Radical Reformation

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Protestant Reformation
Precursors

Waldensians (12th century)
Avignon Papacy (1309–77)
John Wycliffe (1320–84)
Western Schism (1378–1417)
Jan Hus (c.1369–1415)
Hussite Wars (1420–c.1434)
Northern Renaissance
German mysticism
Start of the Reformation
Reformers
By location

Czech lands · Denmark–Norway / Holstein · England · Germany · Italy · Netherlands · Poland-Lithuania · Scotland · Sweden · France · Switzerland
Protestantism

The Radical Reformation was the response to what was believed to be the corruption in both the Roman Catholic Church and the expanding Magisterial Protestant movement led by Martin Luther and many others. Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation birthed many radical Protestant groups throughout Europe. The term covers both radical reformers like Thomas Müntzer, Andreas Karlstadt, groups like the Zwickau prophets and Anabaptist groups like the Hutterites and Mennonites.

Although the proportion of the European population that rebelled against Catholic, Lutheran and Zwinglian churches was small, the literature on the Radical Reformation is proportionately large, partly as a result of the proliferation of the Radical Reformation teachings in the United States.[1]

Characteristics

Unlike the Catholics and the more Magisterial Lutheran and Reformed (Zwinglian and Calvinist) Protestant movements, the Radical Reformation generally abandoned the idea of the "Church visible" as distinct from the "Church invisible."[2] Thus, the Church only consisted of the tiny community of believers, who accepted Jesus Christ and demonstrated this by adult baptism, called "believer's baptism".

While the magisterial reformers wanted to substitute their own learned elite for the learned elite of the Catholic Church, the radical Protestant groups rejected the authority of the institutional "church" organization, almost entirely, as being unbiblical. It was unavoidable that as the search for original Christianity was carried further, some would claim that the tension between the church and the Roman Empire in the first centuries of Christianity was somehow normative, that the church is not to be allied with government sacralism, that a true church is always subject to be persecuted, and that the conversion of Constantine I was therefore the Great apostasy that marked a deviation from pure Christianity.[3]

Radical reformers

There were a lot of radical reformers in the reformation time, who had more radical claims than Luther or Zwingli. Some of them like Thomas Müntzer were involved in the German Peasants' War. Others like Andreas Karlstadt were non-violent and had some theological interferences with Huldrych Zwingli. Kaspar Schwenkfeld and Sebastian Franck were influenced by German mysticism and spiritualism.

Early forms of Anabaptism

Some early forms of the Radical Reformation were millenarian, focusing on the imminent end of the world. This was particularly notable in the rule of John of Leiden over the city of Münster in 1535, which was ultimately crushed by the forces of the Catholic Bishop of Münster and the Lutheran Landgrave of Hesse. After the fall of Münster the small group of the Batenburgers continued to adhere to militant Anabaptist beliefs. Also non-violent anabaptist groups had millenarian conceptions.

The early Anabaptists believed that the Reformation must purify not only theology but also the actual lives of Christians, especially in what had to do with political and social relationships.[4] Therefore, the church should not be supported by the state, neither by tithes and taxes, nor by the use of the sword; Christianity was a matter of individual conviction, which could not be forced on anyone, but rather required a personal decision for it.[5]

Many groups were influenced by biblicism (like the Swiss Brethren), spiritualism (like the South German Anabaptists) and mainly absolute pacifism (like the Swiss Brethren, the Hutterites and the Mennonites from Northern Germany and the Netherlands). The Hutterites contended also the community of goods. In the beginning most of them were strongly missionary.

Later forms of Anabaptism

Later forms of Anabaptism were much smaller, and focused on the formation of small, separatist communities. Among the many varieties to develop were Mennonites, Amish, and Hutterites. Typical among the new leaders of the later Anabaptist movement, and certainly the most influential of them, was Menno Simons (1496–1561), a Dutch Catholic priest who early in 1536 decided to join the Anabaptists.[6]

Menno Simons had no use for the violence advocated and practiced by the Münster movement, which seemed to him to pervert the very heart of Christianity.[7] Thus, Mennonite pacifism is not merely a peripheral characteristic of the movement, but rather belongs to the very essence of Menno's understanding of the gospel; this is one of the reasons that it has been a constant characteristic of all Mennonite bodies through the centuries.[8]

Other movements

In addition to the Anabaptists, other Radical Reformation movements have been identified. Notably, George Huntston Williams, the great categorizer of the Radical Reformation, considered early forms of Unitarianism (such as that of the Socinians, and exemplified by Michael Servetus as well as the Polish Brethren), and other trends that disregarded the Nicene christology still accepted by most Christians, as part of the Radical Reformation. With Michael Servetus (1511–1553) and Faustus Socinus (1539–1604) anti-Trinitarianism came to the foreground.[9]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Euan Cameron (1991). The European Reformation. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-873093-4. 
  2. ↑ Maseko, Achim N. (2008), Church Schism & Corruption, South Africa: Lulu.com, p. 236, ISBN 9781409221869 
  3. ↑ Justo L. Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought (Abingdon: Nashville, 1975)
  4. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 88.
  5. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 88.
  6. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 96.
  7. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 96.
  8. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 96.
  9. ↑ Gonzalez, A History of Christian Thought, 101.

Further reading

  • Williams, George H., The Radical Reformation.

Estep, William R., The AnaBaptist Story. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Roscoe_Estep

External links

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