I was thumbing through a shelf of books in my professor’s personal library and came across a thin pamphlet entitled Blumhardt’s Battle. It caught my attention, for Karl Barth referred often to Johann Christoph Blumhardt.1 The pamphlet, however, was yet another gruesome, sensational account of an exorcism. Surely this was not the same Blumhardt. Or was it?

With a little research, I discovered this was the same Blumhardt – the very one who not only impacted Barth, but also Emil Brunner, Oscar Cullmann, Jacques Ellul, and Jürgen Moltmann.2This was the humble nineteenth-century German pastor who would also eventually influence such wildly diverse movements as religious socialism, neo-orthodoxy, the charismatic movement, and the Bruderhof.

It was the 1980s, and the New Age movement was in full swing. So was the third wave of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement. More Christian groups, including my own circles, were reporting miraculous healings, prophetic utterances, and encounters with demonic spirits. I wasn’t sure what to make of it all. I believed in miracles, in the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit, and that principalities and powers often keep people in bondage to sin and sickness. But I was also wary of how these “spiritual” realities might distract from following Christ, or even be dangerous. Perhaps Blumhardt could help me sort things out. I was eager to learn more of what he actually experienced.3

In the summer of 1838, Johann Christoph Blumhardt was called to Möttlingen, a small Black Forest village in the Kingdom of Württemberg, to begin his first full pastorate. Blumhardt soon made friends with both the young people and the congregation. Unfortunately, the church was inwardly dead. Despite doing everything he could, nothing changed. Even Blumhardt himself started to suffer fatigue.

In the fall of 1841, however, Blumhardt was drawn into what would become known as the “Fight,” or “Battle.” Gottliebin Dittus, a sickly girl who was active in the youth group, began to act strangely. As Blumhardt’s contemporary and biographer Friedrich Zündel reports, Gottliebin had been surrounded by all kinds of magic practices as a child, and these drew relatives and acquaintances away from God and into bondage with dark powers. A good bit of gossip was going around about eerie, even demonic happenings that were occurring around Gottliebin. There was something repulsive and inexplicable in her behavior – something forbidding in her manner. This put many people off, including Blumhardt.

Photograph by Tom Dick / Unsplash. Used by permission.

Gottliebin lived with her sisters Anna Maria and Katharina and brother Johann Georg in the lower apartment of a shabby, narrow house.4 Eventually other family members moved into the house, living in deep poverty. The building was filled with inexplicable knocking sounds and shuffling movements. Not only this, Gottliebin would often fall to the floor unconscious and at night would see shapes and lights. The family kept everything quiet.

In April 1842, Blumhardt began to receive detailed reports about the presence of poltergeists, sounds of finger tapping, and noises in the house which had become so loud that they could no longer be kept secret. Gottliebin often saw the figure of a woman who had died two years before carrying a dead child. Blumhardt exhorted Gottliebin to not enter into conversation with the woman. “It was certain,” he asserted, “one could land oneself in awful tangles and follies by becoming involved with the spirit world.” Puzzling objects were also found in the house: chalk, salt, bones, coins, burnt paper – things that were usually used in folk healing practices. Blumhardt was reticent.

Believing that the “spirit world” Gottliebin was in touch with was godless and demonic, Blumhardt began to pray more earnestly. The noises, however, increased – so much so that they drew the attention of the entire village. Loud blows and knocking sounds could be heard, often coming from the floor near Gottliebin’s bed. At one point, Gottliebin fell into such violent convulsions that Dr. Späth, the attending physician, came to Blumhardt in tears: “Leaving a sick person in such a state – one would think there is no one in this village to care for souls in need! This certainly isn’t anything natural.” Blumhardt shared what was happening with a Moravian missionary who boldly reminded Blumhardt not to forget his pastoral duty to the girl.

Blumhardt felt compelled to become involved. After one visit, he writes:

Once, when Dr. Späth and I were with her, her whole body shook; every muscle of her head and arms was glowing hot and trembling, though otherwise rigid and stiff, and foam issued from her mouth. She had been lying in this state for several hours, and the doctor, who had never seen anything like it, seemed to be at his wits’ end. Then suddenly she came to and was able to sit up and drink water. One could scarcely believe it was the same person.

Gottliebin was clearly troubled, and when attacked she became extremely violent. Terrible voices came out of her, cursing and blaspheming God, along with despairing confessions about long past sins and hellish wickedness. Moreover, the apparition of the dead woman continued to haunt her. During one visit, Blumhardt recounts:

When I got to Gottliebin, I heard the tapping. She lay quietly in bed. Suddenly it seemed as if something entered into her, and her whole body started to move. I said a few words of prayer and mentioned the name of Jesus. Immediately she began to roll her eyes, pulled her hands apart, and cried out in a voice not her own, either in accent or inflection, “I cannot bear that name!” We all shuddered.

