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Gruber on the Discernment of True and False Inspiration

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Walter Grossmann
Affiliation:
Conway, Massachusetts

Extract

The religious community of True Inspired at Amana, Iowa acknowledges and reveres as its two “old country” founding fathers the Württemberg theologian, Eberhard Ludwig Gruber (1665–1728) and his younger friend the saddler, Johann Friedrich Rock (1678– 1749). While Gruber is credited with providing wise religious and organizational leadership, Rock was endowed with the gift of inspiration that characterized the budding movement in the early eighteenth century. Karl Barth wrote of him, “Inspiration … seized Rock and made him a seer and a prophet, to whose curious message half if not all of Germany listened.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1988

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References

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