Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 9

Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries Part 9

To this deep and central question of religion, How is a human soul saved? there were in Schwenckfeld's day four well-known answers:

(1) There was the answer of the Church in which he was born. Salvation is by Grace, mediated through the sacramental channels of the mysterious and divinely founded Church. Man's part consists in the performance of the "works" which the Church requires of him and the proper use of the sacramental means of Grace. Through these sacramental channels actual Grace, substantial divine help, comes into man and works the miracle of salvation in him.

(2) There was the answer of the great mystics, not always clear and simple, but very profound and significant. The Ground and the Abyss of the soul is one substance with the eternal and absolute G.o.dhead.

Finite strivings, isolated purposes, selfish aims, centrifugal pursuits are vain and illusory. We lose our lives in so far as we live {76} in self-will and in self-centred joys. The way home, the way of salvation, is a return to that Ground-Reality from which we have gone out--a return to union and oneness of Life with the infinite G.o.dhead.

(3) The third answer is that of Luther: "Salvation is by faith." This seems at first to be a dynamic answer. It breaks in on the distracted world like a new moral trumpet-call to the soul. It comes to men like a fresh Copernican insight which discovers a new religious world-centre. The soul by its own inward vision, by its moral att.i.tude, by the swing of the will, can initiate a new relation with G.o.d, and so produce a new inward kingdom. That, however, is not Luther's message. He could not take that optimistic view of life because it implied that man has within himself a native capacity for G.o.d, and can rise to the vision and att.i.tude which lead to a moral renewal of the self. Luther never succeeded in clearing his principle from scholastic complications. He never put it upon a moral and dynamic foundation. It remains to the last a mysterious principle, and was easily open to the antinomian interpretation, that upon the exercise of faith G.o.d for Christ's merits "counts man justified"--an interpretation dear to those who are slack-minded and p.r.o.ne to forensic schemes of salvation.

(4) The fourth view was that of the humanist-spiritual Reformers, men of the type of Denck and Bunderlin, who are the precursors of what we to-day call the ethical way of salvation. They a.s.sume that salvation is from beginning to end a moral process. G.o.d is in essence and nature a loving, self-revealing, self-giving G.o.d, who has in all ages unveiled Himself in revelations suited to the spiritual stature of man, has in the fulness of time become incarnate in Christ, and forever pleads with men through His Spirit to come to Him. Those who see and hear, those who respond and co-operate, _i.e._ those who exercise faith, are thereby morally transformed into an inward likeness to Him, and so enter upon a life which prefers light to darkness, goodness to sin, love to hate.

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Schwenckfeld was not satisfied with any of these views. He knew and loved the mystics, but he was too much impressed with the mighty Life and message of the historical Christ to adopt the mystic's way. He felt that Lutheran Christianity was too scholastic, too dependent on externals, too inclined to an antinomian use of "faith." He could not go along the path of the Humanist-Spirituals, for he believed that man had been ruined in the Fall, was too deeply scarred with sin to help himself, was without freewill, was devoid of native capacity for spiritual vision and saving faith. Salvation, if it is to be effected at all, must be initiated by Divine Grace and must be accomplished _for man_ by G.o.d. But it could be for Schwenckfeld no forensic adjustment, no change of reckoning in the heavenly ledgers. "Justification," he once wrote, "is not only forgiveness of sins, but it is more, it is the actual healing and renewing of the inward man."[27] It must involve a real and radical transformation of man's nature--man must cease from sin and the love of it, he must receive from beyond himself a pa.s.sion for goodness and a power to enable him to achieve it. The _pa.s.sion_ for goodness, in Schwenckfeld's view, is created through the vision of the G.o.d-Man who has suffered and died on the Cross for us, and has been glorified in absolute newness of life; and the _power_ for moral holiness is supplied to the soul by the direct inflowing of divine Life-streams from this new Adam, who is henceforth the Head of the spiritual order of humanity, the Life-giving Spirit who renews all who receive Him in faith. "Faith," he says, "is a penetrating stream of light flowing out from the central divine Light and Fire, which is G.o.d Himself, into our hearts by which we are inflamed with love for G.o.d and for our neighbour, and by which we see both what we lack in ourselves and what can abundantly supply our lack, so that we may be made ready for the Kingdom of G.o.d and be prepared to become children of G.o.d."[28]

