Happy New Year!

This is a clip from British television that has somehow become a traditional New Year’s Eve program in Germany.  As I am told, it runs continuously on Dec. 31 and families watch it multiple times over the course of the day.  Enjoy.

No Creed but the Bible! Really?

This is an interesting story from Jan Karel van Baalen in The Heritage of the Fathers, that I came across while doing research for a paper on catechetical preaching.  The objector does not like that van Baalen uses the catechism in preaching.

“No, you neeed not come into the house.  What I have to say I can say out here.  And you need not talk to my wife and daughter either.  I am responsible, and they go where I go.  I want my papers, and I am going to a church where they preach the Bible.”

I asked him if, in his opinion, I did not preach the Bible.

“Sometimes you do, yes; I’ll admit that much.”

“What seems to be wrong?  Why do you want to leave us?” I continued.

“Well, I might as well tell you: I don’t like to see you put that little book on top of the Bible.  If you’d preach nothing but the word of God, I should have nothing to say.  But on Sunday mornings you preach the Heidelberg Catechism.  So my mind is made up, and I am going where the word of God is preached and not  man-made creed.”

I prevailed upon him to tell me where he was going in search of the word of God in preference to man-made creed. He mentioned a recently organized “undenominational” church, the kind that swears by the Scofield Reference Bible. 

I inquired if it made a great deal of difference whether the accepted commentary lay “on top of the Bible” or came in the form of footnotes as the bottom of the Bible.

“Yes, Sir, that’s where they preach the Bible, and nothing but the Bible.”

So I gave up the unequal struggle.  Incidentally, one year after date the undenominational church formulated a creed of its own, to which all officers and workers had to attach their signature.  Even the organist was made to sign, in order to play in true fundamentalist style. 

It is, of course, just as impossible to start at the bottom in interpreting the Christian religion as it would be to study medicine as though no one ever before had known or discovered anything about the human body and its ailments.  One can nor more interpret the Bible ignoring the labors of nineteen centuries than one could study law without taking cognizance of Blackstone.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: The Real Gospel

The following excerpt comes from Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923.

It is true that the Christian gospel is an account, not of something that happened yesterday, but of somethings that happened long ago; but the important things is that it really happened.  If it really happened, then it makes little difference when it happened.  No matter when it happened, whether yesterday or in the first century, it remains a real gospel, a real piece of news.

The happening of long ago, moreover, is in this case confirmed by present experience.  The Christian man receives first the account which the New Testament gives of the atoning death of Christ.  That account is history.  But if true it has effects in the present, and it can be tested by its effects.  The Christian man makes trial of the Christian message, and making trial of it he finds it to be true.  Experience does not provide a substitute for the documentary evidence, but it does confirm that evidence.  The word of the Cross no longer seems to the Christian to be merely a far-off thing, merely a matter to be disputed about by trained theologians.  On the contrary, it is received into the Christian’s inmost soul, and every day and hour of the Christian’s life brings new confirmation of its truth.

In the second place, the Christian doctrine of salvation through the death of Christ is criticized on the ground that it is narrow.  It binds salvation to the name of Jesus, and there are many men in the world who have never in any effective way heard of the name of Jesus.  What is really needed, we are told, is a salvation which will save all men everywhere, whether they have heard of Jesus or not, and whatever may be the type of life to which they have been reared.  Not a new creed, it is said, will meet the universal need of the world, but some means of making effective in right living whatever creed men may chance to have.  

This second objection, as well as the first, is sometimes evaded.  It is sometimes said that although one way of salvation is by means of acceptance of the gospel there may be other ways.  But this method of meeting the objection relinquishes one of the things that are the most obviously characteristic of the Christian message – namely, its exclusiveness.  What struck the early observers of Christianity was offered by means of the Christian gospel, but that all other means were resolutely rejected.  The early Christian missionaries demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion to Christ.  Such exclusiveness ran directly counter to the prevailing syncretism of the Hellenistic age.  In that day, many saviours were offered by many religions to the attention of men, but the various pagan religions could live together in perfect harmony; when a man became a devotee of one god, he did not have to give up the others.  But Christianity would have nothing to do with these “courtly polygamies of the soul”; it demanded an absolutely exclusive devotion; all other Saviours, it insisted, must be deserted for the one Lord.  Salvation, in other words, was not merely through Christ, but it was only through Christ.  In that little word “only” lay all the persecutions; the cultured men of the day would probably have been willing to give Jesus a place, and an honorable place, among the saviours of mankind.  Without its exclusiveness, the Christian message would have seemed perfectly inoffensive to the men of that day.  So modern liberalism, placing Jesus alongside other benefactors of mankind, is perfectly inoffensive in the modern world.  All men speak well of it.  It is entirely inoffensive.  But it is also entirely futile.  The offence of the Cross is done away, but so is the glory and the power.

Is Your Church Really a Parachurch?

