Four books of true Christianity

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Since the Riga edition of 1678/79, the Four Books of True Christianity have been illustrated with emblems ; here an illustration of the book printed by Caspar Holwein in Stade in 1705

Four books on true Christianity is the title of a four-part work by the Lutheran pastor and later general superintendent Johann Arndt , whose first volume was published in Frankfurt am Main in 1605; the complete edition was available in Magdeburg in 1610. It was the most successful Protestant book of edification, of which more than 50 editions, partial editions and translations had been printed by 1700. The work was received very broadly across denominations, but has been controversial in terms of its orthodoxy since it was published.

In later editions, further writings of Arndt were added, so that there were five and six books of True Christianity ; but this does not correspond to Arndt's intention.

content

Guide to Christian Life

Johann Arndt was pastor at St. Martini in Braunschweig while he was writing True Christianity , then moved to Eisleben. In the preface Arndt explained why he wrote the book. Official creed and lived faith do not correspond to one another. Political events and natural phenomena (here the natural philosophy of Paracelsus is in the background) pointed to the crises of the present. The criticism remains general, so that one can only assume that the political turmoil in Braunschweig , which Arndt experienced, worried him.

The book, on the other hand, presents itself as an “initiation” to a spiritual renewal. True Christianity consists in following Christ in life and doing acts of love. Faith is not held to be true of sentences (Arndt is very critical of theology), but an inner force that changes people and becomes visible to the outside in good works .

Four books

The division of the material is important for Arndt's conception. The individual chapters of the work are self-contained units, so that True Christianity was suitable as a house book in which the reader could meditate a section daily. In the sense of a platonic archetype-copy relation, the four divine “books” in which God revealed himself correspond to four real books published by Arndt. The first three books belong together as a group and describe the three-step mysticism of stages: purification, enlightenment and union of the soul with God ( via purgativa , via illuminativa , unio mystica ). The individual books have the following content:

  1. The Book of Holy Scripture ( Liber Scripturae ): God reveals himself in the texts of the Bible. Arndt was thought that man is the image of God, but he had by the fall the image of God lost. But through Christ he would be born anew ( justification and sanctification ) and obtain eternal life. A real inner repentance and turning away from the world are necessary . This repentance, and not the gathering in the church, is the true worship.
  2. The Book of Life, Christ ( Liber vitae Christ ): God reveals himself in Jesus Christ, the "living book". Beginning with the idea that Christ is the doctor and the fountain of healing, the second book deals with the following of Christ and the living connection with Christ in prayer. Arndt lectures here on Angela de Foligno's “Theology of the Cross” . The first part of Valentin Weigel's prayer book , which was relatively harmless in terms of content, is included as a kind of excursus .
  3. The book of conscience ( Liber Conscientiae ): God reveals himself in man himself, in his heart or conscience. The kingdom of God, the highest treasure, is located in the heart of man, “... obviously the relationship to God is conceived individually and independent of the world as well as the church institutions. The effect of this idea on a culture of inwardness and a distanced relationship to the world for Arndt's readers can hardly be overestimated. "
  4. The book of nature ( Liber Naturae ): God reveals himself in nature. “How the great world book of nature testifies to God / leads to God.” The macrocosm of creation refers to God and finds its perfection in the human soul, the microcosm . This is where Arndt Paracelsus took part. In the second part Raimund von Sabunde is lecture: Man is the image of God and obliged to love God.
The emblems as additions to True Christianity often show technical equipment (telescope, printing press, type case, compass); here a rocket with the lemma: "I climb and clean myself."

The idea that there are two books of God, the Bible as Holy Scripture and the “book of nature”, has a long tradition in Christianity. Bonaventura, for example, assumes the two books are complementary. This tradition leads from Bonaventura via Raimundus Lullus to Raimund von Sabunde - the authoritative source for Part II in the fourth book of True Christianity . In addition, in Arndt's time there was also the idea of ​​a trinity of divine books, with the inner human being (heart, soul or conscience) as the third source of revelation, alongside the Bible and nature. Since Christ can also be named instead of the Bible in such rows of three, the result is the number four, which Arndt uses as the basis for the conception of his work.

swell

Johann Arndt had originally studied medicine in Basel , and it was here that he came into contact with the Hermetic Paracelsian philosophy of nature, which especially characterizes the fourth book. Arndt did not identify his sources; but it is largely a skillful compilation . He used both works by medieval mystics and writings by spiritualists of the 16th century:

Arndt had tried to fit his sources into a Protestant framework through selection, paraphrasing , deletions and additions, which, according to Martin Brecht , "did not always succeed in view of the intrinsic tendencies of this material."