"Real faith," he elsewhere says, "that is to say, justifying faith, can come from nothing {78} external. It is a gracious and gratuitous gift of G.o.d through the Holy Spirit. It is an emanation ["Tropflein"] from the eternal Life of G.o.d, and is of the same essence and substance as G.o.d Himself."[29] It is, in fact, the Eternal Word of G.o.d become vocal and vital within the inner region of our own lives.[30]

The Church, in Schwenckfeld's conception, is this complete spiritual community of which Christ is the Head. "We maintain," he wrote in the early period of his mission, and it remained the settled view of his life, "that the Christian Church according to the usage of the Scripture is the congregation or a.s.sembly of all or of many who with heart and soul are believers in Christ, whose Head is Christ our Lord, as St. Paul writes to the Ephesians and elsewhere, and who are born of G.o.d's Word alone, and are nourished and ruled by G.o.d's Word."[31] "The Christian Church," he elsewhere says, "is the entire community of the children of G.o.d. It is the actual Body of Christ, the Seed of Abraham, the House of the living G.o.d, the Temple of the Holy Spirit. It has its life and power through the obedience of faith, it manifests to the world the Name of the Lord, the goodness and the glory of Him who called its members from darkness into His marvellous Light. Wherever such a Church is gathered, there also is Christ, its Head, who governs it, teaches it, guards and defends it, works in it and pours His Life into its members, to each according to the measure of his living faith.

This inward invisible Christ belongs to all ages and all times and lands."[32] The Church, in its true life and power, is thus for him a continuation of the apostolic type. He had no interest in the formation of a sectarian denomination, and he was fundamentally averse to a State-Church system. The true Church community can be identified with no temporal, empirical organization--whether established or separatist. It is a spiritual invisible community as wide as the world, including all persons in all regions of {79} the earth and in all religious communions who are joined in life and spirit to the Divine Head. It expands and is enlarged by a process of organic growth under the organizing direction of the Holy Spirit. "As often," he writes, "as a new warrior comes to the heavenly army, as often as a poor sinner repents, the body of Christ becomes larger, the King more splendid, His Kingdom stronger, His might more perfect. Not that G.o.d becomes greater or more perfect in His essence, but that flesh becomes more perfect in G.o.d, and G.o.d dwells in all His fulness in the flesh into which in Jesus Christ He ever more pours Himself."[33] Each soul that enters the _kingdom of experience_ through the work of the Life-giving Spirit is builded into this invisible expanding Church of the ages, and is endowed with some "gift" to become an organ of the Divine Head. All spiritual service arises through the definite call and commission of G.o.d, and the persons so called and commissioned are rightly prepared for their service, not by election and ordination, but by inward compulsion and illumination through the Word of G.o.d. The preacher possesses no magical efficacy. His only power lies in his spiritual experience, his clarified vision, and his organic connection with Christ the Head of the Church and the source of its energy. If his life is spiritually poor and weak and thin, if it lacks moral pa.s.sion and insight, his ministry will be correspondingly ineffective and futile, for the dynamic spiritual impact of a life is in proportion to its personal experience and its moral capacity to transmit divine power. Here again the emphasis is on the moral aspect of religion as contrasted with the magical. There can be no severing of the ecclesiastical office or function from the moral character of the person himself. Schwenckfeld has cut away completely from sacerdotalism and has returned, as far as with his limited historical insight he knew how to do it, to the ideal of the primitive Apostolic Church. The true mark and sign of membership in the community of saints--the invisible Church--is, for him as for St. Paul, {80} possession of the mind of Christ, faith, patience, integrity, peace, unity of spirit, the power of G.o.d, joy in the Holy Ghost, and the abounding gifts and fruits of the Spirit. "No outward unity or uniformity, either in doctrine or ceremonies, or rules or sacraments, can make a Christian Church; but inner unity of spirit, of heart, soul and conscience in Christ and in the knowledge of Him, a unity in love and faith, does make a Church of Christ."[34] The Church is in a very true sense bone of Christ's bone and flesh of His flesh, vitalized by His blood, empowered by His real presence, and formed into an organism which reveals and exhibits the divine and heavenly Life--a world-order as far above the natural human life as that is above the plant.

