bob Hiller]

Right, right.

[Justin Holcomb]

And setting up orphanages and Christian schools and pharmacies to help heal people. Pietists were in some ways forerunners of the scientific revolution in the sense that they wanted what they called a universal Reformation, a further Reformation that would focus this time not on doctrine, but on life and helping advance human life here and now. And so that's why a lot of them were pharmacists and missionaries and so forth. So even in churches of the Reformation, it was the pietist wings that were at the forefront of the modern missionary movement. And so we have to ask ourselves, what happened here? How have we contributed to the separation of head and heart.

[Dr. Michael Horton]

Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church? This is White Horse Zinn, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.

[Bob Hiller]

Welcome to Whitehorse Inn. Today we are beginning a new series called Reformers vs Radicals. Much of the way things work in modern evangelicalism and in many modern spiritualities did not arise in a vacuum, but are the outgrowth of major movements in Christian history. In this series, we're going to examine a number of those key movements and the figures who have shaped much of 21st century Christianity and evangelicalism. And today we're going to begin with pietism. Pietism. What is it? Isn't piety a good thing? Who are the major figures we need to be aware of in this movement, and how has it influenced the church today to have this discussion? I am here with a conventicle of men with truly pious desires. Michael Horton, Justin Holcomb, Walter Strickland. And I am Bob Hiller. Gentlemen, this is awesome.

[Justin Holcomb]

And this is a real natural topic for you.

[Bob Hiller]

This is my favorite topic. I'm all amped up. What's pietism? What are we talking about here?

[Justin Holcomb]

Well, I think first of all, we have to distinguish between piety, which is just Christians living out their Christian life, and pietism. Which was a movement that actually was rooted in the late medieval spirituality of the mystics, the Christian mystics, and kind of the radical version of it. Meister Eckhart and Johann Tauler and others. He probably wrote the German theology, which was influential on Luther early on, very much. But when Luther pulled up anchor and sailed away from the harbor of this sort of what became Anabaptist pietism, his students, many of his earliest students, put down anchor and just stayed there. And so the radical Reformation, as it's often called, it's a kind of recent label, wasn't radicalizing the truths of the Reformation, but was actually radicalizing the spirituality of Meister Eckhart and others. Eckhart was accused of by the Roman Church of pantheism. And so there's this kind of inner light. I go inside. It's not the church outside. It's not christ for me 2000 years ago in history, but Christ in me. That saves lots of roads we could take out of that. But that's the basic emphasis.

[Walter Strickland]

I think it's helpful to give some dates on this. So it arises late 17th century as a reform of the heart in Lutheran land. So what Mike was just saying is Christ out of me, apart from me. And this is the reform of the heart. And it gets traced historically through Moravianism, Wesley, and then modern evangelicalism is what we have that. And so it's a shift from justification as the engine to sanctification as the litmus test. And so you're gonna be talking about the pietism. It is important to remember the word piety is in institutes. I mean, Calvin talks about piety. So again, this isn't like just a general term. This is a term of the Reformational tradition. And it's important that when we start talking about Lutheran pietism, this is not an endorsement by confessional Lutherans. That's why we were joking about Bob doing this one. But it was reacting to what they would say was doctrinal rigidity in endless disputes by relocating the center of gravity from the courtroom of Christ for us to the living room of Christ in us. That's the reform of the heart type of way of thinking about it. So there's a pastoral instinct for that warmth. That's understandable. And the question is, what happens when the thermometer replaces the bullseye, the touchstone? And that's what happens, that there's a shift.

[Adriel Sanchez]

Yeah. You mentioned the living room. Part of the move for Philip Spinner and others was to have this resurgence of devotional circles, prayer and Bible reading. This idea of the universal personhood of all believers and things like that to. To really, again, allow that sanctification sort of process and these means of doing that to be central in the faith. And so it really is this move away from, as you said, Justin, the rigidity of what the church believed in Germany. And so it really is. There's a flashpoint where I think his name was Augustus Franke. Is that the August Franca.

