MacGregor, Kirk R. A Central European Synthesis
of Radical and Magisterial Reform: The Sacramental Theology of Balthasar
Hubmaier. New York: University Press of America, 2006.
This
publication of Kirk MacGregor’s dissertation is an ironic piece. After a
renewal of Hübmaier studies following John Howard Yoder and H. Wayne Pipkin’s
translation of Hübmaier’s works,[1]
MacGregor presents perhaps the most comprehensively biographical work since
Torsten Bergsten.[2] Yet at the
same time he did not rely on the Yoder and Pipkin translation, instead working
independently from Hübmaier’s sources in order to include pre-Anabaptist works
not included in Yoder and Pipkin. While MacGregor did not attain to write a
biography, the schema in which he presents Hübmaier’s sacramental theology
yields some challenges to the traditional understanding of Hübmaier’s thought
and life and of the origin of Anabaptism.
The
most important of MacGregor’s claims are the identification of Hübmaier as a
sacramentalist rather than a sacramentarian, the relative independence of
Hübmaier’s reforming efforts with a starting point in Luther rather than
Zwingli, an understanding of Hübmaier as primarily Lutheran instead of
Anabaptist, and the prior date of Hübmaier’s practice of believers’ baptism
before the institution of the practice by the Grebel circle. The sacramental,
and thus not typically-Anabaptist sacramentarian, thought of Hübmaier is
Macgregor’s central focus. I will not address it at length here since review of
that matter is beyond my prowess. The “grace-conveying” (25) sense of the
sacraments and the attendant matters of Hübmaier’s literary dependence on
Bernard of Clairvaux,[3] ex opere
operato, purgatory, and baptismal
regeneration are argued for with varying degrees of persuasion, but I will
primarily focus on two conclusions–dating the first modern-era believers’
baptisms to Hübmaier’s Waldshut in 1523, two years before the act by the Grebel
circle in Zürich, and the placement of Hübmaier closer to Lutheran reform that
to radical Zwinglian reform.
MacGregor concluded, “Balthasar Hubmaier, not at
all representative of the Anabaptist movement or even any sect therein, was
actually the initiator of sixteenth-century believers’ baptism, which is shown
to have transpired at Waldshut by January 1523 and probably sometime in 1521”
(108). Macgregor reviewed the well-known practice of infant dedication to
replace infant baptism (105). Relying on the Eighteen Theses concerning the
Christian Life from before 1525,[4]
Macgregor quotes Hübmaier’s thesis concerning the accountability to the
congregation on account of each believer being “baptized for himself” (106).
Macgregor then quotes an explanatory remark containing the maxim Hübmaier used
commonly in later writings, that infant baptism is no baptism.[5]
This remark would take a suggestion of believer’s baptism–since if infant
baptism were considered to be true then the thesis would still hold–to a more
definite indication that Hübmaier saw believers’ baptism as the correct option.
One must not forget, however, that this statement
is found in a disputation thesis, which outlines ideas for discussion, and not a
description of actual practice, such as Hübmaier’s later A Form of Christian
Baptism. At most this statement records Hübmaier’s desire to institute
believers’ baptism but not necessarily the institution of its actual practice.
Writing on the same desire among the Grebel circle, Kenneth Ronald Davis wrote,
“To reject infant baptism did not make one an Anabaptist [read
“rebaptizer”], not in 1524.”[6]
Just because the rejection of infant baptism did not necessarily yield the
practice of rebaptism among the Zürich radicals 1524 does not mean that this
could not have been the case for Hübmaier in 1523–the central difference was
that Hübmaier was the official reformer of his town while the soon-to-be
Anabaptists had no official authority in theirs.
For Hübmaier the desire for believers’ baptism
would have had greater sway toward the actual practice than for the radical
Zwinglians, but even official reformers did not always get their way. MacGregor
himself referenced Calvin’s belief that the Eucharist should be practiced
weekly but the civil government prevented the practice (202). Nevertheless,
MacGregor noted that Hübmaier’s reforms were not opposed while in Regensburg
before returning solely to Waldshut (110). Perhaps then the reason Hübmaier
received “no known complaint” for desisting from infant baptism and
implementing believers’ baptism was not because the council had taken his side
on the issue, as MacGregor concluded, but rather because he had not taken the
definitive action of putting his controversial ecclesiology into practice.