Quite consistently with this spiritual view of religion--this view that the true Church is an invisible Church--Schwenckfeld taught that the true sacrament is an inner and spiritual sacrament, and not legal and external like those of the Old Testament. "G.o.d must Himself, apart from all external means, through Christ touch the soul, speak in it, work in it, if we are to experience salvation and eternal life."[35]

The direct incoming of the Divine Spirit, producing a rebirth and a new creation in the man himself, is the only baptism which avails with G.o.d or which makes any difference in the actual condition of man. Baptism in its true significance is the reception of cleansing power, it is an inward process which purifies the heart, illuminates the conscience, and is not only necessary for salvation but in fact _is_ salvation.

Christian baptism is therefore not with water, but with Christ: it is the immersion of the soul in the life-giving streams of Christ's spiritual presence.

Schwenckfeld was always kindly disposed toward the Anabaptists, but he was not of them. He presented a very different type of Christianity to their type, which he penetratingly criticized, though in a kindly spirit. He did not approve of rebaptism, for he insisted that the all-important matter was not how or when water was applied, {81} but the reception of _Christ's real baptism_, an inner baptism, a baptism of spirit and power, by which the believing soul, the inner man, is clarified, strengthened, and made pure.[36]

His view of the Lord's Supper in the same way fits his entire conception of Christianity as an inward religion. It was through his study of the meaning and significance of the Supper that he arrived at his peculiar and unique type of religion. He began his meditation with the practical test--the case of Judas. If the bread and wine of the Last Supper were identical with the body and blood of Christ, then Judas must have eaten of Christ as the other disciples did, and, notwithstanding his evil spirit, he must have received the divine nature into himself--but that is impossible.

In his intellectual difficulty he turned to the great mystical discourse in the sixth chapter of John, in the final interpretation of which he received important suggestion and help from Valentine Crautwald, Lector of the Dom in Liegnitz. In this remarkable discourse Christ promises to feed His disciples, His followers, with His own flesh and blood, by which they will partake of the eternal nature and enter with Him into a resurrection life. The "flesh and blood" here offered to men cannot refer to an outward sacrament which is eaten in a physical way, because in the very same discourse Christ says that outward, physical flesh profits nothing. It is the Spirit that gives life, and, therefore, the "flesh and blood" of Christ must be synonymous with the Word if they are actually to recreate and nourish the soul and to renew and vitalize the spirit of man.

This feeding and renewing of the soul through Christ's "flesh and blood," Schwenckfeld treats, as we have seen, not as a figure or symbol, but as a literal fact of Christian experience. Through the exercise of faith in the person of the crucified, risen, and glorified Christ--the creative Adam--incorruptible, life-giving substance comes into the soul and transfigures it. Something from the divine {82} and heavenly world, something from that spiritualized and glorified nature of Christ, becomes the actual food of man's spirit, so that through it he partakes of the same nature as that of the G.o.d-Man. Not once or twice, but as a continuous experience, the soul may share this glorious meal of spiritual renewal--this eating and drinking of Christ.

The external supper--and for that matter the external baptism too--may have a place in the Church of Christ as a pictorial symbol of the actual experience, or as a visible profession of faith, but this outward sign is, in his view, of little moment, and must not occupy the foreground of attention, nor be made a subject of polemic or of insistence. The new Creation, the response of faith to the living Word, the transfiguration of life into the likeness of Christ, are the momentous facts of a Christian experience, and none of these things is _mediated_ by external ceremonies.

