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Nikolaus Ludwig Count von Zinzendorf came into the world on May 26, 1700, in the German city of Dresden. He died in Herrnhut on May 9, 1760. His life was filled with both controversy and paradox. He was a theologian who never formally studied theology. In an age of harsh literary and institutional battles between Lutheran Orthodoxy and Pietism, he grew up in a family intimately associated with the leading figures of Lutheran Pietism, yet earned his degree at Wittenberg University, the great fortress of Lutheran Orthodoxy. As a young man, his Christian convictions drove him to embrace pacifism, but he was employed by the government as special counsel to the king of Saxony. He was a representative of the law who conducted illegal religious meetings in his Dresden apartment and wrote and printed anonymously (on his own press) a totally illegal, critical, religious periodical under the pen name “the Dresden Socrates.” He was a member of the high nobility, a relative and friend of kings, who spent a good deal of his adult life in close association with uneducated laborers, religious dissenters, black slaves from the West Indies, and native people in America. He was a devoted follower of Luther who carried on a deep personal friendship with a Roman Catholic cardinal during the days when Lutherans and Catholics regarded each other with open hostility. He was a lover of the Lutheran confessional documents who opened his heart and even his house and lands to religious radicals and dissenters who confessed Jesus Christ but ignored the Lutheran confessions and rejected the state church structure. There were Mennonite preachers who spoke highly of him, while some of his fellow Lutherans considered him mad. A highly cultured intellectual who was engaged with, and appreciative of, much of the Enlightenment, a lover particularly of the work of the philosopher Pierre Bayle, he lived by a simple, passionate, and profound faith in Jesus, the Lamb of God. In an age when most Christians in Europe and the Americas heaped abuse and contempt upon Jews and Judaism, he befriended Jews and learned from them. Indeed, he began to use Yiddish expressions in his speech. Though accused of being a “quietist,” it is hard to imagine anyone more dynamic, engaged, and unquiet.

For all that, one might be tempted to dismiss him as a historically interesting character, but certainly not someone who might bear meaningful theological fruit in the present. Such a conclusion would be badly mistaken. Count Zinzendorf has had, and continues to have, an influence that compels further study and engagement with him. He ought to be read and considered, if for no other reason, for the significance of the people who have been profoundly shaped and influenced by him. He was without question the most influential German theologian between Luther and Schleiermacher. He was a decisive influence on both Schleiermacher and Kierkegaard. He stood behind much of the preaching of Johann Christoph Blumhardt. In the twentieth century Karl Barth came to praise him. Jürgen Moltmann dedicated one of his books to the spiritual heirs of Zinzendorf. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, too, bears the imprint of Zinzendorf. But in order to catch a glimpse of how he might relate to the present, it is necessary to understand him first in his own time and context. In this short essay I will suggest some of the significant features of the age in which he lived, sketch the course of his own life, and, finally, point to a few reasons he ought to continue to matter to Christians even in the present.

The time of Zinzendorf’s birth in Dresden as the son of an imperial count was an age of cultural flowering in Saxony. It was a high-water mark for the region. Art, literature, and language were shaped by the style called “baroque.” It is not too much to say that Dresden was, in fact, a center of baroque culture. In other words, paintings, buildings, sculpture, and speech were ornately decorated. There were gratuitous flourishes everywhere. If a painting seemed to require excessive ornament, then in speech a simple declarative sentence could hardly do. The reader will encounter in Zinzendorf this baroque inclination to speak prose as if it were poetry; to construct long sentences with subordinate clauses; to say, not merely “God,” but “the dear, kind God;” to say not merely “Jesus,” but to add a whole parenthetical list of titles. It is language with a flourish.

Politically, it was the age of absolutism in Saxony, following the French model. The electoral prince of Saxony, or elector, was Friedrich August I (1670–1733), called “the Strong.” In 1697 he took the Polish throne, and in Poland his title was “August II.” Thus, from 1697–1733 he ruled both Saxony and Poland. He was continually in need of money, not least because he spent extravagantly. But extravagant spending seemed to fit the baroque spirit. He had grand, one might say fantastic, political plans. His faith, his relation to God, was decidedly secondary to and in the service of, his political ambitions. It was this, together with his absolutist program, which provoked criticism and opposition from the ranks of the Saxon nobility.

