Global Social Justice, Anabaptists and the Peasants’ War, Hermeneutics, and the Sovereignty of God in History

The rise of concern for global social justice is an undeniable trend within Evangelicalism, the prominence of which needs not be detailed here. Along with this new emphasis comes the usual fear of a revival of a social gospel a la Rauschenbusch, in which sanctification is replaced by mere social activism. At the same time, the movement is celebrated for reclaiming a proper understanding of social concern for the poor that had been lost by a greed-motivated western society. Though both motivations are likely in play in this new emphasis, it is most important to view the role of the awareness of global poverty that has had on Christian interpretation (or rather application) of Scripture on relevant passages and the relationship that this seems to have with radical movements in the Reformation era.

Anabaptists had an association with the Peasants’ War, an association of which the nature has long been in dispute. The Peasants’ War was an uprising late in the first decade of the Reformation that sought to overturn the existing structures of Central European economic life in favor of a more equal society. I may be painting with broad strokes in saying this, but the general sentiment toward the Radical Reformation taken by secular scholars has been that the socio-economic concerns of the peasants were the engine of the development of communitarian readings of Scripture.[1] Meanwhile, historical theologians would deny that Anabaptist social concern was merely a carryover from the Peasants’ War but were instead a fresh interpretation of Scripture.

Although these poles may be an overgeneralization, I ask the question, could it be that, rather than the politics of the peasants determining Anabaptist scriptural interpretation or rather than Anabaptist interpretation outside of any socio-economic influence, the God, being sovereign over history, used the social concerns of the peasants to direct the Anabaptists toward an interpretation of Scripture that recaptured the social impact of nachfolge life, i.e. could it be that the Peasants’ War removed the veil from the eyes of mainstream interpretation that had ignored the social impact of the gospel in favor of retaining the status quo of the feudal system?

If the study of the Anabaptists is to inform our approach to contemporary issues in the church (which is the overarching assumption of my interest, if not of all of church history), then it might be worth asking that same question of contemporary emphases on the social impact of following Christ. Could it be that this emphasis is not the result of progressivism overriding Christian hermeneutics but rather the social situation drawing our attention to what Scripture has been trying to tell us all along. Awareness of famine, poverty and warfare can no longer be considered “wholly other,” but in our age of communication the distress of the world is set before our eyes. The call of secular ethicists, starting from different assumptions, seem to have challenged some false assumptions through which the church has long interpreted Scripture.

For instance, Peter Singer wrote on global justice to say that globalization prohibits unconcern our distant neighbor in need. He wrote, “The fact that a person is physically near to us, so that we have personal contact with him, may make it more likely that we shall assist him, but this does not show that me ought to help him rather than another who happens to be further [sic] away.”[2] If it is possible for God to use a pagan King like Nebuchadnezzar to chastise his people, Israel, then it would not seem beyond God’s ways to use a secular ethicist to convict the church that it has been shallow in its interpretation of Scripture concerning global social justice. My conclusion is that God’s sovereignty over history is displayed in the influence of socio-economic and political concerns toward correcting Christian interpretations of Scripture. These concerns may be precisely what God uses to jar us out of our holding pattern hermeneutic that subjects the Bible to the maintenance of current social structures.

How did this look in the Radical Reformation? In some cases the economic dissenters were social reformers with religious overtones but in other cases they were part of a religious reform that had social implications. An example of the first might be Hans Hergot, who in On the New Transformation of the Christian Life outlined a new societal structure that was to encompass all of Europe.[3] Although this manifesto is lightly peppered with scriptural citations, it is apparent that his rigid, bottom-up hierarchical structure of a worldwide commonwealth is not an attempt to follow any scriptural formula but rather a pragmatic construction to facilitate a populist-empowered government. Even by Hergot’s own admission, the development of this reform program arose from his own personal realizations sparked by the imagery of John 10.[4]

References to Scripture often give the appearance of appeal to common religious awareness rather than exegetical conviction. This must be understood in the context of a society that was far more ensconced in Scripture than that of the present day. Scriptural allusions held far greater currency.[5] Nonetheless, Hergot did not make the claim that his system was founded on Scripture but was “that which the holy spirit shows me.”[6]