It was his ideal purpose to promote the formation of little groups of spiritual Christians which should live in the land in quietness, and spread by an inward power and inspiration received from above. He saw clearly that no true Reformation could be carried through by edicts or by the proclamations of rulers, or by the decision of councils. A permanent work, from his point of view, could be accomplished only by the slow and patient development of the religious life and spiritual experience of the people, since the goal which he sought was the formation, not of state-made Churches, but of renewed personal lives, awakened consciences, burning moral pa.s.sion, and first-hand conviction of immediate relation with the World of Divine Reality. To this work of arousing individual souls to these deeper issues of life, and of building up little scattered societies under the headship of Christ, which should be, as it were, oases of the Kingdom of G.o.d in the world, he dedicated his years of exile. All such quiet inward movements progress, as Christ foresaw, too slowly and gradually "for observation"; but this method of reforming the Church through rebirth and the creation of Christ-guided societies {83} accomplished, even during Schwenckfeld's life, impressive results. There were many, not only in Silesia but in all regions which the missionary-reformer was able to reach, who "preferred salt and bread in the school of Christ"

to ease and plenty elsewhere, and they formed their little groups in the midst of a hostile world. The public records of Augsburg reveal the existence, during Schwenckfeld's life, of a remarkable group of these quiet, spiritual worshippers in that city. Their leaders were men of menial occupations--men who would have attracted no notice from the officials of city or Church if they had been contented to conform to any prevailing or recognized type of religion. Under the inspiration which they received from the writings of Schwenckfeld they formed "a little meeting"--in every respect like a seventeenth-century Quaker meeting--in their own homes, meeting about in turn, discarding all use of sacraments, and waiting on G.o.d for edification rather than on public preaching. They read the books and epistles of Schwenckfeld in their gatherings, they wrote epistles to other groups of Schwenckfeldians, and received epistles in turn and read them in their gatherings. They objected to any form of religious exercise which seemed to them incomprehensible to their spirits and which did not spring directly out of the inward ministry of the Word of G.o.d. They were eventually discovered, their leaders banished, their books burned, and their little meeting of "quiet spirituals" ("stillen Frommen") as they called themselves was ruthlessly stamped out.[37] Societies something like this were formed in scores of places, and continued to cultivate their inward piety in the Fatherland, until harried by persecution they migrated in 1734 to Pennsylvania, where they have continued to maintain their community life until the present day.

But the most important effect of Schwenckfeld's life and work must not be sought in the history of these {84} visible societies which owed their origin to his apostolic activity. His first concern was always for the building of the invisible community of G.o.d throughout the whole world--not for the promotion of a sect--and his greatest contribution will be found in the silent, often unnoticed, propagation of his spirit, the contagious dissemination of his ideas, the gradual influence of his truth and insight upon Christian communions and upon individual believers that hardly knew his name. His correspondence was extraordinarily extensive; his books and tracts, which were legion, found eager readers and transmitters, and slowly--too slowly for observation--the spiritual message of the homeless reformer made its way into the inner life of faithful souls, who in all lands were praying for the consolation of G.o.d's new Israel. Even so early as 1551, an English writer, Wyllyam Turner, in a book written as "a preservative and treacle against the poyson of Pelagius," especially as "renewed" in the "furious secte of the Annabaptistes," mentions the "Swengfeldianes" as one of the heads of "this monstre in many poyntes lyke unto the watersnake with seven heads."[38] There is, however, slight evidence of the spread of Schwenckfeld's views, whether they be called "poyson" or "treacle," in England during the sixteenth century, though they are clearly in evidence in the seventeenth century. One of the most obvious signs of his influence in the seventeenth century, both in England and in Holland, appears in the spread of principles which were embodied in the "Collegiants" of Holland and the corresponding societies of "Seekers" in England.[39] The cardinal principle of these groups in both countries was the belief that the visible Church had become apostate and had lost its divine authoritative power, that it now lacked apostolic ministry and efficacious sacraments and "the gifts of the Spirit" which demonstrate the true apostolic succession. Therefore those who held this view, "like doves without their mates," were _waiting_ and _seeking_ for the appearing of a {85} new apostolic commission, for the fresh outpouring of G.o.d's Spirit on men, and for the refounding of the Church, as originally, in actual demonstration and power.

