Those are all things forming departures, sometimes considerable, from both the doctrine and practice of the Reformers. But compared with the movements which Ritschl does not include in his treatment, especially the English Puritans, they form, except for No. 3, only a continuation of tendencies which lay in the whole line of development of this religion. The objectivity of Ritschl’s treatment suffers from the fact that the great scholar allows his personal attitude towards the Church or, perhaps better, religious policy, to enter in, and, in his antipathy to all peculiarly ascetic forms of religion, interprets any development in that direction as a step back into Catholicism. But, like Catholicism, the older Protestantism included all sorts and conditions of men. But that did not prevent the Catholic Church from repudiating rigorous worldly asceticism in the form of Jansenism; just as Pietism repudiated the peculiar Catholic Quietism of the seventeenth century. From our special viewpoint Pietism differs not in degree, but in kind from Calvinism only when the increasing fear of the world leads to flight from ordinary economic life and the formation of monastic-communistic conventicles (Labadie). Or, which has been attributed to certain extreme Pietists by their contemporaries, they were led deliberately to neglect worldly duties in favour of contemplation. This naturally happened with particular frequency when contemplation began to assume the character which Ritschl calls Bernardism, because it suggests St. Bernard’s interpretation of the Song of Songs: a mystical, emotional form of religion seeking the unio mystica with an esoteric sexual tinge. Even from the viewpoint of religious psychology alone this is undoubtedly something quite different from Calvinism, including its ascetic form exemplified by men like Voet. Ritschl, however, everywhere attempts to connect this quietism with the Pietist asceticism and thus to bring the latter under the same indictment; in doing so he puts his finger on every quotation from Catholic mysticism or asceticism which he can find in Pietist literature. But English and Dutch moralists and theologians who are quite beyond suspicion cite Bernard, Bonaventura, and Thomas à Kempis. The relationship of all the Reformation Churches to the Catholic past was very complex and, according to the point of view which is emphasized, one or another appears most closely related to Catholicism or certain sides of it. ↩
The illuminating article on “Pietism” by Mirbt in the third edition of the Realenzyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, treats the origin of Pietism, leaving its Protestant antecedents entirely on one side, as a purely personal religious experience of Spener, which is somewhat improbable. As an introduction to Pietism, Gustav Freytag’s description in Bilder der deutschen Vergangenheit is still worth reading. For the beginnings of English Pietism in the contemporary literature, compare W. Whitaker, Prima Institutio disciplinaque pietatis (1570). ↩
It is well known that this attitude made it possible for Pietism to be one of the main forces behind the idea of toleration. At this point we may insert a few remarks on that subject. In the West its historical origin, if we omit the humanistic indifference of the Enlightenment, which in itself has never had great practical influence, is to be found in the following principal sources: (1) Purely political expediency (type: William of Orange). (2) Mercantilism (especially clear for the City of Amsterdam, but also typical of numerous cities, landlords, and rulers who received the members of sects as valuable for economic progress). (3) The radical wing of Calvinism. Predestination made it fundamentally impossible for the State really to promote religion by intolerance. It could not thereby save a single soul. Only the idea of the glory of God gave the Church occasion to claim its help in the suppression of heresy. Now the greater the emphasis on the membership of the preacher, and all those that partook of the communion, in the elect, the more intolerable became the interference of the State in the appointment of the clergy. For clerical positions were often granted as benefices to men from the universities only because of their theological training, though they might be personally unregenerate. In general, any interference in the affairs of the religious community by those in political power, whose conduct might often be unsatisfactory, was resented. Reformed Pietism strengthened this tendency by weakening the emphasis on doctrinal orthodoxy and by gradually undermining the principle of extra ecclesiam nulla salus.
Calvin had regarded the subjection of the damned to the divine supervision of the Church as alone consistent with the glory of God; in New England the attempt was made to constitute the Church as an aristocracy of proved saints. Even the radical Independents, however, repudiated every interference of temporal or any sort of hierarchical powers with the proof of salvation which was only possible within the individual community. The idea that the glory of God requires the subjection of the damned to the discipline of the Church was gradually superseded by the other idca, which was present from the beginning and became gradually more prominent, that it was an insult to His glory to partake of the Communion with one rejected by God. That necessarily led to voluntarism, for it led to the believers’ Church the religious community which included only the twice-born. Calvinistic Baptism, to which, for instance, the leader of the Parliament of Saints Praisegod Barebones belonged, drew the consequences of this line of thought with great emphasis. Cromwell’s army upheld the liberty of conscience and the parliament of saints even advocated the separation of Church and State, because its members were good Pietists, thus on positive religious grounds. (4) The Baptist sects, which we shall discuss later, have from the beginning of their history most strongly and consistently maintained the principle that only those personally regenerated could be admitted to the Church. Hence they repudiated every conception of
