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I’ve written before in this space<\/strong> about the Norwegian lay preacher Hans Nielsen Hauge<\/a>. He was the founder of what some would call the \u201csect\u201d 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\u2014and I like to think he’d have been pleased about that.<\/p>\n I’m also beginning to think it was, in certain ways, a good thing.<\/p>\n His opponents and critics accused him of being heterodox to Lutheran theology.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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). <\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Ironically, it was the result of his wonderful conversion experience.<\/p>\n He writes in moving words of his \u201cspiritual baptism,\u201d one day in his mid-twenties, while he was plowing his father’s field. \u201cAt 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…\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So utterly was this man converted, so delectable and luminous was his vision of God, that he found it fairly easy\u2014at least for a long time\u2014to reject worldliness and seek God’s will only.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n And so was not a real Christian.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Which leads me to the conclusion I come to so often, when contemplating my pietist heritage.<\/p>\n We need to constantly examine ourselves, to see whether the rules we lay on others’ backs are actually God’s rules\u2014from Scripture\u2014or our own opinions, or the traditions of man, or our own personal callings.<\/p>\n (Which should not be taken to suggest that there isn’t much to admire–and profit from–in Hauge’s life, work, and writings.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 \u201csect\u201d 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\u2014and I like to think … Continue reading A cautionary tale for the converted<\/span>
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