A movement had taken shape and gained momentum among the nobility, some professors of theology, and some clergy. A good deal of the criticism of the prince came from people active in this movement who were particularly moved to opposition by the prince’s willingness to sacrifice faith for political ends. The movement came to be called “Pietism.” A number of sources gave rise to it. But Lutheran Pietism had one central conviction: that Lutheran theology, the Lutheran confessional writings, worship attendance, talk about God, indeed, the very existence of the Christian Church itself, amounted to emptiness, at best a thin ethical porridge and some metaphysical crumbs, apart from living faith in Jesus Christ that is active in love, a deep personal engagement with Scripture, and a life of prayer. Pietists reacted strongly against a Christianity that had come to be indentified largely with the cognitive: getting the doctrine right. While they did not disparage right doctrine, they called for a Christian life that likewise engaged the affective, the volitional, and the ethical. With the doctrine as a framework a Christian life must be constructed, they thought, by a vital relationship of trust and love with the One to whom all the doctrines point and bear witness; and this relationship, if it is authentic, must shape and drive the affections, the will, and the way one conducted oneself.

The Pietist interest in the will and the affections drove them to a close acquaintance with devotional literature and intense engagement with the Bible. They also learned to open themselves to each other and to speak the truth to each other even when it was hard. But their attention was not turned merely to the inward. Lutheran Pietists had begun sending missionaries outside the continent to take the message concerning Jesus Christ to people who had not heard it. These missionaries were few and the sending was sporadic, but they were the first Protestant missionaries sent to foreign lands.

Lutheran Orthodox theologians sharply opposed the Pietist movement. They accused Pietists of altering doctrine, of subjectivizing the objective truths of the faith, of putting all the emphasis on regeneration and renewal rather than on justification, of thinking and speaking of salvation in a synergistic way (i.e., as though God’s grace does not accomplish all, but rather requires our action), of undermining the status and function of the clergy, and of embarking on mission when God had not called for it. Orthodoxy argued that the Gospel had already been carried to every place God intended it to go. Therefore, there was to be no mission. If there were people who had never had an opportunity to hear the Gospel, to hear of Jesus Christ, it was the fault of their ancestors, who presumably had rejected the message. Pietism continued on its way nevertheless. There were exchanges, sometimes harsh, between Lutheran Orthodox and Lutheran Pietist leaders.

Among the Pietist critics of Friedrich August the Strong was one of the prince’s own counselors, an imperial count named Georg Ludwig von Zinzendorf. Georg Ludwig was a close friend of Philipp Jakob Spener, who is usually referred to as the founder of the Lutheran Pietist movement. Moreover, Georg Ludwig von Zinzendorf was the father of Nikolaus Ludwig, the author of our speeches.

Six weeks after Nikolaus was born Georg Ludwig, 38 years old, died of what seems to have been tuberculosis. Nikolaus’ mother, Charlotte Justine (daughter of Nikolaus von Gersdorf, prefect of Upper Lusatia) took her infant son and went to live with her parents. Two older children from Georg Ludwig’s first marriage went to live with Georg Ludwig’s brother, a Field Marshall. Two years later Nikolaus von Gersdorf himself died. At that point, Charlotte’s mother moved the whole family to her ancestral home, the castle of Gross Hennersdorf in Upper Lusatia, roughly sixty miles east of Dresden. In 1704 Charlotte married Dubislaw Gneomer von Natzmer, a Prussian Field Marshall, and moved with him to Berlin. Four-year-old Nikolaus was left with his grandmother in Gross Hennersdorf.

All this leaving behind of children following death and remarriage may strike the contemporary reader as very strange, or at least very sad. But this is how life was in eighteenth century Europe. Death often came early and children had to be taken in by relatives or friends. It was Nikolaus’ great good fortune to be left to be nurtured and educated by his grandmother, Henriette Katherina von Gersdorf.

Henriette Katherina von Gersdorf was a brilliant and accomplished woman. She had gained recognition among the educated as a poet in both German and Latin. She painted in oils and was a talented musician. By letter from her castle she continued to wield considerable influence at Friedrich August the Strong’s court in Dresden. Moreover, she corresponded with Leibniz, the great German philosopher. She read his work and engaged his thought critically. His letters to her reveal that he took her very seriously as a philosophical conversation partner. Long before Nikolaus’ birth she had been an enthusiastic participant in the Lutheran Pietist movement. There were Pietist gatherings in her castle and Pietist leaders such as Philipp Spener, August Hermann Francke, and Paul Anton were frequent guests in her home. She made generous financial contributions to their projects (e.g., the Franckesche Stiftung, which is still in operation today in the city of Halle and was founded and built partly with von Gersdorf money). She took care of large numbers of orphans, widows, and the poor in her region. She read theology in both German and Latin and learned biblical Hebrew and Koine Greek in order to read the Scriptures in their original languages. Finally, she managed the large estate that came with her castle with dexterity and skill. So it was to this powerful and remarkable woman that Zinzendorf’s mother entrusted his care. Nor did it do any harm that little Nikolaus was the apple of her eye.

