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Devotional Literature from Caspar Schwenckfeld: Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician · Centrally Speaking

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Centrally speaking, is the Central Schweinfelder Church's podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: It speaks about issues that would be of interest to our society.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: In particular, it addresses how a Christian worldview intersects with Western secular culture.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: In the spirit of the church's founder, we take the perspective of the middle way, which is in agreement with the historic Christian Church.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Dr.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Drake Williams, Minister of Mission and Theology at the Church.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: Our website is www.cscfamily.org.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: As people drive past uh Schwankfelder churches, it's only natural for someone to say, who is Caspar Schwankfelder or what is a Schwankfelder?
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: Why did the Schwankfelders uh uh leave us some type of remembrance here in uh Pennsylvania?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, for those types of questions, uh we're very glad to have uh Reverend Nick Pence uh join us uh today as we talk about one of uh Caspar Schwenckfeld's uh writings, The Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: Castor Pence has been at uh Palm Schwenckfelder Church in Palm, Pennsylvania since August 2007, and he started an intensive research on Caspar Schwenckfeld on his sabbatical in 2023.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: He's written up some of his uh responses uh to Schwenkfeld in the denominational publication, The Schwenkfeldian.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: He is a family man too, married to uh Reverend Barbara Pence, uh, who's a pastor at St.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: Andrews uh Church in Percasy, and he has three children.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: Nick, we're very glad to have you here.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the show.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, Drake.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: It's good to be here.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about Caspar Schwenkfeld for a little bit, uh, as both of us have an interest in that, and some who are listening to this will want to as well.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_02: Most people don't know who Caspar Schwankfeld is uh and who the Schwankfelders are.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_02: Can you say something about Caspar Schwenkfeld and his writings and how important it was for his life?
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yeah, absolutely.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_03: Schweckfeld was a Silesian nobleman.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_03: Silesia was at that time a part of Germany, but is now a part of modern Poland.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_03: His interest in the Reformation uh really starts with his awakening, which we think was around 1519.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_03: Schweinfeld was born in either 1489 or 1490, dies in 1561.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: His motivation coming into the Reformation was as a noble person.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_03: So you know, he's looking at the lives of the people around him and seeing a lot of the abuses that he feels needs to be addressed.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_03: Like all the reformers, he starts out as Roman Catholic for about eight years.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_03: He is aligned fairly well with early Luther.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_03: There are some transitions that happen in that time period with Luther, and Schweinfeld starts articulating a little stronger perspective, and then eventually is like many people is not liked at all by Luther and really grouped with a group that Luther called the Schwarmer, the Enthusiast, and those that he was afraid were going to be taking the spirit too far.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_03: Schweinfeld is classified as part of the Radical Reformation, differentiated from the magisterial reformation, and really starts to see that as the Protestant Reformation continues, that there's not a spiritual transformation that is being witnessed, that it is largely just a change in who is leading the church or not being a papal-led church, and just you know, really, really recognizing that there's some problems, uh, some very deep problems still.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: For me, one of the great pieces for Schwenkfeld is that he is deeply steeped in the church fathers.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_03: That was a part of his academic study earlier on, and even before his own transformative time and and coming into a new the new life of Christ.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_03: But he still uses those references to the church fathers in a lot of his writings and as and as a grounding for him.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: Ran across a bit not too long ago, uh, and just an intriguing comment because I think for Schwenkfeld, and especially when he's writing devotionally, so you know, apart from like Eucharist controversy kind of earlier on in his writing career, he's really trying to be non-sectarian.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_03: He's trying to offer these gifts to the church as a whole, and that is absolutely where the part we're gonna be focusing on, the heavenly balm, is coming out of.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_03: It was one of his more popular works.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_03: For the Schwenkfelders, as they come over, while we might not be able to say specifically how extensive their libraries were, there were absolutely pieces that they held and were important to them and provided this foundation.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_03: Specifically for Heavenly Bomb, the translator onspot talks about the importance, even after they had started seeing some community transition into connecting with other denominations or connecting with the Lutheran church that he was pastoring, that people still hold on to this spiritual heritage as well.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_03: And that's really that's the big emphasis for me, you know, recognizing and reminding ourselves about the spiritual inheritance as well as a genealogical inheritance for some of our members and its foundation for us.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, as uh the Schwenckfelders did migrate uh in six uh migrations in the 1730s uh to America, they did bring the books, which is interesting.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: When you're migrating uh those times, I mean to carry around heavy books uh shows an importance of this type of literature.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the things that they uh took interest in was this book, uh The Heavenly Balm and the Divine Uh Physician.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: We know Schwenckfeld wrote a number of catechisms, letters, and treatises, uh, but uh the heavenly balm and the divine physician was one.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: And it's one of his devotional booklets.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, might you have a word about some of Schwenkfeld's devotional booklets?
