Review of Simeon Zahl's book on Christoph Blumhardt

7/31/2019 Review of Simeon Zahl's book on Christoph Blumhardt

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Caleb Maskell / July 2012

Pneumatology and Theology of the Cross in the Preaching of Christoph Friedrich

Blumhardt: The Holy Spirit Between Wittenberg and Azusa Street , Simeon Zahl,London and New York: T & T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology, 2010, (ISBN:9780567645913) Pp. x + 206. $130.00.

The title of Simeon Zahl's exciting new book leaves little ambiguity as to the immediate

matter at hand. Born out of his dissertation at Cambridge, this book is without doubt the

best close analysis of Christoph Friedrich Blumhardts mature pneumatology. It is a

major contribution to the recent and welcome burgeoning of Anglophone Blumhardt

studies. Given the outsized influence of Johann Christoph Blumhardt (the father) and

Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (the son) on the emergence of the counter-liberal German

Protestant theological tradition in the late 19th

and 20th

centuriesmost notably on Karl

Barththe paucity of theological work on them in English is quite surprising. Zahl has

done English-speaking theologians a great service simply by mastering the broad German

primary and secondary literature in order to interpret Christoph Blumhardt's historically

significant theology in the four chapters that form the center of the book. They are a

pleasure to readlucid, concise, interpretations that are laden with fresh translations of

important passages as well as insightful contextualization of Blumhardts cross-centered

pneumatology.

But Zahl has bigger aspirations than just a faithful reconstruction ofBlumhardts

theology from its sources in sermons and letters. The books subtitle reveals his

constructive program: attempting to establish some dialogue among Protestant accounts

of the Holy Spirit between Wittenberg and Azusa Street by drawing on resources in

Christoph Blumhardts thought. Zahl avers that attempts to find common ground between

classical Protestant (read: Lutheran) and contemporary Pentecostal pneumatology


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have reached a fundamental impasse. (23) They appear, by his account, to operate from

irreconcilably different theological starting points, originating from their divergent

understandings of the human person.

The tension, as Zahl sees it, works like this. When Luther prioritized the doctrine

ofsola scriptura for discernment of true knowledge of God,he did so as a safeguard

against the human capacity for self-deception (6), particularly in the form of individual

subjective revelations and interpretations spuriously ascribed to the Holy Spirit. It was on

these grounds that Luther famously blasted the Schwrmerthe enthusiasts of his day

who claimed to be prophets, experiencing direct revelation from God, apparently apart

from the mediation of scripture. Luther argued that such subjectivism could never be

trustworthy, because human beings were so prone to ascribing divine fiat to whatever

doctrine was most convenient for them to believe.

Zahl suggests that pentecostal theology, on the other hand, takes unmediated

personal experience of God to be a sine qua non of Christian faith, the beginning point

from which all other rightly-ordered knowledge and love of God flows. To quote from

one of his sources on pentecostal thought, the Bible has no significance when ripped

from the context of the experience of the Spirit[the Spirit is] prior to the written word

of God. (4) Thus Zahl argues that pentecostal faith is irreducibly rooted in the notion that

human experience of Gods presence is epistemically reliable that people can trust their

subjective sense of Gods presence to be a normative catalyst for their faith and practice.


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In the early 21st century, when one in four Christians around the world identify as some

version of pentecostal, Zahl believes that attention to this tension is of paramount

importanceand he is absolutely right. What is at stake is nothing less than the relevance

of classic Protestant theological paradigms, specifically sola scriptura, to the worlds

largest Protestant movement. Zahl argues that Christoph Blumhardts crucicentric

pneumatology offers a previously unexplored bridge that goes some distance to spanning

this divide.

To make his case, Zahl focuses on the secondand most theologically fertilephase of

Blumhardts career, dating from roughly 1888 to 1896. It was in this period that

Blumhardt moved away from the emphasis on spiritual liberation from extrinsic demonic

oppression that had so famously characterized his fathers ministry, and began to develop

his own emphasis on the problem of besetting sin intrinsic to the instincts ofthe flesh.

He continued to affirm the reality of demonic oppression, but simply argued that it was

not the main problem that human beings face. Zahl summarizes the shift this way: the

primary locus of effective eschatological opposition to God, and, therefore, the true target

of the divine [contestation] is the sinful heart of humankind, not the forces of

supernatural evil. (32)

Zahl suggests that this shift tracks Blumhardts increasing sympathy with Lutheran

anthropological pessimism about the depth of human sinfulness and the possibility of

personal transformation, over against pietistic ideas of self-improvement (which more

characterized his fathers ministry). Practically, his message shifted from being a call to


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healing and victory over the devil to being a call towards self-abnegation and Sterben

death: Die, so that Jesus may live! (40) Christians must willingly embrace the

humiliation and mortification of their flesh, the judgment of God upon their self-centered,

egoistic will, rather than pursing Gods liberation of their bodies as a tacit endorsement

of their present way of life. Blumhardt spoke often in this period about his weariness with

Christians who often sought Gods power for healing from sickness or deliverance from

demons, but were not interested in subsequently giving their lives over to Gods lordship.

