432 Mark A. Granquist (Ed.) European Pietism Has Had a Substantial
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
432 Book Reviews Mark A. Granquist (ed.), Scandinavian Pietists: Spiritual Writings from 19th-Century Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland (New York, New York: Paulist Press, 2015) ix + 292 pp. $39.95 hardcover. European Pietism has had a substantial influence on Lutheran and Reformed groups in North America.Yet scholarship on these Pietist groups and their lead- ers is slim. The lack of accessible translations is partly to blame. Recently Mark Safstrom has contributed translations of Swedish Pietist Paul Peter Walden- ström’s Bunyanesque Squire Adamsson (2013) and a reader of Waldenström and fellow Swede Carl Olof Rosenius and (2015). While offering no fresh transla- tions, Mark Granquist’s Scandinavian Pietists collects an impressive range of devotional, theological, and pastoral writings from the most important Scandi- navian Pietists of the nineteenth century. The collection begins with Granquist’s accessible introduction. He helpfully orients readers to Scandinavian Christianization from the tenth through the fifteenth centuries, the spread of Lutheranism in the sixteenth century, and the emergence of Pietism in the seventeenth century. Indigenous Scandina- vian Pietism began in the eighteenth century but matured in the following century, which is the focus of this collection. Granquist provides useful distinc- tions between churchly pietists and separatists pietists, Moravian spirituality and Lutheran pietist spirituality. Although geography and language facilitated many cross-currents, Gran- quist organizes the writers by nation. This is useful in understanding how writ- ers in the same nation responded to each other. The debate between Finnish leaders Paavo Ruotsalainen and Fredrik Hedberg over the duration one should be burdened by the law is especially fascinating. The organization by nation is also helpful in appreciating how the revival movements within a nation evolved over time. For example, in Sweden, the state-church friendly move- ment of Rosenius became a separatist group under his successor Waldenström. Because hymnody was common property, a separate section of Scandinavian Pietist hymns closes the collection. The selections have been carefully chosen and edited to reveal both the com- mon threads and the intriguing range of thought among these leaders. The concern so many of these writers had for interacting with Luther’s thought reminds us where they felt their ultimate loyalties lay. But as might be expected of Spener’s heirs, the topics of sanctification and religious experience predom- inate. The Norwegian Hans Nielsen Hauge is typical in his “anxiety” about the state of his soul and the possibility of conversion. Rather than fighting Lutheran Orthodoxy, as the first generation German Pietists, the Scandinavian leaders lambasted the “dead faith” of “baptized pagans” and lack of moral verve among PNEUMA © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15700747-04003020 Book Reviews 433 leaders and laity alike, with some adopting the Anglo-American concerns over alcohol and gambling. The hymns of this movement show how earnestness can produce measured classics, like Carolina Sandell-Berg’s “Children of the Heavenly Father,” as well as overwrought oddities, like Berthe Canutte Aarflot’s, “Come Friends and Stand Beside My Gravestone.” Inheriting the interests of Lutheran Orthodoxy in the order of salvation (ordo salutis)—interests that were set on fire by German Pietism and Anglo evangelicalism—many of these writers have something to add on the subject. Since all of Pietism relies on a basic dualism between “awakened” believers and “nominal” Christians, the ordo salutis became the terminological battlefield, with distinctions between different kinds of faith, repentance, regeneration, and sanctification. Some, in a refreshing way, called a spade a spade. “The more we listen to the description of the scribes of what is called the ‘order of salva- tion,’” bemoaned the Danish leader N.F.S. Grundtvig, “the less we understand the matter” (113). Grundtvig’s nearly mystical belief in the power of the Church’s baptismal confession shows, furthermore, that the renewal movements also produced some genuinely original thought. Since David Reed’s ‘InJesus’Name’ (2008) scholars of Pentecostalism can bet- ter appreciate European Pietism as a root for Pentecostalism.While this volume does not venture any sustained interpretations about Scandinavian Pietism’s role in later movements, Pneuma readers will appreciate how these believers dealt with the familiar themes of renewal movements. As in Pentecostalism, Scandinavian Pietism bred a range of views on how the renewal should relate to the established churches, what role emotions played in faith, and to what degree the faithful should be categorized as members of a disinherited class. More suggestively, there is a strand of Jesus-centered piety in the thought of the Swedish leader Henric Schartau that might further support the notion of distant connections between Pietism and Oneness Pentecostalism. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this renewal movement also bred and responded to the practice of speaking in tongues. Unfortunately, this collection includes only criticism of the practice from Ruotsalainen, who writes, “I have had much to do with such speakers in tongues and other visionaries, but I have been victorious without too much trouble” (217). Before this collection, these English translations were scattered variously in out-of-print monographs, in-house denominational publications in some cases a century old, or an obscure M.Div. thesis. In one case, a single copy existed fortuitously in Luther Seminary’s library. Granquist has done a great service by bringing them into one volume. It is a welcome complement to Peter Erb’s volume for the same “Classics of Western Spirituality” series (1983). Any criti- cisms are minor. Occasionally, Granquist points out an intriguing element of a PNEUMA 40 (2018) 389–452.