Christian Life and Witness. Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf

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СКАЧАТЬ reject war, weapons, and all forms of violence, he nevertheless worked for the state. Thus, Zinzendorf walked the hallways engaging in conversation about Jesus with both colleagues and visitors. It must have been strange for many who came into the halls of power for state purposes to encounter this young count asking them questions like, “So then, how do you understand the Savior’s word to love our enemies?” But such questions he incessantly asked.

      He also held illegal religious meetings in his apartments. He would lead the gathered company in devotions and engage in theological argument with non-Lutherans.

      During this period he also acquired a printing press. There were strict laws governing publishing. In particular, all printed matter had to pass a government censor who represented the interests of both the state church and the government. The censor was one of Zinzendorf’s colleagues, occupying an office not far from Zinzendorf’s own. The Count used his press to write, publish, and distribute a weekly underground paper, which he called The Dresden Socrates. He did it all anonymously, of course. In this paper he was critical of the church and of the religious life of the people, and he raised probing questions about both. Meanwhile, the government embarked on a furious search for the author and distributor of this illegal publication, never discovering that he was one of them.

      It was also during this period, in September of 1722, that he married Erdmuth Dorothea, Countess Reuss. The Countess was known for her piety and devotion. He judged that she would make a good partner for him. At the beginning of their marriage he turned all financial affairs over to her. It was highly unusual in the eighteenth century for a woman to be in charge of finances. But it seemed even more radical when, in 1732, he gave her legal title to all his property (thereby making her the owner and not himself).

      It was also in 1722 that a band of ten religious refugees appeared on Zinzendorf’s estate. The Count approved their staying on his lands until a more permanent place could be found for them. He seems to have intended that they should eventually have moved to the lands of his father-in-law, Count Reuss, a Pietist who was already sheltering some religious dissenters. But this never happened. Instead, with the Count’s approval from Dresden, they began to build a small settlement on Zinzendorf’s lands.

      This community came to be called Herrnhut (the Lord’s watch). It began to attract religious dissenters of different kinds. Such people heard there was a place where they could live free of persecution. The story of the development of this community and of Zinzendorf’s engagement with and influence upon them is interesting in itself. Suffice it to say here, that the community became the vehicle for Zinzendorf’s adolescent pledge to preach the Gospel to every creature, and especially to those for whom no one else cared. After a stunning experience of the power and grace of God, this little community became an intrepid, irresistible legion of missionaries undaunted by disease, distance, risk, or death. And die they did, only to be replaced by new volunteers who joyously went to carry the news of the Savior. Within a decade this community of three hundred people had missionaries on every inhabited continent. True to Zinzendorf’s youthful promise, they went first to those places and peoples to whom no one else would go because the journey, the environment, or the people themselves were too dangerous. Moreover, these missionaries, lacking any theological training, were extraordinarily effective.

      Zinzendorf led the missionary effort and at the same time continued his engagement with the churches in Europe. He formed a society within the churches that transcended the boundaries of the confessions. His aim was to bring together those whose hearts were bound to the Savior through love. Some further communities modeled on Herrnhut were also formed. They constituted a renewal of the pre-Reformation Hussite church from Bohemia and Moravia. They quickly came to be called the “Moravian Brethren” or the “Moravian Church.” The intention was not to be a church alongside other churches. Rather, in Zinzendorf’s conception they were to be a fellowship, a leaven, within all the churches, calling people to the heart of the Gospel, to a response to God’s love in Jesus Christ that was passionately loving, and to a resulting love for people of all kinds, including and especially the excluded, the overlooked, and the neglected. Within Europe this produced concern for and activity on behalf of prisoners, the mentally ill, and the developmentally challenged.

      The Count seemed to be everywhere. His customary practice was to speak extemporaneously. Much of the material in his Hauptschriften (major writings) consists of transcripts of speeches given on various occasions for different purposes. His appearances, his speeches, the missionary activity, the trans-confessional societies, and his way of using language all provoked heated opposition from the Orthodox (with some exceptions, e.g., the theological faculty at Tübingen supported him) and from other Pietists. Nevertheless, he carried on. The speeches contained in the present volume come from the mature Zinzendorf. He gave them in Berlin at almost the midpoint of his adult life. His aim was to clarify the main point, the central point, of Christian life. He intended to do that by commenting on Luther’s explication of the second article of the creed, the one dealing with Jesus Christ.

      What did his thought contribute to the wider Christian community? First, the explosion into the world of those missionaries from Herrnhut and its related communities gave birth to modern Protestant missions. Subsequent missionary movements, and missionaries, were inspired and informed by this Zinzendorf and his Herrnhuters.

      Second, his effort to unite Christians across confessional boundaries on the basis of Jesus Christ himself was the impulse and idea that gave rise to the ecumenical movement. Some began to take his talk seriously. Moving along the trajectory of his language and thought, they pushed discussions of the meaning of the divisions between Christians, and the meaning of Christian community and Christian faith, in such a direction that two centuries later brought the ecumenical movement into being. Paradoxically, against his intention, this effort also brought the Lutheran Church in America into being. His idea of forming one Christian church in which each of the theological and liturgical traditions would remain and have their own integrity seemed very dangerous to his contemporaries. Thus, when he travelled to North America, Lutheran authorities in Germany who had before that time mostly ignored requests from America for a Lutheran pastor, immediately sent Muhlenberg to organize the Lutherans in America as a distinct and separate church, and to wrest them away from Zinzendorf’s influence.

      Third, he was a prolific writer of hymn texts and had a great impact on Western Christian hymnody. Under his direction the Moravian Fellowship was a musical band of missionaries.

      Fourth, in days when the great storm of the Reformation seemed to have burned down to a few coals, he called for faith to become again a living, blazing fire rather than a cold acceptance of doctrinal formulations and a formal adherence to socially accepted manners and morality.

      Of great significance was his engagement with the Enlightenment. This was many sided. There were features of that intellectual movement that he regarded as good and some that he rejected quite forcefully. He was in agreement, for theological reasons, with the Enlightenment’s call for religious toleration. Indeed, he preferred people who were passionate about and deeply devoted to what they regarded as holy to those who were casual or indifferent or, as he put it, “cold minded.” In contrast to many of his Christian contemporaries, he embraced biblical criticism. Anything that helps us better understand the texts that preach Christ to us was a good thing in his estimation. Thus, while many Christians feared and attacked early scholarly forays into historical criticism, Zinzendorf welcomed them as useful.

      Also, he loved the philosophical writings of Pierre Bayle, who is sometimes called the grandfather of the Enlightenment. He particularly loved Bayle’s merciless criticism of every human system, every intellectual pretense, and every confident claim to knowledge. He loved Bayle’s demand for plain speech and his refusal to whitewash matters either ethical or religious.

      Moreover, most, if not all, other Christian thinkers of the period engaged Enlightenment deism and atheism by trying to argue within the terms and limits set by Enlightenment thinkers. Christians accepted from these Enlightenment thinkers, mostly without СКАЧАТЬ