The Most Important and Dangerous Spiritual Classic You Haven't Heard Of
...and why it matters a lot
Classic texts have a tendency to assert influence over how people view the world long after they are read or remembered.
Sometimes a book, article, or idea is so potent that it begins to feel obviously true. When this happens, people stop quoting or citing the author, asserting as fact what once might have been seen as provocative.
Let me suggest that there is a deep and profound error assumed by many evangelicals articulated by a spiritual classic they’ve never heard of. What is this spiritual classic? The anonymously written Theologica Germanica, or, as it is sometimes known as today, The Theological Germanica of Martin Luther.
There was, it should be noted, a mixed reception to the work. Calvin wrote concerning it,
“For, although there are no outstanding errors in it, it contains frivolities, conceived by Satan’s cunning in order to confuse the whole simplicity of the gospel. And if you look deeper into it you will find that it contains a hidden deadly poison which can poison the church. Therefore, my brethren, shun like the pest all those who try to defile you with such impurities.”
Luther, however, had a different sense:
“And, if I may speak with biblical foolishness: Next to the Bible and Saint Augustine no other book has come to my attention from which I have learned - and desired to learn - more concerning God, Christ, man, and what all things are.”
Despite Calvin’s worry, Luther’s endorsement won the day. The Theologica Germanica holds incredible influence in evangelicalism because of how substantial its impact was throughout Protestant history, as is evidenced, for instance, in John Wesley’s embracing it.
But it is not just Wesleyan and Lutherans who rejected Calvin’s worry, but many Reformed as well. In 1903, B.B. Warfield was giving a lecture to new seminary students at Princeton, articulating which spiritual classics all seminary students should read. He writes,
“Get at least these dozen booklets, keep them at your elbow, and sink yourselves in them with constant assiduity. They are: - Augustine’s Confessions, The Imitation of Christ, the Theologica Germanica, Bishop Andrewes’ Private Devotions, Heremy Taylor’s Life of Christ, Richard Baxter’s The Saints’ Everlasting Rest, Samuel Rutherford’s Letters, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Sir Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, William Law’s Serious Call, John Newton’s Cardiphonia, Bishop Thomas Wilson’s Sacra Privata.”
Many of these are still recognized as standard spiritual classics in the Christian tradition while the Theologica Germanica is often ignored. Yet it continually shows up in historic Protestant texts and had a massive influence on Protestantism broadly and evangelicalism more narrowly.
Why does that matter? The significance of the Theologica Germanica stems from its unusual view of humanity. Take, for instance, the way the author distinguishes between evil and nature:
“From what has been said above it should be possible better to understand and know that we do not deal with a difference between the devil and nature. Whenever we speak of the first Adam, disobedience, the old man, the I, self-will, self-serving, egoism, Mine, nature, false light, devil, sin, we speak of one and the same thing. And it is all contrary to God and exists without God.”
Notice here that the “I” and “devil” are synonyms. The “I” is a part of the system of nature, which the author equates with disobedience and sin. What then is obedience?
“I answer: Man must put aside all ‘selfdom’ and concern with the ‘Self’ so that he does not look out for himself at all, indeed as though he did not exist. In other words, he should be concerned with his own self as little and think about his own self and his own as little as though he did not exist; yes, he should take as little account of himself as though he were not.”
In case he was not clear, the author reiterates repeatedly saying like this. Take, for instance: “The more of self and I, the more sin and wickedness; the less of self and I the less of sin. It has also been written: The more Mine and I, that is to say I-attachment and selfishness, recede, the more God’s I, that is God Himself, increases in me.”
There is much more we could say here about the overall message of the Theologica Germanica, and how we might want to contextualize these quotations, but I’m less interested in trying to interpret it correctly than I am focusing on how it has impacted evangelical spirituality. The radical rejection of nature, and the demonizing of the “I,” have impacted how we read scripture and understand the fundamentally good features of our humanity.
Take a typical reading of John the Baptist’s sentence: “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). I often hear this means that I have to decrease for Christ to increase. But that is, of course, false. This fails to articulate the reality of life in Christ in every possible way.
First, taking passages about John the Baptist’s precursor ministry and applying them to your life does not work. In the gospel we are not confronted with a zero-sum game, such that I just lose my life. Rather, I lose my life in order to find it. My life, my “I,” might need to be decentered, but Galatians 2:20 says more than merely “it is no longer I who live,” but goes on to say, “the life I now live.” The “I” is not the problem, rather, it is how the I relates to itself in and through Christ.
Second, you need to do a lot more than decrease. You are dead in your trespasses. You need to die. This is the whole point about the claim that you need to lose your life in order to find it. The problem is a whole lot worse than simply you needing to decrease.
Instead, what we find through the gospel is that you do not decrease when Christ increases, you increase when Christ does. In the gospel we discover that our true life is found in Christ, such that we are finally ourselves in him.
The problem with the Theologica Gemanica is that we lose any sense of how self-love works as a feature of the goodness of our humanity, and we take all self-love to be selfishness. There is a reason that the tradition rejects this. Edwards is a good example when he claims that to destroy all self-love would be to destroy humanity, and “Christianity is not destructive of humanity.”
When Christians claim that we need to decrease so that Christ increases we lose sight of the goodness of our humanity and the goodness of the gospel. In a later post I will reflect a bit on why we are taken in by this, and it has nothing to do with it being biblical, but rather because we’ve come to think it feels biblical.