[Bob Hiller]

Franca.

[Adriel Sanchez]

See. Franca see. Thank you, guys. You guys are sharpening me like iron sharpens iron. He attacks the Theolog, the University of Leipzig, to say that their lectures that were deeply rooted in sort of Lutheran thought and theology and the tradition there, to convert them to devotional meetings, sort of completely emptying them from, you know, philosophy and doctrine and those sorts of things that grounded the church at that point. So there's a massive shift that's going on there.

[Bob Hiller]

I think we should call him Frankie. I think it's great.

[Walter Strickland]

Bob, can you tell us how we did? Because we're talking about Lutheran pietism and you probably like. Does that sound accurate to you?

[Bob Hiller]

It sounds pretty accurate to me. It arises in Lutheran areas, and this is why it's called Lutheran pietism, not because Lutherans approve of it. And Justin, you mentioned that the confessional branch, in fact, is quite suspect of this, though there are still a large number of pietists around, and even the Lutheran Church, Missouri Senate, of which I'm a part of, Our founding president, C.F.W. walther, grew up in pietistic circles and was rescued from that. I think it's probably worth going back and just talking a little bit about some of the guys, like how this veers away. Maybe we want to say it this way, how it veers away from the Reformation. So if you read someone like Tyler. All right, so Johan Tauler, German mystic. He would speak of a monastic.

[Justin Holcomb]

This is before the Reformation.

[Bob Hiller]

This is prior to Reformation. Thank you. Sorry about that. Prior to the Reformation. Tauler is a guy that Luther is reading constantly, and he is very adamant about a sort of internal life of the Christian. And this is what he says about the Lord Jesus and his crucifixion. Since Jesus was the most forsaken of all, he was most pleasing to the Father. Thus, whoever experiences this forsakenness and desolation is most pleasing of all to the Father. So notice what Tyler does here. He doesn't say, because Christ was crucified in our place, the sacrament sacrifice was acceptable to the Father, so we are declared righteous. He says, Jesus is the model of what it means to suffer in a manner that is pleasing to God. This is the stuff that almost drove Luther to suicide, because Luther would sit there and he had this sort of negative theology that said, I have got to hate everything except for Jesus, especially what is inside of me. And it's this sort of almost masochistic sort of theology where he had, I.

[Justin Holcomb]

Have to suffer enough.

[Bob Hiller]

I've got to suffer to be pleasing and to make myself righteous. Which is why, by the way, he doesn't like the indulgences, because it's getting you out of suffering. It's not because he's wrong about justification. So Luther is. Is this is what he's actually finally rescued from by the gospel. But this stuff doesn't just go away. Johan Arndt is another guy who comes along, and Arndt is probably a student of Melanchthon, I believe after Luther dies. Arndt is born a little bit after Luther dies. Melanchthon is still teaching one of his professors. And Arndt is more sympathetic to Melanchthon's views, but he writes a book called True Christianity, in which he says, there's something missing. We're not just concerned about doctrine. We're also concerned about the Christian life, the piety of the Christian, which is, in a certain sense, completely in line with the Reformation. Well, Arndt has major influence on two people. The first is a guy named Johan Gerhard, who is one of the great theologians in the history of the church. I mean, he's really one of the great highlights of Lutheran, the theological history, very confessional. And the other guy is Spainer, who Walter brought up earlier. And Spainer is the guy who writes Pious Desires. Is that right? The Pia Diazedaria. And he writes this as a preface to Arndt's book. Years later, after it's been written, he's the one who says, the Gospel has been done, justification is established. Now we need to focus on the internal life of the Christian and making real Christians. And we can't seem to do this by clinging to the institution, by emphasizing the sacraments. Instead, we have to do this internally and personally.