Hübmaier had rejected the invitation to accept
believers’ baptism alongside visiting Anabaptists in February of 1525 (121). In
MacGregor’s reconstruction Hübmaier’s rejection was due to his Bernardian
disposition that equated his ordination with a second baptism. Not until the notably
anti-clerical Wilhelm Reublin met with Hübmaier a few months later did Hübmaier
reject his own clerical ordination and that of his fellow priests to accept
baptism, thus rejecting the equivocation with ordination (122). MacGregor was
attempting to explain why Hübmaier waited to have himself and his fellow
priests baptized whereas the traditional historiography has them as the first
baptized among the denizens of Waldshut. Within the framework of the
traditional narrative this delay might be explained by the controversial nature
of believers’ baptism. It may have taken Hübmaier a second exposure by Reublin
to convince him since Reublin was a more energetic character, among the first
to cease baptizing infant among the dissenters in the villages south of Zürich.
Hübmaier’s delay in accepting baptism would thus not be a result of a
reinterpretation of his Bernardian disposition that ordination served the role
of baptism but rather that he had been convinced to take the final step of
breaking with the pace-setting of the magisterium in reforming ecclesiastical
practices.
MacGregor’s narrative fits the available sources
but had Hübmaier been the first among the reformers to institute believers’
baptism the records would likely indicate the normally vocal opposition. The
traditional historiography on this point seems more fitting while MacGregor’s
relies on uncomfortable conjecture upon the available evidence.
The other conclusion with which I will contend is
that Hübmaier was more aligned with Luther’s reforming efforts than with those
of the Anabaptists or even of Zwingli. MacGregor’s analysis of Hübmaier’s early
theological inspiration from Luther stands on solid ground. Then Hübmaier
apparently broke from Luther over the issues of the freedom of the will and
infant baptism in1523 (110ff.). Yet with the arrival of the Zürich Anabaptists,
MacGregor contends that Hübmaier did not align himself with their cause but
rather continued to see himself as part of Luther’s program, even if he took a
different track within Lutheran Evangelicalism.
Two quotations MacGregor offered from after the
1523 split are to illustrate Hübmaier’s continued identification with Luther,
but these quotations do not necessarily confirm MacGregor’s claim. The first is
from the Nikolsburg work, On Fraternal Admonition. MacGregor quotes it,
“we all want to be Christians and good Lutherans” (35). MacGregor then provides
the original German, “wir all wöllen Christen vnd gůtt Euangelisch.” Granted
that there was a large overlap in the usage of “Evangelical” and “Lutheran,”
especially from Catholics, this does not mean that Hübmaier had in mind to
equate the two terms and more likely used the broader term as inclusive of not
only Luther’s reforms but also Zwingli’s and his own.
Moreover, if the equivocation of “Euangelisch” and
“Lutheran” held, the broader context of the quote does not support that the
Nikolsburg community under Hübmaier’s pastorate had identified themselves with
Luther’s reforms. The broader passage reads, “For we all want to be Christians
and good Protestants [Euangelisch] by taking wives and eating meat, no longer
sacrificing, no more fasting, no more praying, yet apart from this one sees
nothing but tippling, gluttony, blaspheming, [etc.].”[7]
Shortly afterward, Hübmaier wrote that to be a “good evangelical” was to know
how to use Scripture as a cover for licentiousness.[8]
Hübmaier’s point was not to identify himself with Luther’s reforms but rather
to point to the moral poverty of the Evangelical teaching of freedom in the
gospel that reigned where fraternal admonition was not practiced, as it had
been absent in Luther’s reformation. Hübmaier was condemning Evangelical
reforms as gladly accepting the moral changes that were convenient but not
subjecting itself to the higher moral calling of the Scriptures when that
calling proved inconvenient.
At another place Macgregor also quotes Hübmaier as
continuing to freely use the “‘Lutheran’ moniker” (114). “detractors accuse me
publicly to be the most evil of all Lutheran Archheretics, . . .” The weight of
the labels applied to Hübmaier by his opponents deserve scrutiny, particularly
when Hübmaier immediately describes those detractors as never having heard him
or attempted to instruct him.[9]
Shortly after, Hübmaier described in veiled terms his frustration with Zwingli
who did attempt to instruct him. Hübmaier seemed to have had his Catholic and
not his Reformed opponents in mind as the “detractors.”
Nevertheless, even if MacGregor went too far in
severing Hübmaier’s association with the Anabaptists, he follows a trend to
place Hübmaier’s theological foundations in Luther’s, not Zwingli’s, reforms.[10]
On the other side of this is MacGregor’s conclusion that Hübmaierwas not an
Anabaptist. MacGregor attempted this primarily by reassigning the content of
what it meant to be an Anabaptist in the sixteenth century, writing, “it seems
that Anabaptism should be formally defined as that set of Radicals, or
rebaptizers, who regarded baptism and the Lord’s Supper as ordinances rather
than sacraments” (8). One cannot but have the impression that MacGregor adds
Sacramentarianism to his definition for the sole reason of excluding Hübmaier.
