Theology/Denomination Tags

I am really pleased that Logos is branching out and hiring all these different Product Managers with a focus on different Christian audiences.

I agree, this is very good news.

I expect we will see even more of these people on board as Logos continues to grow.

I sure hope so! With Anabaptist resources slowly growing, I would love to see a product manager who could bring cooperation between Logos and some primarily Anabaptist publishers even though most of them are fairly small and do not produce many large works.

Lynden, I've heard that you guys in the Bahamas are really strong Logos users. I'll have to connect with you as soon as I get settled in Bellingham. My guess is that I won't be going to the Bahamas anytime soon! But thanks for the invitation!

Martin

Great list, Andrew!

For Assemblies of God higher education institutions (Stateside, anyhow), I suggest adding the following:

» Caribbean Theological College; Bayamon, Puerto Rico

» Global University (formerly Berean School of the Bible); Springfield, Missouri

» Latin American Bible Institute, Texas; San Antonio, Texas

» Western Bible College; Phoenix, Arizona

Regards,

Rich

Another point: while reading the recently shipped "Angels, Worms and Bogeys" (nice title for a theological monograph), I thought it might be helpful to build a collection on Pietism. My initial rule draft:

author:(spener, francke, arndt) OR pietism

Good idea. I'd change pietism to pietis, though, so it catches both pietism and pietist. One other book that change picked up in in my library was The Founders of the New Devotion: Being the Lives of Gerard Groote, Florentius Radewin and Their Followers by Thomas à Kempis, which mentions "The Brethren of the Common Life," "a Roman Catholic pietist community dedicated to living simple lives in dedication to Jesus Christ." Maybe that doesn't fit within your mental category of Pietism (you might be restricting it to German Protestant Pietism), but there are other figures who could also be included: Zinzendorf and the Moravians.

Thomas à Kempis. The Founders of the New Devotion: Being the Lives of Gerard Groote, Florentius Radewin and Their Followers. Translated by J. P. Arthur. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd., 1905.

The Moravians are certainly related - I now have a separate category for them - but my mental category is some what fuzzy. It would certainly include non-German pietists, however so far I wouldn't simply lump all movements that stressed piety (such as a conversion or dedication to the Lord, a changed lifestyle and a somewhat community-oriented faith) into this category - Jansenists, the Anabaptists etc. I wouldn't tag as Pietist. 

Some people claim that pietism was/is one of the strongest theological currents and that large parts of the evangelical ethos could be traced back to pietist influence. Except for the connection via Wesley and the Methodists I don't see much in my Logos library to this end, and I'm wondering if I just don't see it, if it's not there (and I need to buy more books, or more non-Logos books) or if there are no books - e.g. because the pietists lived their faith rather than to write endlessly about it - or if the non-German pietists simply went under other names, since the word "pietist" seems to be four-lettered for so many people.

Yeah, I too wasn't sure whether the category should be broad or narrow. I'd only thought of Wesley and the Methodists as direct descendants of the German Pietists. Yes, there is a strand of pietism running deep through much of evangelicalism, but I wouldn't consider it all to be "big P" "Pietism."

The only books that are definitively from a Pietist perspective that I have in my print library are Arndt's True Christianity and Spener's Pia Desideria, both of which are classics. The latter is in pre-pub shipping in a little over a week. The former is still sorely lacking in Logos. I don't have anything by Francke.

Looks like God's Glory, Neighbor's Good: A Brief Introduction to the Life and Writings of August Hermann Francke might be good for Logos to try to get. It is mentioned in several Logos resources I have.

There is a whole chapters on "The Awakenings of Eighteenth-Century Pietism" in Hughes Oliphant Old's The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, Volume 5: Moderatism, Pietism, and Awakening. Here are the characters named in it with their own section headings:

I. Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705)
II. August Hermann Francke (1663-1727)
III. Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687-1752)
IV. Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen (1692-1747)
V. Gilbert Tennent (1703-64)
VI. John Wesley (1703-91)
VII. George Whitefield (1714-70)
VIII. Samuel Davies (1723-61)

He omits Arndt who was earlier, and says "Arndt belongs to the age of Lutheran orthodoxy even if he was a powerful inspiration to the pietists."

