I'm very curious about this "New Monasticism" that seems to be emerging from the Emerging/Emergent Church.
There seems to be a movement coalescing around some guy called Count Zinzendorf and "The Order of the Mustard Seed" as if Count Z has the keys to the kingdom to "nu monasticism" and "intentional community."
Can it be that The New Monastics have EMERGED as born-again Zinzendorfians?
This uncritical acceptance of Zinzendorf's teachings does not bode well for The New Monasticism.
Has anyone actually checked out what Count Z actually believed?
For instance, here is an explanation of his teaching on the Holy Spirit from www.zinzendorf.com:
Zinzendorf explicated his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming that she is a mother in three distinct ways.
First, it was the Spirit, not Mary, who was the true mother of Jesus, since she "prepared him in the womb, hovered over him, and finally brought him into the light. She [the Spirit] gave him [Jesus] certainly into the arms of his mother, but with invisible hands carried him more than his mother did."
Second, the Spirit is the mother of all living things because she has a special role in the on-going creation of the world. "It is known that the Holy Spirit brings everything to life, and when the man was made from a clump of earth ... the Holy Spirit was very close through the breathing of the breath of God into the man." Thus, the Holy Spirit is the mother of all living souls in a general way.
The Holy Spirit is also the Mother in a third and most important sense. She is the Mother of the church and all those who have been reborn. "The Holy Spirit is the only Mother of those souls who have been once born out of the side hole of Jesus, as the true womb of all blessed souls."
Zinzendorf bases this understanding of the Spirit giving birth to converted souls in large part on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, not from his mother’s womb, but from God. Nicodemus knew that we are born from a mother, not a father, but he did not know who this mother was.
Zinzendorf has Jesus reply, "There is another Mother, not the one who physically gave you birth, that one doesn’t matter: you must have another Mother who will give you birth."
Ultimately, then, the Holy Spirit is the Mother of the Christian in the sense that she is the active agent in conversion. Human actors are only agents of the Holy Spirit, and in some cases are not even necessary for conversion.
"I could not speak about it [the Holy Spirit], since I did not know how I should define it. I simply believed that she is the third person of the Godhead, but I could not say how this was properly so. Instead I thought of her abstractly. ... The Holy Spirit had known me well, but I did not know her before the year 1738. That is why I carefully avoided entering in the matter until the Mother Office of the Holy Spirit had been so clearly opened up f
Thanks for commenting on my blog...
It's a great question about Count Z. In all honesty, I never dived
deep into his theology. I think what is more impressive about him is
the movement of sacrifice and devotion to sharing the Gospel to
Africa.
So for what its worth...
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