When he complained of the mainstream interpretation of Scripture, which maintained the old order against which the peasants struggled, he decried, “They always interpret Scripture and twist it to produce quarrelling and litigation.”[7] His complaint does not appear to be that they were misinterpreting Scripture but rather that they were doing any interpretation of Scripture in the first place. For Hergot, Scripture in the end provided an unreliable guide because it was a futile attempt to discover the true interpretation. This is why he followed that complain by writing, “But [you should] trust completely in God,”[8] thus echoing Thomas Müntzer’s complaint against the same protestant interpretations of the Bible. Müntze had condemned them for relying on “The mere words of Scripture,”[9] “The dead words of Scripture,”[10] and “The inexperienced papal text of the Bible.”[11] Müntzer preferred to “not pray to a dumb God [i.e. one speaking only through Scripture] but rather to one who speaks [in direct revelation],”[12] for “all true parsons must have revelations.”[13] So, although Hergot utilized Scriptural language, this was only in accordance to the speech patterns of his day and his brand of revolution bears more the mark of a social rather than exegetical genesis.

This origin of peasant protest, however, was not necessarily characteristic of the entire movement. The Eleven Mühlhausen Articles include scriptural citations in a manner reminiscent of confessional statements.[14] The phrases, “As it is written,” and, “According to the word of God,” are used in the articles, describing the approach that is taken in developing their content. The peasants at other times showed a reliance on Scripture, saying, “. . .[T]he basis of all peasants’ articles (as will be clearly seen) is directed toward hearing the gospel and living according to it . . ..”[15] They also declared an intention to submit to Scripture, saying, “. . . [Y]ou will also gladly release us from serfdom or show us from the gospel that we should be serfs.”[16]

This is not to naïvely assume that the hermeneutics of the peasants was exactly as they had claimed, but it does show that they were attempting to mold their program after the pattern of Scripture. Whether this attempt was successful at correctly interpreting the relevant scriptural texts is a valid question, but regardless of success or failure the attempt itself is sufficient to reframe our approach to Reformation hermeneutics in regard to social justice. The debate was not between the scriptural position and the socio-economic position, in which each party can be cast in either role. The debate was rather between competing interpretations of Scripture, each of which necessarily impacted the social order of the day either toward retention or revolution.

Nor should one simplistically assume that the radicals of the Reformation, peasants and Anabaptists alike, were all of one mind on how Scripture was to be interpreted. Conrad Grebel expressed his discontent with Müntzer for setting up tablets, presumably a copy of the ten commandments.[17] Andreas Karlstadt, representing Orlamünde, wrote that that community could not covenant with Allstedt because the former denied the appropriateness of armed resistance advocated by the latter.[18]

Though debate existed within the movement, many of the general tenets of the radicals have since found greater favor within Christianity in our day. Few contemporary Christians would challenge what had been contented during the Reformation. Peasant and Anabaptist demands such as, “Those who are in need should be looked after,”[19] or, “Should this pastor be in need, he should be provided for by the community that chose him,”[20] or that families should not have to pay their lords for the death of their relatives as payment for the loss of property,[21] a practice known as heriot. If Roland H. Bainton is correct, then religious liberty, a matter broadly accepted by evangelicals, owes its genesis to the Anabaptists.[22]

If it was the social situation that pointed the radicals toward interpretations of Scripture that were controversial in their time but have largely since become assumed exegetical conclusions, then the validity of socio-economic and political stimuli in the process of doctrinal development need not be so quickly disparaged. Perhaps it is that God, who is sovereign in history, could use historical events to shake Christian interpretations of Scripture loose of maintenance of standing social structures.

So, to those who might view the contemporary rise in concern for global social justice as having been prompted by extra-biblical stimuli as described above, one must be careful to be sure that interpretations favoring established social orders likewise are not bending hermeneutics to socio-economic pressures. The sword has two edges. This is the value of historical theology as this forum seeks to apply it–to see beyond our own situation by looking through the lens of doctrinal development from those of situations outside of our own. It may just be that God is once again proving his sovereignty over history by using the ethical concern generated by secular sources to prod the church toward a corrected reading of Scripture on matters of social justice.