It was a settled view of Schwenckfeld's that the visible Church had lost its original power and authority, and he cherished, too, a persistent faith and hope that in G.o.d's good time it would again be restored to its pristine vitality and its original conquering power.

"We ask," he writes, "where in the world to-day there is gathered together an external Church of the apostolic form and type, and according to the will of Christ."[40] And yet scattered everywhere throughout the world--even in Turkey and Calcutta[41]--G.o.d has, he says, His own faithful people, known only to Him, who live Christlike and holy lives, whom Christ the living Word, that became flesh, baptizes inwardly with the Holy Spirit and inwardly feeds without external preaching or sacrament, writes His law in their hearts and guides into Eternal Life.[42] But the time is coming when once more there will be in the world an apostolic and completely reformed Church of Christ, His living body and the organ of the Spirit, with divine gifts and powers and commission. In the interim let the chosen children of G.o.d, he writes, rejoice and comfort themselves in this, that their salvation rests neither in an external Church, nor in the external use of sacraments, nor in any external thing, but that it rests alone in Jesus Christ our Lord, and is received through true and living faith.[43]

For Schwenckfeld himself the important matter was the increase of this inward life, the silent growth of this kingdom of G.o.d in the hearts of men, the spread of this invisible Church, but his writings plainly suggest that G.o.d will eventually restore the former glory to His visible Church. "You are," he says, in one of his epistles, "to pray earnestly that G.o.d will raise up true apostles and preachers and evangelists, so that His Church may {86} be reformed in Christ, edified in the Holy Ghost, and unified into one, and so that our boasting of the pure preaching of the Gospel and the right understanding and use of the sacraments may be true before G.o.d,"[44] and the time is coming, we may in good faith believe, when the sacraments will be used according to the will of Christ, and then there will be a true Christian Church, taught outwardly by apostolic ministers and taught inwardly by the Lord Himself.[45] Fortunately, however, salvation does not depend upon anything outward, and during the _Stillstand_ or interim there is no danger to be feared from the intermission of outward ceremonies.[46]

Sebastian Franck graphically describes this waiting, seeking att.i.tude as well known in his time. He wrote in his "Chronicle" (1531): "Some are ready to allow Baptism and other ceremonies to remain in abeyance ["stilston," evidently Schwenckfeld's _Stillstand_] until G.o.d gives a further command and sends true labourers into His harvest-field. For this some have great longings and yearnings and wish nothing else."[47]

The intense _expectation_ which the Seekers, both in Holland and England, exhibit was, of course, a much later development, was due to many influences, and is connected only indirectly with the reforming work and the Gospel message of Schwenckfeld. It indicates, in the exaggerated emphasis of the Seekers, a failure to grasp the deeper significance of spiritual Christianity as a present reality, and it misses the truth, which the world has so painfully slowly grasped, that the only way to form an apostolic and efficacious visible Church is not through sudden miracles and cataclysmic "restorations" and "commissions," but by the slow contagion and conquering power of this inward kingdom, of this invisible Church, as it becomes the spirit and life of the outward and visible Church. This truth the Silesian reformer knew full well, and for this reason he was ready at all costs to be a quiet apostle of the invisible Community of G.o.d and let the outward {87} organism and organ of its ministry come in G.o.d's own way.

The n.o.bler men among the English Seekers, as also among the Dutch Societies, rose gradually to this larger view of spiritual religion, and came to realize, as Schwenckfeld did, that the real processes of salvation are inward and dynamic. Samuel Rutherford is not a very safe witness in matters which involve impartial judgment, or which concern types of spiritual experience foreign to his own type, but he is following a real clew when he connects, as he does, the leaders of spiritual, inward religion in his day, especially those who had shared the seeker aspirations, with Schwenckfeld.[48] Rutherford's account is thoroughly unfair and full of inaccuracies, but it suffices at least to reveal the fact that Schwenckfeld was a living force in the period of the English Commonwealth, and that, though almost a hundred years had pa.s.sed since his "home-pa.s.sage" from Ulm was accomplished, he was still making disciples for the ever-enlarging community and household of G.o.d.

