Part 34 (1/2)
Concerning the Lord's Supper, Schwenckfeldt taught that the deified humanity of Christ is really imparted and appropriated, not indeed through bread and wine, but immediately (without the intervention of any medium), internally, spiritually. The words of inst.i.tution mean: My body, which is given for you, is what bread is, a food, _i.e._, a food for souls; and the new testament in My blood is a chalice, _i.e._, a drink for the elect to drink in the kingdom of G.o.d. Baptism, says Schwenckfeldt, is the ”baptizing of the heavenly High Priest Jesus Christ, which occurs in the believing soul by the Holy Ghost and by fire. Infant baptism is a human ordinance, not merely useless, but detrimental to the baptism of Christ.” (Tschackert, 159ff.)
264. The Ant.i.trinitarians.
The first article of the _Augsburg Confession_ makes a special point of rejecting not only the ancient, but also the ”modern Samosatenes,”
_i.e._, the Ant.i.trinitarians, who in the beginning of the Reformation began their activity in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Germany. Most of these ”modern Arians and Ant.i.trinitarians,” as they are called in the Twelfth Article of the _Formula of Concord_ came from the skeptical circles of Humanists in Italy. Concerning these rationalists and Epicureans the _Apology_ remarks: ”Many [in Italy and elsewhere] even publicly ridicule all religions, or, if they approve anything, they approve such things only as are in harmony with human reason, and regard the rest as fabulous and like the tragedies of the poets.” (CONC.
TRIGL., 235, 28; _C. R._ 9, 763.) Pope Leo X was generally regarded as being one of those who spoke of the profitable ”fables concerning Christ.”
According to a letter of warning to the Christians in Antwerp, 1525, a fanatic (_Rumpelgeist_) there taught: ”Every man has the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit is our reason and understanding (_ingenium et ratio naturalis_). Every man believes. There is neither h.e.l.l nor d.a.m.nation.
Every one will obtain eternal life. Nature teaches that I should do unto my neighbor as I would have him do unto me--to desire which is faith.
The Law is not violated by evil l.u.s.t as long as I do not consent to l.u.s.t. Who has not the Holy Ghost has no sin for he has no reason.” (E.
53, 344; St. L. 21a 730; Enders 5, 147.)
In his report on the Marburg Colloquy, October 5, 1529, Melanchthon remarks: ”We have heard that some of them [the Stra.s.sburgers] speak of the Deity as the Jews do, as though Christ were not G.o.d by nature. (_C.
R._ 1, 1099.) At Marburg, Zwingli remarked that some had spoken incorrectly concerning the Trinity, and that Haetzer had written a book against the divinity of Christ, which he, Zwingli, had not permitted to be published.” (1103.)
In a letter of Luther to Bugenhagen, 1532 we read: ”Your undertaking [of publis.h.i.+ng a writing of Athanasius concerning the Trinity] is Christian and wholesome in this our most corrupt time, in which all articles of faith in general are attacked by the servants of Satan, and the one concerning the Trinity is in particular beginning to be derided confidently by some skeptics and Epicureans. These are ably a.s.sisted not only by those Italian grammarians [Humanists] and orators, which they flatter themselves to be, but also by some Italico-German vipers and others, or, as you are accustomed to call them, viper-aspides, who sow their seed here and there in their discourses and writings, and, as Paul says [2 Tim. 2, 17], eat as doth a canker (_gar sehr um sich fressen_) and promote G.o.dlessness, about which they, when among themselves, laugh so complacently and are so happy that one can hardly believe it.” (St.
L. 14, 326; Enders 9, 252.)
Some Ant.i.trinitarians who affiliated with the Anabaptists have already been referred to. Denk, Haetzer, and others rejected the Apostles' Creed because of their opposition to the doctrine of the Trinity. Haetzer, as stated wrote a book against the deity of Christ in which he denied the tripersonality of G.o.d and the preexistence of the Logos, and blasphemously designated the belief in the deity of Christ as ”superst.i.tion” and the trust in His satisfaction as ”drinking on the score of Christ (_ein Zechen auf die Kreide Christi_).” According to Denk, Christ is merely an example showing us how to redeem ourselves which we are all able to do because there is still within us a seed of the divine Word and light. (Tschackert, 143, 461.) It was of Denk that Capito wrote, 1526: ”At Nuernberg the schoolteacher at St. Sebald denied that the Holy Ghost and the Son are equal to the Father, and for this reason he was expelled.” (Plitt, _Augustana_ 1, 153.)