For now, I only present an initial point of discussion. Much research still needs to be done on both the historical and contemporary issues, but I would hope that the ideas presented here might stimulate further consideration of the appropriation of the Radical Reformation heritage on this matter. I especially note that some might take issue with presenting the peasant rebels alongside more mainstream Anabaptists.

---

[1]A caricature view would be Friedrich Engels, Der Deutsche Bauernkrieg, Moscow, 1956.; but modern, more tempered views can be found in Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History: Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, and South and Central Germany (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1972).; and James Mentzer Stayer, The German Peasants’ War and Anabaptist Community of Goods, McGill-Queen’s Studies in the History of Religion, no. 6 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991). An excellent summary of the latter can be found in A. James Reimer, “From Denominational Apologetics to Social History and Systematic Theology: Recent Developments in Early Anabaptist Studies,” Religious Studies Review 29, no. 3 (Jul. 2003): 237. Stayer concluded that communitarianism was not a fringe view within Anabaptism but rather normative in compliance to the community of goods portrayed in Acts.

[2]“Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs (1973), reprinted in Ethical Theory: Classical and Contemporary Readings, 5^th ed., ed. by Louis P. Pojman (Belmont, California: Thomson Wadsworth, 2007), 244. Emphasis in original. Let it be noted that this is one of the few points with which I would ever agree with Singer.

[3]In The Radical Reformation, ed. Michael G. Baylor, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 210-225. It has been my reading of this source book that has been the springboard of my thought in this area.

[4]Ibid., 211.

[5]In our day, a phrase like “wiser than Solomon” may draw more than a few blank stares and references to going the “extra mile” are usually made in ignorance of Matthew 5:41.

[6]On the New Transformation, 219.

[7] Ibid., 224. The quintessential example of a Protestant interpretation in defense against the peasants is Martin Luther’s 1524 “Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit,” Weimar Ausgabe XV [The critical edition of Luther’s complete works in their original languages], 210-221. Hergot’s manifesto is from 1527.

[8]On the New Transformation, 224. The bracketed material is of Baylor.

[9]The Prague Protest, in The Radical Reformation, 8.

[10]Ibid., 6.

[11]Ibid.

[12]Ibid., 10. Bracketed material mine.

[13]Ibid., 4.

[14]In The Radical Reformation, 227-230. Müntzer, although just show to have not taken an entirely benevolent stance on the text of Scripture, did have a hand in drafting these articles, but Baylor pointed out that others such as Heinrich Pfeffer were also instrumental in the articles’ composition, which reflected local concerns that predated Müntzer’s arrival in Mühlhausen.

[15]The Twelve Articles of the Upper Swabian Peasants, in The Radical Reformation, 232.

[16]Ibid., 234.

[17]Letter to Thomas Müntzer, in The Radical Reformation, 39.

[18]Letter from the Community of Orlamünde to the People of Allstedt, in The Radical Reformation, 33-35.

[19]The Mühlhausen Articles, 228.

[20]Michael Sattler, The Schleitheim Articles, in The Radical Reformation, 176.

[21]The Twelve Articles, 237.

[22]“The Parable of the Tares as the Proof Text for Religious Liberty to the End of the Sixteenth Century,” Church History 1, no. 2 (1932): 67.; A key text would Balthasar Hübmaier, On Heretics and Those who Burn Them, in Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism, edited by H. Wayne Pipkin  and John Howard Yoder, Classics of the Radical Reformation, no. 5. (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1989), 58-66. However, there are those who would attribute religious liberty to the Reformed tradition, such as Jon Witte, Jr., “Law, Authority, and Liberty in Early Calvinism,” in Calvin and Culture: Exploring a Worldview, edited by David W. Hall and Marvin Padgett, Calvin 500 Series (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P & R, 2010), 17-39.