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_03: So and this one is coming out of 1545.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_03: The statement in the collection of Schwenkfeld's writing, the Corpus Schweinfeldianorum, cites that it was written before December 18th, 1545.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_03: They're able to ascribe that date because they know that Valentine Crotwald had passed away that year, along with several other people involved in Schweinfeldianism, or at that point what they were calling followers of the of the middle way.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_03: I was curious because I find that for me, I gravitate a lot at many of the pieces that I have pulled out, either for the folks at Palm or just for my own devotional work.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_03: A lot of them were coming from that 1545 time period.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_03: There was a lot of disease happening.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_03: So I think Schweinfeld is getting more reflective on his own experience.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_03: Looking at Jesus as the divine physician was part of his response to a time period when there were a lot of people who were ill.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um, Schweinfeld himself during that time was having to go to the, I think they used the phrase the baths.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_03: So, you know, he's he's doing mineral baths to try to keep himself well or addressing other maladies.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_03: You know, thankfully makes it through that, but a lot of people do not.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_03: He's also about 55 when he's writing it.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_03: I'm 51 now.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_03: So some of those questions of mortality and of offering comfort, you know, looking for the depths and a more significant piece is is important.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_03: You know, it's also a good reminder for me when I approach the works of Schweinkfeld that today we do have a whole lot of just out there.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_03: Uh a lot of our devotional sources are just very superficial and not necessarily getting into significant meat.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_03: This is a broad criticism of me, of the Christian church, but we spend so much time talking and focusing on conversion or people referring to themselves as being born-again Christians.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_03: That's the start.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_03: And then there is this whole uh you know other lifespan of you know how we live faithfully and of Christian practice.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's what Schwenkfeld is really concerned about and really trying to draw our attention to, and and is ultimately a gift that's offered to us that hopefully we're able to grasp onto and and get a hold of.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what uh we find in a number of uh uh Schwenkfeld's uh uh devotionals.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um just recently we've uh done a modernization of uh Kaspar Schwankfeld's Passional, a prayer and Bible study guide through uh the final hours of Jesus' life.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_02: And it is it is weighty and it is deep.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_03: Let me do one other caveat too, because uh, and that part of this is classification of Schweinfeld.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_03: I had used at School of Christ that in his doctoral dissertation, a Korean student at Temple evaluates Schweinfeld as an evangelical spiritualist to differentiate him from you know, like Meister Eckhart, who is one of the German mystics or you know other later movements like German pietism.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_03: But for Schweinfeld, his spirituality is centered in Christ, and that's what we are being invited into, you know, not just uh an experience of the presence of God or you know, some really significant moment, but being invited into a daily relationship and a continued process of growing and deepening our faith all along, all along the way.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's now focus a little bit more on the heavenly balm and the divine physician.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_02: How long of a book is this?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: So 33 chapters, I think around 150 pages.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_03: Fairly quick read.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_03: One of the reasons that I really gravitated to the heavenly balm specifically for Schweinfeld, he can be verbose.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_03: Drake and I joke a fair bit about the the Corpus Schweinfeldianorum.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_03: You know, the the original intent of Chester Hartramp was to have about five different levels of commentary going along with what comes out to about 40 pages of Schweinfeld's work.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_03: It's an over 700 page volume of kind of thing.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_03: But it's for Heavenly Balm, it's fairly concise.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_03: So it's a little easier, I think, to approach 150 pages.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_03: The chapters are largely looking at the patient-doctor relationship and the importance of medicine in that context, but applied spiritually.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_03: And each chapter kind of works through uh a different aspect of uh of that process in my own work.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I'm also doing devotionals in response to each chapter of the book for as a part of the modernizing of it, and that's really just to kind of hone in on some specific things that I thought were uh pretty significant within those specific chapters.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_03: Hope people enjoy it as it as that comes out.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_03: Onspock does a uh translator's note uh in introducing how he came into the writing.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_03: Schweinfeld does a preface and then it's right into the chapters.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_03: Schweinfeld concludes it with the prayer, and then Onspock also does a prayer as the translator, hoping that his work is of benefit to the broader Christian community.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: As for some of our listeners who are less familiar with Caspar Schweinfeld's uh writing, uh he does go on uh at length on some of his sentences, doesn't he?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_03: Very much so.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then one of our ongoing conversations is you know, just how how you're approaching this.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I really I currently I think of myself more as a modernizer or a distiller than as a direct translator.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_03: It winds up moving into that though, because you know, when you're looking at specific words and phrases, that's how it goes.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_03: So Onspock is doing the translation in 1858-ish, a little before that that was when it was published, so probably starting in around 1856.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: Even at that point, and Onspoch is talking about how much the German language has changed since the the 16th century, even more so now, and in addition to the nature of change in the English language, uh, no longer using predominantly most of us not using King James English anymore.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: I always love the joke of that I would hear in the South if King James English was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_03: But just some shifts.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_03: And then how do we make that you how do we take these pieces and make it more clearly understandable for folks?
