The Radical Reformation

1. The Radical Reformation The Free Church Movement

2. General Characteristics • Moral reformation/discipleship • Christian primitivism/biblical literalism • Eschatological/Apocalyptic expectations • Anti-liturgical and lay-oriented • Free Will • Freedom from state control (Free Church) • Religious Toleration • Communal economic practices

3. Three Major Types • Anabaptists • Some revolutionary types • But mainly evangelical • Discipline as an order of the church • Adult baptism of believers • primitivists • Spiritualists • Mystical; inner light revelations • Schwenfelder and Frank • Anti-Trinitarians (anti-Chalcedon) • Anti-creed; rejected early councils • Primary leader was Faustus Socinus

4. Conrad Grebel (1498-1526) • “Father of Anabaptism” • Education • Trained at Basel; Erasmian humanist (1514) • Studied in Vienna; enamoured with the Italian Renaissance (1515-1518); immoral period • University of Paris (1518-1520) • Came to Zurich in 1520 • Studied under Zwingli, particularly Greek classics (e.g., Plato) • Began to study Hebrew, exegesis and preaching • Conversion experience in 1522, openly defended the Reformation and sought ministerial position

5. Grebel and Zwingli Disagree • At the second disputation (October 1523), Grebel argued for faster reformation but Zwingli wanted to move more slowly. • Heated exchanges over the mass and images. • Zwingli was trying to work with the council, but Grebel wanted move without them. • Grebel became the leader of the radical group which now corresponded widely with Reformers (including Luther). About 15 men regularly met to study the Bible, pray and seek direction from other emerging Reformers. • At the third disputation (January 17 1525), the council condemned “anabaptism” (baptizing again adult believers who had been baptized as infants). The council demanded the baptism of all children.

6. The Council Decree It is therefore the earnest commandment, order and warning of these our Lords that no one in town, country or domain, whether man, woman or girl, shall henceforth baptize another. Whoever hereafter baptizes someone will be apprehended by our Lords and, according to this present decree, be drowned without mercy. —Zurich City Council, March 7, 1526

7. The First “Baptisms” • On January 21, the council prohibited Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz and George Blaurock from conducting home Bible study meetings. • That evening, however, fifteen people met in the house of Manz’s mother in Zollikon, a suburb of Zurich. • Blaurock, a former priest, asked Grebel to baptize him and then Blaurock baptized the rest by pouring water on their heads. • After baptism, they broke bread together as a new fellowship of believers.

8. Zurich Decision • On January 30, Blaurock and Manz, along with others, were imprisoned in Zurich. Fined, they were eventually released in late February but they continued preaching. Blaurock even baptized a friend the day after his release. • Five hundred people were baptized in St. Gall near Zurich in April 1525 in response to Grebel’s preaching. • The city council held another disputation (Zurich’s fourth) from November 6-8, 1525 that was attended by 900 people. Grebel, Blaurock and Manz advocated believer’s baptism. The council decided against them, and they were imprisoned indefinitely on a diet of bread and water. They were sentenced to life imprisonment on March 6, 1526. However, on March 21 they escaped and renewed their ministries in secret. • On March 7, 1526 the penalty for conducting “rebaptisms” became death by drowning.

9. The Death of the Leaders • Felix Manz was recaptured and was the first Anabaptist executed in Zurich. On January 5, 1527, Manz was tied down with weights and thrown into the river Limmat, drowned because of his baptismal theology. • Grebel died of the plague in 1526, but Blaurock, who was beaten and exiled by the Zurich authorities after Manz’s drowning, ultimately suffered martyrdom in Innsbruck, Austria, in 1529.

10. Limmat River with the Two “Munsters”

11. The Place Where Manz was Drowned

12. Why Such a Radical Reaction? • The difference between Grebel and Zwingli was more than baptism. • It was the nature of the church. • Is the church a covenanted community of regenerate disciples—a voluntary community • Or, Is the church linked with the State, that is, is the church co-extensive with the State? • Consequently, the Anabaptist movement was treason to the State.

13. Peasants War—Another Reason • 1524-1525—the revolt affected the regions of southern and central Germany as well as parts of Switzerland and Austria. • At its height, it may have involved as many as 300,000 peasant insurgents with 100,000 dead over the two years. • It was brutally defeated by the various ruling States.

