A PROPHET OF INTERIOR LUTHERANISM: THE CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHANN ARNDT Daniel Ross van Voorhis A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD at the University of St. Andrews 2008 Full metadata for this item is available in Research@StAndrews:FullText at: http://research-repository.st-andrews.ac.uk/ Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: http://hdl.handle.net/10023/517 This item is protected by original copyright This item is licensed under a Creative Commons License A Prophet of Interior Lutheranism: the Correspondence of Johann Arndt Daniel Ross van Voorhis A Thesis submitted to the University of St. Andrews for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Submitted 15 July 2007 Abstract For over four hundred years historians and theologians have been unable to come to a consensus as to where Johann Arndt (1555-1621) fits on the spectrum of orthodoxy in the Lutheran church, what age he best represented, and how he should be understood. Arndt has been credited with reviving medieval mysticism, as being a subversive innovator within the Lutheran church, and as being the father of Pietism. All of this confusion seems to come from the variegated nature of his work. Arndt was willing and able to borrow from a variety of traditions as he sought to revive the church of the Reformation on the eve of the Thirty Years’ War. This work is an investigation into the private world of Arndt through his correspondence as he wrote to individuals with varying theological temperaments. In a sense this thesis follows the pioneering work of Friedrich Arndt, who attempted in 1838 to investigate Arndt’s self-understanding on the basis of his correspondence; his work, however, was severely limited by the fact that only ten letters were known at the time. The Verzeichnis der gedruckten Briefe deutscher Autoren des 17. Jahrhunderts published in 2002 listed twenty-three known letters of Arndt. For my research and using the footnotes and appendices of secondary literature on Arndt and with help from the Forschungsbibliothek in Gotha, I have collected fifty-two letters written by Arndt. This work is the first to treat the letters exhaustively and proposes to present a fuller biographical picture of Arndt and to explore his self-understanding as a prophet of spiritual renewal in the Lutheran church. I, Daniel van Voorhis, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 66,000 words in length has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me and that it has not been submitted in any previous application for a higher degree. Date: ________________ Signature of candidate:___________________ I was admitted as a research student in September, 2002 and as a candidate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in September, 2003; the higher study which this is a record was carried out in the University of St. Andrews between 2002 and 2007. Date: ________________ Signature of candidate:____________________ I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution and Regulations appropriate for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of St. Andrews and that the candidate is qualified to submit this thesis in application for that degree. Date:_________________ Signature of supervisor: ____________________ In submitting this thesis to the University of St. Andrews I understand that I am giving permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and abstract will be published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide library or research worker, that my thesis will be electronically accessible for personal or research use, and that the library has the right to migrate my thesis into new electronic forms as required to ensure continued access to my thesis. I have obtained third-party copyright permissions that may be required in order to allow such access and migration. Date: ________________ Signature of candidate:______________________ TABLE OF CONTENTS ABBREVIATIONS………………………………………………………i INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………….....1 JOHANN ARNDT IN THE JUDGEMENT OF LATER COMMENTATORS CHAPTER 1: JOHANN ARNDT: HERO OR HERETIC?.....................24 A LIFE OF JOHANN ARNDT ARNDT’S TRUE CHRISTIANITY CHAPTER 2: JOHANN ARNDT AS A CONFESSIONAL LUTHERAN……………………………………………………………56 POLITICAL TURMOIL IN THE EMPIRE (1546-1618) THEOLOGICAL TENSION (1546-1577) THE BOOK OF CONCORD AND A DEFINITION OF LUTHERAN ORTHODOXY ARNDT’S CONFESSIONAL CORRESPONDENCE CHAPTER 3: THE ECLECTIC ARNDT……………………………..105 ARNDT DEFINES ‘THE SPIRITUAL AUTHOR’ THE THEOLOGIA DEUTSCH THE SPIRITUALITY OF JOHANN ARNDT THE LEGACY OF ARNDT’S SPIRITUALITY IN THE 17TH CENTURY CHAPTER 4: THE PROPHETIC VOICE…………………………….135 THE EARLY MODERN PROPHET CONFESSIONAL PROPHETS DISSENTING PROPHETS ARNDT’S PROPHETIC CORRESPONDENCE CONCLUSION………………………………………………………..175 APPENDIX A…………………………………………………………181 LIST OF CORRESPONDENCE APPENDIX B…………………………………………………………185 TIMELINE AND PRINTED WORKS APPENDIX C………………………………………………...