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When Theology Comes Alive
Living theology: that's what the 17th-century Pietists wanted to see. And so they invented church history.
Chris Armstrong | posted 8/08/2008 12:33PM
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An earlier version of this essay was given by Dr. Chris Armstrong (associate professor of church history, Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, and senior editor,Christian History & Biography) as a talk to the trustees of Bethel University on May 5, 2005.
Dorothy Sayers, a 20th-century, Oxford-educated dramatist, novelist, and lay theologian, wrote to wake up her sleeping Anglican church. She saw people inside and outside of the churches of her day completely unaware of how radical and powerful the gospel really is. And so she wrote essays, stories, and dramas that made the gospel come alive for people. She had a phrase she liked to use when she encountered people who thought church doctrine—"dogma" as it is still sometimes called—was dull and irrelevant. She would say, "The dogma is the drama!"
I love that. The dogma is the drama. What Sayers was reminding us was that if we are falling asleep in church, it is because we have no idea what dynamite we are sitting on.
And as I always remind my students, a wonderful place to go to see what happens when the Gospel's dynamite blows up in people's lives is Christian history. I'll put this idea in less violent form: Christian history is where theology comes to life.
As a historian working in a seminary, I have asked myself, who decided to make Christian history a part of Protestant seminary curriculums? Bible courses I understand. Theology is obvious. Preaching, counseling, Christian education all make immediate sense. But why Christian history?
To find the answer, we need to step into a time machine and travel to 17th-century Germany.
Quickly, we will see that theology was everything to Protestants of that time and place. Everywhere we find folks arguing heatedly over doctrine, sometimes to the point of violence. We find folks writing long confessional documents for other folks to sign. We find folks enforcing social barriers between their churches and other folks' churches, to make sure that their own pure theology is not contaminated.
Then along comes Philip Jakob Spener and his "Pietists." Spener—a universally respected Lutheran pastor—is appalled by the deadness and dryness and division and nastiness in the major Protestant confessions. He mourns over the age's theologia spinosa—"prickly theology." Christianity, Spener insists, is not just the memorization of catechisms and forms. Theology must be lived. It must be embodied in life. But too many Christian leaders are more concerned about being right than about being righteous.
Doing church differently
In pursuit of a living orthodoxy, Spener's Pietists created new practices. These innovations seem commonplace today—because they worked so well that they changed Protestant religion forever! Small-group Bible studies, spiritual formation programs at seminaries, ecumenical initiatives, lay engagement in spiritual disciplines … all came from the Pietists.
Unlike many modern conservative Protestants, the Pietists also modeled a heart religion with a social conscience. Their works of mercy, including inner-city ministries, orphanages, and hospitals, gave public form to their devotion.
I have said the Pietists changed theological studies. Every theological student, professor, and administrator needs to read Philip Jakob Spener's wise prescription for seminary reform in his brief book Pia Desideria. Centuries before today's trendy initiatives in "holistic" or "integrative" ministerial training, Spener insisted that spiritual formation stands with careful biblical scholarship as the twin pillars of a seminary education.
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