There were no other small children on this (then) somewhat remote estate. So the Count grew up without playmates his own age. He spent a considerable amount of time during his childhood alone, though his mother’s sister still lived in the castle. She was fifteen years older than he and was more like another parent than a playmate. Still, during his childhood their relationship was close.

Zinzendorf participated daily in the devotional services his grandmother led, attendance at which was required for all the employees of the estate. He was sometimes underfoot in the midst of the estate’s bustling activity. But he also made his own projects. And his grandmother von Gersdorf undertook his education. Some of it was carried out by hired tutors and some of it she did herself. But his engagement with other people was with adults and not with other children.

In the midst of all this activity—particularly the Scripture, prayer, and hymns of the devotional exercises, with famous Pietist leaders coming and going—it is not surprising that this extraordinarily talented child was also religiously precocious. There are many stories of his seeking ways to express his love for Jesus. As a very small boy he wrote notes to Jesus, expressing his devotion to and love for his Savior. He would throw the notes out the window so that the Savior would receive them. After public worship he could repeat the pastor’s prayers verbatim for the adults.

In 1706 Swedish armies under Charles XII overran Saxony. A military unit appeared on the estate to commandeer supplies. Entering the castle intent upon ransacking it they burst into a room in which the then six-year-old Zinzendorf was carrying on his usual private devotions. The Swedish soldiers were, like the little count, Lutherans. They paused in their assignment to listen to him speak about Jesus Christ, and to pray with him!

As an adult he said he had never known a time when he did not love the Savior above all things. He experienced no conversion, no hard won repentance, no turning from a dissolute life or from casual indifference to the cross. From his earliest consciousness he lived by faith in the Savior who loved him and gave himself up for him. Always, the Lamb of God, slaughtered on the cross, was central to his cognitive, affective, volitional, and practical life.

In addition to training him in the Christian life, his grandmother also impressed upon him continually that he was born a Reichsgraf, a member of the upper nobility along with princes, electors, and the emperor himself. She taught him that God had given him such a high and noble birth and he must use it to rule. Thus, his education was directed to preparing him to govern. He learned languages (he was polylinguistic all his life), history, geography, mathematics and a host of social skills so that he might be able to carry himself properly. She also believed that rulers must conduct themselves with great discipline. So he was also trained to have great self-discipline, great self-control. By all accounts this self-discipline came with difficulty for him. He had a passionate nature. And despite all this training for government, Zinzendorf wrote many years later that his grandmother’s education had shaped him in such a way that he could relish nothing except the doctrine of Jesus Christ and his death and merit.

When it was time for him to prepare to attend a university, it should come as no surprise that his grandmother sent him as a boarder to the prep school operated by her friend, the Pietist leader and educator August Hermann Francke. Thus, he travelled to Halle in August of 1710 to study. His teachers and fellow students made his life a trial. They conspired to make him miserable. The reason behind his harsh treatment lay in a letter Zinzendorf’s mother had sent to Francke. Since her son was clearly a boy of great ability, she urged Francke to break his spirit and keep him down in order that pride not take root in his heart. He also had to endure simultaneously a tutor who clearly disliked Zinzendorf and tried both directly and deviously to destroy his reputation and to get him removed from the school. But the circumstances revealed that the boy had great inner resources and relied on his Savior. He not only survived the ordeal, but when he left at the age of sixteen to matriculate at university he turned over to Francke a list of seven groups of boys, all of which he had started, and with all of which he met. Each of these groups would meet at its appointed time, apart from adults in some secluded place, and Zinzendorf would lead them in prayer, in sharing the true state of their hearts, and in learning to refer all things in their lives to the Savior who loved them.

While taking his leave from Halle, Count Zinzendorf prayed with one of his close friends, a Swiss noble named de Watteville. The two sixteen-year-olds pledged that they each would do all in their power to carry the message concerning Jesus Christ to all people, but especially to those to whom no one else would go, or about whom no one else cared. This pledge would later be carried out in astounding fashion.

It was decided that he would attend the University of Wittenberg. It was the place where Luther had been professor of Bible two hundred years earlier, and it was, in Zinzendorf’s day, one of the leading institutions of Lutheran Orthodoxy. It was also decided that he would study law. At that time, such decisions were not made by the student. The family, most particularly his parents and his grandmother, made these decisions for him.