……….187 SELECTED LETTERS TRANSCRIBED BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………..205 ABBREVIATIONS AC Theodore Tappert (ed.), “The Augsburg Confession” in The Book of Concord (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 23-97. ADB Die Historische Commission bei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (eds), Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1967-1971). CWE Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto, 1976-) FC Theodore Tappert (ed.), “The Epitome to the Formula of Concord” in The Book of Concord (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 463-501. Fr. Arndt Friedrich Arndt, Johann Arndt- ein biographischer Versuch (Berlin, 1838). LW Martin Luther, Luther's Works, ed. J. Pelikan and H.T. Lehmann. (Pennsylvania, 1955 - 1986). NDB Die Historische Commission bei der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften (eds), Neue Deutsche Biographie (Berlin, 1953-). Rambach Johann Arndt, Johann Arnds Geistreicher Schriften und Werke, vol. III ed. Johann Jacob Rambach (Leipzig, 1736). Raidel Georgius Martinus Raidelius, Epistolae Virorum Eruditorum Ad Johannem Gerhardum (Norimbergae, 1740). WB Melchior Breller, Warhafftiger, glaubwurdiger und gründlicher Bericht von den vier Büchern vom Wahren Christenthumb Herrn Johannis Arndten auss den gefunden brieflichen Urkunden zusammen getragen (Lueneburg, 1625). WC Johann Arndt, Sechs Bücher vom wahren Christentum (Bielefeld, 1996) Introduction On 15 May 1621 Johann Arndt was buried at the Pfarrkirche in Celle. He had been an ordained Lutheran pastor for thirty-nine years and was sixty-six years old. Fifty-two of those years were unremarkable; in the last fourteen years of his life, however, he had laid the groundwork for becoming the most significant devotional author of the seventeenth century. Copies of his Vier Bücher von Wahren Christentum (True Christianity) were ubiquitous in the following centuries, whether in the homes of pious Christians or in the Universities. For the next three hundred and fifty years his image and his famous book were critiqued, extolled, and, at times, forgotten. Controversy surrounding Arndt did not die with him in 1621, as books were being written about True Christianity at a furious pace. He was regarded as either the most significant Reformer since Luther, or an uneducated and dangerous element within the Lutheran church. Based on the sudden drop off of works regarding Arndt in the 1630s it appeared that his place, and his role in the church would remain unresolved. While the occasional biography or analysis of his work appeared in the ensuing centuries, there has been in the last thirty years a resurgence in Arndt research. At the 1988 Symposion des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte a session was held in which two papers were presented concerning the place of Arndt in the Lutheran church. The lack of any consensus about Arndt’s place in post-Reformation Lutheranism was evident in the opposing views of the Reformer offered by Hans Schneider and Wolfgang Sommer, to which we will return. This dissertation explores the complexity of Johann Arndt as a churchman and writer through an examination of his correspondence. The work is based upon fifty-two surviving letters, which have been brought together here for the first time. Research in various German libraries has enabled me to locate letters that were largely unused by previous scholars. 1 Although this collection of Arndt’s letters pales in comparison to other sixteenth century contemporaries such as Melanchthon, Calvin and Bullinger, it provides access to his voice and a view of his character previously unknown. What emerges most strongly is Arndt’s profound and unshaken belief that he was a prophet of the church to his age. Repeatedly he told his correspondents that the Lutheran church desperately required a renewed spirituality if it was to face what he believed to be a distinct crisis of piety. Arndt however, was anything but one dimensional, and what the letters reveal is that he could speak in different tones. To his various correspondents with whom he communicated he revealed different aspects of himself and his thought. It is important to recognize that Arndt was not a systematic thinker; although he studied theology, as well as medicine, he was primarily a pastor who looked to writing as a means of spreading his message of ‘true’ Christianity. He could be very loose with his language, and he had little regard for what he referred to as ‘scholasticism’ or ‘disputational theology’, which meant the Lutheran theology of the Universities. Much of what has been written and thought about Johann Arndt has been based on his famous True Christianity (1606-1610). While this book was rightly seen as Arndt’s masterpiece, as we shall see, the argument of this thesis is that it only offers a partial view of the man. The letters enable us to see him as he lived, a preacher and writer who was frequently involved in conflict and forced to respond to controversy, in short Johann Arndt needs to be studied in context. The correspondence of Johann Arndt, this thesis argues, reveals the diversity of his character and activities.