Six desires of piety
July 2nd, 2008 Posted in Books, Church, Contextual theology, Kingdom of God, Mission, Theology | No Comments »My summer reading of biographies continues and this time with a book about John Wesley. I’ve started to read “Wesley and the People called Methodists” written by Richard P. Heitzenrater. The first part of this 300+ pages volume is about the early development of the Church in England and how it gradually became the Church of England, following many struggles between the papacy in Rome and the governing forces in England.
Heitzenrater describes the birth of the pietism and religious societies in Europe and England in particular. One of the first step of this was the Calvinists urge for Christians to recognized their elect status and making it visible in their lives, as a human response to God’s grace and in this way the Calvinists did not promote “good works” as such. Parallel to this, there was a whole “new” movement gaining ground in Germany in particular - Pietism saw the light of day. On of the main spokespersons was Philipp Jacob Spener, who was among the very first to present the program of the movement. One of the groundbreaking books was “Pia desideria” (1675). In this book Spener outlined six desires of piety. As I read through these six points once again, I realized how some things tend to repeat. We live in non-cyclical times where the kingdom of God is advancing towards a final goal, at the same time some things repeats themselves. These were the six desires of piety that Spener wrote about;
1) In order for the church to ground its life in the proper authority, the church needed to reemphasize the study of Scripture. This was a reiteration of the theme than was one of the main aims of the Reformation - Sola scriptura (Scripture as sole authority for Christian life and thought).
2) The second point of Spener was also a reiteration of one of the Lutheran themes, namely that the renewal of the church needed to commit to active involvement and concern of laity.
3) Speners third point was about the need of more emphasis placed on the evangelical zeal instead of debating skill.
4) Fourthly, Spener meant that there also should be a practical focus on Christian living rather than intellectual acumen.
5) The fifth point was about the method of preaching. Spener wrote that the preaching should be aimed at the salvation of the listener, not simply for instruction or correction.
6) The final point was aimed at the declining moral and spiritual qualities in the lives of many pastors. Spener meant that the ministerial training should emphasize the development of moral and spiritual qualities in the life of the pastors.
It is really interesting to see how these six points, written more than 300 years, in many ways just was well could have been written in our day and age. In an age when the church is contextualizing away some of the truths we find in Scripture, there truly is a need to reemphasize the study of Scriptures.



















