1 of 7

It is customary to speak of the material principle and the formal principle of the Protestant Reformation. The material principle answers the question, “How are sinful human beings saved or justified before a holy God?” The answer: on the basis of Christ’s death alone, made possible by grace alone and received by distraught sinners by faith alone. This is the content of the gospel, the “material” of Christian life and thought as preached by Luther and Calvin.

The formal principle has to do with authority. On what basis can one know that God is gracious, that He freely wants to have mercy on people? The answer: on the basis of scripture alone.

Sweeping changes took place in the church following such theological reformations. There was no need for indulgences and purgatory. The teaching authority of the Pope was replaced by the authority of scripture alone. The mass was shorn of any notion of a redeeming sacrifice. It was now celebrated as a thanksgiving for a redeeming sacrifice completed. The words of institution, “This is my body… This is my blood” were more proclamation than consecration. The list could go on. The material of the faith and the formal character of authority underwent identical changes. They were simplified and made single: one redemption, namely by grace alone; one authority, namely scripture alone.

The twin principles of the Reformation figured highly in Pietism but not without change and development. The language of salvation changed from its forensic, legal character to a more biological and organic type of expression. No Pietist would deny or disregard the gospel of the justification of a sinner by the free grace of God. But a Pietist would express reservation as to the sufficiency of the language of justification to encompass the scope of God’s saving activity.

For one thing, it has a more formal than relational character to it. For another, it is more external than internal as regards its effects on people. It is the formal and external character that Johann Arndt, the “grandfather” of Pietism, came to recognize as a potential threat to the religious life. Arndt had noted that Luther’s preaching of the free grace of God, founded on Jesus’ complete sacrifice for sin and received in faith, had released people from fear. People had feared that their good works were not sufficient or done in the proper spirit leaving God displeased with them. People also feared long stints in purgatory and the power of the church over them and their eternal destiny.

In Arndt’s True Christianity, he lamented the opposite situation in his day. There was no fear of God at all. The people of the Lutheran lands had been baptized. catechized and communed. In all of this, the formal and external word of justification had freed them from the bondage of sin. What had happened was that the religious and the personal, experiential dimensions of justification by grace through faith were missing. What was missing was awe before a holy God —the God before whom Luther fell down as dead, and at the same time, a profound and mysterious gratitude for a grace that freely reached out to the alienated and to the wicked offering justification before God, self, and others. What Arndt saw as the perversion of justification we would call presumption. When the grace and mercy of a person are taken for granted, they are insulted and made fools of, or so it seems. Bonhoeffer called it “cheap grace.” The Pietists wanted to restore the religious and the personal/experiential dimensions to the relation between God and persons. If this could be done they reasoned, then a delicate, not a distressing fear would return to religious life. This fear is the fear of presuming on God’s grace or of taking God for granted. If that happens the link between grace and gratitude is severed.

next page... |  1 of 7

share this page

RSS Feed   RSS Help