Scott Clark addresses “Churchless Evangelicals” over at the Heidelblog.  I was once an Evangelical with no membership in the visible church.  I skipped around to multiple churches without putting down roots.  Even after I was exposed to the doctrines of grace, I was strongly against Reformed ecclesiology.  It was not until I fully embraced Reformed theology that I saw the biblical warrant for presbyterian polity with pastors, elders, and deacons that care for the congregation.  No longer am I a member of an Evangelical mega-church that really functions as a parachurch.  Embracing the five points is not enough.  Come into the deep water of Reformed theology and embrace true ecclesiology.

Truly Radical

 

Conformist

I just returned from a trip to San Francisco, where alternative is the mainstream.  The counter-culture types of the 1960s are now the majority and the establishment.  Those who used to fight the man, now are the man.  

 

I am basically ambivalent about most of these things.  I don’t give much thought as to what people wear, the music they listen to, or what causes they devote their lives to.  What I do think is interesting, though, is the desire that many have to be thought of as different, edgy, or radical.  The use of these terms has changed very much in recent years.  It is not so abnormal any more, to see someone heavily tattooed, pierced, and sporting a mohawk.  Thirty years ago that was strange; today it’s really not.  That guy is mainstream.

Many practices, habits, lifestyles, hobbies, etc. that were deemed controversial years ago are now accepted and not even noticed as being unusual.  Our culture is basically jaded to what used to be thought of as strange.  The formerly strange are now the ones in charge.  It is getting harder and harder to shock people.

That is why I think that being Reformed is one of the only ways left to be truly radical.  We are the real counter-culture.  We think differently, live differently, and die differently than the vast majority of the population.  

We think differently because we basically have a pre-modern epistemology.  We do not believe that man is the measure of all things.  Unlike most of the culture, we know that man is not autonomous and that the human mind is not the clearing-house for all knowledge.  We believe in revelation from God.  It is He who tells us how to think and what is really real.  

It is also God who tells us how to live.  The majority opinion today is “do what you feel” or “follow your heart.”  We believe in following the Bible, what is seen as an outdated book of myths or just an expression of the religious experiences of ancient groups.  We believe that the Bible is God’s revelation of His plan to save His people from their sins through the person and work of Jesus Christ, God’s Son and the Second Person of the Trinity.  We live differently because we seek to live in obedience to God out of gratitude.

 

Radical

We die differently because we are not searching for the fountain of youth.  The only taboo subject in our culture is death.  In our society, sex is discussed far more often than death.  Most people live as if it will never happen to them, while they cling to youth with white knuckles.  Reformed people are not afraid of death, because we have already been crucified with Christ.  We do not live in fear of judgment, always thinking that we have not done enough to earn our way to heaven.  This is the common belief today: if I am a good person, God will accept me.  We believe that God has already judged our sins in Christ.  He has born our penalty for us.  We are truly radical because we rest in the work of another.  

 

There are only about 500,000 confessionally Reformed Christians in America.  That is less than one half of one percent of the total population.  We are definitely not the mainstream.  Many people who tried the culture’s alternative are ending up in Reformed churches, because they know that being Reformed is as edgy as it gets.

Your Weekly Machen Fix: The Gospel in History

The following excerpt is from Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923.

In the first place, then, the Christian way of salvation through the Cross of Christ is criticized because it is dependent upon history.  This criticism is sometimes evaded; it is sometimes said that as Christians we may attend to what Christ does now for every Christian rather than to what He did long ago in Palestine.  But the evasion involves a total abandonment of the Christian faith.  If the saving work of Christ were confined to what He does now for every Christian, there would be no such thing as a Christian gospel – an account of an even which put a new face on life.  What we would have left would be simply mysticism, and mysticism is quite different from Christianity.  It is the connection of the present experience of the believer with an actual historic appearance of Jesus in the world which prevents our religion from being mysticism and causes it to be Christianity.  

It must certainly  be admitted, then, that Christianity does depend upon something that happened; our religion must be abandoned altogether unless at a definite point in history Jesus died as a propitiation for the sins of men.  Christianity is certainly dependent upon history.

But if so, the objection lies very near.  Must we really depend for the welfare of ours souls upon what happened long ago?  Must we really wait until historians have finished disputing about the value of sources and the like before we can have peace with God?  Would it not be better to have a salvation which is with us here and now, and which depends only upon what we can see or feel?

With regard to this objection it should be observed that if religion be made independent of history there is no such thing as a gospel.  For “gospel” means “good news,” tidings, information about something that has happened.  A gospel independent of history is a contradiction in terms.  The Christian gospel means, not a presentation of what always has been true, but a report of something new – something that imparts a totally different aspect to the situation of mankind.  The situation of mankind was desperate because of sin; but God has changed the situation by the atoning death of Christ – that is no mere reflection upon the old, but an account of something new.  We are shut up in this world as in a beleaguered camp.  To maintain our courage, the liberal preacher offers us exhortation.  Make the best of the situation, he says, look on the bright side of life.  But unfortunately, such exhortation cannot change the facts.  In particular it cannot remove the dreadful fact of sin.  Very different is the message of the Christian evangelist.  He offers not reflection on the old but tidings of something new, not exhortation but a gospel.

Is Church Discipline Defamation?