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_03: I find that there's a lot of ornamentation that goes on.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_03: Alan V.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Meyer describes it as three parallel adjectives for like every noun that's coming up.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_03: It takes discernment to kind of work through and hopefully making it a more approachable thing for people to come into.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_03: I would love to have people reading some of the modernizations and then going back to either the original source or you know, some of the the early translation pieces as a part of their own duty, because that's it keeps drawing you in.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_03: At least for me.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_03: It keeps drawing me in, and there's there's a lot of curiosity there.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: It's important we felt when we worked on Schwankfeld's Passional to take sentences that would be a paragraph long and break it at least down to three or four bits to take words that were complex, not only the these and thus, uh, but some uh words that probably come from the the 1600s or were translated in your your case uh by Ansbach in the 1800s that we don't use anymore.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that just makes it more confusing for a modern audience to be able to read it.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_03: The one that came up for me yesterday as I was doing the the side-by-side comparison was the word regenerate.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_03: Now we might use regenerate.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_03: I don't think I I hear it much.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_03: Ironically, maybe not ironically, degenerate.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_03: We still have in our vocabulary in modern society.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_03: When Schwenkfeld uses regenerate, he's talking about the new person in Christ.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this this person who has been transformed by the grace of God.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_03: But that's also part of the struggle because there's there's words that still might have some power and meaning that we don't necessarily want to lose, but I think we do have to at least footnote or explain or give some context for folks so they can come to it with more ease uh and and greater understanding.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's talk about um maybe we might say a word about uh Ansbach, who was the translator of uh the first German into into English.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what type of person was he?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And why did he translate this book?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so Unspach's a Lutheran pastor.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_03: For I think it's for about 10 years, he has a parish or parishes, because a lot of them were linked around that point in the general area of White Marsh.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_03: He comes into contact with several people of Schweinfelder descent.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_03: My suspicion is that some of them were a part of his congregation, or at least connected to him.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_03: And one of those people is Abraham Heydrich, who has publication connections and knows him.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_03: OnSpot talks in his note from the translator to start it just how impressed he was with this group of people who seemed very sincere and genuine in their faith, who were well read, but they were also starting to come to a place already in the mid-1800s in the mid-1800s where people are not speaking German.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_03: They had done a reprint of one of the portions that they had brought over with them in 1820, done all in German, which included the Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician, Three Kinds of Life, and then two letters from Schwankfeld, both about 20 pages, and both very practical.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_03: I think one on the love of God, and I can't remember off the top of my head what the additional piece was, but just these very applicable pieces.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_03: Onsbach is commissioned to do English translation of these German pieces with particular emphasis on the heavenly bomb and then the three kinds of of life, and just starts his work in doing this.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_03: I like the fact that we have a Lutheran pastor doing a translation of Schwenkfeld, and now after this transition into the new world, you the community itself already being aware of the importance of having this be something that can be approached and understood is highly significant.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_03: And I think for the timeline, actually predates by not a whole lot, but predates a lot of the push to develop the Corpus Schweinfeldi Unorum and try to get the collected work of Schweinfeld together and capture as much as they they could.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: I had somewhat related, but you know, tan gentle all the same.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_03: I was having dinner with my son Nick a couple of months ago, and we just had something at the Library and Heritage Center.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_03: And Nick said, Dad, does every denomination have like a heritage center?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_03: No.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_03: No, we're we're actually a really tiny one, and some are far, far bigger and do not have that as a part of their tradition or history.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, and it's just uh it's a really neat opportunity that we uh a fairly unique opportunity that we have as people within this tradition for study and deeper understanding.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: Now you've been doing some this uh modernization of the on spot translation of the heavenly balm and the divine physician.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was wondering if you might uh read a few uh passages that you thought were uh were unique.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_02: And as after you read it, maybe you could tell why you think uh that passage is uh is of value.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_03: I'm gonna pull it from a few different places.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_03: So if the King James is not overly heavy, we'll get there.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_03: And this is also partly kind of how I heard about this particular piece.