Week 18 · AD 1701–1800

Reason, Revival, and Confession

Pietism, Enlightenment doubt, and the Lutheran church in America

Welcome the class. This week covers the century of Pietism, revival, and Enlightenment reason. Every week ties history back to Christ, Baptism, and the Lord’s Supper.

This week

Worship, reason, and revival

Muhlenberg gives colonial Lutherans one common worship service
Pietism and the revivals call people to personal faith
Enlightenment reason tests the Gospel, including the resurrection
Halle, Salzburg, and Philadelphia link Lutherans across the Atlantic
The Confessions anchor faith in Christ’s promise in Baptism and the Supper

Johann Sebastian Bach, portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1748

Johann Sebastian Bach

Elias Gottlob Haussmann, 1748. Bach holds a six-part puzzle canon, BWV 1076.

Haussmann was Leipzig’s official portrait painter. This is the best-known likeness of Bach made in his lifetime. Bach served as cantor, the head church musician, in Leipzig.

Church life

What Lutherans taught and how they worshiped

Christ and the sacraments

One common worship service

Henry Melchior Muhlenberg (1711–1787) wrote one common service in 1748
It centers on confession, absolution (the pastor’s announcement of forgiveness), preaching, and the Lord’s Supper
Christ’s gifts shape every Sunday
The agenda was never printed in the 1700s. Pastors copied it by hand.

The sources show that the church adopted a common liturgy. They do not vouch for every instruction in it. Muhlenberg arrived in Philadelphia on November 25, 1742, but only one source supports that date. For the parish study, read chapters I and II of his agenda beside the Small Catechism Preface.

Pietism

Personal faith in Halle

Pietism, a movement that stressed personal faith and holy living, shaped the Lutheran church in Halle
August Hermann Francke began a school and orphanage there in 1695
By 1698 the orphanage housed 100 orphans
At its best, Pietism called people back to Christ’s Word and Baptism

Pietism also led some people to doubt their baptism, because they felt no dramatic conversion. Halle trained and sent Muhlenberg and other pastors to America. Halle also sent Bartholomäus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plütschau to Tranquebar, India, where they landed on July 9, 1706.

Controversy

Enlightenment

Reason as judge

The Enlightenment, an age that prized human reason, asked people to judge everything by reason
Kant’s 1784 essay urges people to use their own understanding
Rationalism makes human reason the judge of what God revealed
Hume’s 1748 essay “Of Miracles” argues that no testimony can prove a miracle

Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature. This claim strikes at Christ’s resurrection. Test particular claims about his divinity and the sacraments. Do not label all Enlightenment thought heresy.

Christ and the sacraments

Revival and assurance

Wesley’s 1738 journal says his heart felt “strangely warmed” at Aldersgate
Revival movements joined assurance to a remembered emotional experience
Assurance rests on Christ’s promises in Baptism and the Supper
Do not treat every revival as one teaching

Wesley’s journal records an evening meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in 1738. Someone read Luther’s preface to Romans that evening, and Wesley trusted Christ for his salvation. Compare that with the Small Catechism on Baptism and the Supper.

Councils and events

Councils and events

Pennsylvania Ministerium, 1748

Rome and the Eastern churches hold no ecumenical council this century
Six pastors and lay delegates from ten congregations formed it in Philadelphia
Muhlenberg encouraged it, and it adopted a common liturgy
Lutheran classification: Not classified

Ecumenical means church-wide. The Ministerium settled church order and worship forms, not doctrine. Augsburg Confession VII allows such forms to differ where the Gospel and the sacraments stay pure. Treat a colonial synod, a church assembly, as a means of common confession and pastoral oversight, not as an ancient universal council.

Major people

George Whitefield, portrait by John Russell, about 1770

Major people

George Whitefield

An Anglican preacher who drew large crowds in the Great Awakening
He preached in the American colonies in 1739
Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography records his account of Whitefield’s preaching
The Great Awakening was a wave of revivals in the colonies

Franklin’s account is in section 44 of his Autobiography. Jonathan Edwards preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” at Enfield on July 8, 1741. The Confessional section compares the two. Whitefield’s portrait was painted about 1770, two decades after Bach’s.

Wider world

Wider world

Steam, rights, and religious freedom

1769: James Watt patents a separate condenser, which cools used steam apart from the cylinder
1776: The Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence on July 4
1786: Virginia’s statute for religious freedom helps shape the First Amendment
1789: France’s National Assembly adopts the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

Use Watt as one anchor of the Industrial Revolution, not its single starting date. Virginia’s statute passed on January 16, 1786, and it ended the privileged place of the Church of England there. Lutherans had never held a state-church position. Compare the Declaration’s language about rights with Muhlenberg’s agenda, and ask what the church owes the state.

Lutheran developments

Lutheran developments

Ebenezer to Philadelphia

Salzburg Lutherans, expelled from today’s Austria, reached Georgia in 1734 and founded Ebenezer
Halle sent their pastors, Johann Martin Boltzius and Israel Gronau
German, Swedish, and Salzburger Lutherans shared one confession across national lines
Map activity: trace Lutheran churches from Ebenezer to Philadelphia

Archbishop Leopold von Firmian expelled the Protestants of Salzburg by an edict of October 31, 1731. About 300 accepted the invitation to Georgia. The first group arrived in 1734, and the sources give two landing dates: March 12 and March 17, 1734. For Christian education, assess the teaching by Augsburg Confession IV, V, and XIII. Keep Christ and the means of grace, Word and sacraments, central.

Confessional Lutheran connection

Christ and the sacraments

One Christ, Baptism, and the Supper

The Son of God is one person, with full divinity and full humanity (Augsburg Confession III)
Baptism offers grace, including to children (Augsburg Confession IX)
Christ’s body and blood are truly present and given in the Supper (Augsburg Confession X)
Bach’s cantata BWV 7 teaches the same about Baptism

Judge any teaching that reduces Jesus to a moral teacher by these passages, as Enlightenment rationalism often did. This is the curriculum’s confessional judgment. Ask who acts in Baptism and the Supper, and what he gives.

Pietism and revivals

Assurance in Christ’s promise

The Confessions welcome earnest faith and holy living
They anchor assurance in Christ’s promise, given from outside us in Word and sacraments
Assurance does not rest on feelings (Augsburg Confession IV, V, and XII)
Compare an observer’s account of Whitefield with Edwards’s sermon: judgment, repentance, Christ’s promise

This is the curriculum’s confessional judgment. Do not take one sermon as all of Edwards’s teaching. Do not treat every awakening participant as the same. Keep judgment, repentance, and Christ’s promise separate.

Christ and the sacraments

Make disciples

William Carey’s 1792 Enquiry argued that Christians must use means to reach the nations
Matthew 28:18–20 joins teaching, Christ’s authority, and Baptism
Compare the command with Augsburg Confession V and IX
Judge Carey’s argument apart from later missionary practice

Read Carey’s Enquiry, section I, and Matthew 28:18–20 first. Then read Augsburg Confession V and IX. Ask how the command to make disciples joins teaching, Christ’s authority, and Baptism.

For discussion

Where does Christ’s promise in Baptism and the Supper stand between reason and feeling?

Week 18 · 18th century: AD 1701–1800