A member of a community church in Florida is being disciplined for continuing an immoral relationship and is angry that her sins will be brought before the church (click here for the story).  According to the story, it does not appear that the elders of the church were very careful in carrying out the process of discipline.  But this brings up the larger point of church discipline in America.  When will we see a church that disciplines a member sued for defamation?  It could very well happen in America.  Members must know the stipulations that apply before they unite with a church.  In the United Reformed Churches, members take vows before the congregation with the understanding that church discipline is the necessary consequence to certain behavior, namely negligence in doctrine or life.  

According to Matthew 18, if a member is unrepentant and refuses the pleadings of fellow church-members and pastors and elders, that person’s sins must be brought before the church.  This is not for the purposes of defaming someone or airing dirty laundry, but rather to help bring the person to repentance.  The church is to reach out to this person and loving call for him to repent. 

At Oceanside United Reformed Church, we recently had a disciplined member restored to full fellowship after a process of restoration.  There was much rejoicing!  It is a beautiful thing to see God use the church and the process of discipline to bring one of his sheep back into the fold.  Unfortunately, most churches do not practice discipline and the ones that do will probably be litigated against in the near future.  What is more loving, to let someone go his own way and descend deeper and deeper into sin, or to lovingly confront him with his sin, pleading with him to repent and be restored to the church?

Your Weekly Machen Fix: On Salvation

The following is an excerpt from Christianity and Liberalism, published in 1923.  Machen set out to prove that Liberalism was not a branch of Christianity, but an entirely different religion compared to historic Christianity.

It is not surprising then that it [Liberalism] differs from Christianity in its account of the gospel itself; it is not surprising that it presents an entirely different account of the way of salvation.  Liberalism finds salvation (so far as it is willing to speak at all of “salvation”) in man; Christianity finds it in an act of God.  

The difference with regard to the way of salvation concerns, in the first place, the basis of salvation in the redeeming work of Christ.  According to Christian belief, Jesus is our Saviour, not by virtue of what He said, not even by virtue of what He was, but by what He did.  He is our Saviour, not because He has inspired us to live the same kind of life that He lived, but because He took upon Himself the dreadful guilt of our sins and bore it instead of us on the cross.  Such is the Christian conception of the Cross of Christ.  It is ridiculed as being a “subtle theory of the atonement.”  In reality, it is the plain teaching of the word of God; we know absolutely nothing about an atonement that is not a vicarious atonement, for that is the only atonement of which the New Testament speaks.  And this Bible doctrine is not intricate or subtle.  On the contrary, though it involves mysteries, it is itself so simple that a child can understand it.  ”We deserved eternal death, but the Lord Jesus, because He loved us, died instead of us on the cross” – surely there is nothing so very intricate about that.  It is not the Bible doctrine of the atonement which is difficult to understand – what are really incomprehensible are the elaborate modern efforts to get rid of the Bible doctrine in the interests of human pride.

Modern liberal preachers do indeed sometimes speak of the “atonement.”  But they speak of it just as seldom as they possibly can, and one can see plainly that their hears are elsewhere than at the foot of the Cross.  Indeed, at this point, as at many others, one has the feeling that traditional language is being strained to become the expression of totally alien ideas.  And when the traditional phraseology has been stripped away, the essence of the modern conception of the death of Christ, though that conception appears in many forms, is fairly plain.  The essence of it is that the death of Christ had an effect not upon God but only upon man.  Sometimes the effect upon man is conceived of in a very simple way, Christ’s death being regarded merely as an example of self-sacrifice for us to emulate.  The uniqueness of this particular example, then, can be found only in the fact that Christian sentiment, gathering around it, has made it a convenient symbol for all self-sacrifice; it puts in concrete form what would otherwise have to be expressed in colder general terms.

An Anabaptist Doctrine of Revelation

The following is an abbreviated essay on Hans Hut’s doctrine of revelation.  For his doctrine of justification, click here.  I first became interested in the Anabaptist movement when I was a student at a dispensational seminary, prior to coming to Westminster Seminary California.  While this seminary claimed to be “Calvinists” concerning the doctrine of salvation (they were not, click here to find out why), they were adamantly against the Reformers on most other doctrines, strongly taking the side of the Anabaptists concerning controversies of the sixteenth century.  I was confused by this and after transferring to WSC, I started researching the Anabaptist movement.  I have since learned that no Anabaptist of the early sixteenth century believed in the doctrine of justification by faith alone.  Anabaptists were not (and are not) Protestant, they never claimed to be.  Protestants who claim them as forefathers are not doing justice to history.  Unfortunately, many Evangelicals today more closely resemble the Anabaptists of the sixteenth century than the Protestants.                                                                                          

 

Hearing the Divine Voice Within:

Hans Hut on the Doctrine of Revelation

            One of the leading figures of the Anabaptist movement was a German bookseller, Hans Hut.  Though his ministry career lasted less than two years, Hut is viewed by some as the driving force behind the early Anabaptist movement in South Germany.  He is best known for his radical eschatology, which has caused his views on revelation to be somewhat overlooked.  His doctrine of revelation is not completely original, but it is critical to understanding the Anabaptist movement of the 1520s, particularly in South Germany.  His doctrine is not all that dissimilar to much in modern Evangelicalism. 

