Dr. Rod Rosenbladt on "Pietism" and "Christ Alone"

My White Horse Inn compatriot and dear friend, Dr. Rod Rosenbladt, was recently on "Issues, Etc."

Dr. Rosenbladt on Pietism

Dr. Rosenbladt on Christ alone

Comments

[Andrew]

Rod is my favorite part of the WHI and I'm not even Lutheran...

[George]

This was a most excellent lecture by Dr. Rosenbladt. Thanks for linking us to it. I grew up LCMS under very confessional Lutheran pastors until about age 11 when the family relocated to a region of the country where Lutheranism (what passed for it) was counterbalanced by Wesleyanism and Quaker pietism. So, like Dr. Rod, I spent my teen years in an ALC congregation that preached and practiced exactly those things covered in his lecture. It was not until many years later, returning to the LCMS and studying these matters that I began to realize the differences between the "pietistic" Lutherans of the Swedish/Norwegian ALC/LCA (and ULC, for that matter) and the LCMS, the latter of which was to undergo its own crisis in the 70's. These days I prefer to follow Reformed theology, but mainly over issues like baptismal regeneration and consubstantiation in the Lord's Supper, certainly not over justification sola fide.

But there is an item in Rod's lecture that is a bit confusing to me, beginning at about minute 6:00. He refers to Spener and Butzer in Strasburg, "a strong 120 proof Calvinist city" as some of the beginning points of the pietistic movement. Why would a strongly Calvinistic area influence these people toward introspection and progressive sanctification? The historic Reformed theology that I read about on blogs like this one and the Heidelblog seem to emphasize justification sola fide as much as the confessional Lutherans.