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_03: So the 1858 edition, Harback done in Baltimore with Abraham Heydrich.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_03: I had an email from Alan V.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_03: Meyer a while back, and he was just letting me know that he had been working with a guy named Andrew Zabaslansky, who was very interested in the heavenly balm and divine physician.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_03: Andrew has written a book entitled Evangelical Mysticism.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_03: He is really coming more from the Lutheran side and a lot of the German Pietist early on, and then back to Jacob Baum.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: Baum, we know, had the works of Schwenkfeld.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm assuming that was the line that Zawaslansky was tracing as he was doing some of his own work.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_03: So I I have no qualms about cold emailing anyone in the world to ask them whatever, and was like, hey Andrew, I hear you're working on this.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_03: Can we talk?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_03: He was working with Remizio books and did largely a reprint of the Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician through them.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_03: And this is a this is a site where you can, in essence, do a pay by the book amount for the printing.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_03: So I I picked that up from the library, started reading it, was fascinated, and knowing that it was 150 pages, that it was going to take some time to work through.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_03: It also gave me the advantage because at that, but before starting work on the heavenly balm, I was working with AI to do German translation out of it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: It provides a kind of a safety net when I have an existing English translation to work from and be able to get that and use it going along.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_03: The general thing that I sense in coming to the works of Schwenkfeld, I wind up singing an old hymn pretty often when I've hit some of his more significant sections, and it's uh wonderful words of life.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_03: So this is the the refrain in the chorus.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_03: Sing them over again to me, wonderful words of life.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_03: Let me more of their beauty see, wonderful words of life.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_03: Words of life and beauty, teach me faith and duty, beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life, beautiful words, wonderful words, wonderful words of life.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_03: We'll go to the 1858 version first.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: You can read us your modern uh translation.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_03: I mean that's that's yeah, we'll give you a couple.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_03: It was easier for me to mark it when we went, and I don't I don't think it's too heavy on this part.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_03: And this is from uh chapter 25.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_03: Thus, the afflicted soul that has learned of Jesus and has been received into the divine favor knows full well from experience the efficacy of the heavenly balm and the goodness and mercy of the divine physician.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_03: He has therefore come out of the dark and pestilential air of sin and walks in the light of God's favor, and now that he has become a new creature, he has power through grace to partake of all those means provided in God's word for the strengthening of his soul, and may bring from the treasury which contains the balm of life such supplies as his infirmities may require, thus keeping under any symptoms that may appear of the disease which the great physician has subdued.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_03: In seasons of doubt and temptation he repairs to the promises, knows from experience the particular promise or truth.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_03: truth which will meet his case.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, the Bible is to him a very pleasant garden, which he enters to gather such fruits as his spiritual appetite craves, such flowers whose fragrance may refresh his spirit, and such herbs as are for the healing of the soul.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_03: Oh how delightful does he find the manifold provisions of grace.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_03: An heir of God and joint heir with Christ, he rejoices amid the glories and the raptures of the kingdom of God and sings to the praise of the balm and physician through whom his soul is healed from all evil.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_03: And I said the wrong I said twenty five that was from twenty-seven when I read portions and it's like mercy I want some of that.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_03: That's a really good thing.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_03: You know and just these these promises and depth of of life.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_03: Part of that irony too or or ironically Schweinkfeld is writing this in his period of self-exile.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_03: So from 1529 until his death um he removes himself from court.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_03: He's afraid of drawing attention to himself and to the people that he had worked with and so he's going it into forms of isolation and is spending a lot of time.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_03: And I think it fosters kind of like with the desert fathers you know those moments of solitude foster a deeper and deepening relationship.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_03: And I think that's where Schwenkfield really kind of shines.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_03: Let me pull up one of my other pieces and sorry for doing that on the laptop.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_03: This is from the 25th chapter.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_03: This blessed balm brings sunlight into the heart, drives away the clouds, lifts the vapor and calms the previous storm as the earth after being shaken by thunder and drenched with rain looks renewed and sends up its sweet fragrance, so the believing soul looks up through its tears with grateful smiles to the God of mercies.