There is much concord amongst scholars as to the nature of Hut’s doctrine of revelation.  Scholars both within (Packull, Friedmann, Klaassen) and without (Williams, Ozment, and Baylor) the Mennonite tradition have concluded that Hut, along with most Anabaptists, believed that the Holy Spirit did not cease to give new revelation and therefore, was opposed to the Protestant doctrine of revelation in the sixteenth century.  There is some disagreement, however, as to Hut’s position concerning the relationship of this new revelation to Scripture, as well as the significance of this doctrine as it pertained to Hut’s overall theology.

The purpose of this essay is to examine Hans Hut’s view of revelation.  This paper proves that Hut adopted the doctrine of the medieval mystics that the Holy Spirit continues to impart direct revelation to the individual, resulting in this direct revelation taking precedence over the written Word.  This doctrine could not be considered Protestant in the sixteenth century, as defined by Martin Luther and John Calvin. 

            This essay is in three parts.  First, a brief biography of Hut sets him and his theology in their time.  Second, Hut’s doctrine of revelation is examined including its background in medieval mysticism, its relation to his doctrine of suffering, and the gospel of all creatures.  The last section interacts with secondary sources, both current and contemporary to Hut, concerning the validity of Hut’s doctrine, as well as the potential motivation for his position. 

Biography

            Hut was born in Franconia sometime between 1485 and 1490.  He was a bookbinder and a book salesman in Bibra.  His extensive travels throughout the region, including Wittenberg and Nürnberg, brought him much exposure to the theological controversies in Germany. 

            German society in the early 1520s was in flux.  The Lutheran doctrines were disseminating to the common man and a climate of change was developing. The absolute authority of the church was being questioned and a revolutionary spirit was in the air.  In late 1523 or early 1524, Hut engaged in an argument that caused him to reconsider his doctrine of infant baptism.  He traveled to Wittenberg to gain understanding, but was not satisfied with the evidence presented to him in support of paedobaptism.  This lingering doubt, coupled with exposure to a lack of morality in some Lutherans, led Hut to reject Luther’s theology and seek another source for spiritual insight.

Hut was baptized by Hans Denck in Augsburg in 1526, which marked the beginning of his prolific baptizing ministry.  He became an itinerant minister, preaching and baptizing throughout the region, and is credited with rebaptizing over two hundred and fifty people.  Having been influenced by Müntzer, his message was eschatological. Unlike Müntzer, however, whose incitement to violence had failed, Hut adapted his eschatology in an effort to avoid the same fate. 

            There are two extant tracts written by Hut in 1527.  The most well known is On the Mystery of Baptism and the other work is A Christian Instruction on How Divine Scripture Should Be Compared and Judged.  Hut’s doctrine of revelation, as revealed in these two writings, will be examined in the next section.

Examination

Backgrounds in Medieval Mysticism

            Han’s Hut’s doctrine of revelation had its roots in medieval mysticism.  In contrast to natural theology, which utilizes general revelation, and dogmatic theology, which relies on historical texts, mystical theology centers on the immediate revelation within the soul of man.  Natural theology acquires knowledge of God as Creator and Judge through natural reasoning.  This knowledge is available to all.  Dogmatic theology learns from God’s revelation of himself in the Scriptures.  This knowledge is available, to a certain extent, to all who have access to the biblical texts.  Mystical theology receives secret knowledge of God and is available only to those whom God chooses as depositories of his revelation.  Although the receiver may deny it, this direct knowledge understandably takes precedence in the individual over natural and biblical revelation. 

            Few medieval theologians would deny that God is free to do anything, including reveal himself without the use of ordinary means (church, word, and sacraments).  For the most part, however, God reveals himself through these traditional means involving the institutional church.  The mystics turned this idea on its head.  Ozment explains:

The divine freedom to work independently of all secondary causes and traditional means of self-communication is no longer viewed as a rarely exercised option; it is the normal, de facto form in which God has and always will communicate his holy gifts.  Neither pope, council, church, nor holy book is the immediate locus of divine truth.

In locating the authority within the individual rather than church, the mystics attempted to loose themselves from ecclesiastical power.  The seat of authority was in the individual, rather than church hierarchy.  For medieval mystics like Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler, salvation was “the discovery of the final power and authority of the Self within one’s own self.”

            Ontological union of divinity and humanity is key to the mystical understanding of revelation.  It is impossible for humanity to know the Deity without sharing the same being.  Eckart remarked, “As the masters say, to be and to have knowledge of are one and the same thing.”  For the human to know the divine being in a saving way, implied humanity on the part of the Deity and Deity on the part of humanity. 

            The mystics assert that his divinity is present in humans, after the Fall, in the form of an inner spark.  It is through this remaining spark of divinity that humans are able to receive direct revelation from God.  The Anabaptists, building on the foundation laid by the mystics, believed that this divine spark also gave them inspired understanding of the written Word.  Their ontology opened the door to their epistemology.  Hans Denck, close friend of Han’s Hut, clarified:

As I now progress at the hand of the inner and outer Word, I reach the understanding that the inner voice in me is a spark of the divine spirit.  But this divine spark is darkened in many hearts.  Only he can understand the Scriptures correctly who is himself illuminated by the light of the divine Spirit.

