Luther, Spener, and Medieval Mysticism
Lutheran Weirdos: a Minority Report 2
In a previous post, I wrote a little bit about definitions of pietism. Some people characterize it a little more theologically; others think about it more historically. I tend to be within the latter camp, since I’ve found the way we’ve been taught to think about pietism doesn’t really match up with what the pietists actually wrote. Of course, there are some pietists, like Auguste Francke, who were rigid rigorists, who denied people the Lord’s Supper for being too ‘worldly’ and made spiritual hierarchies within the church, stressing the necessity of a born-again experience. I invoke Francke because this seems to be characteristic of especially his brand of “Halle Pietism”—which was more institutional and aggressive than other forms of Lutheran pietism. But Francke was the student of Philip J. Spener, who was one of the founders of Frankfurt Pietism. Frankfurt Pietism was a churchly movement, based in the need for reform within the government-run church establishments. Spener did not stress the punctiliar moment of salvation (when one was born again), nor did he approve of Francke’s church-within-a-church mentality. And furthermore, he did not think of the spiritual life as anything but the product of grace, nor did he think his project was widely different from that of Luther, himself.
In fact, according to K. James Stein, Spener saw his project as continuous with the project of Luther.[1] Before, these comments weren’t taken very seriously. In America, Luther and Spener are considered to be fairly discontinuous thinkers. Even in Shantz’s large volume of contemporary pietist research, he argues that Pietism ushered in a “New Paradigm” that is incongruous with Luther and the Reformation.
But this in large part is due to the scholarship of Albrecht Ritschl. Ritschl’s neokantian reduction of Lutheran theology to an anti-speculative, anti-mystical, and anti-pietistic edifice of moral theology has been deeply significant for the self-understanding of Lutheran theologians in America today. Lutheran neo-kantians after Ritschl minimized the more mystical, pietistic, and speculative dimensions of Luther’s thought to the point of practical nonexistence—and this has left a large historical question mark looming over the relationship between Luther, Early Modernity, and the process of European Seculatization.
Postliberal Lutheran theologians, such as Dr. David S. Yeago and Dr. Christine Helmer have questioned the dominance of these Neo-kantian readings in the American and European academies. Finish Scholars such as Tuomo Mannerma and Olli-Pekka Vainio further challenge the specifically anti-metaphysical readings of Luther’s theology of faith, exploring its similarity with Eastern concepts of theosis. These new readings of Luther explore the Reformer’s rootedness in the Medieval and Humanist movements and allow us to reevaluate his connection not only with patristic and medieval sources, but also humanist and early modern writers, too.
Now that the dominance of German Lutheran Scholarship is beginning to shift in parts of the American academy, it’s become easier for us to evaluate claims about the continuity between Luther and Lutheran Pietism. I plan to take full advantage of this state of affairs in this post here. Postliberal and Finish Luther scholarship have opened up a way to read a continuity between Luther and Spener—the thinkers have much more in common than is normally realized. In this post, I’ll look specifically at their configuration of the Simul Iustus et Peccator and their use of medieval mysticism.
Let’s start with the Simul. It is growing more and more difficult to deny that Luther taught both the ‘whole’ and ‘partial’ simul. What does this mean? The Simul is shorthand for the phrase: simul iustus et peccator, that is, simultaneously just and sinner. Luther saw the human predicament in terms of two problems: the fall caused both the corruption of the human nature and the entirety of human life to be under divine wrath. When one is justified, Luther was concerned to teach clearly about the change that occurred. When human beings are justified, they live a double reality, as wholly saints (totus iustus) and wholly sinners (totus peccator). Once the believer is united with Christ by faith, Christ covers all of his sins, and God is no longer wrathful with him. Though he is not actually sinless (and is indeed before God ‘totally sinful’), he is reckoned as sinless and righteous because he is in Christ. The believer’s righteousness is therefore an imputed righteousness—it comes from without, from his participation in Christ, and is not earned by any of his actions (which, apart from Christ, are ‘sin’). The believer is in this sense simul iustus et peccator, simultaneously a just man and a sinner, characterized by this double identity.
