Background
Johann Arndt was born on the 27th of December, 1555 in Edderitz near Ballenstedt.
Johann Arndt was born on the 27th of December, 1555 in Edderitz near Ballenstedt.
From 1575 Johann Arndt studied at the University of Helmstedt the liberal arts and medicine. In 1581 he went to the University of Wittenberg, where he found a theological teacher in Polycarp Leyser the Elder.
He continued his studies in Strasbourg, under the professor of Hebrew, Johannes Pappus (1549–1610), a zealous Lutheran, the crown of whose life's work was the forcible suppression of Calvinistic preaching and worship in the day, and who had great influence over him.
In Basel, again, he studied theology under Simon Sulzer (1508–1585), a broad-minded divine of Lutheran sympathies, whose aim was to reconcile the churches of the Helvetic and Wittenberg confessions.
In 1581 Johann Arndt went back to Ballenstedt, but was soon recalled to active life by his appointment to the pastorate at Badeborn in 1583.
In 1583 Johann Arndt became a pastor at Badeborn, but in 1590 he was deposed for refusing to remove pictures from his church and to discontinue the use of exorcism in Baptism. Both were considered offenses against the Calvinist concept of strict purity and simplicity.
Arndt found asylum in Quedlinburg the same year and in 1599 was transferred to St. Martin’s Church at Brunswick.
The principal work among his many writings, which were inspired by the mystics St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Johann Tauler, and Thomas à Kempis, is Vier Bücher vom wahren Christentum (1605–09; “Four Books on True Christianity”). Translated into most European languages and widely distributed in Arndt’s time, it served as the foundation of many devotional books, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Its publication aroused strong controversy among Lutherans. It was also a chief influence in the life of Philipp Jakob Spener, who was a founder of Pietism, a movement that stressed simple Christian living.
The opposition aroused by his book caused difficulty for Arndt in Brunswick.
In 1609 Johann Arndt moved to Eiseleben and in 1611 to Celle, where he remained until his death in 1621.
Arndt held that to follow orthodox doctrine was not enough and that the Christian must undergo a moral purification through righteous living and communion with God.
Arndt was also interested in alchemy, natural history and medicine.
Like Luther, Arndt was very fond of the little anonymous book, Theologia Germanica.