‘The entire work of the gospel is to portray Jesus,
to paint him before the eyes,
to take the Spirit’s stylus and etch ”“ yes, engrave ”“ the image of Jesus
in the fleshly tablets of the heart,
so that it can never be removed.’
Zinzendorf, 9 lectures, p77
For Zinzendorf, Jesus is the Amtsgott, the active God, God-for-us, the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the ‘concentrated God.’ Any theology that ‘skips over’ Jesus and just speaks of ‘God’ in a general way is ‘invented by the devil’. (Vogt p211). ‘If it were possible that there should be another God than Christ, I would rather be damned with Christ than happy with another’. (Zinzendorf, quoted Hoover p65)
Zinzendorf certainly believed in the Trinity (see my page on mission communities), but there is no doubt that ‘christocentric’ describes his theology. ‘No one is directly adopted by the Father, he passes first by the Saviour; no one is directly born from the Holy Spirit, he goes first through the Canal of the Saviour’s side’, says Zinzendorf in a sermon. (Atwood p11) Jesus’ birth was celebrated, with ‘The League of Gentlemen’ having a particular devotion to the nativity story, and the ‘advent star’ and ‘christingle’ both being inventions of Zinzendorf’s pilgrim congregation. (Lewis p173) ‘Come here and see the concealed Abyss, the hidden Majesty in Jesus, the lowly child’, says Zinzendorf in an early poem (Vogt p211). Jesus’ life was studied and seen as our example. But it was not just believing the facts about Jesus that mattered ”“ it was loving him. ‘The key question is: Do you love Me?’ (Zinzendorf, 9 lectures, p77). Not much factual understanding is required for someone to love Jesus -‘otherwise mentally inferior persons (sic) would be unable to be saved’ (Zinzendorf, The German Socrates, p291). And this relationship is indestructible: ‘If we have an inseparable friendship with the Lamb, this is religion that may be retained in its essence by a man who has no understanding, no senses, no Bible, no memory, no friend.’ (Zinzendorf, 9 lectures, p98).
Zinzendorf often described this relationship in terms of marriage to Jesus, especially during the so-called ‘Sifting Time’ of the 1740s. To contemporary sensibilities this can seem uncomfortable ”“ the Yorkshire Ortsgemein recorded a communion service in the words ‘Today 100 were sacramentally penetrated and died into his virginal corpse’ (Podmore p136) ”“ but after all, ‘Bride of Christ’ is a biblical image, and it was the whole church, not the individual, who were usually spoken of as the bride. Filling our minds with thankful thoughts of Jesus is the primary means by which we can live a full Christian life. ‘Jesus, you have given me new life and endless comfort. The more sure I am of your mercy and love, the more devoted I will be to you, and the more cheerfully I will comply with your every command.’ (Zinzendorf, Liturgy and Hymns 20).
When Leonard Dober resigned as Chief Elder in 1741, it proved impossible to find a visible candidate to succeed him, and Jesus was formally appointed as Chief Elder, an empty seat presiding symbolically at synods. In practice this meant that most of the time there was no simple hierarchy, with elected Elders equal in rank to Bishops ”“ except of course when Zinzendorf himself disregarded the structures he had set up (see my page on ‘serving the church’).
The Wounds
‘I love his tears and sufferings great,
I love his precious loving sweat,
I love to meditate by faith
Upon his meritorious death’
John Cennick, Liturgy and Hymns 335
The death of Jesus had been central for a long time within the tradition of the Moravians ”“ the logo of the Lamb and the slogan ‘Our Lamb has conquered, let us follow him’ predate Zinzendorf. (Lewis p70) But in Hutton’s disapproving words, ‘instead of concentrating all his attention on the more moral and spiritual value of the cross, Zinzendorf now began to lay all the stress on the mere physical details.’ (Hutton p276) In other words, as Atwood comments, ‘Zinzendorf was not the Victorian moralist Hutton thought all Christians should be.’ (Atwood p4) Zinzendorf was setting out to shock ”“for him, the death of Jesus was to be a scandal, a stumbling block, triggering an emotional crisis; and though the words ‘cross’ and ‘crucified’ had lost their power to shock in eighteenth century Europe, the word 'wound' was still controversial.
The Anabaptist tradition has tended to read the rest of the Bible through the Sermon on the Mount; some parts of the Reformed tradition have privileged Paul's epistles; Zinzendorf privileged the passion and resurrection narratives in the Gospels, and spent his last days producing a pocket devotional book for the Moravians consisting of a harmony of the four gospel accounts of Thursday-Sunday of Holy Week. (It is available in contemporary version for 60p on the Kindle as The Affliction, Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ). For my version, compiled from Bible Gateway.com, see the afflictions. Moreover, on the basis of Jesus’ words on the road to Emmaus, the entire Bible was interpreted in terms of the death and resurrection of Jesus; so for example the David and Goliath story is best read as the unlikely Hero freeing the people from their enemies and inviting them to share in His victory. Zinzendorf called this ‘the hermeneutic of the wounds’. (Vogt p214). ‘It is impossible to utter any divine truth or to speak anything which might be called complete without mentioning the LAMB, our Saviour.’ said early Moravian preacher Francis Okely: ‘This must be the anointing and the salt, the principal ingredient of every matter, of every sigh, of every writing, of every sermon, yea of every thought.’ (Lewis p64)
‘1 Corinthians 2.2 summarises the essence of the Christian faith; God does not recognize any true knowledge of himself apart from the crucified Christ.’
(Zinzendorf quoted by Vogt p211) The centre of biblical history is ‘the transaction and posture of our God, when he bled to death for our sins upon the cross. When our hearts are struck by this, ‘tis the beginning of an universal kind of religion, disengaged from all debates, where even a child soon becomes a divine.’ (Zinzendorf, quoted by Lewis p98) To this day, many Moravian services end with the sentence ‘Christ and him crucified remain our confession of faith.’
The wounds are a ransom to free us from the powers of darkness; a sacrifice in our place; and the means by which our indifference is broken. ‘When we seek to partake of the death and cross of Jesus,’ says Zinzendorf, ‘we do not start by being pious and holy; we are made righteous through his merits as sinners, and without any help from our works.’ (Vogt p212). ‘We think that when anyone gets hold of the crucified Christ for the heart, all that is idle vanishes away and all necessary good comes, together with the living impression of the loving and faithful Lamb of God.’ (Zinzendorf, quoted Lewis p72)
Extravagant language was often used about the wounds: ‘I pray the Lord to make me like a dear little Bee that can go in and out and suck the honey from his wounds which are like so many pretty Roses around his lovely Body’, said John Cennick in 1746. (R.13.A.17.D). Particular attention was given to the side-wound, the wound in Jesus’ side pierced by the spear. Thomas was invited to put his hand into it; we are invited to enter Jesus’ heart through it, and there we, and all the church, will be ‘inside Christ’; Jesus has been elected, and all those in him share in this election. ‘The side-wound is the gate of heaven, the way in past the torn veil into the Holy of Holies, the birth canal of the new birth’; the church is born from the side-wound like Eve, who was born from Adam’s rib. (Atwood pp11-12) To be a 'Christian' is to be the product of Christ's side, just as in Genesis 2 to be a 'woman' is to be the product of the man's side. (Zinzendorf, 9 lectures, p80)
It is crucial to see that the wounded Jesus Zinzendorf worshipped is not dead. The wounds contemplated are on his risen, glorified body, and the worshippers felt not guilt and sadness but reassurance and joy as they pictured them. ‘Cavernous wounds of Jesus,’ sung the grateful congregation, ‘in your treasure hoard sit many thousands of kinds of sinners.’ (Atwood p28).