- IT is all the more improper to regard Schleiermacher as the leader of the theology of the nineteenth century, because alongside of the isolated results of his continued influence we find two compact schools quite heterogeneous to his—the school of Pietistic orthodoxy and that of philosophic radicalism. For these do not deduce their origin from Schleiermacher, though they may have taken some hints from him. The Pietistic-orthodox school seems in its roots to be connected with Schleiermacher, for they both have their origin in the Moravian brotherhood. On closer consideration, however, it becomes manifest that Schleiermacher’s doctrine of salvation is of another stamp than that which modern Pietism has taken from the Moravians. We enter upon a region that has hitherto been but little explored, in taking in hand to determine the theological influences of Pietism as a whole, and its influence upon the doctrines before us in particular. For this reason regard to chronology must be subordinated to the attainment of a way of arranging the subject that shall follow those positive points of view which are determined by distinguishing the various forms and gradations of Pietism. If we consider the goal which has been reached in the repristination of Lutheran orthodoxy, the Pietistic origin of that movement cannot be doubted, and is easy to prove. But this is the region of that modern Pietism within the Church, which as such does not date further back than the year 1817, and which has little in common with the older Pietism which arose with Spener. This last connects effort after personal sanctity, in withdrawing from the world as entirely as possible, with a peculiar and individually attained assurance of salvation, and aims at or secures both in closer union with like-minded persons who continue to be more or less indifferent to the Church forms of fellowship. (See above, p. 330.) Now herein lies the difficulty of historically mastering this field, that this religious and moral life in its very nature withdraws from publicity, and that therefore the theological literature which accompanies it, and the controversies which are carried on, assume a remoter relation to the praxis of the party than is usual in other cases, and really throw very little light upon it. Nay, we must doubt whether the method of individual assurance of salvation, which originally constitutes the problem of the older Pietism, has more occupied the “quiet in the land” than has their effort after sanctity, and to keep themselves unspotted from the world. For very distinct proofs are to be met with that in these circles the assurance of salvation has gradually come to be subordinated to sanctity, and made to depend on it.
For this reason the method of penitential exercise, by which the Pietists of Halle met the proper and original problem of Pietism, and that too in accord with the dogmatic premisses of Lutheranism, was after all only an episode in the history of that school. When it was only attempted, as was the case in the earliest Pietism, to realize the precepts enjoined in the Lutheran doctrine of pœnitentia, in order thereby to gain the assurance that the faith which has been attained is a right one, such a tendency essentially points the attention to attainments of the past. This is also the case in so far as that inner experience was sought in the form of intellectual reflection, and of the determinations of the will regulated thereby. For this reason the theology of the school of Halle adheres with the utmost strictness to the line of Lutheran tradition, although the attention devoted in a preponderant measure to the praxis pietatis also prevented dogmatic theology from being handled with scholastic precision, and gave no security for the maintenance of correct doctrinal notions. J. A. Freylinghausen’s unusually widely circulated Grundlegung der Theologie (1703:—I have before me the 14th edition, 1774) follows the Lutheran type of doctrine throughout, yet gives it in so popular and diluted a form that the book comes up more to what might be expected of a catechism than to what is required in a scientific system. In it all the doctrines are accompanied by observations on the duties they establish and the comfort they convey; hereby it is indicated that they assert their value not as a systematic knowledge of the truth but merely as individual incitements to the praxis of piety. So far as the doctrines of Reconciliation and Justification are concerned, the first is maintained in this Pietistic system of doctrine in a thoroughly orthodox form. but the second has to submit to a modification, which Löscher indeed has reprimanded as a departure from the true faith,1 but which arises only from the circumstance that the Pietists aimed at a practically gained and individual conviction of justification, which had rather been repudiated by orthodox teachers.