Over a period of two years, Blumhardt visited Gottliebin regularly, quietly bringing along trusted friends and witnesses, including Dr. Späth. Curiosity and fear had to be avoided at all costs. Gradually, Blumhardt concluded that the spirit haunting Gottliebin was a deceased soul in the devil’s bondage. Even so, he refused to play the exorcist, which meant relying on incomprehensible formulas, rituals, and objects like the crucifix. For him, these techniques were superstitious – “godless miracle-mongering” – and only made matters worse. Instead, Blumhardt relied solely on prayer, fasting, and scripture.

Photograph by Peter Herrmann / Unsplash. Used by permission.

Blumhardt eventually came to believe that Gottliebin was afflicted with many demons, who often spoke blasphemous words through her using various known and unknown languages. Refusing to speak with them, he would command them to keep silent, which they did. But the battle raged on more intensely – so much so that Gottleibin attempted suicide. She suffered terribly, losing large amounts of blood, vomiting endlessly, and reportedly experiencing objects emerge from her body.

Eventually, the fight over Gottliebin’s soul and body came to a head. Blumhardt describes the decisive moment as follows:

I was gripped by a kind of wrath; it suddenly came over me, and I can only confess: it was an inspiration from above, even though I was unaware of it then. With firm steps I went up to her … grasped her cramped hands (which I should not have done, for it hurt her afterward) in order to hold them together if possible and loudly called the unconscious girl’s name into her ear, saying, “Put your hands together and pray: ‘Lord Jesus, help me!’ We have seen long enough what the devil does; now let us see what the Lord Jesus can do!” After a few moments she woke up, prayed those words after me, and all convulsions ceased, to the great astonishment of those present. This was the decisive moment, thrusting me with irresistible force into action for the cause.

Yet the battle continued. Gottliebin’s brother and sister both began to experience similar demonic attacks. Exhausted, Blumhardt pressed on and sensed a breakthrough was coming. The end of the fight came during the Christmas holidays of 1843. After he and others kept watch by Gottliebin’s sister Katharina for forty hours, the last battle was won. The demonic spirits oppressing Katharina howled so loudly that, in Blumhardt’s words, “the inhabitants of the village heard them.” Zündel writes:

At two o’clock in the morning, while the girl bent her head and the upper part of her body far backwards over her chair, the purported angel of Satan, with a voice such as one would scarcely think a human throat capable of, bellowed out the words, “Jesus is victor! Jesus is victor!” Wherever these words could be heard, their significance was grasped too; they made an indelible impression on many.

The fight was over. The puzzling phenomena and physical suffering ceased, and Gottliebin herself underwent a complete transformation. The change was so dramatic that Blumhardt often spoke of her service and praised her ability to engage children with insight, love, and patience. She eventually became part of his household.

Blumhardt’s efforts toward confidentiality were, in the end, in vain. His detailed report to church officials about Gottliebin’s sickness (and eventual healing) was leaked and then published. No one really knows who was responsible for the leak or the motive behind it, but among other things it was perhaps an attempt to expose Blumhardt to ridicule. He and Zündel proceeded to write a public account as part of a broader biography to situate the events in their proper context of faith in Christ.

“Jesus is victor!” This battle cry characterized much of Blumhardt’s ministry from that point. His battle was only the beginning of what followed: an unexpected spiritual awakening of “avalanche proportions,” as Dieter Ising puts it in his biography of Blumhardt, occurred throughout the region.

Signs of this awakening emerged during the New Year’s week of 1844. Gottliebin’s newfound freedom brought about radical changes in the spirit world which in turn broke the spiritual strongholds that bound people in Möttlingen. Möttlingen became the place upon which a new foundation for God’s kingdom was being laid, one in which the entire community of believers underwent an incredible transformation.

Photograph by Gidon Wessner / Unsplash. Used by permission.

The youth began to gather and study the Bible. The tailor, Johann Georg Fischer, well known in the village, repeatedly came to Blumhardt to confess his sins. Unbeknownst to Blumhardt, he then started urging others to take the same course. Little by little, the entire congregation sought Blumhardt out. The dam burst, and a flood of repentance and forgiveness followed. Describing this time, Blumhardt’s wife wrote to her parents: “There is a yielding, a humility, a readiness, a fire, and glowing of love to the Savior among those that have found him.”

One by one, Blumhardt met with his congregants. He writes:

Every day I have people with me until half past eleven at night; the next morning at six somebody is already waiting, and this goes on without a letup all day long, so that I can no longer think of anything else. At Sunday school yesterday in the jam-packed schoolroom I asked to be excused from talks on account of my work for the monthly paper, but because of that I may expect all the more callers today.… And yet, what am I to say to it all? It is way beyond anything I can think. By now a total of 156 persons have come, all shedding tears of repentance – if not the first time, then the second, and quite surely the third time. How I manage to come through is a puzzle to me.

