Two Extremes: Head and Heart

Throughout the history of the church the pendulum of Christian experience has swung between the extremes of Scholasticism and Pietism – between an emphasis on the head and a focus on the heart. Scholasticism was prevalent in the generation after the Reformation. The followers of the Reformers turned heartfelt faith into a matter of the intellect. They had not had the heart-rending experiences of their spiritual predecessors. The faith they inherited was a new system of understanding Christianity that had put them outside the Roman Church and had founded new churches in their respective countries. The ground was fertile for the development of the great cardinal truths that had been so recently unearthed. However, their enthusiasm often carried these new theologians far into the realm of the speculative. The warmth of a personal knowledge of God faded into the background as unity based upon creeds came to the fore. Along with an intellectual focus came a stress on church attendance, reception of the sacraments and learning the catechism. All this was done to educate the masses, but the effect was to produce a sterile state church.

The most notable movement of Pietism (from which we its name) came as a reaction to the dead orthodoxy of German Lutheranism. This view of Christianity took its beginning with the individual. The Pietists focused on personal conversion and faith. Personal experience of God’s saving grace led to baptisms of adults and the gathering of believers into fellowships. The gospel spread from these groups and people from all classes of society were converted. There is much to cheer about with Pietism.

However, the important point to note with Pietism is the individualistic nature of this version of Christianity. Pietism can easily lead one into thinking that life is all about himself. The Bible becomes a book of personal feelings and experiences. It becomes a book that is full of “examples” to imitate. The pietist goes to the Bible looking for himself. The words of Scripture are taken to point us to the thoughts and “lessons” of the authors, not to the message of God. The key hermeneutical (interpretative) questions are, “What did this person feel, experience or think?” and “Why did he do what he did?” not “What does God say?”  Of course, the authors were inspired to write the thoughts of God and were themselves learners of these thoughts. However, the Bible is a message that comes from God, not from men and their inward (e)motions.

Dr. Michael Barrett has well said, “all study is devotional.” That statement is a balanced perspective between the two extremes outlined above. We who are dead in our trespasses and sins definitely need a life-giving experience to become Christians at all. Dead orthodoxy never raised any sinner to newness of life in Christ. The regenerating ministry of the Holy Spirit is irreplaceable. However, the Book that God inspired is not “all about us.” It is all about Him. It is God preaching and revealing His thoughts to us, which are higher than our thoughts. The words, the grammar, the syntax (how words are put together to form sentences and paragraphs), the genre (type of literature a particular text is), and the historical background are all parts of God’s “sermon.” These elements require serious and strenuous study. If we are to hear God speaking in His Word, then the literary elements listed above must all be taken into consideration by those who would teach us and preach to us. The Bible is not about what I “feel” it is, about some warm fuzzy feeling I get from it, or about the “message” I might “get” as an experience in prayer. God has already spoken. The message is already there. The role of the teacher and preacher is to let God speak through His already-given message. Teaching and preaching will simply pass on to others what God has already said. That is the only message that will bear fruit. That is the only message that God will use to change peoples’ lives.