For Further Reading: Bruce

The moral dualism of the Pietists reveals their affinity with the Reformers and their distance from the tradition of mysticism (which was in­clined toward monism). Even though the Pietists encouraged the reading of the mystics for per­sonal devotions, they saw the principal cleavage as being not between time and eternity (as with the radical mystics) but between faith and un­belief, salvation and sin, the kingdom of God and the demonic kingdom of darkness.

Pietists have often been accused of subjec­tivism, and it is true that they emphasized the spirit over the letter of the Bible. They occa­sionally differentiated between the form and content, the kernel and husk, of Scripture. Yet their concern was not to find a Word beyond the Bible but to discover the treasure of the gospel within the Bible. Above all, the Bible was to be read in a spirit of devotion rather than with aca­demic curiosity. Though acknowledging the pos­sibility of special revelations, they held that these private illuminations must be conformable to Holy Scripture and not conflict with the light that has already been given in Jesus Christ.

Pietism is also noted for the fact that it gave tangible expression to the Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Spener advo­cated the formation of conventicles, private gath­erings which usually met on Sunday evenings for Bible readings, prayer, and discussion of the sermon. These meetings came to include hymn singing, meditations, and even sermons, which were given as a supplement to the morning homily. These fellowships became known as the collegia pieiatis, from which the Pietist move­ment derives its name.

A final distinguishing feature of Pietism is its emphasis on the urgency of mission. Zinzendorf declared: "My joy until I die: to win souls for the Lamb!" Indeed, Protestant missions can be said to have begun with Pietism. The great mis­sionary societies within Protestantism in the 18th and 19th centuries as well as the Inner Mission of the 19th and 20th centuries have their roots in Pietism. The Reformation generally saw the two practical marks of the true Church as the preach­ing of the Word and the right administration of the sacraments; to these the Pietists in effect added the fellowship of love (koinonia) and a zeal for missions.

The Pietists remind us that Christianity has to do with life as well as doctrine, ethical action and spiritual devotion as well as theology. We need to heed their warning that justification cannot stand by itself but must be fulfilled in sanctifica­tion. Even though the righteousness of Christ en­titles us to heaven, we are not qualified to enter heaven apart from personal holiness.

We can learn from Pietism that Christian prac­tice is the field in which our sanctification is car­ried forward. The Pietists sought to hold the practical and mystical dimensions of the faith in balance, though Pietism was more aggressive than contemplative, more practical than theolog­ical (John F. Hurst)."

Out of the awakenings associated with Pietism came a concern for the oppressed and destitute in society. Besides founding orphanages, homes for unwed mothers, homes for epileptics, and deaconess hospitals, the Pietists and later evan­gelicals pioneered in the area of social justice. Their efforts played a major role in the abolition of slavery, prison reform, and legislation against child labor abuse, animal cruelty, and pros­titution.

A constant danger in Pietism is that its inclina­tion to elevate life and experience over doctrine often promotes doctrinal indifferentism and lati-tudinarianism. It is an open fact that the Univer­sity of Halle, founded by the early Pietists, became within two generations a bastion of ra­tionalism.

Subjectivism is another temptation within Pi­etism. Even though the early Pietists had a high view of the sacraments and preaching,their stress on the immediacy of the Word tended to obscure the mediate role of the Church and the sacra­ments. The radical Pietists became sectarian and individualistic.

Pietism was also inclined to neglect the doc­trine of creation by focusing so intently on per­sonal salvation. We need to remember that redemption does not annul creation but only the sin that distorts creation.

At its best, Pietism sought to penetrate and transform society with the leaven of the gospel. At its worst, Pietism became defensive, culti­vating a fortress mentality that regarded the world as totally under the sway of the powers of darkness; the strategy then became that of build­ing citadels of light in a dark world.

See PIETY, EVANGELICAL, PURITAN (PURITANISM), METHODISM, SYNERGISM, PREVENIENT GRACE, WES­LEYANISM, HOLINESS MOVEMENT, DEVOTE (DEVOTION), SOCIAL ETHICS, PIETISM (ENGLISH EVANGELICAL).