In Wittenberg he continued with a tutor who did not understand, and who was totally unsympathetic to his religious life. The tutor had been hired by his father’s brother, who was deeply opposed to Pietism. Nevertheless, the sixteen-year-old set himself a rigorous devotional program. He also took to handing out Pietist tracts on the streets of this city whose university was the very bastion of Orthodoxy. Although he was supposed to be study law, he snuck into lectures in theology. He was befriended by a professor of theology who took him under his wing and guided his theological reading. Many years later the count remarked that what he really learned at Wittenberg was not law, but theology. And the theology he learned was that of Lutheran Orthodoxy.

While still a teen he undertook to bring the leaders of Orthodoxy and Pietism together for formal discussions. His intention was to bring about rapprochement. He had personal contacts with both sides and viewed this as a call from God to make peace between them. He had gone as far as arranging a meeting when his family intervened and derailed the project. In their view he was only a student, and not even a theology student, therefore he was meddling in matters that were not his affair. His family ordered him to withdraw. As a result, the meeting never happened, and Orthodoxy and Pietism continued in their sharp opposition to each other.

Upon completing his degree in law, Zinzendorf was sent on a trip around Europe. This was considered a necessary part of a young noble’s education. On this trip he was to build an international network of friends and acquaintances, looking forward to the day when he would wield power, and to become more finely cultured by seeing the great art, architecture, and historical sites of the continent. Zinzendorf spent much of his time seeking friends who shared his love for Jesus and engaging in deep conversations with those who did not. He wanted to talk about the Scriptures rather than governing.

He met Christians who represented theological perspectives other than his own Lutheran one. And even if he disagreed with them about some points of doctrine, he found that they were united in their devotion to the Savior and his grace. This seemed important to him, especially in view of the rise of theoretical atheism, which he increasingly encountered. So, contrary to what was thought properly Christian by all sides, he began to cultivate close relationships with Christians who were not Lutheran. Among these were a Catholic Cardinal in Paris and the future British governor of the colony of Georgia.

Although he was forthright about his desire to preach the Gospel, his grandmother reminded him that he was an imperial count. Imperial counts did not preach; they exercised their office and ruled. So, through her connections at court, she got him a position as special counsel to Friedrich August the Strong—the same position his father had held with the same prince. In 1722 he rented an apartment in Dresden and took up his new post. With great energy he promptly set himself to the task of avoiding actual government work as much as possible. He was surrounded by ambitious men who were eager to take on the cases that were originally given to him.

Feeling himself compelled by the words and way of Jesus to reject war, weapons, and all forms of violence, he nevertheless worked for the state. Thus, Zinzendorf walked the hallways engaging in conversation about Jesus with both colleagues and visitors. It must have been strange for many who came into the halls of power for state purposes to encounter this young count asking them questions like, “So then, how do you understand the Savior’s word to love our enemies?” But such questions he incessantly asked.

He also held illegal religious meetings in his apartments. He would lead the gathered company in devotions and engage in theological argument with non-Lutherans.

During this period he also acquired a printing press. There were strict laws governing publishing. In particular, all printed matter had to pass a government censor who represented the interests of both the state church and the government. The censor was one of Zinzendorf’s colleagues, occupying an office not far from Zinzendorf’s own. The Count used his press to write, publish, and distribute a weekly underground paper, which he called The Dresden Socrates. He did it all anonymously, of course. In this paper he was critical of the church and of the religious life of the people, and he raised probing questions about both. Meanwhile, the government embarked on a furious search for the author and distributor of this illegal publication, never discovering that he was one of them.

It was also during this period, in September of 1722, that he married Erdmuth Dorothea, Countess Reuss. The Countess was known for her piety and devotion. He judged that she would make a good partner for him. At the beginning of their marriage he turned all financial affairs over to her. It was highly unusual in the eighteenth century for a woman to be in charge of finances. But it seemed even more radical when, in 1732, he gave her legal title to all his property (thereby making her the owner and not himself).

It was also in 1722 that a band of ten religious refugees appeared on Zinzendorf’s estate. The Count approved their staying on his lands until a more permanent place could be found for them. He seems to have intended that they should eventually have moved to the lands of his father-in-law, Count Reuss, a Pietist who was already sheltering some religious dissenters. But this never happened. Instead, with the Count’s approval from Dresden, they began to build a small settlement on Zinzendorf’s lands.