That's probably where I'd draw the boundaries of Pietiesm for this collection rule, though Methodism deserves its own separate collection. (I guess that's what "Arminian (Wesleyan)" covers?)

Coming to this discussion from an American Lutheran perspective, historically there are pietistic roots in just about every branch of Lutheranism here - even when we don't admit it.  The thing is that both "Lutheran Orthodoxy" and "Pietism" can be mean quite different things to different people.  It seems that the discussion in both was rather diverse. In some works it is difficult to decide on which side people like Johann Ardnt, Johann Gerhard, and Paul Gerhardt fall.  It seems that both protestant orthodoxy and pietism were richer than our textbooks describe.

Henry M. Muehlenberg was a student of Francke's son at Halle, and sent over to the colonies to organize and preach to the German Lutherans, and so his journals and reports back to Halle would be of interest.  And so the 18th Century figures here were pietists of various stripes.  After a brief flirtation with Liberalism/Rationalism in figures like Quitman (which evidently was also in Halle after Francke - heck - Pietism was a huge influence on Schleiermacher - the father of Liberal theology), North Americans went different directions.  Many of the "east coast" Lutheran debates in the 19th century were about the meaning of that pietist legacy.  One side emphasized the Lutheran roots (eg. Krauth, Mann) and another the openness to fresh understandings with others (eg. S.S. Schmucker, Sprecker, and Kurtz).  But all were pietists of various flavors.

Back in Germany, there was a confessional revial happening in Pietists like Harless and Loehe, and in general Erlangen University who were discovering a richness in orthodoxy to at least compliment the pietism in which they had come up.  Loehe sent quite a few men over to to be teachers or pastors if called by congregations, and so had a great influence on the Ohio, Missouri, and Iowa Synods in the midwest.

CFW Walther, founder of the Missouri Synod, was a pietist who found that pietism didn't work for him - and found answers to his problems in reading Luther directly.  He energetically wrote in multiple (German language) periodicals his whole life to spread this wisdom.  But even when he is attacking pietism in works like Law and Gospel, there is a still a pietistic warmth behind it - and a deep desire for a pious ministry and pious membership.

And then there are the various Scandinavians...  Grundvig, Hauge...  And of course the facinating novel of Bo Giertz, The Hammer of God which talks extensively about various "pietist" movements in all three sub-novels.

Thank You, Andrew!                I truly appreciate your work of love and your sharings with your Brothers and Sisters on these Logos Forums..    thank you very much indeed!                  *smile*

                                                                                Psalm 29:11

Andrew!          *smile*                      May God's Peace constantly flood your very being! .... and keep you in Great and Abundant Joy!

                I, for one, appreciate the incredible work you are doing that benefits the whole Logos Forums Community!                       

                                          All I can do is to say, Thank you very kindly!

AND          To thank our Gracious God as I use the work you have shared with us!

Ralph Wardlaw seemed to be Congregational, rather than Presbyterian, though he grew up Presbyterian.

As I read Wikipedia, they define him as Presbyterian with an independent congregational bent ... I would defer to others on him.

The church in New England that I grew up in was Congregational (a member of the CCCC -- Conservative Congregational Christian Conference) but it was a church plant from a Presbyterian church and I believe that their theologies are pretty much the same, though church polity differs.

From Wikipedia: "The history of Congregational churches in the United States is closely intertwined with that of American Presbyterianism, especially in New England where Congregationalist influence spilled over into Presbyterian churches farther west."

But Wikipedia says Wardlaw was from Scotland, so the New England characteristic intertwining of Congregational and Presbyterian might not apply.

Thanks for this, Lynden. Your expertise and participation are a real blessing on this forum.