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PHILIPP JAKOB SPENER: Pietism's Treadmill Leads to Assurance-based Performance and Moralism
By Chuck Collins
www.virtueonline.org
February 5, 2024
Personal piety is great, but pietism is just awful. It's heavy lifting and oppressive, and in the end, it is an impossible load. Much of the 17th century Pietistic Movement carries over into the church today, bending the church's attention from what God has done for us in his Son (the gospel), to what we should do for God (the law without gospel).
PHILIPP JAKOB SPENER died February 5, 1705. He best personifies the spirit of German Lutheran Pietism. Like all movements, Pietism started with the best of intentions: to promote personal holiness and methods for spiritual growth. It sought to extend the 16th century Reformation into 17th century individual experience and practice - to put legs on the theological revolution call the Reformation. "Enough talk about doctrine, you crazy Lutheran reformers; let's apply this stuff to our lives!" Very quickly this man-made system of spiritual growth changed the face of Christianity from assurance of salvation because of our identity in Christ, to assurance based on our performance.
Pietism signals the rise of moralism (deeds over creeds) that has become today's evangelicalism! Are you deeper with God than you were a year ago (usually whispered in a low judging voice)? Are you more like Jesus? How are your quiet-times? Are you making converts and planting more churches? If you walk into a church and Richard Foster's "Celebration of Discipline" is the book-of-the-month featured in the bookstore, and the preacher is in a five-week series on "Steps to Improve Your Marriage," you probably have walked into the clutches of Pietism.
In his book "Pia Desideria" (Heartfelt Desire for God-pleasing Reform), Philipp Spener gave six proposals meant to lead to holy living and spiritual vitality. This is Pietism's manifesto and it can be boiled down to: "try harder to be a better Christian," and "correct theology is less important than experiencing God."
So, what's wrong with the rise of moralism, and rules and exercises for holy living and holy dying (Jeremy Taylor, 1650), and a serious call to a devout and holy life (William Law, 1728)? Pietism makes Christianity about the individual - about me - and about my fulfillment, rather than about God's glory. It focuses on duty and obedience as the way to earn God's respect and admiration rather than "trusting" that he is not mad and that he delights and sings over us as his very own children. When we experience his one-way-love it then becomes our natural impulse to respond and obey, this time from a changed heart.
Pietism's treadmill view of Christianity is exhausting and never enough, when all the while his invitation to us is to come to him and rest (Matthew 11:28). Rest describes our initial encounter with God, but it also is the place from which comes all service, all loving our neighbor, and all beneficial exercising of spiritual discipline.
Practices of piety are great. Praying, worshipping with your church family, reading the Bible, and planting new churches to reach the lost are wonderful habits of the heart that lead us more and more into the presence of God. But never can the "things we do" be anything other than the fruit that follows from our faithful reception of God's loving kindness (Articles of Religion 12 & 13).
The spiritual disciplines are only beneficial when they come from a heart changed by love, otherwise they become badges of pride, judgment, and pharisaism. Sermons that dispense instruction and give self-help advice only confirm our inadequacies. But sermons that bring us to Christ, are always transformational.
Canon Chuck Collins is the author of Reformation Anglicanism: Beautiful, Generous, Beautiful. You can purchase it here: https://www.amazon.com/Reformation-Anglicanism-Biblical-Generous-Beautiful/dp/0986044148