At Stra.s.sburg the Anabaptists were publicly charged, in 1526, with denying the Trinity; in 1529, with denying the deity of Christ. In 1527 Urban Regius spoke of the Anabaptists in Augsburg as maintaining that Christ was merely a teacher of a Christian life. In the same year Althamer of Nuernberg published his book _Against the New Jews and Arians under the Christian Name Who Deny the Deity of Christ_. In 1529 Osiander wrote concerning Anabaptists in Nuernberg: ”It is well known, and may be proved by their own writings, that they deny and contradict the sublime article of our faith concerning the Holy Trinity, from which it follows immediately that they also deny the deity of Christ.” ”Christ is not the natural, true Son of G.o.d,” such was also the accusation made by Justus Menius in his book concerning the _Doctrines and Secrets of the Anabaptists_. In his _Sermons on the Life of Luther_, Mathesius said ”Now the Anabaptists speak most contemptuously of the deity of Jesus Christ.... This was their chief article that they despised the written Word, the Holy Bible, and believed nothing or very little of Jesus Christ the eternal Son of G.o.d.”
265. Franck, Campa.n.u.s, Ochino, Servetus, Blandrata, etc.
Sebastian Franck and John Campa.n.u.s must also be numbered among the Ant.i.trinitarians. Franck was a pantheist, who had been pastor in the vicinity of Nuernberg till 1528, when he resigned and engaged in soap manufacturing, writing, and printing. Campa.n.u.s appeared in Wittenberg, 1527. At the Colloquy of Marburg he endeavored to unite Luther and Zwingli by explaining the words: ”This is My body” to mean: This is a body created by Me. In 1530 he published a book: ”Against the Entire World after the Apostles--_Contra Totum post Apostolos Mundum_,” in which he taught that the Son is inferior to the Father, and denied the personality of the Holy Spirit. ”He argues,” says Melanchthon, who in his letters frequently refers to the ”blasphemies of Campa.n.u.s,” ”that Christ is not G.o.d; that the Holy Spirit is not G.o.d; that original sin is an empty word. Finally there is nothing which he does not transform into philosophy.” (_C. R._ 2, 33. 34. 93. 29. 513; 9, 763; 10, 132.) When Campa.n.u.s endeavored to spread his doctrines, he was banished from Saxony, 1531. He returned to Juelich, where he preached on the imminence of Judgment Day, with the result that the peasants sold their property and declined to work any longer. Campa.n.u.s was imprisoned for twenty years and died 1575.
Prominent among the numerous Ant.i.trinitarians who came from Italy were Ochino, Servetus, Gribaldo, Gentile, Blandrata, and Alciati. Bernardino Ochino, born 1487, was Vicar-General of the Capuchins and a renowned pulpit orator in Siena. In 1542 he was compelled to leave Italy in order to escape the Inquisition. He served the Italian congregation in Zurich from 1555 to 1564, when he was banished because he had defended polygamy. He died in Austerlitz, 1665. In his _Thirty Dialogs_, published 1563, he rejects the doctrines of the Trinity, of the deity of Christ, and of the atonement. (_Herzog R_. 14, 256.)--Michael Servetus was born in 1511 and educated at Saragossa and Toulouse. In 1531, at Hagenau, Alsace, he published _De Trinitatis Erroribus Libri VII_. He was opposed by Zwingli and Oecolampadius. In 1540 he wrote his _Christianismi Rest.i.tutio_, a voluminous book, which he published in 1553. In it he opposes the Trinity as an unbiblical and satanic doctrine, and at the same time rejects original sin and infant baptism.
The result was that, while pa.s.sing through Geneva on his way to Italy, he was arrested at the instance of Calvin, tried, condemned, and burned at the stake, October 27, 1553--an act which was approved also by Melanchthon. (_C. R._ 8, 362; 9, 763.)--Matteo Gribaldo, in 1554, uttered tritheistic views concerning the Trinity in the Italian congregation at Geneva. Arrested in Bern, he retracted his doctrine. He died 1564.--John Valentine Gentile also belonged to the Italian fugitives in Geneva. In 1558 he signed an orthodox confession concerning the Trinity. Before long, however, he relapsed into his Ant.i.trinitarian errors. He was finally beheaded at Bern. (_Herzog R_. 6, 518.)
George Blandrata, born 1515, was influenced by Gribaldo. Fearing for his liberty, he left Geneva and went to Poland and thence to Transylvania.
Here he published his _Confessio Ant.i.trinitaria_, and was instrumental in introducing Unitarianism into Transylvania. He died after 1585. In 1558 Gianpaolo Alciati of Piedmont accompanied Blandrata to Poland. He taught that Christ was inferior to the Father, and denied that there were two natures in Christ.