[Justin Holcomb]

That's a great summary, Bob. I think, too. So the early Luther really did come out of the same soup that the Anabaptists did. They were his early students and were really flummoxed that he abandoned that early sort of radical mysticism. Luther stands up and says, the average person today goes to Mass. Here's what the priest says. And says him, I believe, well, what a lot of people, even around Luther, and certainly his successors saw was that that was happening in Lutheranism and also in Reformed churches. There were quote unquote pietists, little p. Critics of Reformed churches becoming too rote and too focused on the institution and the sacraments and so forth. So a similar thing happened. So you could claim Luther, you could go back to Luther, you could go back to Calvin on, and quote them on the Christian because they held these things together. Union with Christ brings justification and sanctification, but you never lose your focus on Christ outside of me, for me being fix your eyes on Christ, the author and perfecter of faith. That is the source of piety. You never take your eyes off of that, but that leads to piety. And so you could imagine how some people would say, oh, that's right, that's right. We don't just go to church and hear what the priest or pastor says and just go home and say, okay, one and done. We have to get together in these intense prayer meetings and study groups and special conventicles of the truly pious. And yeah, we'll still go to church on Sunday maybe. But what really the stuff that's really inspiring and enriching, the thing that really advances the Christian life is super committed people getting together for discipleship in small groups.

[Bob Hiller]

Thank God we don't have that anymore.

[Justin Holcomb]

Right, Mike, I think it's very important.

[Adriel Sanchez]

That you were talking about focusing on Christ and then piety flows out of that. You know, Johanna, one of the forerunners for pietism, this is one thing that he said that sort of puts a fine point on that. He says, quote, become a fertile ground for the divine birth. Cherish this deep silence within, nourish it frequently. And so it's this inward turning away from the church that they were promoting to say that this is actually going to be the way forward. And what we're saying is that Christ then leads us towards sanctified living, not just this sort of turn inward, becoming a fertile ground for the divine birth.

[Justin Holcomb]

Yeah. Whereas Paul says faith comes by hearing the word of God, and that is done in assembly with brothers and sisters who are also hearing the word of God. Peter says that we've been born again by the preaching of the Gospel and over and over again. But if, if the emphasis is not on Christ, who was born in Bethlehem and crucified outside of center city Jerusalem and rose again from the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea on the third day, but on him rising again in my heart, if that's the real place where the resurrection happens, not to deny the importance of the new Birth, but to basically make the locus of salvation. What happens within me is really a return to what Rome was teaching. Rome was saying justification is the inner transformation of the soul. It was an inner experience of the soul that was justification. And the danger of pietism was that it returned to that kind of inner transformation. And you could tell who was in and who was out by a rigorous test of the fruit of their lives. And again, it's taking good things that we would also want to stress and losing better things.

[Walter Strickland]

Yeah, we're not tossing out sanctification. And it's the way it's talked about. There's a nuance that is not just a nuance. It's not like a. Oh, you're just not saying it right. There's a foundational shift. Just for the sake of listeners and for myself, when we're doing these episodes, we get to dive in. This is part of my continuing education because I jump into things and start diving in a little bit more. Because we just heard a lot of names. And for the sake of that, I think I just want to summarize a little bit from those three names and where I think we are a little bit of a confirming making sure I got it. But also because there's some fascinating things that we got to hear. So we have this late medieval, early modern streams feeding into this Lutheran pietism. The tauler was the mystical experience shifts to the interior life to kind of set the tone for experiential piety. So you have this then you have the ardent the True Christianity 1606. And the things I read about, Joanne, is that he didn't so much reject the Reformation, just said, oh, it's kind of withered. We're shifting now from right belief. We did that to now right life in. And maybe he was more against reformational things than I know. But it just had more of a withering reframing the Christian life from assurance from the outside, which is what Mike jumped on very early on. And more of the transformation verified on the inside. So that. That this internal shift both of those two feed into. Is it spanner?

[Adriel Sanchez]

How do you say that?

[Justin Holcomb]

E N E R For people who.