[1] The most important material for a study of Schwenckfeld is the following:--

_Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum_, edited by C. D. Hartranft. Published Leipzig, vol. i. (1907); vol. ii. (1911); vol. iii. (1913). Other volumes to follow.

_Schriften von Kaspar Schwenckfeld_, in 4 folio volumes. Published between the years 1564-1570. Indicated in my notes as vol. i., vol.

ii., vol. iii. A, vol. iii. B. There are, too, many uncollected books and tracts, to some of which I refer in footnotes.

Karl Ecke, _Schwenckfeld, Luther, und der Gedanke einer apostolischen Reformation_ (Berlin, 1911). Important book, but to be followed with caution.

R. H. Grutzmacher, _Wort und Geist_ (Leipzig, 1902).

Gottfried Arnold, _Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historien_, i. pp. 1246-1299.

(Edition of 1740.)

H. W. Erbkam, _Geschichte der prolestantischen Sekten im Zeitaller der Reformation_ (Hamburg und Gotha, 1848), pp. 357-475.

Dollinger, _Die Reformation_, i. pp. 257-280.

Ernst Troeltsch, _Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen_ (Tubingen, 1912), pp. 881-886.

[2] Christ, Schwenckfeld insisted, is the sum of the whole Bible, and to learn to know Christ fundamentally is to grasp the substance of the entire Scripture.

[3] He wrote in 1543 to Luther: "I owe to you in G.o.d and the truth all honour, love, and goodwill, because from the first I have reaped much fruit from your service, and I have not ceased to pray for you according to my poor powers."--_Schriften_, ii. p. 701 d.

[4] In _An Epistle to the Sisters in the Cloister at Naumberg_, written probably in the autumn of 1523, he says: "A true Christian life in its essential requirements does not consist in external appearance . . .

but quite the contrary, it does consist in personal trust in G.o.d through an experience of Jesus Christ, which the Holy Ghost brings forth in the heart by the hearing of the Divine Word."--_Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum_, i. p. 118.

[5] _Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs etlicher furnemsten Artikel des Evangelii_ (1524). _Corpus Schw._ ii. pp. 26-105.

[6] "Wir greyffen das Creutz noch am waichsten Ort an."--_Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs_. Corpus Schw. ii. p. 89.

[7] "There are now in general two parties that make wrong use of the Gospel of Christ, one of which turns to the right and the other to the left of the only true and straight way. The first party is that of the Papacy . . . the other party consists of those to whom G.o.d has now granted a gracious light--But!"--_Ermahnung dess Missbrauchs_.

[8] The _Stillstand_ was proposed in a _Circular Letter_ written by Schwenckfeld, Valentine Crautwald, and the Liegnitz Pastors, April 21, 1526.--_Corpus Schwenckfeld_, i. pp. 325-333.

[9] The revival of this idea of a _Stillstand_, that is, of a suspension of certain time-honoured practices of the Church until a further revelation and new enduement should be granted, will be referred to in later chapters, especially in connection with the _Collegiants_ of Holland and the English _Seekers_.

[10] Ecke, _op. cit._ p. 217.

[11] Arnold, _op. cit._ ii. p. 251. There are many similar references to Schwenckfeld in Luther's _Table Talk_, and he usually calls him by the opprobrious name of "Stenkfeld."

[12] "Ein naturliches Licht kennt Schwenckfeld nicht."--Grutzmacher, _Wort und Grist_ (Leipzig, 1902), p. 168.

[13] The important data for Schwenckfeld's doctrine of Christ and the way of salvation will be found in the following writings by him:--

_Von der gottlichen Kindschaft und Herrlichkeit des ganzen Sones Gottes_ (1538).

_Ermanunge zum wahren und selig machende Erkanntnis Christi_ (1539).

_Konfession und Erklarung von Erkanntnus Christi und seiner gottlichen Herrlichkeit_ (1540).