But Luther didn’t just stop there. He also had a comprehensive view of the Christian life, which rests on what is called the partim. Luther believed that every believer is not only totally a saint and totally a sinner—he also taught that every believer is also partially a saint and partially a sinner, with the hope that one will be less and less sinful through the pedagogy of the Holy Spirit. This partim simul is based on the totus simul: when one is “in Christ”, one receives the Holy Spirit, who brings about a healing of one’s corrupted nature. The Christian life in this sense has a form and a direction—though it is not a “getting away” from grace, but rather a life that has been ordered from grace by grace to grace, a common feature of the Augustinian tradition.
The partim of course is controversial among American Luther scholars today. But in the Anti-Latimus, Luther is quite adamant that there is a partial and progressive righteousness that Christians are called to in this life. He says that the reason that Christians receive the Spirit is for the purpose of renovation; that Christ not only wants to do away with our guilt, but he also wants to heal our corrupt nature, gradually, until it is fully restored on the last day.
Spener follows this argument fairly closely. Stein says that the Pietist leader’s understanding of Rebirth can be characterized by three movements, which happen simultaneously: faith, justification, and the restoration of the image of God. God creates faith in the heart; the believer receives forgiveness, justification, and adoption; and the believer begins to receive a new nature. Another way to look at these three movements might be through the categories of union, redemption, and purgation. The believer is united to God by faith; because of this, he is both fully forgiven his sins (the ‘totus’ simul) and granted the Holy Spirit for the renovation of his nature (the ‘partim’ simul). Spener connects the union and redemption of the believer with the believer’s baptism and repentance (again, just like Luther!). He connects the renovation of the believer’s nature with continued reception of the Lord’s Supper.
But how does this purgation work? Spener follows Luther here again, with his own theological reading of the medieval theological tradition. Luther especially appreciated the insights of Augustine, Bernard, the Theologia Germanica and Johannes Tauler; Spener follows this thread, appropriating the Augustinian tradition’s of mystics for language to talk about the Christian’s growth in righteousness, his erneuerung (renewal).[2] He says that the life of piety consists of the threefold mystical path: purification, illumination, and union with God. By this path, the human nature is healed, or, what amounts to the same thing, the image of God is restored.
Luther often characterized the path of sanctification as one of perpetual repentance. For example, the first of the ninety-five theses reads, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, ‘Repent'’ (Mt 4:17), he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.” The Christian life, for Luther, begins in Baptism—and baptism continues to work in us daily repentance. That is, we are constantly called and awakened to reject what is evil, our old man, and embrace Christ, whose Spirit is shaping us into a new man. Baptism and repentance, then, are the perpetual dying to sin and rising again with Christ, the purgation of the human nature.
Spener coordinates his understanding of the mystic path with Luther’s thoughts on repentance. The Christ life, the mystic path, is fundamentally a matter of “daily repentance.”[3] “By daily repentance,” he says, “we [are] ever more illuminated, and ever more united with God.” This is the proper way to read the medieval mystics; in fact, Spener says that we must cast aside anything else we might find in them.
Speaking of “casting away”: Spener is aware that a sifting is needed, just as the Lutheran Reformers sifted the writings of the Early Church. In Medieval mysticism, Spener warns, one will find platonic philosophy, papal idolatry, and even some examples of enthusiasm.
Though one may be skeptical of Spener’s insistence that readers of the medieval mystics can easily lay aside their platonism and their papism, what is more interesting is the way in which Spener shields mysticism from Luthern accusations of enthusiasm. First of all, he admits, yes, there are some enthusiasts among medieval mystics. But by and large, enthusiasm and mysticism are two different things.
Spener tells us that the Book of Concord clearly defines and condemns enthusiasm. He quotes three times from the Formula of Concord, first from FC SD II:5, and then with two supplemental citations from FC EP II.13.[4]
ancient as well as modern enthusiasts have taught that God converts a person through his spirit and brings him to saving knowledge of Christ without any created means or instrument, that is, without external proclamation and hearing of the word. (FC SD II:5)
they [Enthusiasts] imagine that God draws men to himself and enlightens them, justifies them, and makes them blessed without any means, without hearing the Word and without use of the Sacraments. (FC EP 2:13)
enthusiasts are those who await a divine revelation of the Spirit and despise the preaching of the divine word. (FC EP 2:13)
So an enthusiast is one who embraces rebirth without means. And one sometimes sees this in certain medieval mystics. But Spener wants to make it clear that this is not the same thing as mysticism, per se. A mystic is one who “experiences the working presence of the Holy Spirit, the sealing, the illumination (by virtue of which the Spirit brings to us from the truth created from the Word), the Spirit’s consolation, the loving taste of eternal things.”[5] This is what true mysticism is; and “all these things are indicated in the Holy Scripture and are promised to believers and thus are not empty fantasies.” Spener is adamant: “He is not an Enthusiast who rejoices in such experiences, and with all zeal, and by all holy means endeavors to share in them.” This is the goal of mysticism which is “placed before all in the Holy Scripture.”
