Post by PJ, #1: Reading Wallmann's "Pietismus und Orthodoxie"

[the original post can be found at Pietismus.blogspot.com]

With the dissertation behind me, I decided to return to an article my first mentor at the IEG recommended I read before attempting any investigations into August Hermann Francke’s theology: Johannes Wallmann’s “Pietismus und Orthodoxie.”*  It was written at the time as a review of Pietism scholarship, but still holds invaluable insight into understanding Pietism.**  So, I thought I would bullet a two interesting things that jumped out at me during this read:

• Wallmann reminds us that the phrase “Lutheran Orthodoxy” is much more fluid and complex as we tend to think it.  Although there have been attempts by scholars to construct a “Reform” party within seventeenth-century Lutheranism, those members who are grafted into it do not always fit the mold of those opposing the work of Lutheran Orthodoxy.  We need to be clear and careful when we draw lines between religious figures within the same confession.  There is much more fluidity in thought than we tend to recognize.  See for instance Hans Schneider’s German Radical Pietism.
• We need to keep the influence of eschatology in the back of our minds as we read Pietist writings.  The “hope of better times” in Spener’s theology played a role in how he formulated church reform.

* a reprint of Wallmann’s article is found in Martin Gerschat, ed. Zur Neueren Pietismusforschung

** yes folks, I capitalize the “P”