Читать книгу The Awakening - Friedrich Zuendel - Страница 4

Though relatively unknown to many readers, Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805–1880) is widely recognized in his native Germany, perhaps because of his landmark biography, which appeared the year he died and still remains in print. The terrifying psychic phenomena described in it catapulted his parish into the public eye and still draw streams of curious visitors to it, one hundred and fifty years later.

The central fact of Blumhardt’s life, however, was not his involvement in demonic struggle as such, but the childlike faith that led him into it – namely, his belief in the reality of the age-old battle between good and evil, and in a Jesus who was not only an historical figure, but a living reality whose cosmic power can be felt and experienced still today.

This faith embarrassed Blumhardt’s contemporaries, so much so that his nervous superiors tried to suppress him by restricting his pastoral work. It is even more suspect in our time, when scientific progress has rendered rationalism the only acceptable faith for thinking people, and the untidy mysteries of the supernatural are relegated to talk shows and fiction shelves. Mention God, or Satan, and you’re sure to evoke winces or worse.

For Blumhardt, there was no question about it: good and evil truly did exist, and not only in the abstract. To him, the well-known accounts of New Testament writers had meaning not only as parables or stories, but as factual instances of divine intervention in the lives of real men and women. To him, it seemed obvious that if demons were driven out, the sick healed, and the dead raised two thousand years ago, they could also be driven out, healed, and raised in the present too.

Zündel’s account is fascinating on an historical level, but it has vital implications for today’s reader. And though the quiet pastor at the heart of the struggle he describes worried that it might become a source of exaggerated rumors, he would still want it to be discovered and grappled with and read. More than that, he would surely want it to give courage to those who despair over the spiritual emptiness of our church-filled landscapes, and hope to those whose hearts are open to believe.

The Editors October 1999