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_03: The process is like that of a refiner who places silver in the crucible, subjects it to intense heat and stirs it until all impurities rise and are removed, only the pure metal remains and the dross breaks away, so it is with the soul under the twofold effect of God's healing grace.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: But we must not stop with these general descriptions our heavenly physician Jesus Christ administers this healing bomb.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_03: I will not dwell on the first beginnings of grace, neither the earliest stirrings of new birth nor the initial spark of faith, but on the full cure which the divine physician brings, the gospel presents him as the one who, by the grace of God, awakens the soul from the death of sin, inspires faith, and urges the heart to seek him, love him, and acknowledge him.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: To the spiritually sick and sin afflicted he calls, awake you who sleep and arise from the dead and Christ will give you light.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_03: This is God's invitation that you would know Christ as your physician, seek his help, trust his care, and be restored to spiritual health and the salvation of God.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_03: May the Lord Jesus grant us this that we may seek through earnest prayer the heavenly balm, recognize its power and experience its grace.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_03: Then through God's precious gift that we may be lifted into the presence of the Holy One where there is fullness of joy and pleasures forevermore.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_03: Amen.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Very nice.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah Nick uh I was just thinking as uh you were reading these passages um obviously they were meaningful for Schwenkfeld years ago they're meaningful for uh those in the 1800s as Ansbach was translating.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: But why do you feel today that a book like Heavenly Balm and Divine Physician is beneficial for those in the year 2026?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_03: So on the first level I think it's important within the the Schwenkfelder tradition so that we remember who we are and the foundation that we have in faith.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_03: I use the inclusive we for me not as a Schweinfelder descendant but as a person who is genuinely interested in Christian faith.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_03: I find that there's a lot of resources that I would describe more as cultural Christianity than as genuine Christian faith.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_03: We need to be focused on being disciples of Jesus Christ and listening to Christ's teachings.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_03: We just did Transfiguration Sunday this past week and the instruction at the transfiguration after Peter wants to construct these three dwellings is God saying this is my son the beloved and then listen to him.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah the way that we are called to follow Christ is is of the greatest import.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_03: For me when I was first starting down this I really thought that the interest was predominantly around ancient mysticism and then it's coming to discover that one there's a pretty significant bread in mysticism and there's also some more foundational pieces and seeing Christ at the center of that being able to be led by Christ into times of contemplative prayer is much, much needed.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_03: I don't see the New Age movement a whole lot anymore but there and the probably the more significant phrase I was introduced to the word Sheilaism have you run across that one yet it was I'm not going to be able to think of the book title but there was a psychologist and sociologist who was doing a study and was interviewing some people about their faith and one of the women he interviewed was Sheila.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_03: And when he asked her about doctrinal life or her understanding or or her religious affiliation she said well I I believe in Sheilaism.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_03: What is Sheilaism?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_03: And it's it's taking you know this piece and this piece from this and this piece from this and trying to assemble us assemble this thing.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_03: And I get it I mean and a lot of people might respond in that way but we're still not that's the superficial part you know unless we're really exploring something and trying to found trying to find some of those foundations for us we're just not going to be having the benefit and gain that's there.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_03: I have started and this was a shift for me in reading about Schwenkfeld and then reading Schwenkfeld too I really tried to stop reading Schweinfeld uh so much as a student and uh or as a a teacher or a person conveying doctrine or dogma and really started approaching Schwankfeld as a spiritual guide as someone who has lived a life of faith and offers some valuable insight.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_03: And I don't think that part is in any way exclusive to the Schweinfelder tradition.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_03: I think that's foundational for all of Christianity and uh and important for us to re-embrace that heritage and depth and curiosity and exploration.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think so too.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: But uh just even thinking of the title Heavenly Balm and how many times have we had you know scabs or itches uh but to think of uh Schweinfeld uh as a uh Christian thinker uh envisioning uh the soothing ointment that comes uh from uh the heavenly uh from the divine physician that being uh uh Jesus Christ most of us I'm sure go to the physician uh periodically and isn't it nice to know that uh the savior can be likened like that too.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_03: Absolutely and this was one of the pieces that we both picked up on in doing the school of Christ connecting with German pietism but the ability to take our and for I would say for Schweinfold of that moment modern but trying to take some of the language and the and the relationships and what is happening and then applying that to the Christian life and recognizing its importance is partly how we try to continue to make things like the church fathers and scripture relevant and reminding people of its importance and and foundation.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: But thank you for taking some time and answering some questions for us today Pastor Nick and we look forward to seeing uh your modern translation of um uh this work by uh Schweinfeld the Heavenly Balm and the Divine Physician excellent thank you so much Drake thank you