The external divine being speaks through the divine spark within a person and provides either new revelation or illumination of the Bible. 

Hut believed that humans receive more than just a divine spark.  He stated that the divine Word, himself, must become incarnate within the individual:

The Word must be received in him with a true heart through the Holy Spirit and become flesh in us.  That happens through great terror and trembling as with Mary when she heard the will of God from the angel.  The Word must be born in us too.  That can happen only through pain, poverty, and distress inside and out, etc.  And where the Word has been born and become flesh in us so that we praise God for such a favour, our heart has found peace and we become Christ’s mothers, brother, and sister.

This incarnation allows for immediate revelation without the need for the written Word.  It is understandable that the Scriptures would become passé for Hut and the mystics compared to the always new and vibrant revelation of the Word incarnate within the individual.  Hut mentions the fact that suffering leads to understanding, which is a critical component to his doctrine of revelation.

Suffering

Suffering was a way of life for an Anabaptist in the 1520s.  Hans Hut was enveloped in misery.  The debacle of the Peasant’s War left many homeless and starving.  Virtually everyone with whom he came into contact was suffering in some way.  Of course, the Anabaptists did not view themselves as rebels of the state, but as defenders of the true faith.  They did not see themselves as insurrectionists who were duly put down by the government, but as martyrs for biblical truth.

The Anabaptists chose a different path than the Magisterial Reformers.  Luther, followed by Calvin, had chosen to work within the confines of law and order, appealing to the magistrates to adopt the theology of the Reformation.  The Anabaptists (alongside other radicals) at first attempted to overthrow the civil rulers in the Peasant’s War.  When Hut and his colleagues witnessed this failure, they began to withdraw from society and to initiate the process of creating their own communities outside of the mainstream. 

Hut was incensed by the dichotomy between the living conditions of the Anabaptists and those of the Reformers.  He saw his people suffering immensely while Luther and the Reformers lived in comfort.  From this dichotomy, he developed his theology of suffering.  It was impossible for one who had not suffered to properly understand the revelation of God.  The experiential knowledge that comes only through suffering is essential in unlocking the truths of the revelation.  Those who live in ease are too blinded by their material wealth to comprehend the imitation of Christ, which is the goal and duty of all believers.  He wrote, “No worldly, pleasure-seeking scribe can know the judgments of the Lord.  For, since they are perverted, to them all things are perverted, and they mislead both the poor and the rich with their flowery words.”

Only the poor and outcast are able to expound the truths that God has revealed.  Their minds are unclouded by the desire for profit and relaxation.  Hut warned:

Therefore, my dearest brothers in the Lord, if you truly want to learn correctly the judgments of God, the testimony of the holy Scriptures about the truth, then do not listen to the cries of those who preach for money.  Rather, look upon the poor, who are despised by the world and charged with being fanatics and devils, as were Christ and the apostles.  Listen to these poor folk.  For no one may attain the truth unless he follows in the footsteps of Christ and his elect in the school of every grief.

In order to imitate Christ, one had to suffer as Christ suffered.  This imitation of Christ is what led to the believer’s justification.  It is basically circular: suffering leads to understanding revelation, which uncovers the path to imitating Christ, which results in justification, which leads to more suffering, and so forth. 

Hut considered both Roman Catholics and Protestants equally incapable of understanding the revelation due to their lack of suffering.  He chided, “For no one can learn the mystery of divine wisdom in the underworld hangouts of every villainy, as is believed at Wittenberg or at Paris.”  Hut, and Müntzer before him, had more disdain, however, for Luther.  The radicals had initially rallied behind him in the overthrow of papal authority.  When Luther did not go far enough in their eyes, which meant usurping civil authority as well as papal, the radicals turned on him.  Hut followed Müntzer’s example of speaking harshly of Luther, “For God’s wisdom does not dwell where Brother Soft-life [Luther] is… And they establish [Protestants] – God have mercy on us – a worse popery than before over the poor man.  They will not listen, and they cannot bear to be convinced by Scripture, for they do not want to be seen as unknowing or unlearned.”

Suffering was necessary to understand divine revelation.  This revelation, though, was not limited to the Scriptures.  It was available to all through general revelation.

The Gospel of All Creatures

            The most important aspect of Hans Hut’s doctrine of revelation is from his reading of the Great Commission in Mark 16, “Go into the whole world and preach the gospel of all creatures.”  Hut read the word, aller (all), as a genitive rather than the traditional dative.  He explained what he meant by the gospel of all creatures:

This is not to be understood as though the gospel should be preached to creatures like dogs and cats, cows and calves, leaves and grass.  Rather, as Paul says, ‘the gospel that is preached to you in all creatures.’  He also shows this, and says that eternal power and divinity will be seen if one perceives it in the creatures or the works produced since the creation of the world. (Romans I).

Basically, for Hut, the gospel is revealed to all men through the created world.  The gospel is suffering as Christ suffered, and thus becoming intrinsically righteous through a purging of sin.  In essence, believers are justified through a purgatory on earth.

