I’ve written before in this space about the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge. He was the founder of what some would call the “sect” I grew up in, our prophet and martyr, you might say. And yet, oddly, we rarely read anything he actually wrote. We concentrated on the Scriptures—and I like to think he’d have been pleased about that.
I’m also beginning to think it was, in certain ways, a good thing.
His opponents and critics accused him of being heterodox to Lutheran theology.
I’ll probably get in trouble for writing this, but I’ve been reading his works in the original Norwegian, and I’ve come to believe that, to some extent, his critics were correct.
I hasten to add that the error I think I see occurs in one of Hauge’s earliest books. It’s known that he mellowed his views in later years, and so I hope I may believe he amended his error (if I’ve understood him correctly).
I don’t have the book right in front of me, but from what I understand him to be saying, at one particular point he seems to portray salvation as a sort of transaction. Christ does His part by dying for our sins, and we do our part by turning our backs on worldly things. If we don’t keep our side of the bargain, then our salvation is false.
This is not true to Lutheran teaching. Lutherans believe that salvation is only by grace. Any works we perform are purely the fruit of a loving response to the gift we’ve received.
And yet (also on the basis of Hauge’s writings) I’m pretty sure I know how he came to fall into this (perceived) error.
Ironically, it was the result of his wonderful conversion experience.
He writes in moving words of his “spiritual baptism,” one day in his mid-twenties, while he was plowing his father’s field.
“At this point my mind became so exalted that I was not myself aware of, nor can I express, what took place in my soul. For I was beside myself. As soon as I came to my senses, I was filled with regret that I had not served this loving transcendentally good God. Now it seemed to me that nothing in this world was worthy of any regard. That my soul possessed something supernatural, divine, and blessed; that there was a glory that no tongue can utter…”
So utterly was this man converted, so delectable and luminous was his vision of God, that he found it fairly easy—at least for a long time—to reject worldliness and seek God’s will only.
The problem was that he assumed it was the same for every true Christian. If you had a real conversion, it would be just like his. And your response would be the same. Holy living would be (relatively) easy. Anyone who struggled with sin, and fell again and again, clearly hadn’t been truly converted.
And so was not a real Christian.
There’s a paradox here. The very freedom of grace he experienced led him to lay a burden of law on other Christians, whose experience of God was different from his.
Which leads me to the conclusion I come to so often, when contemplating my pietist heritage.
We need to constantly examine ourselves, to see whether the rules we lay on others’ backs are actually God’s rules—from Scripture—or our own opinions, or the traditions of man, or our own personal callings.
(Which should not be taken to suggest that there isn’t much to admire–and profit from–in Hauge’s life, work, and writings.)
His opponents and critics accused him of being heterodox to Lutheran theology.
Do you believe Martin Luther was a prophet, who spoke for God, or merely a wise man, who may have gotten some things wrong?
I mean Lutherans subscribe to a set of theological principles which, if they are disregarded, disqualify one from having the right to call himself a Lutheran.
So it’s possible that Hauge’s was not a Lutheran, at least for part of his life.
I guess it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the idea of a religion that is defined by belief.
That’s curious, Ori, because I can’t think of how religion would be defined accept by belief.
The Hebrew word for religion, “dat”, originally meant law. That word is used in the book of Esther for rules issued by the king.
Judaism is in some ways the opposite of Protestant Christianity. We believe that Mitzvot, following God’s law, is what ultimately matters.
The association that Lars and I belong to recently published a collection of biographical sketches covering the lives of 14 early German and Scandinavian Pietists. Reading the lives of these men who were so instrumental in leading revival movements challenges me on several fronts.
One is the constant tension between dead orthodoxy and emotional extremism. On the one hand were those times and places where right teaching prevailed, but didn’t affect how people lived, allowing corruption to prevail in the government, in the marketplace, and even in the church. On the other hand were movements built on personal experience that quickly strayed from orthodox teaching. I see our association as an endeavor to maintain Biblical teaching while recognizing that a true faith will change the way one lives.
Secondly, I’m struck with how many leaders of spiritual awakenings are later found to have very weak theology. More often then not, they built their teaching, not upon a thorough study of the Bible, but like Hauge’s account above, upon a personal experience or a pragmatic assessment of what works. Many accounts of old time revival movements speak of great opposition. I fear I would have opposed many of these leaders had I pastored in those days. I feel a similar tension in responding to popular ministries of our day. Should I cheer them on for their seeming success in winning souls or should I expose the errors of their teaching and warn against them? I’m finding more and more I need to speak out and not let their errors go unchallenged.
