The Spirit of the Prophets: Ludwig Haetzer on Scripture and the Voice of the Spirit

Disclaimer: Any inaccuracies in the following report are due to the nature of presenting papers. Below is represents with the greatest attempt for accuracy but there is not text available for review. Points of uncertainty in the author’s ideas will be evident in how I represent them.

“The Spirit of the Prophets: Ludwig Haetzer on Scripture and the Voice of the Spirit.” - Geoffrey Dipple, Augustana College

Dipple’s paper sought to answer several questions concerning the development of Ludwig Hätzer’s thought. He observed that Hätzer’s earliest theology reflected the Biblicism of Zürich but later moved toward the Spiritualist theology for which he is known. The main period of development was from 1523 to late 1527, shortly following the publication of his and Denck’s translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew.

            An early emphasis in Hätzer’s activity was the matter of God’s forbidding of graven imagery. In the controversy over whether images could be allowed in the church, Hätzer’s polemic intentionally sought a scriptural foundation Further, the strong body/spirit dichotomy that was characteristics of the Spiritualists was not evident. Despite this attempt to firmly ground this early polemic on Scripture, Hätzer gradually manifested a greater reliance on direct revelation from God than on revelation mediated through Scripture.

            What then was the impetus for this move? Dipple pointed toward Hätzer’s stay in Auspitz, during which he would come under the influence of Karlstadt. Karlstadt had also entered into controversy against the evangelical reformers on the matter of imagery in the church. I believe Dipple was making the point that both Hätzer and to a lesser degree Karlstadt utilized Spiritualistic arguments as an additional resource to the scriptural arguments, for Scripture served as a resource to both the evangelicals and the radicals.

            More evident was the influence of Karlstadt’s doctrine of gelassenheit. That yieldedness was formulated as a spiritual type of discipleship. The direct spirituality of gelassenheit would extend into Hätzer’s doctrinal formulations, both in respect to revelation and to the sacraments. An essential resource for identifying Hätzer’s concept of the spirit is his translation of the Hebrew ruach. Hätzer’s translation of the word in the varying instances displayed a greater complexity than previous translations.