Spener takes up one more objection before leaving off. Sometimes, the medieval mystics are criticized for their obscure or extrabiblical mode of expression.[6] Spener makes two comments here. First, if these expressions cause anyone to stumble, they can simply be left out or ignored. And yet—scholastic theology often employs extrabiblical terminology, and it doesn’t suffer the same criticism. At the end of the day, though, the terminology itself matters very little; what matters is rather following the teaching of the revealed word, which teaches us to daily repent, following after Jesus.
An aside, before I close. It is worth noting that Spener was not only in conversation with the medieval mystics. In the very same treatise, he recommends the writings of Johann Arndt, a Lutheran mystic deeply implicated in the tradition of spiritual alchemy.[7] Arndt was a close reader of Jacob Boehme, of whom he was contemporary, and Paracelsus, the “alchemical Luther.”[8] His writings were of course embraced by a wide range of theologians, from Scholastics to Separatists. Spener found a theology of inner renewal in Arndt that was compatible with his own vision of Christian renewal, sourced as it was in Luther’s theology of renovation and repentance.
Spener was also deeply indebted to others. Shantz makes it clear that Jean de Labadie, a nomadic separatist, had a deep impact on Spener’s famous conventicles.[9] And further, his colleague Johan Jakob Schultz and his correspondent Johanna Petersen were both instrumental in the creation and then further dissemination (and subsequent radicalization) of Frankfurt Pietism. Spener likewise had examples of medieval ressourcement in the Dutch Further Reformation movement, which may have set a precedent for his appropriation of medieval mysticism.
But I think that Luther often isn’t taken as a serious source for Lutheran pietism. And this is deeply problematic. Postliberal and Scandinavian Luther scholars have attempted to place Luther back within his medieval and humanist context; and this new perspective challenges the commonplace that Luther and Pietism work from separate or even opposed paradigms. Luther is much more concerned with the renovation of the human nature than post-Ritschlean Luther scholars admitted; he is deeply implicated in his medieval milieu, so much so that the tradition after him is able to draw from both medieval scholasticism and medieval monasticism and mysticism. The Pietists, especially Spener, are simply following their own tradition.
Luther and Spener are actually quite similar, when it comes to their theologies of the Christian life. Both men thought about salvation not only in terms of imputation, but also in terms of union with Christ by faith and the renovation of the human nature. Both men were also deeply implicated in the Augustinian tradition of Western theology, gaining seminal ideas and practices from what was passed down in western monasticism. And of course, both men were deeply immersed in a milieu of western mysticism, which led both to characterize the Christian life as one of perpetual repentance. These resonances are interesting, and they should make us pause to reconsider the relationship between the Lutheran Reformation, Lutheran Pietism, and their influence on the modern world today.
[1] K. James Smith, “Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705),” in The Pietists Theologians, ed. Carter Lindberg (Malden: Blackwell, 2005), 85.
[2] See Spener, “On Hinderances to Theological Study,” in Pietists: Selected Writings, ed. Peter C. Erb, (New York: Paulist, 1983), 68.
[3] Spener, “On Hinderances,” 70.
[4] Spener, “On Hinderances,” 69.
[5] Spener, “On Hinderances,” 69.
[6] Spener, “On Hinderances,” 70.
[7] Spener, “On Hinderances,” 70. Spener also structured his suggestions for Church reform in Pia Desiderata around what he found in both Luther and Arndt. See Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism: Protestant Renewal at the Dawn of the Modern Europe, (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2013), 89.
[8] See Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, 25-30.
[9] Shantz, An Introduction to German Pietism, 50.