§ 159.1. Christological Controversies.

1. The Cryptist and Kenotist Controversy between the Giessen and Tübingen theologians, in A.D. 1619, about Christ’s state of humiliation, led to the publication of many violent treatises down to A.D. 1626. The Kenotists of Giessen, with Mentzer and Feuerborn at their head, assigned the humiliation only to the human nature, and explained it as an actual κένωσις, i.e. a complete but voluntary resigning of the omnipresence and omnipotence immanent in His divinity (κτῆσις, but not χρῆσις), yet so that He could have them at His command at any moment, e.g. in His miracles. The Cryptists of Tübingen, with Luc. Osiander and Thumm at their head, ascribed humiliation to both natures, and taught that all the while Christ, even secundum carnem, was omnipresent and ruled both in heaven and earth, but in a hidden way; the humiliation is no κένωσις, but only a κρύψις. After repeated unsuccessful attempts to bring about a reconciliation, John George, Elector of Saxony, in A.D. 1623, accepted the Kenotic doctrine. But the two parties still continued their strife.466
2. The Lütkemann Controversy on the humanity of Christ in death was of far less importance. Lütkemann, a professor of philosophy at Rostock, affirmed that in death, because the unity of soul and body was broken, Christ was not true man, and that to deny this was to destroy the reality and the saving power of his death. He held that the incarnation of Christ lasted through death, because the divine nature was connected, not only with the soul, but also with the body. Lütkemann was obliged to quit Rostock, but got an honourable call to Brunswick as superintendent and court preacher, and there died in A.D. 1655. Later Lutherans treated the controversy as a useless logomachy.

§ 159.2. The Syncretist Controversy.—Since the Hofmann controversy (§ 141, 15) the University of Helmstadt had shown a decided humanistic tendency, and gave even greater freedom in the treatment of doctrines than the Formula of Concord, which it declined to adopt. To this school belonged George Calixt, and from A.D. 1614 for forty years he laboured in promoting its interests. He was a man of wide culture and experience, who had obtained a thorough knowledge of church history, and acquaintance with the most distinguished theologians of all churches, during his extensive foreign travels, and therewith a geniality and breadth of view not by any means common in those days. He did not indeed desire any formal union between the different churches, but rather a mutual recognition, love, and tolerance. For this purpose he set, as a secondary principle of Christian theology, besides Scripture, as the primary principle, the consensus of the first five centuries as the common basis of all churches, and sought to represent later ecclesiastical differences as unessential or of less consequence. This was denounced by strict Lutherans as Syncretism and Cryptocatholicism. In A.D. 1639 the Hanoverian preacher Buscher charged him with being a secret Papist. After the Thorn Conference of A.D. 1645, a violent controversy arose, which divided Lutherans into two camps. On the one side were the universities of Helmstadt and Königsberg; on the other hand, the theologians of the electorate of Saxony, Hülsemann of Leipzig, Waller of Dresden, and Abr. Calov, who died professor in Wittenberg in A.D. 1686. Calov wrote twenty-six controversial treatises on this subject. Jena vainly sought to mediate between the parties. In the Theologorum Sax. Consensus repetitus Fidei vera Lutheranæ of A.D. 1655, for which the Wittenberg divines failed to secure symbolical authority, the following sentiments were branded as Syncretist errors: That in the Apostles’ Creed everything is taught that is necessary to salvation; that the Catholic and Reformed systems retain hold of fundamental truths; that original sin is of a merely privative nature; that God indirecte, improprie, et per accidens is the cause of sin; that the doctrine of the Trinity was first clearly revealed in the New Testament, etc. Calixt died A.D. 1656 in the midst of most violent controversies. His son Ulrich continued these, but had neither the ability nor moderation of his father. Even the peaceably disposed Conference of Cassel of A.D. 1661 (§ 154, 4) only poured oil on the flames. The strife lost itself at last in actions for damages between the younger Calixt and his bitter opponent Strauch of Wittenberg. Wearied of these fruitless discussions, theologians now turned their attention to the rising movement of Pietism.467