This is certainly in odd move in that, while the strong connection between
sacramentarianism and Anabaptism has been made before,[11]
this definition does not fall into any of the main streams of defining the
essence of Anabaptism with which I am familiar–discipleship (Bender),
ecclesiology (Littell), two kingdom theology (Friedmann), the free church
(Bainton) or any of the others, most of which fall on the spectrum of discipleship,
reformation of life or moral improvement.
MacGregor correctly realized that Hübmaier could
only be considered an Anabaptist with significant qualification. This is the
case in the common reference to Hübmaier as a “magisterial Anabaptist.”[12]
After MacGregor’s work, then, Hübmaier must be understood as a magisterial,
sacramental, non-pacifist Anabaptist. For MacGregor this was too great a
difference for Hübmaier to be considered a true Anabaptist. Thus MacGregor
prefers to place Hübmaier within the Lutheran camp, but this assignment cannot
come without its own qualifications. If a Lutheran, Hübmaier would only exist
so as a baptizing, free will, banishing Lutheran. But how much more helpful is
it to categorize Hübmaier as a non-typical Lutheran rather than a non-typical
Anabaptist? We may just as well throw our hands in the air declaring, “Sui
generis!”
This may be the end value of MacGregor’s work. While
some of his conclusions may be overdrawn, namely that he was more Lutheran than
Anabaptist and that the first believers’ baptisms were practiced under his
charge, Hübmaier may be a far more independent reformer than previously
realized.[13]
Understood as the leader of the Anabaptists,[14]
a disciple of Zwingli, a Catholic Anabaptist,[15]
and now a radical Lutheran, MacGregor prompts us to view Hübmaier in a new
light, that he may have been a reformer of exceptional originality in synthesizing
not only radical and magisterial reforms but also the thinking of Bernard,
Nominalism and a great many other streams of thought into a unique reform
program. This justifies a remark made in 1536 by the Catholic polemicist,
Michael Hillebrant, that those breaking off from the church were Lutherans,
Zwinglians, Anabaptists and “Balthasarianer” (164n).
[1]Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism,
Classics of the Radical Reformation, no. 5 (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald,
1989).
[2]Balthasar
Hubmaier: Seine Stellung zu Reformation and Täufertum (Kassel:
Oncken, 1961).
[3]I might at
this point take issue with the term “literary dependence” in preference for
“ideological preference,” since literary dependence would seem to put more
focus on phraseology, vocabulary and the like. MacGregor points more toward
dependence, whether mediated or immediate, in details such as shared exegesis
of certain Scriptures and similar use of explanatory metaphors. However, since
we today only have access to their ideas through their literary output, the
terms mean nearly the same thing.
[4]Pipkin and
Yoder date the document to March 1524 based on the extant publication history
and the presumed date of the disputation the Theses were to cover, Theologian
of Anabaptism, 30-31. MacGregor gave the date as January 1523 but did not
cite his justification for this date. Regardless, the later date would still
place Hübmaier’s putative practice of believers’ baptism before the practice by
the Grebel circle.
[5]Pipkin and
Yoder’s translation does not reveal this explanatory remark. Until I get a copy
of the Bergsten source book, I will be doubtful, considering some of
MacGregor’s other spurious use of quotations, as to the place of this remark.
[6]Anabaptism and Asceticism: A Study in
Intellectual Origins, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 16
(Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald 1974), 81.
[7]Theologian of Anabaptism, 375-376.
[8]Ibid., 376.
[9]Ibid., 308.
[10]Brewer
seemingly concurs, having written on Hübmaier’s sacramental theology as having
been born out of an appropriation of Luther’s thinking, despite having taken
Luther’s thinking in a direction Luther himself would never dare. Brian
Christian Brewer, “Radicalizing Luther: How Balthasar Hubmaier (Mis)Read the
‘Father of the Reformation,’“ MQR 84, no. 1 (Jan. 2010): 95-115.
[11]See Leonard
Verduin, “Guido de Bres and the Anabaptists,” MQR 35, no. 4 (Oct. 1961):
256n. “Sacramentarians and Anabaptists (Sacramentschwärmer und Wiedertäuffer)
are closely related types. It is impossible to say where the one begins and the
other ends.”
[12]This
appellation has been around since the early eighties at least but I have not
been able to track down its origin.
[13]Thus appears
to be the conclusion regarding soteriology in Chang Kyu Kim, “Balthasar
Hubmaier’s Doctrine of Salvation in Dynamic and Relational Perspective,” Ph.D.
diss., University of Bristol, 2009.
[14]Henry Clay
Vedder, Balthasar Hubmaier: Leader of the
Anabaptists (New York: Knickerbocker, 1905).
[15]James
William McClendon Jr., “Balthasar Hubmaier: Catholic Anabaptist,” MQR 65, no. 1 (Jan. 1991): 20-33.
