Supporting Theological Reflection and Conversation that Strengthen the Ministry of the Church

A wonderful byproduct of the recent renewed interest in spirituality has been the recovery and growing availability of many historical texts and writers that were previously unknown or at least had become rather neglected. In particular, the valuable series, Classics of Western Spirituality, published by Paulist Press, has made readily accessible the worlds of Patristic, Orthodox, Spanish, German, French and English spirituality as well as the medieval mystics, women as well as men. Ignorance of this rich tradition is no longer excusable; church and theology have much to gain by paying it serious attention.

Lacunae remain, however, and this volume under review calls attention to one—the Dutch Second Reformation of the 17^th and 18^th centuries. This work by Carl Schroeder, focusing on one of the important leaders of the Second Reformation, Jodocus van Lodenstein (1620-77), is an excellent introduction to the movement. The author identifies strongly with the Reformed experiential tradition and the result is a sympathetic though not uncritical portrait.  Primarily based on a thorough review of secondary sources rather than original scholarship, the volume does make a contribution to scholars by including some sixty pages of van Lodenstein text, translated into English.

Schroeder begins by placing the Second Reformation and van Lodenstein in the long tradition of Dutch mystical piety (including Calvin, Brethren of the Common Life), provides a useful overview of Dutch national and church history (William of Orange, Synod of Dordt), and then gives us an overview of Van Lodenstein’s life, education, ministry, and writing. Van Lodenstein came from a socially and economically privileged class and practiced a piety of stringent self-denial. He never married, was abstemious with respect to food, little given to social niceties, and preached a life of Christian discipleship in which renunciation played a major role. He even lived in a cloistered, monastic-like setting on an estate in Utrecht. The rigor was tied to disciplined spiritual habit in which a profound Jesus mysticism was prominent.

Van Lodenstein introduced the use of monthly repentance sermons to the Dutch Reformed Church, a practice he picked up from the Puritans. His monastic and mystical inclinations, combined with disappointments that the Dutch Reformed Church was not reforming the life of Dutch people, led Van Lodenstein beyond the Old Testament parallels between God, Israel and the Netherlands, to pay more attention to the Song of Songs, to the writings of Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas a Kempis. He also became critical of the tendency among Reformed Christians to react only negatively Roman Catholic honoring of Mary, insisting that it is proper for Reformed Christians to appreciate the purity and obedience of our Lord’s mother.

Finally, both in the appendices of sermons and in his chapter on Van Lodenstein as “Poet, Hymnist, and Writer” (ch. 5), Schroeder gives us enough material for us to get a good feel of Van Lodenstein the writer. His own summary (p. 122) is worth citing in full: 

Van Lodenstein was a unique phenomenon in his day; a Dutch Reformed “secular” monastic, living in the world which stoutly resisting its appeal. He was an orthodox Calvinist in theology, but innovative and often unique in his practices. The strong mystical trends of his later years reinforced his “Christ Against Culture” stance even more, leaving him increasingly solitary even as his health declined.

Schroeder does engage the scholarship of pietism—he makes much use of Stoeffler and regularly argues with Ritschl—but his chief interest is in Van Lodenstein’s relevance for the church today. His summary of the conditions for revival are on target but I do have two small quibbles with Schroeders “application.” I am not sure if simul iustus et peccator (pp. 78, 99) really defines a Reformed attitude to the world. and wonder about the usefulness of using  H. Richard Niebuhr’s “Christ transforming culture” and Robert Schuller’s “self-esteem” theology as touchstones for a Reformed view of discipleship. 

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