Ori, you’ve put your finger on the heart of the divide between Christianity and Judaism. It goes back to Christ’s own teaching that if a man lusts in his heart, or harbors hatred in his heart, he’s bound for hell, and Paul’s teaching that we are justified by faith alone, apart from works. It’s why Christianity is sometimes called “The Faith.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to say Hauge “was not a Lutheran.” But he seems (if I read him correctly) to have been a somewhat confused Lutheran for a time.
A question, Ori–and I hope you trust me well enough to know it’s not meant as a “gotcha,” but springs from an honest search for clarity.
I’m told the “Messianic Jews,” those who believe in Jeshua as Messiah, are not accepted by any Jewish community, even if they do all the Mitzvot, because they’re Trinitarians. Is that not a faith requirement in Judaism?
Lars: A question, Ori–and I hope you trust me well enough to know it’s not meant as a “gotcha,” but springs from an honest search for clarity.
Ori: It’s not just that I trust you, but I am fully aware you are not Jewish. A Jew would ask the gotcha questions, and expect to be asked them in return. Studying religion serves us the way communion serves you. And we study it primarily by means of argument. So I’m doubly not offended.
Now, to get to the substance of your question – you’re right. There are two issues here:
1. There are required elements of belief in Judaism. According to the Rambam (= Maimonides), there are 13 of them. But that’s like any other rule. Not following it does not make you a non-Jew, but an imperfect one.
2. Sociologically, being an atheist isn’t considered leaving Judaism, but becoming a Christian (or a Muslim, but that’s rarer) is. Arguably we’re inconsistent here, but that’s custom rather than law.
Would I be wrong to formulate it this way: “Becoming an atheist is not considered a betrayal of the Jewish community, but becoming a Christian is”?
Lars, that’s the kind of short, insightful summary one would expect from a professional wordsmith. This is precisely the right way to say it.
According to Halacha, you cannot leave Judaism. You can only be very bad at it. However, that’s still considered betrayal.
Greybeard:
Can you post a link to the book you mentioned about the bios of the various pietists?
Lars:
I read this this morning and have been thinking about it all day. I don’t mean to question God’s sovereignty in salvation but I do wonder why so few people have salvation experiences like Hauge’s. It would seem to solve a lot of the problems like lukewarmness, etc., we see in the church. Why do you think God does it the way he does?
Greg, the book he is referring to is They Lived In the Power of God, which you can find on this page: http://www.ambassadorpublications.org/
As for why God does not give more people ecstatic experiences, I suppose it’s for the same reason He doesn’t do more miracles. Because He prefers to work through His ordinary creation, rather than overwhelming our free will with lots of signs and wonders.
Kudos to all on this discussion and to Lars on this post. Very interesting. It’s too bad Hauge didn’t flirt with Calvinism, then he would definitely have been labeled unLutheran.
Greg,
I have found that God gives mystical experiences when He feels it is the best way to achieve His higher purposes. I have also observed in those groups that emphasize and seek mystical experience, that it quickly becomes a stumbling block keeping them from God. Rather than seeing emotional moments as a motivation to seek God or a tool to lead them to repentance and faith, the emotional experience becomes an end in itself, the primary goal of all their religious activity.
It’s very much like the drug addict who desires opiates, not to suppress pain so they can heal, but for the good feeling they get from the intoxication. When burdens are lifted at Calvary, it is an emotional experience, but we are not to seek the emotional high, or even the lifting of burdens but reconciliation with the God who lifts our burdens. Otherwise we end up like the kids Jesus describes in Matthew 11 and Luke 7, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” They see religion as a game by which they can manipulate God. What a tragic error.
Also, Lars gave a good link to find the book, They Lived In The Power of God.
To echo what Greybeard says, we might remember that the record we have of Jesus’ life covers very few days in a 3-4 year ministry. John says Jesus did many more things that are not recorded, but even if he did at least one miracle per day, he was 30 years on the earth without miracles (or very few). The apostles did few miracles. The Old Testament records few miracles of hundreds of years. That should speak to the frequency the Lord wants us to experience mystical occurrences. He wants faithfulness, even while we live in Egypt or Rome.
Building on what Phil said, almost all the miracles recorded in Scripture are clustered into three brief periods:
1. The Exodus, as God lead Israel out of bondage to establish them as a nation
2. The final years of the Northern Kingdom as Elijah and Elisha were used to call them to repentance before final judgement fell and the Assyrians hauled them off to captivity.
3. The First Century time of Christ starting with John the Baptist continuing on through the establishment of the church in the book of Acts.
In all three of these circumstances, God used miracles, not for the sake of doing something spectacular, but as signs to bear witness to the bigger work He was undertaking; Establishing a people of His own, calling a nation facing imminent destruction to repentance, and, as John stated in chapter 20 of his Gospel, so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that by believing we might have life in His name.