Ein Leben für die Kirche: Zinzendorf als praktischer Theologe (review)

Peter Zimmerling undertook this work to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the death of Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf: the count, the pastor, and the bishop. He offers a study of the practical nature of the leadership that Zinzendorf provided the Moravian Church during his lifetime. Zimmerling’s book is as helpful as it is overdue. Rather than caricaturing Zinzendorf’s theology as chaotic, erotic, or neurotic—as did many of his detractors, and even some supporters who valued other parts of Zinzendorf’s legacy—Zimmerling subdivides Zinzendorf theological expressions into sensible and manageable categories. He then traces the development of Zinzendorf’s thoughts and their pragmatic applications to the growing and changing movement over time. In the preface, Zimmerling points out that the concept of this book grew out of going for a walk with Dietrich Meyer, who then contributed separate chapters on Zinzendorf as liturgist, as hymnologist and hymn writer, and as catechist. In addition, Peter Vogt wrote a chapter on Zinzendorf and the development of spiritual offices. The rest of the book is Zimmerling’s, who wrote chapters on Zinzendorf as preacher, as pastoral counselor, as contributor to understandings of the church, both local and universal, and as creator of the Daily Texts and a chapter devoted to Zinzendorf’s spirituality.

In his introduction, Zimmerling notes Zinzendorf’s view of the experimental nature of the Moravian Church. It was a place where theory and practice could meet and mutually inform, and at times, mutually correct each other. Several important themes run throughout the chapters, including the roles that Zinzendorf’s “turn to Luther,” “Seelsorge,” or care of the soul, and the priesthood of all believers played out in the practical aspects of the everyday lives of church members, and indeed how the Moravian Church structured the lives of these members. Several of these chapters address how the particular theological theme applied not just in Herrnhut but throughout the church as it expanded, with particular attention being paid to Herrnhaag. In a markedly different approach from many English-speaking authors who have vilified Herrnhaag as the dumping ground for what Sifting Time nonsense a given author dislikes, Zimmerling often views Herrnhaag as the embodiment of the mature or maturing expression of the theological concepts he discusses.

One interesting example of this is the paradoxical effect that Zinzendorf’s practical theology exercised on Herrnhaag. While its architecture and physicality had the effect of “aristocrizing” its generally common inhabitants (Zimmerling goes so far as to call it a “revolution from above”), its ecclesiological and social structures exercised a democratizing effect on them and their noble neighbors. This collapsing of distinctions from both above and below works well with Zimmerling’s thought that Zinzendorf’s theology led the Moravian Church to collapse many distinctions: between clergy and laity, between male and female leaders, between sacred and secular work, between Sunday and the rest of the week, between the early church as the life of the church as experienced in the eighteenth century, between the church on earth and the church in heaven, and ultimately between heaven and earth.

While much of the book touches on themes that are somewhat familiar to scholarly readers, many will find Zimmerling’s chapter on Zinzendorf as a preacher the most groundbreaking. The lack of attention to this fact of Zinzendorf’s life is surprising given his lifelong interest in ministry and the numerous public addresses that he delivered on his many travels. In this chapter, Zimmerling notes that there were already thousands of pages of Zinzendorf’s sermon manuscripts collected before his death, and he further notes that, as early as 1926, Waldemar Sinning lamented the relative inattention to Zinzendorf’s preaching. The English translation and publication of sermon collections by Forell (1973), Atwood and Weber (2001), and Kinkel (2010), while welcome contributions, have only scratched the surface.

While this is primarily a historical work, current practical theologians...