            Jesus explicitly preached the gospel of all creatures, claimed Hut, through the use of parables.  Christ used everyday examples that the common man would know, in order to explain this doctrine of suffering.  Hut explains, “He [Jesus] did not direct the poor man to books, as our uncomprehending scribes do now.  Rather, he taught them the gospel, and illustrated it, through their work.”  Just as the worker uses a process of pain to bring creation to its rightful purpose (a gardener pruning, a fisherman catching fish, foresters chopping down trees, etc.), God brings mankind to its rightful purpose through suffering.  Therefore, through general revelation, the believer is able to understand the gospel, which is suffering as Christ suffered.

            Creation then, becomes the lens through which one is to read Scripture.  Hut wrote, “For the whole world with all its creatures is a book in which one sees in actions everything that is to be read in Scripture.”  The created world can even serve as a replacement for Scripture.  Hut explained:

Therefore, all the actions which we perform on creatures should be our Scripture and should be diligently reflected on… And all elected people, from the beginning of the world down to Moses, studied in the book of all creatures and perceived in it the knowledge that was written in their hearts by nature through the spirit of God. 

In creation, those who do not have access to Scripture, be they heathen on the other side of the world or the illiterate in Germany, have available to them all the knowledge that is required for salvation. 

            Hut formulated his doctrine of revelation in the context of the poor and uneducated.  He made clear:

So man can perceive God’s invisible essence and eternal power in the actions of all creatures.  And he can recognize how God acts through man and prepares him for perfection [salvation], since perfection can only occur beneath the cross of suffering according to God’s will [the gospel]… Christ spoke or preached and showed the gospel in all creatures through parables.  And he did this because he preached the gospel to the poor man.  So he never directed people to the chapters of a book, as our scribes do, for everything that can be shown through creatures will prove everything in Scripture.  Christ needs no Scripture except because of the soft scribes, to show them with it.

Hut did not abandon Scripture.  It was still useful, especially in condemning the educated clergy of his day.  Scripture, though, was to be interpreted through the gospel revealed in all creatures and was not necessary for one to come to salvation.  Suffering in imitation of Christ, which was the gospel and the means by which one was justified before God, could be understood in creation, without the aid of Scripture.

            The gospel of all creatures led to a Trinitarian understanding of revelation, enabling the believer to connect with the Father and the Son in a new way.  Hut explained:

And now, what does he see through the Holy Spirit in truth?  The Father in the power of his omnipotence by whom he has been made.  He also knows the Son in whom he was tested, cleansed, justified, and circumcised a true child of God.  He has open access to the Father and has become one with Christ and all his members.

The first step of this Trinitarian revelation was experiencing the Father as the omnipotent Creator of the universe.  The second step was suffering as the Son suffered.  The third step was the direct encounter with the merciful Holy Spirit.  Werner Packull explains:

Thus the confession which declared its faith in the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost was to be existentially entered into by the viator.  The genuineness of the experience could be verified from Scripture.  Thus Hut depersonalized the Trinity into a threefold creative-redemptive-revelatory activity.

This knowledge of the Trinity created a mystical reunification between Creator and creature, with the believer receiving immediate revelation from the Deity, which was incarnate within.

Defense

            Modern Mennonite scholars have attempted to vindicate Hut and his doctrine of revelation, claiming that the inner revelation did not supersede that of the written Word.  The inner working of the Holy Spirit was merely illumination, allowing the believer to understand Scripture, not in the form of new revelation taking priority over Scripture.  Herbert Klassen explains:

The Spirit works in the heart of a disciple but He does it in relationship to the Word.  There will, therefore, not be any new revelations to supersede the Scriptures.  At this point the Scriptures are a control on any so-called new revelation, and even the individual’s interpretation of the scriptures is subject to the Church which helps to keep men from the dangers of individualism and fanaticism.  The fact that Hut was admonished by his brothers at the Martyr Synod of 1527 in regard to a certain area of his teaching is a good example of this concept.  This is the only basis on which a common and unified view of the Scriptures can emerge.

Klassen interprets Hut’s doctrine of revelation as being centered on the written Word, placing much less emphasis on the direct revelation from the Spirit to the individual.

            This attempt to portray Hut as having a more orthodox doctrine of revelation does not hold up to Hut’s own words or the events of the period.  First, as noted earlier, Hut believed that the gospel of all creatures was sufficient for salvation apart from the written Word.  To reiterate, he wrote, “Therefore, all the actions which we perform on creatures should be our Scripture and should be diligently reflected on.” 

Second, Klassen’s claim that an individual’s interpretation of Scripture was subject to the Church and his attempt to prove this by using the example of the Marty Synod of 1527 is tenuous.  The Anabaptist movement of the 1520s was certainly not known for a strong doctrine of the church.  There was no unified church that oversaw the interpretation of Scripture.  The Anabaptist’s attempt at some form of unity, the Schleitheim Confession of 1527, did not serve as a consensus document for the movement until 1560, under the leadership of Menno Simons, as for the Hutterite communities.  The admonishment that Hut received at the Martyr Synod of 1527 (which was not a synod at all) was not specifically due to a misinterpretation of Scripture; rather, it was Hut’s apocalyptic predictions that were causing the civil authorities to take notice, prompting his Anabaptist colleagues to encourage him to silence his prophecies of the coming destruction of Anabaptist enemies.  They did not want to suffer the same fate as Müntzer. 

