JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH & ITS

HISTORICAL CHALLENGES #7

The Reformation: Return to the Biblical Perspective (cont’d.)

The Swiss Anabaptists, Ulrich Zwingli & John Calvin

by Ron Merryman, Copyright,1999

This series is the outgrowth of seminars on Church History that I conducted in a number of local churches across America in the past few years. The level of interest is most encouraging. My intent is to illustrate how the doctrine of justification by faith so critical to basic Christianity has historically been under attack. My ultimate aim, however, is not the past, but the present. It is the current understanding of this doctrine in Bible believing circles that is of great issue. And we will soon be dealing with the present scenario, but first, we must wrap-up the Reformation.

The Anabaptists1 and Zwingli: Zurich, Switzerland, 1525 A.D.

(All place names are suburbs of Zurich)

It is Sunday, January 22, 1525, and Hans Oggenfuss, a tailor, is leaving Zurich to deliver a robe ordered by Wilhelm Roubli, a pastor in the village of Witikon. There is little time to waste, for yesterday, the Zurich city council sentenced Roubli to exile because he is one of the leading opponents of infant baptism. He must leave the canton within one week.

On the way, tailor Oggenfuss witnesses a very peculiar, unheard of incident (to which he would later testify in court): the (re)baptism of a cobbler named Fridli Schumacher at the village fountain in Hirslanden! Oggenfuss recognizes both parties as men who live in Zollikon: the man who baptizes the cobbler is Johannes Brotli, a former Catholic priest, who had left his parish in 1523 in favor of the teachings of Huldrich Zwingli, had married and fathered one child. But since the summer of 1524, Brotli, along with others, have been openly opposing the doctrine of infant baptism taught by Zwingli and the established church.

At the fountain, Schumacher says to the former priest, "Well, Johannes, you have taught me the truth. For that I thank you and request the sign." Brotli, despite a law that threatened death to anyone who would rebaptize or be rebaptized, did not hesitate: He performed the rite of baptism on Schumacher. 2

The Anabaptist movement had begun. It was the followers of Zwingli who saw clearly that only believers were baptized in the New Testament. Infant baptism was repudiated, including their own, thus the necessity for rebaptism. What they had been disputing and promoting verbally with Zwingli since the summer of 1524, they now made practice. And because of their practice, consistent with their faith, those who led and those who followed would all die or be killed within two years: many, unfortunately, at the hands of their original mentor, Ulrich Zwingli. Who were these people? What were they all about?

The Swiss Anabaptists & Justification by Faith

This baptism at the town fountain of Hirslanden was most likely preceded (probably the day before) by that of each of the leading antagonists of infant baptism (all previous followers of Zwingli) – Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, George Blaurock, and ex-priest Brotli.

It is difficult for us to imagine how courageous was this step toward a more accurate biblicism. That water baptism was a privilege and testimony unique for those already redeemed and forgiven was revolutionary. Moreover, these affirmed that infant baptism was wrong, misleading, and totally unscriptural. Baptism was only for those who had already believed the Gospel: unheard of in the established churches of their day, whether Zwinglian, Lutheran, or Roman Catholic!

Fritz Blanke, Professor of History at the University of Zurich, in recounting the events of January 22-29, 1525, in Zollikon, documents thirty-four men and one woman who were (re)baptized. 3 On January 30, police appeared in Zollikon and arrested Blaurock, Manz, and all who had been baptized during the previous week, except Grebel and Brotli who had fled the canton. Fourteen days later, an unknown benefactor helped them escape. But governmental oppression, fines, imprisonments, and death were to be their lot from that day forward. Zwingli himself accused his former disciples of sedition and actively sought their arrest.

Conrad Grebel, humanist and Greek scholar trained at the University of Paris and converted under Zwingli, was pursued throughout Switzerland and imprisoned numerous times. He died of the plague in August, 1526, but not before baptizing some five hundred converts in the area of St. Gall. Felix Manz, also a trained humanist with a remarkable expertise in Hebrew, after many imprisonments was executed by drowning in the Limmat River in Zurich on January 5, 1527. George Blaurock, firey ex-Catholic priest, after several banishments in various Swiss cantons, preached in the Tyrol area where he was arrested and finally burned at the stake on September 6, 1529.4

As I have stated previously, sola scriptura ("by the scriptures alone,") is a thesis common to all the Reformers of the Sixteenth Century. Luther, Zwingli, Calvin, and the Anabaptists all agreed or came to the conclusion independently that Christian faith and practice are to be based upon the Scriptures alone: no Pope, Church Council, or political power could dictate in these areas. But none applied this thesis as literally as the Anabaptists.

Luther & Calvin in Contrast to the Swiss Anabaptists

Luther rejected only those features of Roman Catholicism which he felt were expressly forbidden in Scripture (statues, images, altars, confession to priests, purgatory, the Papacy, edicts of Church Councils, etc.). Calvin retained only what he felt had warrant in Scripture. Luther and Calvin:

The early Swiss Anabaptists:

Blanke, seeking to summarize the theology in this first generation of Anabaptists, writes: 5

…They knew that not only forgiveness of sin is a gift of God, but also the awareness of sin. This the Zollikon Anabaptists, particularly their teachers, learned from Zwingli’s preaching. Especially their consciousness of the complete corruption of the unregenerate man they acquired from Zwingli, as well as their knowledge that redemption is based alone on God’s grace. The fact that the way of human salvation from its beginning stands under sola gratia is the decisive reformatory discovery which also controls the Zollikon Anabaptists… .6

We conclude that these Anabaptists stand with us on justification by faith alone in Christ alone. Moreover, their deviations from Zwingli are directed toward a more literal and Spirit-motivated obedience to Scripture. For Zwingli, Luther and Calvin, as well as for the Anabaptists, the authority of the Bible is the norm, but in applying this norm, the Anabaptists were more literal and consistently Biblical.

