Review of The Importance of Church Discipline within Balthasar Hubmaier’s Theology, and of Wounds that Heal: The Importance of Church Discipline within Balthasar Hubmaier’s Theology, by Simon Victor Goncharenko

Goncharenko, Simon Victor. “The Importance of Church Discipline within Balthasar Hubmaier’s Theology.” Ph.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011.

_________. Wounds that Heal: The Importance of Church Discipline within Balthasar Hubmaier’s Theology. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick, 2012.

This review comes from my reading of Goncharenko’s dissertation, which has recently been published as a monograph. The assumption that I will be making throughout this review is that the latter closely follows the former at least close enough that this review would be helpful for those reading the book also.

Goncharenko’s dissertation on the importance of the doctrine of church discipline within the framework of Hübmaier’s theology seeks to fill a gap in Hübmaier studies. Other works have looked at Hübmaier’s doctrine of church discipline alone, but none yet has sought to investigate the doctrine’s impact on other facets of Hübmaier’s theology (6). Gonharenko sought to fill this gap by arguing that church discipline played a major role in the development of the rest of Hübmaier’s theology, especially his anthropology, soteriology and, of course, his ecclesiology (v). After providing an introductory chapter, perfunctorily summarizing Hübmaier’s biography, Goncharenko spent a chapter each on these three theological categories in Hübmaier’s thought.

That first chapter begins unfortunately with little value to the dissertation. It gives a biography that is frightfully without citation and a listing of influences on Hübmaier. That listing does not provide any content to what those influences were beyond names except in the cases of Luther, Erasmus and Zwingli on the matter of baptism. The content of the influences on more relevant matters comes in later chapters. While Goncharenko is correct that the context must be understood since theology is not developed in a “vacuum” (v), it is not certain how an overview of Hübmaier’s general biography clears up his understanding of church discipline.

There is also some other troubling material at the outset. Goncharenko provided the categories of 1) Anabaptists, baptizers who denied Sacramentalism, 2) Radical, baptizers more badly, and 3) Magisterial reformers, those of the state church imposing reformation from the “top-down” (8). These categories are at best confused. The difference between “Anabaptist” and “Radical” only seems to be at the point of denying Sacramentalism, at which point one must ask if there were any baptizers that did not deny Sacramentalism. Goncharenko seem to have misunderstood George Huntston Williams’ categorization, which used the term “Radical” much more broadly to include Anabaptists (which fits the category of the same name that Goncharenko had borrowed from Kirk Robert MacGregor), Spiritualists and Evangelical Rationalists. It is not clear what Goncharenko had in mind since he did not cite his sources. Also the use of “Magisterial” could be problematic in the case of Hübmaier, who has been described as a “magisterial Anabaptist.”[1]

Also, in a footnote summarizing the debate on monogenesis versus polygenesis, another discussion with which the reader should already be familiar, Goncharenko demonstrated a poor understanding of the particulars of the debate. He attributed the introduction of monogenesis to Harold Stauffer Bender without awareness that monogenesis was the assumption before Bender’s work.[2] Curiously, he also did not recognize the work that created the debate.[3] All of this raises serious doubts about Goncharenko’s grounding in Radical Reformation scholarship.

An especially helpful summary of Hübmaier’s church discipline closed out the introduction. Goncharenko gave four purposes for Hübmaier’s doctrine: Church discipline was to 1) keep the church pure in the eyes of the world, 2) prevent believes from falling into sin, 3) provoke offenders to repentance and 4) provide a “unifying factor” for his theology that would ground his theology into practice (29). It is this fourth purpose that Goncharenko has set out to demonstrate in accordance with his thesis that church discipline was important to Hübmaier’s theology and linked that theology with practice (v).

In the chapter on anthropology, Goncharenko spent the bulk of space reviewing the nature of Hübmaier’s anthropology. Church discipline occupied two-and-a-half pages at the end of the chapter. Goncharenko’s anthropological review gave content to the listed influences from the previous chapter, affirming the findings of previous scholars that Hübmaier reflected the nominalism of medieval thought. That background served Hübmaier’s biblical interpretation as opposed to the more Augustinian background that served the Reformers (47). Goncharenko held an uneasy tension between attributing to Hübmaier a biblicism that “ . . . did not blindly embrace . . .” the medieval background (46) while at the same describing Hübmaier as having “. . .reache[d] back to a number of late medieval scholastic concepts with which to support his doctrine of man . . .” (48) and having had a “. . . reliance on certain medieval concepts for his anthropology” (51).