Klassen claims that the new revelation did not supersede the Scriptures, but this does not explain Hut’s prediction that the Turks would advance on Europe preceding the return of Christ on May 31, 1528.  Klassen is right when he says, “This is the only basis on which a common and unified view of the Scriptures can emerge.”  Unfortunately for the Anabaptists, a unified view of the Scriptures did not emerge until the adoption of the Schleithem in 1560.  There was certainly no unified view in the 1520s. 

Herbert Klassen goes on to say that the gospel of all creatures “is not thought of as a substitute for the written Word of God, but merely a means for explaining the Gospel message to seeking people.”  Again, this is refuted by Hut’s own statement, “So he [Jesus] never directed people to the chapters of a book, as our scribes do, for everything that can be shown through creatures will prove everything in Scripture.”  Hut did not view the gospel of all creatures as teaching anything contrary to Scripture; rather, it communicated all that was necessary in Scripture to the poor and illiterate.  Thus, it did not usurp Scripture, but rather served alongside as revelation to the uneducated masses.

Like Klassen, Wilhelm Wiswedel wants to be clear that new revelation does not rank above the written Word.  All new revelation must measure up to the standard of Scripture.  Wiswedel offers his view of the Anabaptist doctrine of revelation, stating:

The Bible is not the only revelation of God.  If God works only through the outer Word, we will have to deny the possibility of miracles.  The Anabaptists had Biblical proof for this.  One thing is, of course, correct: all other revelations of God to man must be proved by the Holy Scriptures.  They are in a sense the absolute measure that can alone be normative.  That which does not agree with them cannot be God’s Word.

He cannot deny that Hut taught that the Holy Spirit imparts new revelation.  Wiswedel is quick to remind, however, that this new revelation is always in harmony with the written Word.  Contrast this position to that of John Calvin:

Certainly a far different sobriety befits the children of God, who just as they see themselves, without the Spirit of God, bereft of the whole light of truth, so are not unaware that the Word is the instrument by which the Lord dispenses the illumination of his Spirit to believers.  For they know no other Spirit than him who dwelt and spoke in the apostles, and by whose oracles they are continually recalled to the hearing of the Word.

For Calvin, the Word is necessary for the illumination of the Spirit and the Spirit is necessary for the illumination of the Word.  The Holy Spirit does not provide revelation outside of the Word; rather, he is constantly drawing the believer to the Word. 

            Calvin’s position echoed that of Martin Luther.  He wrote concerning new revelation, “For the Holy Spirit does not – as the enthusiasts and the Anabaptists, truly fanatical teachers, dream – give His instruction through new revelations outside the ministry of the Word.”  The Reformers were adamant that after the close of the New Testament, God only spoke through the written Word.  The Holy Spirit, in every epoch, leads people to the Scriptures to hear the voice of God.

            This is the major problem with Hans Hut’s doctrine of revelation.  He does not view the Spirit as driving the believer to the Word.  He claims in his view that the Spirit does not work in contrast to the Word, but in harmony with written revelation.  However, his own writings, including his ill-fated prediction of the return of Christ, demonstrate that the new revelation is superior to Scripture.  At best, it works alongside of Scripture in the gospel of all creatures and serves as a substitute to the written Word, rather than driving the Christian to the text.  This is in contrast to Bible’s view of itself and the Protestant doctrine of Scripture.  Werner Packull, a Mennonite scholar, concludes, “We can say here that Hut’s attitude toward the Scriptures…was not that of the major Reformers.”

            In conclusion, it is understandable that Han Hut would choose to emphasize the individual reception of immediate revelation from the Holy Spirit, thus transferring authority to the common man.  Martin Luther and the Reformation had brought about the transition of authority from popes and councils back to the written Word.  Hut, however, saw this emphasis on the Scriptures as still being exclusionary of the poor and illiterate, leaving them now dependent upon biblical doctors rather than the Roman Magisterium.  He sought to remove all barriers and place the authority within the individual through his emphasis on direct revelation from the Holy Spirit and the gospel of all creatures, thus usurping the written Word.  This doctrine places Hut outside the confines of Protestantism as defined by Martin Luther, John Calvin, and their colleagues in the sixteenth century.

             

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The increased attention is due in large part to recovery of original texts.  See George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation, 3^rd Ed.  (Kirksville, MO:  Sixteenth Century Journal Publisher, Inc., 1992).  He writes,  “There is no aspect of European sixteenth-century research that is so alive with newly discovered and edited source materials and monographic revisions as the Radical Reformation” (xxi).  For somewhat positive connections between the Anabaptists and modern Baptists, see Tom Nettles, The Baptists:  Key People Involved in Forming a Baptist Identity, vol. 1 (Fearn, Scotland:  Christian Focus Publications, 2005); Robert G. Torbet, A History of the Anabaptists (Philadelphia:  The Judson Press, 1950).  For a more nuanced treatment see James Edward McGoldrick, Baptist Successionism:  A Crucial Question in Baptist History (Lanham, MD: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1994).

