The same preaching can be a necessary wake-up call for one person and the wrong medicine for another. Ole Hallesby’s serious preaching on sin and conversion therefore raises a question that also touches my own story: What happens when the medicine is right, but the diagnosis misses the mark?
Who Was Hallesby?
Ole Hallesby (1879–1961) was a professor at the Norwegian School of Theology (Menighetsfakultetet) and one of the most prominent figures in Norwegian low-church Christianity in the twentieth century. In public memory, he is perhaps best known for his uncompromising preaching on conversion, damnation, and the seriousness of encountering God. At the same time, he wrote books in a very different tone, such as Fra bønnens verden (Prayer), in which his pastoral and caring side comes clearly to the fore.
The Seriousness of Repentance: What It Required
Hallesby’s preaching stood within a pietistic tradition in which conversion was often understood as a recognisable process: conviction of sin, repentance, faith, and a new life. This could create a clear line between a “before” and an “after”, even though Hallesby’s own theological treatment of the process was more nuanced than a simple sequence of stages.
This kind of preaching has clear parallels with the Haugean understanding of the order of salvation (ordo salutis): conviction of sin, repentance, faith, and a recognisable breakthrough. The question is whether this was a theologically necessary description of conversion itself, or also a pastoral strategy—a way of shaking people out of indifference.
My Own Experience: The Wrong Diagnosis, Not Too Little Seriousness
I myself heard relatively little of Hallesby’s preaching directly—he belonged to a generation before my own. The preaching I encountered at Fjellhaug was of a different kind: more strongly shaped by the Rosenius emphasis on “come as you are to your Saviour”, and with much less focus on the precise moment of conversion than was characteristic of the Hallesby tradition.
The teaching there was strongly shaped by the distinction between law and gospel. I especially remember one teacher holding up red and white pieces of paper to illustrate that we were one hundred per cent sinners in ourselves, but one hundred per cent righteous in Christ—clearly expecting this to produce joy and relief in us. It did not, at least not in me.
The problem, as I understand it in retrospect, was that the diagnosis did not fit. The preaching assumed that my low spirits came from trying to make myself righteous before God through works of the law—that I needed to be reminded that I did not have to perform. But that was not my situation.
I knew perfectly well that one was not supposed to search for assurance of salvation within oneself, but to look to Jesus, as they themselves put it—and I tried to follow precisely that advice, without ever reaching a complete breakthrough. My real problem was something else: I did not know who I was, or what God’s plan was for my life. I lived in a kind of vacuum, without a sense of belonging, and that was painful in a way this preaching was not designed to address.
I do not want to exaggerate how much Hallesby-like preaching I personally encountered. Both before and after Fjellhaug, I certainly heard preaching in that direction, but on the whole I think I avoided becoming deeply troubled by that particular kind of preaching. Even so, the general point remains important: the same preaching can affect different people in very different ways. For some, it can be a necessary wake-up call that breaks through indifference. For others, who are already struggling with anxiety or spiritual anguish, it can intensify what is already there without addressing what is actually needed.
The Catholic Sacrament of Penance: The Same Seriousness, a Different Structure
The Catholic Church takes sin, conversion, and repentance very seriously, but gives them a different sacramental structure. Repentance is necessary, but it is not measured by how intensely it is felt. The Church even distinguishes between perfect and imperfect contrition. The penitent examines his conscience, confesses his sins, and has the intention of turning away from them; forgiveness is then received through absolution.
In this way, assurance does not finally rest on my ability to determine whether my repentance feels genuine enough, but on a promise spoken to me from outside myself.
I must nevertheless admit that confession has not occupied a particularly large place in my own Catholic life. One reason may be that my spiritual difficulties have seldom been tied to specific actions that I could easily identify and confess. They have rather consisted of spiritual anguish, unease, thoughts, and feelings—and especially the difficulty of distinguishing between what I am actually responsible for and what simply happens within me. For that reason, confession has not become the direct solution to the problems I am describing here.
What Actually Helped
In the end, I was freed from my spiritual anguish after becoming Catholic, but I do not think this happened primarily through confession. As I understand it, it had more to do with the sacramental structure as such—the assurance that something is given independently of my own inner state, as I have already written in connection with Holy Communion.
Ordinary human circumstances probably played a part as well. After I married, I became less lonely, and loneliness can in itself intensify spiritual anguish. Yet several years still passed after my marriage, with my life improved on the human level, before the spiritual anguish actually loosened its grip. For that reason, I believe that what I found in the Catholic Church, in the sacramental life as such, had an independent and decisive importance—not merely better life circumstances.
Fra bønnens verden – Another Hallesby
Although I encountered relatively little of Hallesby’s preaching directly, his book Fra bønnens verden (Prayer) has meant a great deal to me. There he reveals a very different side from the one for which he is best known: considerable pastoral insight and care, and a sincere desire to help the reader grow in the life of prayer.
I suspect that the same underlying pastoral concern was also present in his more confrontational preaching, even though the form was different. It is therefore too simple to contrast “the strict Hallesby” with a “gentler Catholic” spirituality. Both sides are present in Hallesby himself: searching seriousness and warm pastoral care.
When the Medicine Does Not Fit the Diagnosis
I do not want to conclude by saying that the Catholic Church simply “solves” what Hallesby’s seriousness did not solve. That would be too easy, and it would not match my own experience, in which the solution came gradually and from several directions at once.
Hallesby’s seriousness still has value as a counterweight to an overly easy proclamation of grace, for those whom it actually addresses rightly. In my case, the problem lay elsewhere: not in too little seriousness about sin, but in a lack of identity and belonging that preaching alone could not fill. Human fellowship gradually came to matter. But in the sacramental life I also found something else: an external and concrete anchor for faith, one that did not depend on my first managing to produce the right inner state.
It was this, rather than a stronger argument about the seriousness of sin, that gradually helped the spiritual anguish lose its hold.