[Walter Strickland]

Writing it down and they were reading Ardent and others and this renewal of Lutheranism through the household devotion. And Walter mentioned this. The small group shift to kind of democratizing edification and implying that corporate worship wasn't enough. That's why we're talking about Christ preached and poured in baptism and received at the table is there's a shift. Shift that that's not enough. That's the right belief place, but the right life place is the small group edification place. And then yoking the tendency to yoke justification to sanctification in a particular way. I mean, others say this, but Calvin says, well, justification necessarily leads to sanctification. It's going to happen. But the negative way of talking about this is from Spainer. No one justified who isn't intent on, on holiness. No one is justified who has an intent on holiness. Well, now you're talking about like my intent reminds me back to Bob's point from years ago, the adverbs. I'm not, I'm not intent enough, I'm not right, I'm not sincere enough, all that. And, and then the, the reshaping of pastoral curriculum, tilting from exegesis dogma to methods and spiritual formation. It goes from proclamation to pragmatics. And so you. It seems more of a revolt to the Reformation to kind of undermining of the center, moving from promise of the Reformation to performance of this pietism.

[Justin Holcomb]

Yeah, it's an overcorrection, isn't it? One historian distinguishes between the churchly pietists who stayed in the church but wanted to form a church within a church, small group fellowships that did the real piety, and then they would just go to church and go through the motion, so to speak. Then you had the radical pietists who said that the church is a fallen creature. That's one of their phrases over and over again. The church died with the apostles and now it's resurged, it's run underground. And Meisser Eckhart and Johann Thaler and these late medieval mystics were examples of people God raised up in this darkness. But the church really just went underground and it's still pretty much underground today. So the invisible church of the true elect versus the institutional church, which is made up of elect and non elect together.

[Bob Hiller]

Now I do want to say, I want to try and put a helpful spin on this. Not just to say like, these guys are just going way off the tracks because I think we're all kind of agreeing on this, but we do have to kind of understand what they are overcorrecting. It's not just that people are going to church every Sunday and reading their Lutheran confessions and having great discussions about it. And then these guys are like, oh, you know what we need More Spainer comes around. If I'm not mistaken, somewhere towards the end of the thirty Years War, and the Thirty Years War was by and large influenced by religious disagreements. Each region is Religiously associated. So the Catholics and the Reformed and the Lutheran, they have their areas and they're. They're fighting with each other for 30 years. And then because of this, the wars decimate a lot of places, which always ends up with people being displaced, people getting very sick. There's a lot of struggle in the community. And the pastor gets up on Sunday and says, here's why we're not Calvinists, here's why we're not Roman. We are Lutheran. And this is what the catechism says, and this is what the formula of Concord. And they go through. You know, they're arguing for the way the two natures of Christ work while people are starving out in the streets and they're getting a long lecture. And so what happens is preaching is not aimed at the human beings there. It's aimed at ideas. It's aimed towards the head.

[Justin Holcomb]

Just so different from Luther's preaching.

[Walter Strickland]

Correct.

[Bob Hiller]

I mean, you cannot say Luther does that, and proper disciples of him ought not to be doing that. At the same time, the overcorrection in my mind is not that they stopped focusing on the head, but they stopped focusing on the heart. But in none of this are they focusing on Jesus Christ for you. Right. So the pastor is more concerned about not being wrong than he is about the suffering people in his congregation. And so they say, the problem is we're too academic. We need to be more loving. Well, the problem is preaching Christ and him crucified addresses both of those issues. But they don't go back to Christ. They go to the internal life, I think, and that becomes why the correction is made in that way. So it's not just happening in a vacuum like, oh, we need to emphasize this in theology now. Church is not addressing people in any sort of real way. And that's their concern. At least I think that's what's going on.

[Justin Holcomb]

And as you say, you mentioned Gerhard. Johann. Gerhard. Bob, here's a great example, and he was hardly alone, of early Lutheran representatives who were during this period, orthodox confessional Lutherans and often numbered with the Pietists.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, yeah, because.