In confession, Blumhardt heard about the litany of sins that had been committed: superstitious healing practices, attempts to speak with departed spirits, sexual immorality, adultery, incest, bestiality, stolen property, and even murder. He witnessed how “secrecy is the power of sin,” but he also experienced first-hand how burdens, when brought to the light, could be lifted and the soul be completely freed. “Repentance and faith in the crucified Christ is the pivot on which everything hinges,” he wrote. Though rattled by all the wretchedness that was revealed, Blumhardt, in obedience to the gospel, simply laid hands on the penitents, granting the person forgiveness and encouragement in the name of Jesus.

In all this, Blumhardt stood in awe, reassured by the words “Jesus is victor!” Herein lay the true miracle taking place before him. Jesus’ victory not only happened on Golgotha, but was taking effect right in their midst. “What I did was not anything I had sought, made, or forced but something that came about completely of its own accord; it came my way without my asking for it, out of unmerited grace.” Even the pious and respected members of the church, though not the first ones to line up and see the pastor, eventually came to confess their sins. Marriages were restored, stolen property returned, enemies reconciled, alcoholism overcome, and troubled consciences healed.

There was certainly no more sleepiness in Blumhardt’s parish. His confirmation classes started meeting daily, praying and singing, reading and discussing the Bible. A growing number of people in the congregation gathered in homes to do the same. Although Blumhardt made sure that these gatherings had some kind of supervision, he avoided trying to influence or direct them. He simply kept watch and made sure that there would be “no excesses of enthusiastic character” that would lead to spiritual pride.

Möttlingen, with Blumhardt’s rectory (white house) and parish church. Photograph courtesy of the Bruderhof Archives.

With no fanfare, unexpected visitors from around the area were soon turning up in Möttlingen. By April 1844, the Black Forest began, in Blumhardt’s words, to “burn.” On Pentecost there were over two thousand visitors. In the following weeks, the numbers swelled to five thousand people. Sometimes up to 250 men slept on the hills nearby, eager to hear the pastor preach the next day. Blumhardt’s sermons, however, were anything but fiery. They were calm, simple, plain, and earnest – certainly not a “public ranting about repentance.” After the services, strangers laid siege to the parsonage. Blumhardt, of course, could not keep up and so resorted to telling people to simply turn to Christ, trust in him completely, and believe in his healing graces. Untold numbers went away with hearts unburdened.

Among the thousands who came to Möttlingen, many experienced physical healing. A man with severe rheumatism, a three-year-old scalded all over her body by oil, a child with an incurable eye disease, people with tuberculosis, arthritis, spinal infections, epilepsy, life-threatening illnesses, suicidal thoughts, and mental disorders were healed.

Healings like this became part of everyday life. People from all strata of society and different Christian traditions experienced renewal and healing of both body and soul. For Blumhardt this was to be expected, since the kingdom of God was a reality and the powers of the future were at work in the here and now.

Blumhardt soon had to deal with objections from clergy in the area, alarmed and indignant at all the confessions and reports of healing miracles. But Blumhardt didn’t draw attention to the miracles, and he taught that healing could never be forced by prayer. In fact, he often admonished his congregation to leave the sick to stand before God, and he himself often stopped people from telling him their ailments. “You sick ones, just come into the church,” Blumhardt would say. “Lay your sufferings before the Savior, and listen carefully to the sermon. You are assured of my intercession and that of the congregation. There is really no need for me to know your ailments.” Those with infirmities still came away healed, and more importantly, experienced inner transformation. For Blumhardt, the healing of the body was not the goal: “Oh you dear ones, in most of our prayers repentance is forgotten. We are always ready to request something, but what kind of a person are you who request it?” It was God’s new creation on earth that mattered most to Blumhardt.

When people gave Blumhardt credit, he vigorously protested: Jesus alone is victor! He alone is Lord! Blumhardt warned against the mechanical use of prayer, against set forms of blessing and organized revival meetings. Human beings cannot direct the affairs of the Spirit. Yet Blumhardt and his ministry increasingly became a problem for both government and church officials, who accused him of performing healings instead of calling a doctor. They thus forbade him to take overnight guests in his home, and eventually banned him from seeing visitors one-on-one. Bit by bit, Blumhardt was corralled within the confines of ordinary, traditional church life. Despite becoming increasingly isolated, abandoned by friends and confidants, God’s Spirit continued to move and Blumhardt remained steadfast.

Photograph by Julian Hochgesang / Unsplash. Used by permission.