The short section on church discipline is somewhat at odds with the thesis, which was to show that church discipline was important to the rest of Hübmaier’s theology. Goncharenko effectively said that it was rather that it was Hübmaier’s theology that was important Hübmaier’s doctrine of church discipline, writing, “. . . [T]he trichotomous division of the nature of man is what propels Hubmaier to esteem the doctrine of church discipline so highly” (64). This happens by Hübmaier’s ascription to free will determining his understanding of the voluntary nature of the church, by church discipline answer the problem of how man can overcome sin, and by Hübmaier’s trichotomy allows a balance between the handing over of the flesh to Satan as a result of disciplinary action and the preservation of the spirit against destruction (64-66).[4] It remains unclear whether Goncharenko was attempting to show discipline’s importance to the rest of Hübmaier’s theology or if he only wanted to show how discipline fit in as an outworking of Hübmaier’s theology.

The next chapter, on soteriology, adheres more closely to the thesis, claiming “[C]hurch discipline will emerge as an essential part of Hubmaier’s Soteriology” (77). This was demonstrated by showing that church discipline guarded against charges of perfectionism by it inherent admission of faults within believers needing discipline (75), the maintenance of faith through continued brotherly love as aided by church discipline (80), and the placement of baptism outside of salvific operation but rather as an initial step submitting the baptizand under the disciplining authority of the church (94). Hübmaier’s recognition that salvific faith was not the confession of doctrine but more so the faith made evident by a disciplined life, thus manifesting one’s adherence to true doctrine (98).[5]

The last theological category with which Goncharenko dealt was ecclesiology. He gave a competent overview of church discipline in its relationship to Hübmaier’s ecclesiology, especially in its relationship to the ordinances. This connection was made through Hübmaier’s understanding of the keys, which were given to the church and moderated by discipline and the ordinances (108-109). Baptism, as a submission to the disciplining authority of the church (125), acted as a key letting believers into the church. The Lord’s Supper, as that from which those disciplined are kept out, then would act as a key keeping the unrepentant out of the church (113).

Though this dissertation began weakly, the last two chapters on soteriology and ecclesiology are solid explanations of Hübmaier’s though in these areas.  The main thesis that church discipline is important to Hübmaier’s theology is here only halfheartedly accepted. Goncharenko’s estimation that the doctrine was important needs no contesting, even to the point of demonstrating that discipline is an integral component of Hübmaier’s ecclesiology. The extension of this importance to say that discipline made Hübmaier’s soteriology “come together” (77) or that it was the “central” doctrine among the whole of Hübmaier’s theology (vi) is a contention that not convincingly argued.

It may seem that I’ve been a bit harsh on the product of Southwestern Seminary, and I admit I keep a keen eye on the work coming out of there. Since it is my alma mater, which hopes to become a center of free church studies beginning in the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement, I want to see a standard of excellence among the scholarship that comes from there. What I don’t want to see is anything less than excellence pass by and thus remove the solid foundation of scholarship that will be needed if we truly want the movement inform our own tradition rather than impose our own thinking back onto history.

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[1]Hans-Jürgen Görtz, The Anabaptists (London: Routledge, 1996), 100, among others.

[2]Goncharenko placed the origin of the monogenesis theory at “The Anabaptist Vision,” MQR 18, no. 2 (Apr. 1944): 67-88. The later debate against monogenesis was actually centered on two competing visions of monogenesis typified by Ernst Troeltsch, Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1912), and Karl Holl “Luther und die Schwärmer,” in Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschichte I: Luther (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1932), 420-467.

[3]James Mentzer Stayer, Werner O. Packull and Klaus Deppermann. “From Monogenesis to Polygenesis: The Historical Discussion of Anabaptist Origins,” MQR 49, no. 2 (Apr. 1975): 83-121.

[4]Oddly, Goncharenko’s description of how this occurs involves only the flesh and the spirit. No account of the soul’s involvement in this process is given. This process is thus described as being facilitated by a dichotomy; so, it is not explained why Hübmaier’s trichotomy aids the tension between preservation and destruction of the offender.

[5]There is one fault in this chapter in that it uses Calvin as representative of the Swiss protestant faith rather than Zwingli since Calvin has a wide accessibility. At this level of work, one should be expected to provide the necessary background, regardless of accessibility, especially in this case where anachronism is a danger.