§ 159.3. The Pietist Controversy in its First Stage.—Philip Jacob Spener born in Alsace in A.D. 1635, was in his thirty-first year, on account of his spirituality, distinguished gifts, and singularly wide scholarship, made president of a clerical seminary at Frankfort-on-Main. In A.D. 1686 he became chief court preacher at Dresden, and provost of Berlin in A.D. 1691, when, on account of his intense earnestness in pastoral work, he had been expelled from Dresden. He died in Berlin in A.D. 1705. His year’s attendance at Geneva after the completion of his curriculum at Strassburg had an important influence on his whole future career. He there learned to value discipline for securing purity of life as well as of doctrine, and was also powerfully impressed by the practical lectures of Labadie (§ 163, 7) and the reading of the “Practice of Piety” and other ascetical writings of the English Puritans (§ 162, 3). Though strongly attached to the Lutheran church, he believed that in the restoration of evangelical doctrine by the Wittenberg Reformation, “not by any means had all been accomplished that needed to be done,” and that Lutheranism in the form of the orthodoxy of the age had lost the living power of the reformers, and was in danger of burying its talent in dead and barren service of the letter. There was therefore a pressing need of a new and wider reformation. In the Lutheran church, as the depository of sound doctrine, he recognised the fittest field for the development of a genuinely Christian life; but he heartily appreciated any true spiritual movement in whatsoever church it arose. He went back from scholastic dogmatics to Holy Scripture as the living source of saving knowledge, substituted for the external orthodox theology the theology of the heart, demanded evidence of this in a pious Christian walk: these were the means by which he sought to promote his reformation. A whole series of Lutheran theologians of the seventeenth century (§ 159) had indeed contributed to this same end by their devotional works, hymns, and sermons. What was new in Spener was the conviction of the insufficiency of the hitherto used means and the undue prominence given to doctrine, and his consequent effort vigorously made to raise the tone of the Christian life. In his childlike, pious humility he regarded himself as by no means called to carry out this work, but felt it his duty to insist upon the necessity of it, and indicate the means that should be used to realize it. This he did in his work of A.D. 1675, “Pia Desideria.” As it was his aim to recommend biblical practical Christianity to the heart of the individual Christian, he revived the almost forgotten doctrine “Of Spiritual Priesthood” in a separate treatise. In A.D. 1670 he began to have meetings in his own house for encouraging Christian piety in the community, which soon were imitated in other places. Spener’s influence on the Lutheran church became greater and wider through his position at Dresden. Stirred up by his spirit, three young graduates of Leipzig. A. H. Francke, Paul Anton, and J. K. Schade, formed in A.D. 1686 a private Collegia Philobiblica for practical exposition of Scripture and the delivery of public exegetical lectures at the university in the German language. But the Leipzig theological faculty, with J. B. Carpzov II. at its head, charged them with despising the public ordinances as well as theological science, and with favouring the views of separatists. The Collegia Philobiblica was suppressed, and the three friends obliged to leave Leipzig in A.D. 1690. This marked the beginning of the Pietist controversies. Soon afterwards Spener was expelled from Dresden; but in his new position at Berlin he secured great influence in the appointments to the theological faculty of the new university founded at Halle by the peace-loving elector Frederick III. of Brandenburg, in opposition to the contentious universities of Wittenberg and Leipzig. Francke, Anton, and Breithaupt were made professors of theology. Halle now won the position which Wittenberg and Geneva had held during the Reformation period, and the Pietist controversy thus entered upon a second, more general, and more critical epoch of its history.468—Continuation, § 166, 1.

§ 159.4. Theological Literature (§ 142, 6).—The “Philologia Sacra” of Sol. Glassius of Jena, published in A.D. 1623, has ranked as a classical work for almost two centuries. From A.D. 1620 till the end of the century, a lively controversy was carried on about the Greek style of the New Testament, in which Lutherans, and especially the Reformed, took part. The purists maintained that the New Testament idiom was pure and classical, thinking that its inspiration would otherwise be endangered. The first historico-critical introduction to the Scriptures was the “Officina Biblica” of Walther in A.D. 1636. Pfeiffer of Leipzig gained distinction in biblical criticism and hermeneutics by his “Critica Sacra” of A.D. 1680 and “Hermeneutica” of A.D. 1684. Exegesis now made progress, notwithstanding its dependence on traditional interpretations of doctrinal proof passages and its mechanical theory of inspiration. The most distinguished exegetes were Erasmus Schmidt of Wittenberg, who died in A.D. 1637: he wrote a Latin translation of New Testament with admirable notes, and a very useful concordance of the Greek New Testament, under the title Ταμεῖον, which has been revised and improved by Bruder; Seb. Schmidt of Strassburg, who wrote commentaries on several Old Testament books and on the Pauline epistles; and Abr. Calov of Wittenberg, who died in A.D. 1686, in his 74th year, whose “Biblia Illustrata,” in four vols., is a work of amazing research and learning, but composed wholly in the interests of dogmatics.—Little was done in the department of church history. Calixt awakened a new enthusiasm for historical studies, and Gottfried Arnold (§ 159, 2), pietist, chiliast, and theosophist, bitterly opposed to every form of orthodoxy, and finding true Christianity only in sects, separatists, and heretics, set the whole theological world astir by his “Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-historie,” in A.D. 1699 (§ 5, 3).

§ 159.5. The orthodox school applied itself most diligently to dogmatics in a strictly scholastic form. Hutter of Wittenberg, who died in A.D. 1616, wrote “Loci communes theologici” and “Compendium Loc. Theol.” John Gerhard of Jena, who died in A.D. 1637, published in A.D. 1610 his “Loc. Theologici” in nine folio vols., the standard of Lutheran orthodoxy. J. Andr. Quenstedt of Wittenberg, who died A.D. 1688, exhibited the best and worst of Lutheran scholasticism in his “Theol. didactico-polemica.” The most important dogmatist of the Calixtine school was Conrad Horneius. Calixt himself is known as a dogmatist only by his lectures; but to him we owe the generally adopted distinction between morals and dogmatics as set forth in his “Epitome theol. Moralis.”—Polemics were carried on vigorously. Hoë von Hoënegg of Dresden (§ 154, 3, 4) and Hutter of Wittenberg were bitter opponents of Calvinism and Romanism. Hutter was styled by his friends Malleus Calvinistorum and Redonatus Lutherus. The ablest and most dignified polemic against Romanism was that of John Gerhard in his “Confessio Catholica.” Nich. Hunnius, son of Ægid. Hunnius, and Hutter’s successor at Wittenberg, from A.D. 1623 superintendent at Lübeck, distinguished himself as an able controversialist against the papacy by his “Demonstratio Ministerii Lutherani Divini atque Legitimi.” Against the Socinians he wrote his “Examen Errorum Photinianorum,” and against the fanatics a “Chr. Examination of the new Paracelsist and Weigelian Theology.” His principal work is his “Διάσκεψις de Fundamentali Dissensu Doctrinæ Luth. et Calvin.” His “Epitome Credendorum” went through nineteen editions. The most incessant controversialist was Abr. Calov, who wrote against Syncretists, Papists, Socinians, Arminians, etc.—Continuation, § 167, 4.