For Further Reading: Brown, Understanding Pietism; Stoeffler, German Pietism During the Eighteenth Century;



402

PIETISM, ENGLISH EVANGELICAL—PILGRIM


The Rise of Evangelical Pietism; Continental Pietism and Early American Christianity; Bloesch, "The Legacy of Pi­etism," The Evangelical Renaissance, 101-55.

Donald G. Bloesch

PIETISM, ENGLISH EVANGELICAL. Few religious movements have been so misunderstood and un­justly maligned as Pietism. Until recently the role of English Pietism has gone unchronicled. Springing from the Geneva-Rhineland tradition of Martin Bucer and antedating continental Pi­etism (Spener), the movement was to profoundly influence Anglicanism, producing the Puritan sector of the British and American church, and creating the ethical and spiritual concerns that were to mark Methodism and the later American holiness movement. Many Wesleyan scholars now recognize the roots of Wesley as being more entwined in English Pietism than in Continental sources.

Following the Bucerian emphasis on "living doctrine," Pietism's interest lay in practical, ev­eryday living rather than doctrine. The Bible, rather than the creeds, became the authority. Christianity is to be lived as well as confessed. In following the rules of biblical interpretation as set down by Thomas Greenham, the movement adopted the principle that not only is sin forbid­den but its occasion as well. Thus, the contem­porary evangelical's antagonism to the theatre, the dance, and the saloon is rooted in English Pietism. The terms characteristic of this tradition, such as experiential, inward, or personal, reflect a concept of the essence of Christianity as being a personally meaningful new-birth relationship to God. Henry Smith's statement that "an almost Christian is no Christian" discovers the pietistic drive to a Christian perfection which prepared England for Wesley's position. The pietistic insis­tence on an experiential "I-Thou" relationship, resulting in an inner personal knowledge of di­vine approbation, was closely related to Wesley's doctrine of assurance. England's 17th-century pietistic conventicle anticipated the Methodist society, the holiness prayer meeting, and the con­temporary home Bible study group.

See pietism, puritan (puritanism), wesleyanism.

For Further Reading: Stouffler, The Rise of Evangelical

The noun used in the NT is eusebeia, men­tioned 14 times in the Pastoral and General Epis­tles, and is usually translated "godliness." Godliness is associated with holy living, as well as performing acts of spiritual worship (1 Tim. 2:2; 5:4; 6:3; 2 Pet. 1:3, 6). Piety is synonymous with "holy and godly lives"—the fruit of faith and hope in the second coming of Christ (Jas. 1:26; 2 Pet. 3:11-12).

Piety is synonymous with the OT "fear of the Lord." Among OT saints a holy and godly life was grounded in reverence, submission, and obedience to God.

Piety is a response to God's revelation of him­self and His will. It is equated with holiness (1 Pet. 1:15; 2 Cor. 7:1; 1 Thess. 4:3) and includes separation from the world, overcoming tempta­tions, mortification of sin, and the cultivation of faith, hope, and love.

See pietism, godliness.

For Further Reading: Kepler, ed., The Fellowship of Saints; Law, A Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life; Sangster, The Pure in Heart, 95-182.

The people of the old covenant were consid­ered strangers and pilgrims. They were on a pil­grimage toward the Promised Land and beyond (Gen. 15:13; Exod. 22:21; Lev. 25:23; 1 Chron. 29:15). This journey was both physical and spiri­tual, a pilgrimage of revelation plus destination.

Peter describes the people of the new covenant as strangers away from home, and admonishes them to abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul. As aliens, strangers, and pil­grims on earth, their real citizenship is in heaven (1 Pet. 1:1, 17; 2:10-11; Phil. 3:20; 1 Pet. 1:4).

The classic passage which describes the con­cept of the pilgrimage of the people of God throughout history is Heb. 11:8-16. The patri­archs and those who followed were considered strangers and pilgrims on earth. They were mov­ing towards their permanent home with the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (Rev. 21:22-26).