This community came to be called Herrnhut (the Lord’s watch). It began to attract religious dissenters of different kinds. Such people heard there was a place where they could live free of persecution. The story of the development of this community and of Zinzendorf’s engagement with and influence upon them is interesting in itself. Suffice it to say here, that the community became the vehicle for Zinzendorf’s adolescent pledge to preach the Gospel to every creature, and especially to those for whom no one else cared. After a stunning experience of the power and grace of God, this little community became an intrepid, irresistible legion of missionaries undaunted by disease, distance, risk, or death. And die they did, only to be replaced by new volunteers who joyously went to carry the news of the Savior. Within a decade this community of three hundred people had missionaries on every inhabited continent. True to Zinzendorf’s youthful promise, they went first to those places and peoples to whom no one else would go because the journey, the environment, or the people themselves were too dangerous. Moreover, these missionaries, lacking any theological training, were extraordinarily effective.

Zinzendorf led the missionary effort and at the same time continued his engagement with the churches in Europe. He formed a society within the churches that transcended the boundaries of the confessions. His aim was to bring together those whose hearts were bound to the Savior through love. Some further communities modeled on Herrnhut were also formed. They constituted a renewal of the pre-Reformation Hussite church from Bohemia and Moravia. They quickly came to be called the “Moravian Brethren” or the “Moravian Church.” The intention was not to be a church alongside other churches. Rather, in Zinzendorf’s conception they were to be a fellowship, a leaven, within all the churches, calling people to the heart of the Gospel, to a response to God’s love in Jesus Christ that was passionately loving, and to a resulting love for people of all kinds, including and especially the excluded, the overlooked, and the neglected. Within Europe this produced concern for and activity on behalf of prisoners, the mentally ill, and the developmentally challenged.

The Count seemed to be everywhere. His customary practice was to speak extemporaneously. Much of the material in his Hauptschriften (major writings) consists of transcripts of speeches given on various occasions for different purposes. His appearances, his speeches, the missionary activity, the trans-confessional societies, and his way of using language all provoked heated opposition from the Orthodox (with some exceptions, e.g., the theological faculty at Tübingen supported him) and from other Pietists. Nevertheless, he carried on. The speeches contained in the present volume come from the mature Zinzendorf. He gave them in Berlin at almost the midpoint of his adult life. His aim was to clarify the main point, the central point, of Christian life. He intended to do that by commenting on Luther’s explication of the second article of the creed, the one dealing with Jesus Christ.

What did his thought contribute to the wider Christian community? First, the explosion into the world of those missionaries from Herrnhut and its related communities gave birth to modern Protestant missions. Subsequent missionary movements, and missionaries, were inspired and informed by this Zinzendorf and his Herrnhuters.

Second, his effort to unite Christians across confessional boundaries on the basis of Jesus Christ himself was the impulse and idea that gave rise to the ecumenical movement. Some began to take his talk seriously. Moving along the trajectory of his language and thought, they pushed discussions of the meaning of the divisions between Christians, and the meaning of Christian community and Christian faith, in such a direction that two centuries later brought the ecumenical movement into being. Paradoxically, against his intention, this effort also brought the Lutheran Church in America into being. His idea of forming one Christian church in which each of the theological and liturgical traditions would remain and have their own integrity seemed very dangerous to his contemporaries. Thus, when he travelled to North America, Lutheran authorities in Germany who had before that time mostly ignored requests from America for a Lutheran pastor, immediately sent Muhlenberg to organize the Lutherans in America as a distinct and separate church, and to wrest them away from Zinzendorf’s influence.

Third, he was a prolific writer of hymn texts and had a great impact on Western Christian hymnody. Under his direction the Moravian Fellowship was a musical band of missionaries.

Fourth, in days when the great storm of the Reformation seemed to have burned down to a few coals, he called for faith to become again a living, blazing fire rather than a cold acceptance of doctrinal formulations and a formal adherence to socially accepted manners and morality.

Of great significance was his engagement with the Enlightenment. This was many sided. There were features of that intellectual movement that he regarded as good and some that he rejected quite forcefully. He was in agreement, for theological reasons, with the Enlightenment’s call for religious toleration. Indeed, he preferred people who were passionate about and deeply devoted to what they regarded as holy to those who were casual or indifferent or, as he put it, “cold minded.” In contrast to many of his Christian contemporaries, he embraced biblical criticism. Anything that helps us better understand the texts that preach Christ to us was a good thing in his estimation. Thus, while many Christians feared and attacked early scholarly forays into historical criticism, Zinzendorf welcomed them as useful.