266. Davidis and Socinus.
Francis Davidis in Transylvania was an Ant.i.trinitarian of the most radical stripe. He had studied in Wittenberg 1545 and 1548. In 1552 he joined the Lutherans, in 1559 the Calvinists. Secretly after 1560 and publicly since 1566 he cooperated with Blandrata to introduce Unitarianism in Transylvania. In numerous disputations he attacked the doctrine of the Trinity as unscriptural and contradictory. In 1567 he published his views in _De Falso et Vera Unius Dei Patris, Filii et Spiritus Sancti Cognitione Libri Duo_. He contended that the doctrine of the Trinity was the source of all idolatry in the Church; that Christ, though born of Mary in a supernatural way, was preexistent only in the decree of G.o.d, and that the Holy Spirit was merely a power emanating from G.o.d for our sanctification. He also rejected infant baptism and the Lord's Supper. After the prince and the greater part of the n.o.bility had been won for Unitarianism, Davidis, in 1568, was made Superintendent of the Unitarian Church in Transylvania. In 1571 religious liberty was proclaimed, and Unitarians, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were tolerated equally. Before long, however, a reaction set in. The Catholic Stephan Bathory, who succeeded to the throne, removed the Unitarians from his court and surrounded himself with Jesuits. On March 29, 1579, Davidis delivered a sermon against the adoration of Christ, declaring it to be the same idolatry as the invocation of Mary and the saints. Three days after he was deposed and imprisoned. In the proceedings inst.i.tuted against him he was convicted as a blasphemer and sentenced to imprisonment for life. He died in prison, November 15, 1579, prophesying the final downfall of all ”false dogmas,” meaning, of course, the doctrines which he had combated.
In Poland, especially since 1548, the humanistic and liberal-minded n.o.bility opposed the Catholic clergy and protected Protestants and later on also fugitive Ant.i.trinitarians. Among these were the Italians Francis Lismanio, Gregory Pauli, and Peter Statorius. These Unitarians, however, lacked unity and harmony. They disagreed on infant baptism, the preexistence and adoration of Christ, etc. These dissensions continued until Faustus Socinus (born at Siena 1539, died 1604 in Poland) arrived.
He was the nephew of the skeptical and liberal-minded Laelius Socinus (Lelio Sozzini) who left Italy in 1542, when the Inquisition was established there, and died in Zurich, 1562.
Faustus Socinus claimed that he had received his ideas from his uncle Laelius. In 1562 he published anonymously an explanation of the first chapter of the Gospel of St. John, which, contained the entire program of Unitarianism. In 1578 he followed an invitation of Blandrata to oppose non-adorantism (the doctrine that Christ must not be adored) as taught by Davidis. In the following year Faustus removed to Poland, where he endeavored to unite the various Unitarian parties: the Anabaptists, Non-adorantes, the believers in the preexistence of Christ, etc., and their opponents. The growth of Unitarianism in Poland was rapid. A school flourished in Rakow numbering in its palmy days about 1,000 scholars. However here, too, a Jesuitic reaction set in. In 1638 the school at Rakow was destroyed, the printery closed, and the teachers and ministers expelled. In 1658 the Unitarians generally were banished as traitors, and in 1661 the rigorous laws against Unitarianism were confirmed.
The chief source of the Ant.i.trinitarian and Socinian doctrine is the Racovian Catechism, published 1605 in the Polish and 1609 in the Latin language under the t.i.tle: ”_Catechism of the Churches in the Kingdom of Poland_ which affirm that no one besides the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is that One G.o.d of Israel.” It teaches: There is but one divine person; Christ is a mere man; the doctrine concerning the deity of Christ is false; as a reward for His sinless life, G.o.d has given Christ all power in heaven and on earth; as such, as G.o.d's representative (_h.o.m.o Deus factus_, the man made G.o.d), He may be adored; there is no original sin; with the help of G.o.d, that is to say, with the commandments and promises of G.o.d revealed by Christ, man may acquire salvation; he is able to keep these commandments, though not perfectly; man's shortcomings are pardoned by G.o.d on account of his good intention; an atonement by Christ is not required for this purpose; moreover, the doctrine of atonement must be opposed as false and pernicious; by His death Christ merely sealed His doctrine; all who obey His commandments are adherents of Christ; these will partic.i.p.ate in His dominion; the wicked and the devils will be annihilated; there is no such thing as eternal punishment; whatever in the Bible comports with human reason and serves moral ends is inspired; the Old Testament is superfluous for Christians, because all matters pertaining to religion are contained better and clearer in the New Testament. (Tschackert, 473.)
Evidently, in every detail, Ant.i.trinitarianism and Socinianism are absolutely incompatible with, and destructive of, the very essence of Christianity. The _Apology_ declares that the deniers of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity ”are outside of the Church of Christ and are idolaters, and insult G.o.d.” (103, 1.) This verdict is confirmed by Article XII of the _Formula of Concord_. (843, 30; 1103, 39.)
XXIII. Origin, Subscription, Character, etc., of Formula of Concord.
267. Lutherans Yearning for a G.o.dly Peace.