As Blumhardt’s fame grew, and the church authorities’ frustration deepened, it was inevitable something had to give. Moreover, the Möttlingen parish was simply too small to handle all the visitors. Eventually Blumhardt was able, due to the generous help of friends and benefactors, to purchase Bad Boll, an unprofitable spa resort with sulphur springs. In summer 1852 he moved there with his family and four members of the Dittus family, including Gottliebin, who had by then become his most loyal and trusted coworker. People from all over and outside the German lands, believers and unbelievers, skeptics and curious alike, came to witness for themselves what they had heard about. As many as 150 guests were in the house at any one time.

As in Möttlingen, inner and outer healings frequently took place at Bad Boll. Again, Blumhardt made sure no fuss was made, and those who met him for the first time were often taken back by how humble and “unspiritual” he was. He opposed any attempt to isolate or highlight individual gifts of the Spirit. In this way, Bad Boll became a place of quiet renewal and community for countless people.

What are we to make of what happened in Möttlingen, and later at Bad Boll? Do these events have any relevance for today? What lessons can we learn regarding the liberating power of Christ? Personally, Blumhardt’s faith and the accounts of these events have given me a framework by which to approach the unseen forces that hold people, even institutions, in bondage.

On the one hand, we must avoid what missiologist Paul G. Hiebert called “the flaw of the excluded middle” – the mistake of seeing the universe as two-tiered, a world split in two: the material, natural realm below and the spiritual realm above. Biblically, and as the story of Möttlingen and the persistence of the Pentecostal and Charismatic movement shows, there exists a world “in between” – an invisible world that has its origin from God but works its influence, for good and for ill, on the earth. We must be alert to this world.

On the other hand, we must guard against becoming overly curious about it; it is not the world we are assigned to dwell in while on earth. This world is real, but it is under the lordship of Christ; it is not a realm to mess with or dabble in. It is meant to serve God’s purposes on earth, and our dealings with it should be determined in obedience to him. Otherwise, it can easily tempt us away from what God wants us to accomplish on earth. With today’s fascination with the strange and paranormal, it’s important to remember that God alone has the power to save, to redeem, and to make life whole. He not only governs the supernatural but overcomes the humanly impossible through Christ and with prayer.

Additionally, Blumhardt’s story reminds us that if we live by faith, we must discern the spirits (and the spirit of this age) and do battle with whatever forces – visible or invisible – undermine the gift of life. This is paramount, since, as the apostle Paul writes, our world is infected with and ruled by principalities and powers – whether in politics, technology, economics, academics, art, religion, or personal life. Human means are never sufficient to remove that which truly binds and causes us misery. Through repentance, forgiveness, and the power of God’s Spirit, strongholds that oppress and divide us can be demolished.

All the more, we must strive to overcome our inner lethargy. Miracles of healing can and do happen, but such miracles are only a small part of what Christ wants to do in our lives. The miracle at Möttlingen went far beyond the deliverance of the Dittus siblings. God’s supernatural power was at work setting everything right in the village and beyond. This power still consists of being liberated from ourselves – from all ego-bound self-serving that seeks to finagle God – and from other spirits, which do our bidding, guarantee us success and security in our lives, and are usually much more subtle than those in the Möttlingen story. When God’s righteousness makes everything right, when light breaks into darkness, his glory and his purposes, not ours, become front and center.

Blumhardt believed that what happened in Möttlingen was only a beginning, a foretaste of a greater outpouring of the Spirit on the church and the world. Although much of today’s church is compromised and lukewarm, like Blumhardt we must hold on to the promise that the Spirit of early Christian apostolic authority is available to us and will be given in even greater measure. “We are a dehydrated people,” Blumhardt once wrote, and “only a fraction of the promise was fulfilled at the time of the apostles.” May more of God’s Spirit descend upon us that we may know the reconciling and liberating power of Jesus.

Footnotes

1. See Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 2nd ed. (Oxford University, 1921).
2. The influence of Blumhardt and his son Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt on later theology has been traced in a number of monographs and studies. For an overview, see Vernard Eller, “Who Were the Blumhardts?.” See also Christian T. Collins Winn, Jesus Is Victor: The Significance of the Blumhardts for the Theology of Karl Barth (Pickwick, 2009); Christian T. Collins Winn and Peter Goodwin Heltzel, “Before Bloch There Was Blumhardt: A Thesis on the Origins of the Theology of Hope,” Scottish Journal of Theology 62, no. 1 (2009): 26–39.
3. In what follows I rely primarily on two accounts of Blumhardt’s life: Friedrich Zündel, Pastor Johann Christoph Blumhardt: A Biography (Plough, 2010); and Dieter Ising, Johann Christoph Blumhardt: Life and Work (Cascade, 2009). Among other sources, these accounts are based on Blumhardt’s own, An Account of Gottliebin Dittus’ Illness, which he wrote at the request of church authorities.
4. This house has been restored and serves as a memorial to what took place in Möttlingen.