Also, he loved the philosophical writings of Pierre Bayle, who is sometimes called the grandfather of the Enlightenment. He particularly loved Bayle’s merciless criticism of every human system, every intellectual pretense, and every confident claim to knowledge. He loved Bayle’s demand for plain speech and his refusal to whitewash matters either ethical or religious.

Moreover, most, if not all, other Christian thinkers of the period engaged Enlightenment deism and atheism by trying to argue within the terms and limits set by Enlightenment thinkers. Christians accepted from these Enlightenment thinkers, mostly without criticism, how God was to be spoken of and argued for, i.e., what conceptual scheme was acceptable. They accepted the Enlightenment understanding of reason and the Enlightenment’s meaning or use of the term “truth.” Thus, the game was lost before it was even begun. But in stark contrast, Zinzendorf sharply rejected these. He refused to play on a field marked out by the Enlightenment and doubted they were even playing the same game. Central to this was his refusal to accept or engage in any talk about God that was not talk about Jesus. God as a cold abstraction, as the conclusion arrived at by a chain of human reasoning or observation of the world, as something or someone whose being and purposes could be somehow sketched out by rationality was for Zinzendorf nothing but a chimera (his word) concocted out of human desires and wishes and shaped by the limits of reason. It reflected nothing more than the limits themselves. Concepts of “God” resulting from reason and observation were nothing more than the mirror of finitude. They were not concepts of the real God. God could only be spoken of on the basis of God’s own act and God’s own speech: Jesus Christ.

Zinzendorf was thus radically christocentric. For him, no Scripture passage is really rightly understood until it has been referred to Jesus Christ. No statement about God can be taken seriously with respect to truth unless it is about and one way or another has reference to Jesus Christ. No talk about what a Christian ought to do or how one ought to navigate the world is legitimate unless it is about and has direct reference to Jesus Christ. In an age that began to be squeamish about reference to God, he boldly spoke a full and rich Trinitarian God and did not hesitate to refer to Jesus as “God incarnate.” At the same time, one would have difficulty locating a Christian thinker who takes more seriously or considers more directly the full and authentic humanity of Jesus. All this is clear in the speeches in this volume.

There are other things interesting and noteworthy in Zinzendorf that warrant more study and discussion. He was working on understanding child development and tried to focus communication for children in ways that were appropriate for them. He had a sense of the systemic character of sin and therefore knew that it is not enough for individual sinners to be justified and saved. God calls forth a new community to live a different way by different forms and to stand over against the “system of sin” as a witness to the presence and grace of God. He unhesitatingly used feminine language for God, specifically for the Holy Spirit. He tried to move beyond trapping God in human categories while recognizing that such forms are the only ones we can use to speak of God.

Of special note, too, is his work for renewal among Christians and his lifelong commitment to evangelism and mission. His commitment to mission was a commitment to do all for the Savior and to call all people into the eschatological community of Jesus. He did not do this because he thought people would be otherwise damned. He did it so that they could know the joy of life in Christ, lived toward resurrection from the dead and the redemption of all things. His commitment was so total that by the time of his death he was broke. All of his great wealth and resources he gave to the mission; every last penny. There are tremendous resources in his thought and in his life for a Christian Church in the twenty-first century that is uncertain, increasingly marginalized, and tempted to abandon discipleship and theology for the sake of making itself attractive. Zinzendorf did not think a good set of management principles would bring about the renewal of life that can be brought only by the living Lord, Jesus Christ.

Finally, the golden thread one can trace through the whole course of his life is his passion for the Savior. His passionate attachment to Jesus never grew dim. It informed everything he did and said. It shines like a nova on every page of these speeches.

The translation that follows is based upon the text contained in Volume I of the Olms edition of the Hauptschriften edited by Erich Beyreuther and Gerhard Meyer. This text was an edition of the Speeches revised by Zinzendorf and published by Gottfried Clemens in 1758. The full title of the 1758 edition was Des Ordinarii Fratrum Berlinische Reden, nach dem vollständigen und von ihm selbst eigenhändig revidirten Exemplar. In the eighteenth century there were two English translations of the Speeches and John Wesley published a selection from them. The biblical references are part of the original published text. They may or may not come from Zinzendorf. He did oversee the publication of these speeches, but an editor may have added the references. Zinzendorf always spoke extemporaneously and thus, when he quoted Scripture or any other source, he quoted from memory. I did not use any modern English translation of the Bible for Scripture quotations, but followed Zinzendorf’s own iteration of the text.