Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [113]
LUTHER: You’re being obnoxious.
ZWINGLI: (excitedly) Don’t you believe that Christ was attempting in John 6 to help those who did not understand?
LUTHER: You’re trying to dominate things! You insist on passing judgment! Leave that to someone else! … It is your point that must be proved, not mine. But let us stop this sort of thing. It serves no purpose.
ZWINGLI: It certainly does! It is for you to prove that the passage in John 6 speaks of a physical repast.
LUTHER: You express yourself poorly and make about as much progress as a cane standing in a corner. You’re going nowhere.
ZWINGLI: No, no, no! This is the passage that will break your neck!
LUTHER: Don’t be so sure of yourself. Necks don’t break this way. You’re in Hesse, not Switzerland.
How did the positions of Zwingli and Luther on the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper differ? What was the purpose of this debate? Based on this example, why do you think Reformation debates led to further hostility rather than compromise and unity between religious and sectarian opponents? What implications did this have for the future of the Protestant Reformation?
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THE IDEAS OF THE ANABAPTISTS Anabaptists everywhere held certain ideas in common. All felt that the true Christian church was a voluntary association of believers who had undergone spiritual rebirth and had then been baptized into the church. Anabaptists advocated adult rather than infant baptism. No one, they believed, should be forced to accept the truth of the Bible. They also tried to return literally to the practices and spirit of early Christianity. Adhering to the accounts of early Christian communities in the New Testament, they followed a strict sort of democracy in which all believers were considered equal. Each church chose its own minister, who might be any member of the community, since all Christians were considered priests (though women were often excluded). Those chosen as ministers had the duty to lead services, which were very simple and contained nothing not found in the early church. Like early Christians, Anabaptists, who called themselves “Christians” or “Saints,” accepted that they would have to suffer for their faith. Anabaptists rejected theological speculation in favor of simple Christian living according to what they believed was the pure word of God. The Lord’s Supper was interpreted as a remembrance, a meal of fellowship celebrated in the evening in private houses according to Jesus’s example.
Unlike the Catholics and other Protestants, most Anabaptists believed in the complete separation of church and state. Not only was government to be excluded from the realm of religion, but it was not even supposed to exercise political jurisdiction over real Christians. Human law had no power over those whom God had saved. Anabaptists refused to hold political office or bear arms because many took the commandment “Thou shall not kill” literally, although some Anabaptist groups did become quite violent. Their political beliefs as much as their religious beliefs caused the Anabaptists to be regarded as dangerous radicals who threatened the very fabric of sixteenth-century society. Indeed, the chief thing Protestants and Catholics could agree on was the need to stamp out the Anabaptists.
VARIETIES OF ANABAPTISTS One early group of Anabaptists known as the Swiss Brethren arose in Zürich. Their ideas, especially adult baptism, frightened Zwingli, and they were expelled from the city in 1523. Because the first members of the Swiss Brethren who were baptized as adults had already been baptized as children (in the Catholic Church), their opponents labeled them Anabaptists or Rebaptists. Under Roman law, such people were subject to the death penalty.
As the teachings of the Swiss Brethren spread through southern Germany, the Austrian Habsburg lands, and Switzerland, Anabaptists suffered ruthless persecution,