15. “Twelve Articles of the Black Forest”February 1525 • The right to choose their own pastor • Church tithe to be used for pastor and poor • Freedom from serfdom as redeemed in Christ • Freedom to hunt and fish in God’s good creation • Freedom to cut wood • Freedom from excessive services imposed by the Lords • Call for services rendered by agreement for payment • Call for rent control • Freedom from inheritance taxes • Stop the appropriation of community land by Lords. • Stop the incessant making of new laws • Willingness to subject all demands to the “Word of God”

16. Thomas Muntzer (1489-1525) • Born in central Germany, he was ordained a priest in 1513 and studied with Luther from 1517-1519 in Wittenburg and became a Lutheran pastor in Saxony in 1520. • Expelled from Zwickau, he traveled to Prague and within Germany. He opposed infant baptism, even before the Swiss Brethren did. He also affirmed a Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper. • Only July 13, 1524 he delivered his “Sermon to the Princes”. • He settled in Muhlhausen and raised a peasant army of 8,000 that was defeated in May 1525. Munzter was beheaded that same month.

17. Peasants Revolt • With major armies warring in Italy (the Hapsburg-Valois war of 1521-1525), peasants drew up their grievances and pressed them in their local communities. • Peasants claimed the authority of the Word of God, some claimed direct leading of the Spirit (Zwickau Prophets), and some established communal theocracies (e.g., Muhlhausen). • Princes opposed and when the troops returned the peasants were slaughtered (5,000 died at Muhlhausen).

18. Reformation and the Revolt • Catholic Princes blamed Luther and the other reformers for the revolt. • Some reformers were involved: Zwickau Prophets, Muntzer led an army, and Hubmaier helped draft the 12 Articles. • Luther • Critiqued the princes for their oppressive practices and for suppressing preaching • But backed the princes in their use of violence to put an end to the revolt • Luther believed the peasants confused gospel preaching and human rights—the gospel must not be furthered by the sword. • Authored “Admonition to Peace in Response to the Twelve Articles”

19. Michael Sattler (1495-1527) • After the deaths of Grebel and Manz, Sattler emerged as the leader of the Swiss Anabaptists. • Sattler was educated at Freiburg and became a monk at a monastery near there where he rose to the rank of Prior before leaving in 1523—the same year he married. • He joined the Swiss Brethren in 1525. He travelled in southern Germany for most of the year avoiding arrest.

20. Schleitcheim Confession (1527) • Sattler returned to Swizterland in February 1527 and presented a “confession” to an assembled group of Brethren leaders at Schleitcheim (in the canton of Schaffhausen). • It was important enough that both Zwingli and Calvin responded to the confession. • It became the most significant communal statement of belief by the Swiss Brethren in the 16th century.

22. Theology of the Confession • Baptism: “Baptism shall be given to all those who have learned repentance and amendment of life, and who believe truly that their sins are taken away by Christ, and to all those who walk in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and wish to be buried with Him in death.” • Ban: The ban shall be employed with all those who have given themselves to the Lord, to walk in His commandments, and with all those who are baptized into the one body of Christ and who are called brethren or sisters, and yet who slip sometimes and fall into error and sin, being inadvertently overtaken. The same shall be admonished twice in secret and the third time openly disciplined or banned according to the command of Christ. Matt. 18. • Lord’s Supper: Therefore it is and must be (thus): Whoever has not been called by one God to one faith, to one baptism, to one Spirit, to one body, with all the children of God's church, cannot be made (into) one bread with them, as indeed must be done if one is truly to break bread according to the command of Christ.

23. Theology of the Confession • Separation • Separation from apostate bodies of Christians • Separation from governments • Separation from sin and the world of evil. • Pastor: “This office shall be to read, to admonish and teach, to warn, to discipline, to ban in the church, to lead out in prayer for the advancement of all the brethren and sisters, to lift up the bread when it is to be broken, and in all things to see to the care of the body of Christ, in order that it may be built up and developed, and the mouth of the slanderer be stopped. This one moreover shall be supported of the church which has chosen him, wherein he may be in need, so that he who serves the Gospel may live of the Gospel as the Lord has ordained.”

