Philipp Jakob Spener

Philipp Jakob Spener (January 13, 1635 – February 5, 1705) was a German Christian theologian known as the "Father of Pietism."

Spener was born in Rappoltsweiler in Upper Alsace.After a brief time at the grammar school of Colmar, he went to Strasbourg in 1651, where he devoted himself to the study of philology, history and philosophy, and won his degree of master (1653) by a disputation against the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. He then became private tutor to the princes Christian and Charles of the Palatinate, and lectured in the university on philology and history. From 1659 to 1662 he visited the universities of Basel, Tübingen and Geneva, and commenced the study of heraldry, which he pursued throughout his life. In Geneva especially his religious views and tendencies were turned in the direction of mysticism.

Spener returned to Strasbourg in 1663, where he was appointed preacher without pastoral duties, with the right of holding lectures. Three years afterwards he was invited to become the chief pastor in the Lutheran Church at Frankfurt. Here he published his two chief works, "Pia desideria" (1675) and "Allgemeine Gottesgelehrtheit" (1680), and began that form of pastoral work which resulted in the movement called Pietism. In 1686 he accepted the invitation to the first court chaplaincy at Dresden. But the Elector John George III, at whose personal desire the post had been offered to him, was soon offended at the fearless conscientiousness with which his chaplain sought to discharge his pastoral duties. Spener refused to resign his post, and the Saxon government hesitated to dismiss him. But in 1691 the Saxon representative at Berlin induced the court of Brandenburg to offer him the rectorship of St Nicholas in Berlin with the title of "Konsistorialrat"."

In Berlin Spener was held in high honour, though the tendencies of the court and the government officials were rather rationalistic than pietistic. The University of Halle was founded under his influence in 1694. All his life long Spener had been exposed to the attacks and abuse of the orthodox Lutheran theologians; with the years, his opponents multiplied, and the movement which he had inaugurated increasingly served as a subject for hostile criticism. In 1695 the theological faculty of Wittenberg formally laid to his charge 264 errors, and only his death released him from these fierce conflicts. His last important work was "Theologische Bedenken" (1700-1702), to which was added after his death "Letzte theologische Bedenken", with a biography of Spener by CH von Canstein (1711).

Though Spener has been called the "father of Pietism". Albrecht Ritschl ("Geschichte des Pietismus", ii. 163) maintains that "he was himself not a Pietist," as he did not advocate the quietistic, legalistic and semi-separatist practices of Pietism, though they were more or less involved in the positions he assumed or the practices which he encouraged or connived at. The only two points on which he departed from the orthodox Lutheran faith of his day were the requirement of regeneration as the "sine qua non" of the true theologian, and the expectation of the conversion of the Jews and the fall of Papacy as the prelude of the triumph of the church. He did not, like the later Pietists, insist on the necessity of a conscious crisis of conversion, nor did he encourage a complete breach between the Christian and the secular life.

Spener was a prolific writer. The list of his published works comprises 7 vols. folio, 63 quarto, 7 octavo, 46 duodecimo; a new edition of his chief writings was published by P Grunberg in 1889.

References

*1911

Bibliography

* Philipp Jacob Spener: Pia desideria – Umkehr in die Zukunft, Brunnen Verlag Gießen, 1995, ISBN 3-7655-9065-7
* Ludwig Biewer: Philipp Jakob Spener als Heraldiker - Ein kleiner Beitrag zu dem 300. Todestag eines großen Theologen in: Der Herold (Virteljahresschrift des "Herold" - Verein für Heraldik, Genealogie und verwandte Wissenschaften zu Berlin), Bd. 16, Heft 17/2005, S. 493ff.
* Johannes Wallmann, Philipp Jakob Spener und die Anfänge des Pietismus, 1970
* Reinhard Breymayer: Der "Vater des deutschen Pietismus" und seine Bücher. Zur Privatbibliothek Philipp Jakob Speners, in: Bibliothecae selectae da Cusano a Leopardi, a cura di Eugenio Canone. Leo S. Olschki Editore, Firenze 1993 (Lessico Intellettuale Europeo, 58), S. 299-331.

External links

* [http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/camenaref/spener.html Online edition of Spener's heraldic works]