  Hut predicted that the world would end in 1528.  His eschatology was extreme even for Anabaptists.  At the Martyr’s Synod in 1527, he was censured from promoting his radical views.  For Anabaptist eschatology see Walter Klaasen, Living at the End of the Ages: Apocalyptic Expectation in the Radical Reformation (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1992).

  William Milton Stoesz,  “At the Foundations of Anabaptism: A Study of Thomas Müntzer, Hans Denck, and Han Hut” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1964), 240. 

  Stoesz, “Foundations,” 277.

A humorous incident occurred in May of 1525, when Hut traveled from Wittenberg to Frankenhausen, hoping to sell books.  In Frankenhausen, he encountered a group of peasants preparing for battle.  They were greatly displeased to find Hut trying to peddle books of Martin Luther, one of their stated enemies.  He was captured but later released due to Müntzer’s influence.  See Stoesz, “Foundations,” 244.

  Hut believed that Christians were not to bring about the end of the world with the sword, but were to wait for the return of Christ and then pick up the sword. 

  David Knowles, in The English Mystical Tradition (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961), 2-3, writes, “This knowledge, this experience…has three main characteristics.  [1] It is recognized by the person concerned as something utterly different from and more real and adequate than all his previous knowledge and love of God.  [2] It is felt as taking place at a deeper level of the personality and soul than that on which the normal processes of thought and will take place, and the mystic is aware, both in himself and in others, of the soul, its qualities and of the divine presence and action within it, as something wholly distinct from the reasoning mind with its powers.  [3] Finally, this experience is wholly incommunicable, save as a bare statement, and in this respect all the utterances of the mystics are entirely inadequate as representations of the mystical experience, but it brings absolute certainty to the mind of the recipient.”  

Steven E. Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Idelogy and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 35.

Ozment, Mysticism and Dissent, 12.

Josef Quint, Meister Eckharts Predigten, vol. I (Stuttgart: W. Kohlammer Verlag, 1958), 476, quoted in Werner O. Packull, Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement 1525-1531 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1977), 21.

Packull, Mysticism, 21-22.

  Wilhelm Wiswedel, “The Inner and the Outer Word: A Study in the Anabaptist Doctrine of Scripture,” Mennonite Quarterly Review, vol. XXVI (July 1952): 184.

  Hans Hut, “A Christian Instruction,” Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources, ed. Walter Klaassen (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1981), 90.

  This gradual retreat from society in the late 1520s led to the formation of the theocracy in Munster, as well as the Hutterite communities in the 1530s.  

  Hans Hut, “On the Mystery of Baptism” The Radical Reformation, ed. Michael G. Baylor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 153.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 154.

  There is an anti-intellectualism in Hut, in contrast to the university-trained scribes.  He writes, “So if we are to come to a correct understanding of such judgments in a different way [than that of the scribes], we must being by becoming children and fools about them,” Baylor, Radical Reformation, 155.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 154.  These two cities were viewed as the seats of theological scholarship for the Protestants and Roman Catholics, respectively.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 154

Hut purposefully read a dative for a genitive.  Steven E. Ozment points out, in Mysticism and Dissent: Religious Ideology and Social Protest in the Sixteenth Century (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), 105n, that grammatically the Latin “evangelion aller creatur” could be read either way.  Of course, few if any other interpreters of the passage have agreed with Hut.  

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 157.

  Hut calls this process of suffering that leads to justification a spiritual baptism, which is that which is signified by the physical baptism of the believer.  Essentially, sanctification is conflated with justification and one is justified by and to the degree in which one is sanctified.  Hut virtually mimics the soteriology of the medieval church.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 157.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 158.  Hut cited Acts 14; 2 Timothy 3; and Judges 8.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 160.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 160.

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 161.

  Walter Klaassen, Anabaptism in Outline, 74. 

  Packull, Mysticism, 67.

  Herbert Klassen, “The Life and Teachings of Hans Hut: Part II,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review, XXXIII (1959), 276. 

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 160.

  See Williams, The Radical Reformation, 289.

  See Packull, Mysticism, 118-19.

  See Williams, The Radical Reformation, 267. 

  Klassen, “Hut: Part II,” 276. 

Herbert Klassen, “The Life and Teachings of Hans Hut” The Mennonite Quarterly Review, XXXII (1958), 193.   

  Baylor, Radical Reformation, 161. 

  Wiswedel, “The Inner and the Outer Word,” 190.

  John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. For Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1960), 1.9.3.

  Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, American Edition, 55 vols., ed. Lewis W. Spitz, Helmut T. Lehmann (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1960), 3:162.

  Werner Packull, “Gottfried Seebass on Hans Hut: A Discusstion,” The Mennonite Quarterly Review XXXIX (1965), 64.

 

 

 

No Dog Left Behind

Have you seen this?  A dog in Santiago, Chile, risks his life to save his injured friend.

The translation of the announcer is:

“These images seen from the surveillance cameras show a very common situation with our overpopulated highways. It is normal for us to see dogs run over. In the video, we can see this dog fighting for his life because he was run over by the vehicle.

“What is very touching is to see the very heroic actions of this other dog who is trying to pull him to the side of the highway. We are going to keep seeing things like this until we find a solution to the dogs living on the streets.”