24. Theology of the Confession • Sword: • Governments are used by God to punish evil and protectg the good. • Christians, however, do not participate in governments as they are dedicated to the kingdom of God. • Christians are pacifists and do not serve in the government. • Oath: “Christ also taught us along the same line when He said, Let your communication be Yea, yea; Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil. He says, Your speech or word shall be yea and nay. (However) when one does not wish to understand, he remains closed to the meaning. Christ is simply Yea and Nay, and all those who seek Him simply will understand His Word.”

25. Sattler’s Martyrdom • Sattler was arrested in Horb, Germany on May 17, 1527 and tried at Rottenburg where he was tortured and burned at the stake on May 21, 1527. • Here are some of the charges against him: • Secondly, he has taught, held and believed that the body and blood of Christ are not present in the sacrament. • Thirdly, he has taught and believed that infant baptism does not conduce to salvation. • Fourthly, they have rejected the sacrament of extreme unction. • Fifthly, they have despised and condemned the mother of God and the saints. • Sixthly, he has declared that men are not to swear before the authorities. • Ninthly, he has said that if the Turks should invade the country, no resistance ought to be offered them;

26. Anabaptist TheologianBalthasar Hubmaier (1481-1528) • Born near Augsburg, Germany, in 1503 he enrolled at the University of Freiburg where he studied under Johannes Eck and earned the M.A. in 1511. • He studied and then taught at Ingolstadt University where he earned the Doctor of Theology degree in 1515. • In 1516 he became the Cathedral preacher at Regensburg. • He led an Anti-semitic persecution there—expelling the Jews, burning their synagogue and replacing it with a church dedicated to Mary • It became a pilgrimage site due to claimed miracles and Hubmaier became embroiled in a controversy between the city council and the bishop. • As a result, he became the pastor of a small church in Waldshut in Germany on the Rhine between Basel and Zurich during 1520.

27. The Reformer • Hubmaier read Erasmus and the fathers while in Waldshut. He also started reading Luther and Oecolampadius. • When invited back to Regensburg, he spent the winter there but was converted to Lutheranism and returned to Waldshut early in 1523. • In 1523 he visited Zwingli in Zurich, and he sided with the Reformation in the October 1523 disputation. • Hubmaier joined the Grebel Bible study group and maintained relationships with this radical movement.

28. Waldshut, 1524-1525 • Hubmaier began to implement reforms in Waldshut • He gave the communion with both bread and wine. • He married in 1524. • Hubmaier submitted to adult baptism on April 15, 1525. • On Easter Sunday, April 16, 1525, Hubmaier baptized 300 adults from his parish church at Waldshut. • He published his first book in defense of adult believer’s baptism in May 1525. • The Austrian army occupied Waldshut (during the Peasant’s Revolt) in December, 1525 and Hubmaier fled to Zurich. • He was arrested in Zurich and forced to recant under torture. • Upon release he fled to Moravia and renounced his recantation.

29. Moravia, 1526-1528 • Under his leadership, Nickolsburg in Moravia became a center for the Anabaptist movement. • Some estimate 12,000 Anabaptists in the city. • The Zurich printer Froschauer had emigrated to the city and published Hubmaier’s books. • The city was protected by Leonhard von Liechtenstein and Moravian nobility. • After the defeat of King Louis of Hungary and Bohemia by the Turks, Austria sought the arrest of Hubmaier on political charges related to the Peasant’s Revolt. • The Moravians turned him over to King Ferdinand of Austria. • He was eventually tried and burned at the stake in Vienna. • His wife was drowned three days after her husband died.

30. Hubmaier’s Theology • Rejected Zwingli’s predestination and advocated free will in much the same way that Erasmus did. • He was not a pacifist and believed Christians should pay “war taxes.” • His baptismal theology shaped future Anabaptist thought: • The church is a voluntary community that lives in tension with the world. • The believer respond’s to God’s regenerating grace by entering into covenant with God through baptism as an act of discipleship

31. Dutch Anabaptism • Melchoir Hoffman (1495-1543) was the original agent of Anabaptism among the Dutch. • Hoffman was born in upper Franconia in Bavaria, Germany. As a layperson, he became attracted to Luther’s teaching in 1520. • As a lay preacher, he was quite successful but he became iconoclastic. • He was sent to counsel with Luther in 1525. • Living in Denmark in 1529, he adopted a Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper and began to speculate on millennial theories.