From Weigel, Arndt took over the doctrine of the "inner word", which - problematic for Lutheran theology - relativizes the authority of the Bible; Biblical texts are something external and therefore "only medium / which one should not despise / but they are not the treasure itself / but Christ and God / who can also come without means." The Bible is in the four books of true Christianity through allegory mystical-existential designed.

reception

Pietism

The work had a particularly strong influence on Pietism , so that some church historians support the thesis that it was not Philipp Jakob Spener (who valued True Christianity and published a commented edition in 1674), but Arndt was the founder of Lutheran Pietism ( Ernest Stoeffler , Martin Brecht ). The "True Christianity ... has become more effective in the long run than any dogmatic systems of Orthodoxy," said Brecht. The work met the taste of the late Renaissance and Baroque ; "Arndt ... used the imaginable descriptive sentence, the gripping biblical story or the memorable image taken from the Bible or from nature."

Arndt's disputes

The first reactions to the publication were positive. Johann Valentin Andreae recommended true Christianity , the Dresden court preacher Polykarp Leyser defended Arndt's orthodoxy with the cryptic vote: "The book is good if only the reader is good." Arndt's friendship with Johann Gerhard at the time was also beneficial for the acceptance of the work . who personally combined the new piety with orthodox school theology. The conflict arose in Danzig from 1618 onwards from followers of Weigel who invoked true Christianity . It was discovered that Arndt Weigel's prayer book had excerpted - a scandalous way of working for a Lutheran pastor and author of that time. Arndt claimed that he did not know who the author of that text was and that while excerpting he had followed the biblical principle "Check everything and keep what is good" ( 1 Thess 5:21  LUT ). The Danzig pastors split and asked foreign theologians for their opinions.

Arndt's work was in 1623, two years after Arndt's death, the Tübingen Theology professor Lucas Osiander II. In a Theological Bedencken sharply criticized mystical and spiritualistic literature for its use. Osiander had coordinated with his colleagues, so that for the first time a theological faculty took a position against true Christianity . Other theologians of Lutheran Orthodoxy , e.g. B. Johann Konrad Dannhauer , took up this criticism.

Ecclesiastical Domestication of True Christianity

But the work also found numerous admirers and defenders among the theologians of Lutheran Orthodoxy , such as Paulus Egardus and Heinrich Varenius . It was mainly theologians from the Brunswick-Lüneburg area who campaigned for true Christianity with the support of their royal house . Varenius, court preacher August the Younger in Hitzacker , published in 1624 a two-volume “Christian, written well-founded Rescue of the Four Books of True Christianity.” Spener added arguments from Varenius and Luther quotations as footnotes in his Frankfurt edition of True Christianity (1674) Interpretation of Arndt's work as an undoubtedly orthodox book of edification.

The True Christianity in other denominations and languages

The first volume was printed in Reformed Zurich as early as 1615, a Czech translation appeared in Prague in 1617, various translations into Dutch since 1631, and a first Swedish translation in 1647, which together with a second translation in 1695 had the greatest influence on Swedish intellectual life. At the end of the 17th century, the Latin version (without title or author's name) was recommended to visitors to a Spanish Jesuit library as the best ascetic work. Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf arranged for a French translation to be printed for Catholic readers. A Catholic edition appeared in Kempten in 1734 .

Russian translation of True Christianity , Halle 1735

Simon Todorski made a translation into Church Slavonic , which was printed in Halle in 1735. Arndt's work met with great interest in Russia, as many readers felt addressed by an undogmatic piety. True Christianity was banned in 1743 , but still widely read. So took Arseniy Mazejewitsch , Metropolitan of Rostov , other than the Bible, only the True Christianity with him when he in 1763 under Catherine II. Was deposed and imprisoned until his death - even though he was an outspoken opponent of Lutheranism in Russia. Tikhon von Sadonsk excerpted large passages of true Christianity in his main work of the same name (Об истинном христианстве Ob istinnom christianstve , "On true Christianity"). The missionary Makari Glucharew used and recommended Arndt's work.

The True Christianity was, Karl Christian Felmy , compatible with orthodox piety because Lutherans and Orthodox on the one hand it agreed to reject all notions of human merits before God, and Arndt's work on the other hand justification and sanctification bound them together.

Web links

Text output

  • Of true Christianity . The first edition of the first book (1605), critically edited by Johann Anselm Steiger . Hildesheim et al. 2005.
  • Four books of true Christianity . The first complete edition (1610). Reprint, with an appendix edited by Johann Anselm Steiger. Hildesheim 2007.