[Justin Holcomb]

The Pietists invented dead orthodoxy. There was a lot of dead orthodoxy around. I mean, you could go to. We have, in the Dutch reform tradition, catechism preaching. Usually in the evening, we preach through the catechism. That started the same time Lutherans started taking people through the catechism. This is why were Lutheran. That can be done really well or it can be done really badly. And I think it's really important to see in Those early years, whether it's Lutheran or Reformed, in those early years there really wasn't an orthodox group over here that was just intellectualist and a pietist group over here that was just emotional and sentimental and navel gazing. There was a lot more overlap. It was really by the end of the 17th century and as you say so helpfully, Bob, the 30 Years War and the absolute decimation of whole populations that people began to wonder, is the Reformation actually a bad thing? Did it actually do more harm than good? Are we. Are the Lutheran and Reformed clerics any better than the Roman priests.

[Dr. Michael Horton]

At Sola Media? We're committed to helping Christians deepen their faith through clear, Christ centered teaching rooted in the riches of the Reformation. Every podcast, article and resource we produce is offered free of charge and it's only possible because of generous monthly supporters. When you become a partner Today, you'll receive two remarkable books as our Rediscovering the Holy Spirit by Dr. Michael Horton and Praying with Jesus by Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We believe these books can guide you into a clearer understanding of the Spirit's work and a richer prayer life. To become a partner and receive these two books, visit solarmedia.org partner.

[Bob Hiller]

It seems to me, of course you're going to go to small conventicles in small groups. Why? Because you can't trust the institution of the state. They're going to go to war over things. You can't trust the institution of the church because they're not really caring about us. They're just concerned about making sure, you know, they're getting paid by the taxes. We've got to find a spirituality somewhere else. And so instead of correcting the preaching and fixing things, you tie the church and the state together much like it was actually prior to the Reformation. And the state has way too much influence over how life is done in the church. And so people start to move away from the institution because it's not actually doing its job. I haven't done any work on that to think it through, but it does seem to me like this inner anti institutional perspective does come from a proper desire to. To really be engaged with what the word of God says. The problem is they do it by removing the means of grace from it because in their minds the means of grace are too much associated with a. What did you say? That they. The fallen institution or something like this.

[Justin Holcomb]

Yeah, fallen creature.

[Bob Hiller]

And so we start looking for Christ where he's never promised to be, and that becomes the danger.

[Adriel Sanchez]

Yeah, it's helpful, Bob. And just as I'M trying to empathize with the laity in this situation. There's a theological fatigue trying to come out of the Reformation and to get their doctrine correct as it's being offered to them. But then they're thinking, perhaps, and maybe this is the Baptist in me. What am I supposed to do now? So do I. I thought the Baptist.

[Walter Strickland]

Part was the sympathizing with the ladies.

[Adriel Sanchez]

I guess there's. There's several layers to it. That's preacher, the believer. And now we're talking about. You know, So I really did.

[Walter Strickland]

I was like, is that. Is that from the ecclesiology? I was serious.

[Justin Holcomb]

Baptists love people.

[Walter Strickland]

Apparently not in a critical.

[Adriel Sanchez]

Yeah, we actually think about the people in the pews and not just. We just don't perform on stage and doing our theology. Reading our theology papers.

[Justin Holcomb]

Pietist.

[Walter Strickland]

It was kind of a compliment originally, but I'm taking it back.

[Adriel Sanchez]

No, no, I appreciate that. I think it just.

[Walter Strickland]

Only the adult laity.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah.

[Adriel Sanchez]

It's just so much deeper than you think, though.

[Justin Holcomb]

Oh, you missed that, Walter.

[Adriel Sanchez]

I did. Or you just ignored it. Yeah, that's true. Only the baptized, you know, post conversion, so. But yeah, I'm sorry, I really.

[Walter Strickland]

You were on a great point. I interrupted, but this is fun.