Such people exemplified the fact that human entanglement with forces in opposition to

God was a fundamental, ontological problem, not a contingent, historical one.

However, for all of its emphasis on ontological problems, this sterbetgospel was also

thoroughly eschatological. It is here that Zahls reclamation ofBlumhardt becomes

especially interesting. Blumhardt argued that the presence of Christ would only come to

earth as Christians embraced the practice of learning to how to die the sake of Gods

kingdom. He was convinced that, apart from it, the Kingdom of Godwhose full

consummation his father had believed was just around the cornerliterally could not

fully come to earth. The thorough application of a sterbetgospel was an eschatological

station on the world-historical road to the return of Christ in the consummation of all

things. Offering an important exposition ofBlumhardts understudied monograph,

Gedanken aus dem Reiche Gottes (Thoughts from the Kingdom of God), Zahl

compellingly argues that, in this way, Christoph Blumhardts theology at once affirms

and amends his fathers unfulfilled eschatological vision.


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As goes eschatology, so goes experience. Zahl also shows that Blumhardts sterbet

theology never gave up a pietist embrace of unmediated experience. Rather, he

modified it to fit his pessimistic turn. As Blumhardts anthropology plummeted, Zahl

argues that he became increasingly committed to what he calls negative experience of

Gods judgment in the life of the believer. This negative experience was a subjective,

sensible awareness of the crushing and, ultimately, killing effect of divine Truth and

Righteousnesssomething akin to the undoing of the prophet in Isaiah 6 as he falls

apart in the presence of Gods holiness. It is, in essence, the inner experience of Luthers

theological use of the law.(174) Without categorically undermining other types of

experienceprophecy, healing, private revelation, etc.negative experience becomes

for Blumhardt the primary agent in the process of dying to self which he had come to

believe was the irreducible element of Christian discipleship. Where the work of the Holy

Spirit could be held in doubt in other circumstances, in the context of negative

experience, Blumhardt held that God was indubitably at work, advancing the process of

death, so that Jesus may live.

Zahls analysis of Blumhardt is brilliant, a profitable read for anyone interested in the

history of modern theology, pastoral ministry, or Christian spiritual experience.

In his provocative final chapters, Zahl makes explicit his constructive thesis about

Blumhardts position between Wittenberg and Azusa Street that he has been implicitly

advancing throughout the book.

His theological relation of Blumhardt to Lutheran spirituality is very important,

and essentially irrefutable. It highlights both the strengths (relentless attention to self-


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deception) and the weaknesses (aggressive bracketing of private experience) of much

application of Lutheran doctrines of discernment to theologies and practices in the late-

modern era. Zahl distills a wide variety of Luther scholarship to show that it can no

longer be responsibly argued that Luthers sola scriptura meant that he was opposed to

spiritual subjectivity. Indeed Zahls argument is so compelling that it raises a critical

question: if Luther would have recognized negative experience as legitimate spiritual

experience, what resources does Blumhardts only tentative acknowledgement of the

value of other positive experiences do to move contemporary Lutheran-Pentecostal

dialogue beyondLuther? Negative experience is, in some sense, a fact of Christian life,

while positive experience of God has been so energizing to pietist traditions precisely

because it is unusual, a rupture in the fabric of everyday existence. Can Blumhardt do

more to bridge the gap between Wittenberg and Azusa Street than simply redeeming

Luther from spurious charges of radical anti-experientialism?

My instinct, which I suspect that Zahl shares, is to answer this question with a resounding

Yes. However, this question can only be properly addressed via further engagement with

pentecostal theology, across the great divide. Zahl acknowledges that his book is an

opening volley intended to provoke theological conversation between pentecostals and

Lutherans on this issue. Also, he acknowledges that his account of pentecostal theology is

not comprehensive, but drawn from a handful of representative, synthetic sources,

especially the work of Frank Macchia, Allen Anderson, and Stephen Land. This

generalization is understandable and necessary, given the major work of synthesis that

Zahl himself is undertaking in Blumhardts primary sources and in Luther studies. One


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wonders, however, how Zahls argument would have been affected by engagement with

newer sources in pentecostal theology, such as the work of James K. A. Smith, Amos

Yong, and Nimi Wariboko in the Eerdmans Pentecostal Manifestos series. While they

sometimes lack the historical contextualization of theological self-understanding that

Zahl wisely champions, these thinkers, among others, offer a hermeneutical richness and

a theological sophistication that represents an important new point of departure for

contemporary studies of pentecostalism.

Zahls wonderful study seems to set itself its own follow-up task, namely to offer a

theological account of the place of positive spiritual experience in Christian

discipleship. After all, it is these unusual positive experiences, in concert with their self-

deferential theological acuity, that put the Blumhardts on the map in the first place.

Happily, one is left with the sense that Zahl himself has much more to say about such

questions. His voice is as vibrant as it is wise. I hope and expect that he will continue to

offer historically-grounded, intellectually creative, and pastorally helpful insight into this

most crucial of questions for the theological self-understanding of the 21st

century global

church.

Documents

Review of Simeon Zahl's book on Christoph Blumhardt