This call to the life of a pilgrim, not unlike that of Abraham, is the same for all believers. We are



PITY, PITIFUL—PLEASURE

403

called from what we are to what we can become in Christ Jesus. We look forward to the escha­tological kingdom of God coming in all its glory (1 John 3:1-3).

The Christian is a pilgrim of eternity; a travel­ler on the way, never wearily giving up the jour­ney, but living in hope and dying in expectation. For this reason alone God is not ashamed to be called his God. He lives as one who is looking beyond the visible and tangible, and through the eye of faith, sees the coming kingdom of God.

Living in the world as a stranger and pilgrim does not mean that the Christian despises the world. Being a member of any community im­plies responsibility. However, the Christian keeps himself unspotted from the world by noncon­formity to its standards. A pilgrim lives by the law of the kingdom of God (Rom. 12:1-2; John 17:12). The world is his stage towards his perma­nent home, not his goal.

See LIFE-STYLE, WORLD (WORLDLINESS), HEAVEN, VALUES, HOPE.

For Further Reading: Barclay, New Testament Words,
142-50; BBC 10:142-46; Wiley, The Epistle to the He-
brews, 366-70. Isaac Baldeo

PITY, PITIFUL. See compassion.
PLATONISM. This refers to the kind of philoso­phy taught by the great Athenian thinker, Plato, who lived 427-347 b.c.

Unlike the Greek philosophers from Thales onwards, who had been materialists of various sorts, Plato was the first distinguished idealist. The earlier men had believed that such material elements as water, or earth, or air, or fire, or com­binations of them, are what ultimate reality is composed of. In distinction from them, Plato taught that materialities of that sort have only shadowy and not-really-real existence. What is real, metaphysically real, for Plato, is ideas, or concepts—the most significant of these concepts being the true, the beautiful, and the good (with the "good" as the very highest).

It is this kind of metaphysics that was in vogue when Christianity was being birthed. Actually, it was in vogue for many centuries in the East and in the West, but much more especially in the East.

Some early Christians such as Justin Martyr, who flourished at around the middle of the sec­ond century of the Christian era, had been pro­fessional philosophers, of the Platonic sort, before becoming Christians-—and they carried that kind of understanding over into their theo­logizing as Christians. This was not altogether unfortunate, for metaphysical idealism is much more congenial to Christian faith than meta­physical materialism is—for materialism does not even admit the existence of God.

However, Platonism was so extreme that it tended to deprecate materiality in a wide-scoped way. Insofar as materiality has any existence at all, it was conceived of as evil per se, and not as the creation of God.

This extreme antiphysicalism tended, there­fore, to depreciate the biblical doctrine that God created the world—some, Gnostic-inclined as well as Platonic, saying that an evil God, the Demiurge, had created matter. The human body was also deprecated because it partakes of materiality—as Origen (185-254) and others taught. If Platonism was not in agreement with the plain teaching of Scripture (as it is not, on the body, and on sexuality expressed in marriage), the Platonic Christians such as Origen viewed Scripture as having a hidden, allegorical mean­ing; and they taught that that meaning is in agreement with Platonism's idealism.

While it was customary for OT prophets (such as Isaiah, Hosea, and Ezekiel) to be married, and while NT figures such as the apostle Peter were, it was Platonism, with its deprecating of phys-icality, that occasioned the refraining from mar­riage in the hermits—and later among the monks, nuns, and priests of Catholicism.

Biblical teaching, with its doctrine of creation, of incarnation, of the sacraments (with their ma­terial elements), of marriage, and of the resurrec­tion of the body (Platonism had taught that only the soul will survive death), locates somewhere between the materialism of the pre-Platonic phi­losophers, and Platonism.

See METAPHYSICS, THOMISM, REALISM AND NOMI­NALISM, REALISM, REALISM IN THEOLOGY NEOPLATO­NISM.

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