[Adriel Sanchez]

But as I'm thinking about them, they're probably thinking, okay, because the preaching is more to clarify the doctrinal distinctives that emerge from the Reformation. They're looking out at the world and seeing, does God have anything to say about this? There's probably an urge to do something. And I can see how. I mean, again, I'm not affirming what the conclusion was, but I can see the impulse of wanting to democratize the teaching of the Word, which resulted into a poor hermeneutic that relativized what the Gospel was actually doing. And I'm trying to sort of even set the table for the moment today to say there's probably going to be moments where people feel that same sort of urge, but to learn from what happened with the pietists.

[Justin Holcomb]

That's right. That's a great point. You know, use it as a. Not just a cautionary tale about pietism, but a cautionary tale about orthodoxy. For example, okay, Luther was not big into missions because he thought that Jesus was coming Thursday. I mean, his eschatology was not millennialist, but it was Christ's second coming. Is. I mean, just look at everything that is unfolding in the Church of Rome. The Antichrist standing in the temple and so forth. It looks like Jesus is soon to come. We're kind of in the tribulation right now. And Calvin was actually, he was the first of the reformers to send missionaries to the New World. The first Protestant missionaries came from Geneva. And Calvin knew that he was possibly sending them to their death because he sent them to Brazil, a Portuguese colony. And sure enough, they were killed by the Jesuits. But. But the pietists were the pioneers of modern missions.

[Bob Hiller]

Right, right.

[Justin Holcomb]

And setting up orphanages and Christian schools and pharmacies to help heal people. Pietists were in some ways forerunners of the scientific revolution in the sense that they wanted what they called a universal Reformation, a further Reformation that would focus this time not on doctrine, but on life and helping advance human life here and now. And so that's why a lot of them were pharmacists and missionaries and so forth. So even in churches of the Reformation, it was the pietist wings that were at the forefront of the modern missionary movement. And so we have to ask ourselves, what happened here? How have we contributed to the separation of head and heart, hands?

[Walter Strickland]

And there are real gains that came from this. That's what I mean. And just to be really clear, it was philanthropy and missionary zeal for conversions. So it wasn't one or the other. It was, well, we're going to do all this philanthropy. I didn't know some of those that you were talking about of the pharmacies being set up and the lay engagement. It didn't have the kind of clericalism like, oh, well, I guess that person will do the gospel proclamation stuff. I don't do that. And so there was this, well, if the news is this good and Jesus is making all things new, let's dive in. And so you actually do have this real gain that comes from the tradition, from the Lutheran pietism.

[Justin Holcomb]

Then Jesus making all things new replaces eventually Jesus hanging on a cross, flies buzzing, blood dripping, and him being raised the third day.

[Adriel Sanchez]

Yeah, there seems to be this unleashing of the laity in their vocations in such a way that puts. It really does democratize the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel in ways that I think are very. Are very healthy. However, the ways in which that was done might be concerning at times.

[Bob Hiller]

I would say I think you're right, but I would qualify it that one of the things that's going to come out of a pietistic mindset is your vocation is not spiritual, or that is to say the vocation. Someone who simply goes to church, goes to work, goes to their kids, I'm sure they had Sport? No, I guarantee the pietists didn't have sporting events. They weren't that fun, but went to, you know, you do all this stuff that's inferior. The superior spiritual life is going to be found in the conventicle with the person who is constantly looking within to see where are things that I sin too much with, how do I get rid of this? And always working towards a holier way of life, which means less of a love for this world and more of a love for God. Which is strange when the God you worship says, love the Lord your God and love your neighbor as yourself and calls the creation good. The other thing. It is worth noting though, here I do want to put a quick plug in if we're going to do some bibliography. Our old friend Dan van Voorhis from 1517 Christian History Almanac. His dissertation was on Arndt, and he wrote a book called A Prophet of Lutheran Pietism. Arndt was not, properly speaking, a pietist. However, what you were just talking about, Mike, is fascinating. Dan says that Arndt can't really write a letter without making some reference to some sort of like, new medicine he's discovered or some new way of, like, giving health to people. So there's this already in, like, pre pietistic stuff. They're trying to take care of their health and their body and all of this.

