The Essential N.F.S. Grundtvig by Anders Holm

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Essential N.F.S. Grundtvig by Anders Holm H. George Anderson The Essential N.F.S. Grundtvig. By Anders Holm. Translated by Edward Broadbridge. Aarhus: FILO, 2019. 249 pp. Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872), whose life was as long as his name, continues to be a pervasive presence in Danish life. His influence can be traced in church life, education, politics, and culture. [End Page 352] Grundtvig was the nineteenth century equivalent of today’s public intellectual. He hectored, inspired, and educated his countrymen with an incessant stream of articles, books, hymns, and lectures. His role grew from cultural gadfly to parliamentarian to “cult-like” status (73). In 1872 a visitor from England described the prelude to a worship service: “his disciples fell on their knees behind him, stroking the skirts of his robe, touching the heels of his shoes” (74). In the process he moved the Danish church out of its rigid discipline, enriched the Danish educational system with a new student- centered model, and roused his country to a joyful nationalism. His hymns, including “God’s Word is Our Great Heritage” and “Built on a Rock,” continue to stir congregations. Grundtvig stood at the dawn of the age of biblical text criticism and reacted against it in a novel way. He came to believe that Jesus had taught his apostles the Creed as well as the words of institution and baptism. “God was present as the Holy Spirit in his Church from the beginning, and especially in the sacraments of Baptism and Holy Communion, at which Jesus’ own words were repeated long before they were written down” (69). Therefore, the Bible, although it was a resource and comfort for baptized Christians, was not the foundation of Christian belief; it did not have the authority of the “living word from the Lord’s mouth.” As for textual criticism, “if we put letters together without the light of the Spirit and a life in the faith, we shall only create a church that snores, a hawthorn hedge of sophistry, an iceberg of dogmatics and a deluge of sermons!” (84) To try to convey the essence of a life of eighty-eight years and a literary output of over 25,000 printed pages would be daunting enough, but when the writer ranged over topics from religion and politics to poetry and education, changing his viewpoint from decade to decade, the job would take more than the roughly 250 pages in this book. Better called an “Introduction” (which was its original title in Danish) than “Essential,” the book is a sort of Cliff Notes on Grundtvig’s life. In addition to excerpts spanning fifty years of his writing, it also provides a timeline, a bibliography of books in English, and a series of contemporary portraits that chronicle his aging face. Individual chapters explore his activity as a romantic, mythologist, pastor, historian, educator, hymn writer, politician, and Dane. Concluding sections summarize Grundtvig’s legacy in [End Page 353] Denmark and the world. Each chapter provides brief excerpts from his work, sets them into his life and society, and then summarizes them. Always longer than the quotations themselves, these summaries are interlarded with text boxes containing basic information on subjects like “Romanticism and Enlightenment” or “The Development of Education up to Grundtvig’s Time.” Scholars looking for an in-depth critique of Grundtvig’s theology will be disappointed. The chapter dealing with him as pastor is only twenty-one pages long (63-84) and presents short excerpts from five of his early writings. For a more helpful collection of his religious views, readers should consult Human Comes First: The Christian Theology of N. F. S. Grundtvig (2018), edited by the translator of this volume. On the other hand, those who know Grundtvig only by name will find this book to be an accessible and comprehensive introduction. H. George Anderson Green Valley, Arizona Copyright © 2021 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran Quarterly, Inc