The Swedish Pietists: A Reader by Mark Safstrom (review)

European pietism is one of the major formative influences on Lutheranism in North America; one might even dare to say that it is the formative influence. However, in the last sixty years or so, many North American Lutherans have been running fast and hard away from this element of their past, casting their European pietist roots in a negative and disparaging light. Much negative commentary on pietism has come out of ignorance and stereotypes, or out of experiences with more recent forms of pietism that unfortunately devolved into a joyless legalism (as portrayed in the 1987 film, Babette’s Feast). It is truly unfortunate that our popular perception of this formative movement is based on such ignorance and bias, because when people are actually exposed to the writings and theology of the pietist leaders, they are often amazed by the positive depth of Christian faith and life in these leaders, and at the applicability of their writings to the lives of contemporary Christians.

When it comes to the great Scandinavian pietistic awakenings of the nineteenth century, much of the problem stems from a lack of access to its major writings and formative figures. Many important writings were never translated into English, or if they were translated, those editions have long been out of print. Fortunately, new editions and translations of some of the important writings of the nineteenth-century Scandinavian pietist leaders have appeared recently. Front and center in this revival is a younger scholar, Mark Safstrom (University of Illinois), who had been providing us with wonderful new volumes of material. In 2013 he translated and edited a new English version of Paul Peter Waldenström’s Squire Adamsson, a nineteenth-century fictional allegory on the Christian life (akin to Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, but in this reviewer’s opinion more readable and with a sly wit that is greatly enjoyable). A new volume with a selection of writings from the nineteenth-century Scandinavian pietists edited by this reviewer has appeared in the Paulist Press series “The Classics of Western Spirituality.”

The present volume from Safstrom is a third recent volume on pietist leaders, this time focusing on two major Swedish leaders, Carl Olof Rosenius and Paul Peter Waldenström. Many pieces from these two theologians have never been translated into English, and the selections are well-done and judiciously edited—these authors tend to be lengthy! The entries are on the short side, usually one to three pages. Safstrom has organized these entries thematically in four major sections: knowledge of God, knowledge of Christ, the Christian community, and the nature of faith as experience. Each section contains approximately a dozen entries, evenly divided between Rosenius and Waldenström. These entries are, on the whole, pithy and wise, and accessible.

Safstrom’s introduction alone is worth the price of the book, as he gives a judicious and fairly complete survey of the religious thought of these two authors. This is important, because although the two were roughly contemporary (Waldenström was younger, and the successor to Rosenius as editor of the magazine Pietisten), Waldenström eventually diverged from the Rosenian line. Rosenius always urged his followers to remain Lutheran and within the Church of Sweden, while Waldenström’s followers later diverged from this path, and became the founders of the Covenant and Free Church movements in Sweden and North America. Safstrom rightly points out that the initial cause of this was Waldenström’s new position in 1872 on the doctrine of the atonement, and Safstrom carefully works out the positions of the two authors on this doctrine. This is true, but still an incomplete explanation of the split, which, though it began over the atonement, was ultimately and at root a divergence over the nature of theological authority and the Lutheran confessions. Waldenström’s followers eventually moved towards a non-creedal, biblicistic position, and away from a formal adherence to the Lutheran confessional writings.

This is a fine book, and well worth having and reading closely...