[Justin Holcomb]

They were alchemists most.

[Bob Hiller]

Yeah, that's. That's. Dan says, and at best he was a pharmacist, and at worst he was an alchemist. But I think that's interesting. But there's also this tied into all of it. And I think you brought this up. And I think this is so important. Their missionary zeal is good. It's also very post millennial. Like they are convinced that they are about to make the world a Christian place. And so there does become, I think, and we'll get into this in later episodes in this series, but here you start to see the seedbed of the Enlightenment that we actually have. Something that's going to make this world sort of this great utopia on earth. And so the missionary zeal on the one hand is great because you're preaching Christ to the nations, on the other hand is so morally focused that the preaching of Christ becomes secondary to the reform of the community around you. And then ultimately, when you get to the Enlightenment, that just pushes Christ out completely.

[Justin Holcomb]

Yeah. What's ironic here is they so emphasized the inner light. And Paul Tillich, not my favorite theologian, but good historian of dogma, Paul Tillich, said the Enlightenment dogma of inner reason is the child of the pietist doctrine of the inner light.

[Bob Hiller]

Oh, interesting.

[Justin Holcomb]

And it's true. Once you basically religion goes indoors, and first it's identified with the inner light, the Holy Spirit speaking in my heart rather than in ink and paper. And then that inner spark of divinity becomes reason. In the Enlightenment, all of the major, certainly German leaders of the Enlightenment were Pietists. They were raised in pietist backgrounds, all of them. And so you can see that transition, a secularizing of this almost Pentecostal, if we may say, doctrine of the Holy Spirit speaking in my heart and identifying the Holy Spirit with my inner Spirit, that just is a step away from identifying the Holy Spirit with universal reason. So that is a way in which this turn inward created the individualism and autonomy that became a hallmark really, of the modern world.

[Bob Hiller]

So do you guys. Where do you. Do we see this sort of thing, like in the church now? Where do we see this sort of thing?

[Justin Holcomb]

Or don't we see it all over the place?

[Bob Hiller]

That's probably a better way of asking the question.

[Walter Strickland]

You have the gains and the losses. You have the missionary zeal, philanthropy, but then you have this narrowing of the church to the small groups. You have the sidelining of confessional scaffolding to guard the gospel. You see it in the questions of how does this text. How do you feel about this text? I mean, there's nothing wrong with asking how the Scriptures would make you feel, but when that's the only question, or the main focus of that is not really what's the meaning of the text? What's God's meaning of the text? What does the text actually mean in itself, but turning the Scriptures into a mirror of my interior life as opposed to a window into God's redemptive saving acts, that shift of rich, no heightened attention to devotion, restless activism and recurring assurance struggles. And then we go, okay, well, maybe it's going to be. Maybe discipleship's the answer. Maybe if I focus on discipleship or some other thing, as opposed to the objective empty tomb, cross, all of that. So again, as soon as Mike said it, it just kind of clicked again. It's the recentering of Christ for us and the Word and sacraments to Christ in us that flows as fruit.

[Justin Holcomb]

And what you guys are hinting at all throughout this is we're really talking about from at least a confessional perspective. What we're really talking about here is a return to a kind of Roman Catholic piety, a medieval piety, where, as you said, Bob, for instance, Hermann Bovinck explains well that in medieval piety, it's not gnostic. It's not that our work in the world is sinful. It's not that being married is wrong, we should all be celibate. It's that the celibate life of the priest and monk and nun, the celibate life is higher as grace is higher than nature. And the Reformation stepped in to mess all that up by affirming the integration of nature and grace and so on and so forth. And the value of our callings in the world, whether it's marriage and family or we're going to work on Monday and suffering, whatever it is we're going through, that's a calling, a vocation. It was a new idea. It was a new idea. So on one hand you have this kind of monastic piety where again, it's okay to be an average Christian who goes to church, it's better to be a spiritual Christian who's part of the pietist conventicle. And what's ironic here is that the monk really becomes the social transformer of the early modern period. So it's not a lot of times the pietists are described as navel gazing, self obsessed, monkish kinds of people who didn't really care about the world. That's not true at all.

