著者

金子 晴勇

出版者

聖学院大学

雑誌

聖学院大学論叢 (ISSN:09152539)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.11, no.1, pp.1-23, 1998-09-20

---

In the lands of Germany, Lutheranism continued to develop along the orthodox lines apparently after the acceptance of the Formula of Concord in 1580. But the theologians of the first half of the seventeenth century did not lose sight of the prior importance of the Bible as the Word of God, though they did not ignore the practical religious problems of their day. This attempt, however, tended to relegate Luther's doctrine of justification to the background and led to the introduction of many elements of late-medieval German mysticism and the natural philosophy of Paracelsus. These spiritual movements developed the doctrine of the inner light of the mystics and formed the Protestant Mysticism in Germany. Weigel's spiritual conception of Christianity was fed by the sermons of Tauler, the "German Theology" of an unknown German mystic, and the natural philosophy of Paracelsus. He drew also from many other sources and finally arrived at a type of religion, still interior and personal, but less negative and abstract than that of the fourteenth-century mystics. Weigel developed a very interesting theory of knowledge, which fits well with the inwardness of his religious views. He holds that in sense perception the percipient brings forth his real knowledge from within. All natural knowledge is in the knower, but the supernatural knowledge comes from the inner "Grund der Seele" as German mystics had once taught. Weigel plainly arrived at his basic ideas under the formative influence of Schwenckfeld and Franck, but he also reveals in his conception of the microcosmic character of man, the influence of Paracelsus. Arndt was a minister of the Lutheran Church and an observant reader and perceptive student of Martin Luther's works. He had studied medicine as well as theology. Therefore, in his widely read and influential work "True Christianity" are also found extracts from the works of Paracelsus, Tauler and "German Theology". Long before scholars decreed the mutual exclusion of "Reformation" and "Mysticism," Luther himself had ingested and incorporated into his own thinking the sermons of Bernard of Clairvaux, Johannes Staupitz, and Tauler. In this respect Arndt is a second Luther, a Lutherus redivivus. His work helped prepare the way for the strong German reaction to Lutheran orthodoxy as expressed in both the Enlightenment and Pietism. We will clarify the characteristic feature of the Mysticism of Protestantism in Germany. In the above-mentioned context, this paper seeks to elucidate the following points: (1) V. Weigel and Natural Mysticism (2) J. Arndt's "True Christianity" and Protestant Mysticism.