John Calvin on Justification by Faith

When John Calvin was born (July 10, 1509), Luther had already served two years as an ordained Augustinian priest and had just received his Bachelor of Bible degree which qualified him to lecture in the University of Wittenburg. Zwingli had already served three years as an ordained priest at Glarus in eastern Switzerland.7

Calvin, of French extraction, emerges as the key leader in what could be called the second phase of the Reformation. Whereas Lutheranism challenged Catholicism from 1520-1550, Calvinism was its main threat from 1550-1600.

It is generally agreed that what Calvin called "his sudden conversion" occurred when he was in his mid-twenties while he was writing his Institutes of the Christian Religion. First published when he was twenty-six, this masterpiece of Calvin’s doctrine was originally addressed to the French King, Francis I, in defense of persecuted French Protestants. Destined to influence theology in the Western world for the next four centuries, the text, enlarged and clarified by Calvin himself, went through five revisions by 1559. The Roman Catholic hierarchy immediately branded the first edition as "The Koran and Talmud of heresy"!

Since the scope of this paper is limited, I must resist the temptation to expand on the tremendous influence of John Calvin (and of Luther, Zwingli, and the Anabaptists) on Western Civilization. What I am trying to document in this stage of history is the return to a biblical understanding of justification by faith. Calvin clearly states his view which is totally compatible with the other reformers:

We explain justification simply as the acceptance with which God receives us into His favor as righteous men on the basis of the work of Christ for us. And we say that it consists of the remission of sins and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.8

 

Conclusion

The Magisterial Reformers, Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, though in disagreement about some major issues, were in total agreement about justification by faith. It was by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, as recorded in the Scriptures alone. To this, the Anabaptists would say "Amen." And so would the Apostle Paul!

But what of the Roman Catholic priesthood and hierarchy? How would they respond and react to these scriptural arguments that were sweeping over Europe? Coming up next in this series: The Council of Trent and Roman Catholic Reaction to the Reformation. ¢

Footnotes:

1 The term "anabaptist" simply means " to baptize again" or "to rebaptize." But in the 16th Century, it became a designation of derision applied diversely to antitrinitarians, mystical spiritualists, rationalists, rebaptizers, and anyone considered heretical. I am using the word largely in regard to the Swiss Brethren. Though not endorsing all their views, I consider them to be the most scriptural of all the reformers in this century of change.

2 I adapted this account from Fritz Blanke’s excellent article detailing the events of the first week of the Anabaptist movement in Zollikon: see "The First Anabaptist Congregation: Zillikon, 1525," by Fritz Blanke, The Mennonite Quarterly Review, Vol. 27 (1953), pp.17-33. Blanke’s details come from the actual court records found in the Zurich state archives. These records are available for serious students in Quellen zur Geschichte der Taufer in der Scheiz, Vol. I, Zurich, Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid, Edits., (Zurich, 1952, 428 pp.).

3 The normal method of baptism among the first generation of Anabaptists was infusion (pouring). Blanke clearly states this was the method used to baptize 35 persons between Jan. 23-30, 1525; but apparently the court records state that Brotli baptized Oggenfuss by sprinkling. It is not until the second generation that immersion becomes the standard method of baptism among Anabaptists.

4 For a well written overview of the birth and spread of evangelical Anabaptists represented by the Swiss Brethren, see William R. Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids: William R. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 1977, Revised Edition, available in paperback). For a more classical approach that includes the broad sprectrum represented in the term anabaptist, see George H. Williams, The Radical Reformation (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1962). Harold Bender has written a monumental biography of Grebel simply entitled Conrad Grebel (Goshen, IN: Herald Press, 1950). Fritz Blankes’s short history, originally published as Bruder in Christo: Die Geschichte der altesten Taufergemeinde, is available in English under the title Brothers in Christ, translated by Joseph N. Haug (Scottsdale, PA: Herald Press, 1961).

5 Swiss Brethren had little opportunity to write of their faith. They were constantly on the move because their lives were in jeopardy, hence little writing is preserved from the first decade of the movement. From the pen of Conrad Grebel, we have fifty-seven letters to his brother-in-law, Vadian, the famous Reformer from St. Gall, and a few more to Zwingli. Still extant from 1527 is a writing entitled Brotherly Union of a Number of Children of God Concerning Seven Articles, now commonly referred to as "The Schleiteim Confession of Faith." Zwingli’s refutation of this Confession written in the Summer of 1527 still exists. And from the secular authorities, we have trial or court documents. It is from sources such as these that scholars like Fritz Blanke have documented the beliefs of the first Swiss Anabaptists.

6 Blanke, op.cit., MQR, Vol. 27, p. 29. (Blanke’s article was written in German: the English translation of this paragraph is somewhat awkward).

7 Luther (b. Nov. 10, 1483) was seven weeks older than Zwingli (b. Jan. 1, 1484). Unfortunately, Zwingli’s life ended tragically in the Battle of Kappel when he was only forty-seven years old (Oct. 11, 1531). This short battle was between the Catholic and Protestant Swiss Cantons. Zwingli’s body was quartered and burnt, his ashes scattered in the wind. Luther died peacefully on Feb. 18, 1546 at Eisleben.

8 John Calvin. Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book III., Ch. xi, 2.