[Bob Hiller]

No.

[Justin Holcomb]

As you say, Bob, they were post millennialists. They believed that they were going to transform the world. So on one hand it's all inward, it's inside me and they focus on the Christ within. On the other hand, that drives them to tremendous activism in the world, founding hospitals, all kinds of things that were beneficial to other people. And yet that once again a good thing. The fruit of righteousness became the root of righteousness. And now people began to shift their focus from, from Christ for me and for us to Christ the renovator of the world. That was Jan Amos Cominius, the presiding bishop of the Moravian Brethren. He made that point that while affirming justification, while affirming Christ saving us outside of ourselves, 2,000 years ago, he shifted the balance to Christ the renovator of the world. And again, it's not a question of denial, it's a question of shifting the focus from the root to the fruit. And then eventually in the social gospel in America, you only have the fruit. And as Friedrich Nietzsche noticed, moderns didn't seem to realize you can't have the fruit without the tree.

[Adriel Sanchez]

Yeah, that's good, Bobby. Were just asking for even more contemporary expressions of this. I do think that Baptist, because of our one of Our distinctives causes us to have a little bit of pause here. And this is the one, the distinctive of regenerate church membership. So what that means for all of you guys out there is that somebody is a member of a church because of a credible declaration of Christ as Lord. And in practice, what that often looks like is somebody, you know, in churches that want to be very careful about this, to actually have regenerate church members. Somebody gives a affirmation of they want to join the church. And then there's a period of, you know, us watching their lives. But then at that point, there can be a tendency, it doesn't have to be this way, but there can be a tendency to mistake the fruit for the root. Yeah. To have somebody who does not have a clear saving declaration of Christ as Lord, doesn't really understand fully what they are asserting as far as the lordship of Christ and his death and resurrection on their behalf and those sorts of essential doctrines, but simply a spiritualism that has enthusiasm and vigor towards the Lord and towards spiritual things. And so what I would just caution Baptists out there is to not confuse a lot of spiritual enthusiasm and energy for genuinely knowing Christ is Lord. And let's not forget the declaration of what that means, that someone has to articulate that gospel, that transformative reality, and where that comes from. And then it is. We see it in the fruit, not just the fruit, as the litmus test for being a regenerate church member.

[Bob Hiller]

This is great, guys. I think as we kind of close up, it's worth thinking a little bit about what pietism has done. I think pietism has opened some eyes, at least in its point in history. It helped open the eyes some problems that can arise within the church. And it did help see ways to confront significant cultural problems that had to be addressed. And the zeal for mission is phenomenal. But the struggle I always have with pietism is it seeks to develop a Christianity that focuses so much on the inner life of the Christian that Christ becomes secondary. Now, they might be right to say that Christianity runs into dangers when it focuses too much on the head. But the right answer to that is not to focus too much on the heart, because a focus on either of those is a focus within faithful. Christianity fixes our eyes on Jesus. It aims at preaching Christ in him, crucified law and gospel, which kills the idols of head and heart and renews our minds and replaces our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh. It is more concerned about the ears, what fills them, and the eyes where they are fixed, that is to say it is more concerned with Jesus. Ultimately, Christianity is not about what you think or feel, but about what God says and does in Christ for you, about how he died and rose for you and sustained you into everlasting life. So stop looking at your pious little belly and fix your eyes on Jesus. He's the One who started, and he's the one who finishes your faith.

[Dr. Michael Horton]

Here at Sola, we encourage disciples and equip disciple makers by drawing on the riches of the Reformation to apply historic Christian theology to all of faith and life. Our work is only possible thanks to the generosity of thousands of supporters across the world. In order to keep our resources free, we need your support. Will you prayerfully consider a donation to help us equip and encourage even more people to grow in knowing God and seeing everything in his light? If so, please visit solarmedia.org donate.