literature

  • Dietmar Peil: On the history of illustration of Johann Arndt's "From true Christianity" with a bibliography. In: Archives for the history of the book industry . Vol. 18 (1977), Col. 963-1066 ( epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de ).
  • Martin Brecht : The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany. In: History of Pietism: Pietism from the seventeenth to the early eighteenth centuries. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, pp. 113-204. ISBN 3-525-55343-9 .
  • Udo Sträter : Meditation and Church Reform in the Lutheran Church of the 17th Century. Mohr, Tübingen 1995. ISBN 3-16-146299-8 .
  • Hermann Geyer: Hidden Wisdom. Johann Arndt's “Four Books on True Christianity” as a program of a spiritualistic-hermetic theology . 2 volumes, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2001. ISBN 978-3-11-086340-6 .
  • Hans Schneider : The Stranger Arndt: Studies on the life, work and effect of Johann Arndts (1555-1621). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2006. ISBN 3-525-55833-3 .
  • Hans Otte , Hans Schneider (Ed.): Piety or Theology. Johann Arndt and the "Four Books of True Christianity". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007. ISBN 978-3-89971-386-2 . ( Review )
  • Johannes Wallmann : Arndt reception in the Baltic States. Johann Fischer and the Riga edition of True Christianity from 1678/79. In: Pietism and Orthodoxy. Collected essays, Volume 3. Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2010. ISBN 978-3-16-150259-0 . Pp. 258-276. (= Lecture at the 3rd Hilding-Pleijel-Symposium, Lund 1997)
  • Thomas Illg: Becoming a different person: Johann Arndt's understanding of the imitatio Christi as a guide to true Christianity. V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2011. ISBN 978-3-89971-870-6 .
  • Stefan Reichelt: Johann Arndt's "Four Books of True Christianity" in Russia. Heralds of a modern intercultural dialogue. Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, Leipzig 2011. ISBN 978-3-374-02863-4 .
  • Volkhard Wels: Immediate divine revelation as the subject of debate in Protestant theology of the early modern period . In: Herbert Jaumann (Ed.): Discourses of the learned culture in the early modern times. A manual. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2011. ISBN 978-3-11-018901-8 . Pp. 747-808.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Johannes Wallmann: Arndt Reception in the Baltic States , Tübingen 2010, p. 271.
  2. ↑ Thomas Illg: Becoming Another Human , Göttingen 2011, p. 56 f.
  3. ↑ Thomas Illg: Another Human Become , Göttingen 2011, p. 60.
  4. ↑ Thomas Illg: Another Human Becoming , Göttingen 2011, p. 63 f.
  5. ^ Hermann Geyer: Verborgene Weisheit , Volume 1, Berlin / New York 2001, p. 10 f.
  6. ^ Hermann Geyer: Verborgene Weisheit , Volume 2, Berlin / New York 2001, p. 74.
  7. ↑ Wolfgang Sommer : The spirituality between Lutheran orthodoxy, mysticism and Pietism using the example of Johann Arndt (1555-1621) . In: Peter Zimmerling (Ed.): Handbook of Evangelical Spirituality. Volume 1: History. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht ,. Göttingen 2017, pp. 213–238, here p. 224.
  8. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 136.
  9. ↑ a b Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 137.
  10. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 137 f.
  11. ^ Hermann Geyer: Verborgene Weisheit , Volume 2, Berlin / New York 2001, pp. 20-22.
  12. ^ Hermann Geyer: Verborgene Weisheit , Volume 2, Berlin / New York 2001, p. 53 ff.
  13. ^ Hermann Geyer: Verborgene Weisheit , Volume 2, Berlin / New York 2001, p. 60.
  14. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 138.
  15. ^ Johann Arndt: Four books from true Christianity, II.34.11, p. 392. Verbatim quotation from Weigel's prayer book. See Volkhard Wels: Immediate Divine Revelation as the Subject of Discussion in Protestant Theology of the Early Modern Age , p. 781.
  16. ↑ a b Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 139.
  17. ↑ "The father of Lutheran Pietism is not Spener, but Johann Arndt." (E. Stoeffler,: The Rise of Evangelical Pietism , 2nd edition, Leiden 1971, p. 202, quoted here from: Johannes Wallmann: Der Pietismus , Göttingen 2005, p. 33).
  18. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 142 f.
  19. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 143.
  20. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 146.
  21. ^ Johann Anselm Steiger : Johann Arndt's "True Christianity", Lukas Osiander's Critique and Heinrich Varenius' Arndt Apology. In: Hans Otte , Hans Schneider (Ed.): Piety or Theology. Johann Arndt and the "Four Books of True Christianity". Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2007. ISBN 978-3-89971-386-2 , pp. 263-291.
  22. ↑ Martin Brecht: The emergence of the new piety movement in Germany , Göttingen 1993, p. 147.
  23. ↑ Johannes Wallmann: Arndtrezeption im Baltikum , Tübingen 2010, p. 274.
  24. ↑ Hilding Pleijel : The importance of Johann Arndt for the Swedish life of piety. In: Pietism in forms and effects. Festschrift Martin Schmidt . Luther-Verlag, Bielefeld 1975, pp. 383–394.
  25. ^ Hans Schneider: The strange Arndt . Göttingen 2006, p. 247.
  26. ↑ Hans Rothe : Religion and Culture in the Regions of the Russian Empire in the 18th Century . Westdeutscher Verlag, Opladen 1984, p. 80.
  27. ^ Karl Christian Felmy : Reflections on the Dialogue between the Orthodox Churches and the Churches of Lutheran Tradition . In: Reinhard Flogaus, Jennifer Wasmuth (Ed.): Orthodoxy in Dialogue: Historical and Current Perspectives. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / Boston 2015, pp. 75–88, here p. 77 f.
  28. ↑ Karl Christian Felmy: Introduction to Contemporary Orthodox Theology , Berlin 2014, p. 179.