32. Hoffman’s Travels • Hoffman was banished from Lutheran territories, so he came to Strasbourg to seek alliance with Bucer. • Strasbourg was also resistant to his millennial speculations but was especially hostile to his emerging Anabaptist tendencies. He joined the Anabaptists in Strasbourg in 1529. • Hoffman traveled to East Frisia in NW Germany near the Netherlands where he baptized 300 adults and established churches from 1530 to 1533. • He returned to Strasbourg in 1533 where he prophesied the imminent return of Christ to that city where a new era would begin in the New Jerusalem of Strasbourg. • Hoffman was eventually imprisoned, though released on occasions, where he died in 1543.

33. Munster, Germany Two of Hoffman’s disciples, Jan van Matthijs and Jan van Leiden, believed that Hoffman had identified the wrong time and place—they believed it would be Münster in NW Germany (near the Netherlands).

34. The Münster Theocracy • Münster had, since 1530, been undergoing a Lutheran-style reformation with its leader Bernard Rothmann moving in Anabaptist directions. • They went to Münster and within weeks had baptized 1000 adults. • The Anabaptists seized the city and ruled it for 18 months (February 1534 to June 1535) as they awaited the return of Christ. • They ruled the city as a new Davidic kingdom—practiced polygamy and violently suppresed opponents.

35. Anabaptist Leaders • The town was besieged by its expelled bishop and eventually retaken. • The city was originally 9,500 in 1533 but was only 4,000 in 1534. • The Anabaptist leaders were tortured, executed and their bodies hung in cages from the Steeple of St. Lambert’s Church.

36. Anabaptists and Münster • Münster represents a minority millennialist, violent strain of Anabaptism which sought the overthrow of the State. • The main Anabaptist groups are pacifists who seek separation from the State as in the case of the Swiss Brethren. • Another Anabaptist stream is that of Hubmaier where the State is good and Christians should support it.

37. Menno Simons • Born to dairy farmers in Witmarsum, Netherlands, he distinguished himself as a Latin scholar. • In 1524 he was ordained and appointed priest in Pingjum, the village next to his father's farm. • Reading some Reformation literature (Luther and Erasmus) because he was having doubts about transubstantiation, he began to read the Bible for himself in 1526 at the urging of those authors.

38. Map of the Netherlands

39. Development of a Reformer • Soon rejected transubstantiation and had increasing doubts about the Roman Catholic church but also some of the views of the Reformers. • By 1528 he was known as an “evangelical” preacher though he continued as parish priest. • When in 1531 a Dutch tailor, Sicke Freerks in Leeuwarden, was beheaded because he had been re-baptized as an adult, Menno objected and began to restudy the issue.

40. Turning Point • In 1531, he became the village priest in his home parish at Witmarsum. • In 1532 Anabaptists were present in his hometown and encountered the first Münsterites emissaries in 1534. • He wrote tracks against the Münsterites though not rejecting their Anabaptism (Menno’s brother was killed at Münster). • Dirk Philips, who formed the center of the peaceful Melchiorite movement and perhaps baptized by Hoffmann himself, sought out Menno after his conversion and both baptized and ordained him after January 1536.

41. Simon’s Ministry • While Luther at least could exercise a ministry in a friendly political environment, Menno's ministry had to be clandestine on account of political hostility. • In 1542 the Holy Roman emperor Charles V issued an edict against him, promising 100 guilders reward for his arrest. One of the first Anabaptist believers to be executed for sheltering Menno was Tyaard Renicx of Leeuwarden, in 1539. • Menno died a natural death after 29 years of ministry as an “underground” Anabaptist minister in the Netherlands.

42. Mennonite Theology • Believer’s baptism—symbolic of regenerative faith • Zwinglian understanding of the Lord’s Supper. • Free Will—rejection of the Magisterial understanding of Election. • Covenanted Community of Disciples led by an ordained Pastor who administers the sacraments of baptism and the Lord’s Supper. • Discipleship as the central dimension of the Christian life. • Pacifist theology

43. Mennonites • “Mennonite” was a term first used by opponents in 1544. • It describes the North German and Dutch Anabaptists. • The “Amish” Brethren are a sect of the Swiss Mennonites that objected to “compromises” made by other Mennonites (1690s). • The Swiss and Mennonite traditions evolved separately but they also held common beliefs that mutually nurtured each other. • The root of these common beliefs are probably Erasmian humanism and the Zwinglian reformation. • Mennonites began to enjoy freedom of practice in the mid-17th century and many emigrated to the British colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries.