History is written by the victors. People who are defeated, imprisoned, tortured and killed, don’t get to write the history books. Those who survive and thrive write the history books, the victors write the history books. Sometimes, the victors are not always on the right side, and so sometimes their take on history is the one that ends up in the well-known books. The proof of that is that the man we are going to look at today is probably unknown to most of us. You won’t see his biography in most Christian bookstores, and you won’t hear many biographies on his life.
He was Balthasar Hubmaier, one of the Anabaptists of the 16th century. He lived during the time of the giants of the Reformation, Martin Luther, John Calvin and Ulrich Zwingli. But he was too radical for them, and too radical for many of the Reformed descendants of Calvin, Luther and Zwingli. And since they often write the histories, write the textbooks, and hold the seminars, you will not hear much about Balthasar Hubmaier.
And yet you live today in a world partly shaped by him, and some of his fellow Anabaptists of the 16th century – Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock. Consider four areas which you take for granted as part of life in the church, and as part of life in thousands of churches around the world today:
- The baptism of believers only
- The Lord’s Supper as a memorial and covenant of love between Christians
- The non-interference of the State in the worship of the church, the right of citizens to worship according to conscience
- The right of each congregation to govern itself
These ideas were almost completely absent in Christianity 500 years ago. Infants were baptized, the Lord’s Supper communicated grace, the State was to regulate worship and punish heretics, and there was no such thing as an independent, autonomous local church. This was true of Roman Catholicism, but sadly, it continued to be true of the Reformers. Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, while recovering the great truths of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, while recovering the authority of Scripture alone, did not go as far as they needed to. They retained infant baptism. They modified Roman ideas about the Lord’s Supper, but kept some ideas. They all supported the idea of a State church, with barons and dukes and the army on the side of the church to enforce discipline, kill heretics and even wage war where necessary. The devastating wars between Catholicism and Protestantism in the years after the Reformation are proof of this. And none of the Reformers believed in independent local churches led by their pastors.
So much so, that people have called these Anabaptists the Radical Reformers. Radical comes from a Latin word which means, the root. These Anabaptists wanted to Reform the Catholic church to the roots, to the deepest levels. Luther, Calvin and Zwingli wanted to go far, but only so far. And when the Anabaptists pressed these men to be consistent and thorough in their Reforms, the Reformers themselves began to persecute, vilify, and even kill these Anabaptists.
Balthasar Hubmaier was born in Friedberg, Germany, close to Augsburg, around 1480. He studied at Freiburg University under the Roman Catholic scholar, John Eck. After being ordained as a Catholic priest, he continued his studies and earned a doctorate in theology at the University in Ingolstadt in 1512. He then taught at the University, advanced to the position of prorector of the University, and was also a priest in the city’s largest parish.
He then served as cathedral preacher in Regensburg from 1516 to 1520, becoming popular as a preacher and going along with current anti-Semitic sentiment. He had cooperated in the destruction of a Jewish synagogue in Regensburg and in the expulsion of the Jews from the city. He became a highly popular preacher to pilgrims at the chapel built at the place where the synagogue had stood. Supposedly, this chapel was the scene of all kinds of miracles. This led to a great concourse of pilgrims and rich gifts for a church. Hubmaier, as the first chaplain of the chapel, kept a record of the supposed miracles.
Years later, he would say this of his preaching of that time:
‘I say without subterfuge, and God knows I am not lying, that I became a doctor in the Holy Scriptures (as this sophistry was called)…Yes and at that time I had never read a Gospel, or an epistle by Paul from beginning to end. What kind of a Holy Word could I then teach others or preach to them?’
‘Until now we have preached much gossip, unnecessary junk, human laws and legends and we have said how we can through this or through that work become righteous and be saved, namely through infant baptism, vigils, masses, organs, pipes, ringing, indulgences, images, pilgrimages, brotherhoods, offerings, purgatory, masses, mumblings, growlings, and bellowing. But this is all a small matter, if now we will only confess and abstain from this trickery and call to God with Paul “O God forgive us; we did it without knowing.”’
The decisive change came in 1521. The controversies brought about by all the pilgrims to Regensburg led him to Waldshut, and in 1522, he became acquainted with Glarean (Conrad Grebel’s teacher). He began reading Luther’s writings. He read the Pauline epistles for himself. He began writing to some of the Reformers. He visited the Catholic who was critical of much in Catholicism – Erasmus. By 1522 he was clearly teaching the doctrine of the Reformers.
In March, 1523 in Zürich, Hübmaier met with Ulrich Zwingli. “Then Zwingli agreed with me, that children should not be baptized before they are instructed in the faith.”
He publicly apologised for his behaviour as a priest by writing a booklet. He apologised for how he “led in all pride, fornication, and worldly luxury . . . contrary to the teaching of Christ. . .with false, ungrounded, and godless teachings. . . outside of the Word of God. Therefore, dear Lords and brothers, be warned and admonished that you henceforth yourselves test and examine the prophets and preachers as to whether they go before you with God’s teaching or not. Search the Scriptures; they will give testimony of Christ and the Christian life.”
He resigned as priest from the parish at Waldshut and the congregation reinstated him as their pastor on the same day. He was now preaching that the priests who failed to preach the pure, undiluted Bible-Gospel were ’soul murderers, priests who denied God, messengers of Satan, eaters of souls’.”
“Like others, I was blinded and possessed by the doctrine of men. Therefore I openly confess before God and all men, that I then became a Doctor and preached some years among you and elsewhere, and yet had not known the way unto eternal life. Within [the last] two years has Christ for the first time come into my heart to thrive. I have never dared to preach him so boldly as now, by the grace of God.”
In 1523, a religious debate took place in Zurich. The themes for discussion there were the place of images in churches, and the mass. On both these topics Hubmaier supported Zwingli.
He declared that the Bible alone must decide such questions; the Mass is not a sacrifice, but a proclamation of Christ’s covenant, which commemorates His suffering and His sacrifice of His life; as a sacrificial offering the Mass benefits neither the living nor the dead. “Just as I cannot believe for another, neither can I hold a Mass for another.” Concerning the worship of images he cited the Scripture that a carved or graven image is an abomination to God.
He tried to persuade the clergy of Waldshut with his first writing, 18 Theses Concerning the Christian Life. But both the Austrian government and the Catholic authorities were not pleased, and called for his dismissal. His reforms in Waldshut continued. He conducted the service in German, abolished the laws on fasting and the celibacy.
Attempts were made to return matters to the old way, so military force was now going to be used. Hubmaier requested his own dismissal, grieving that the town of Waldshut had been brought into disrepute and on false charges. Worse, during the Peasants’ Rebellion, some 550 armed peasants sought mutual help and protection there in August 1524.
Hubmaier fled for safety to Schaffhausen in August 1524. There he married Elsbeth Hügline. He wrote his Heretics and Those Who Burn Them, one of the earliest pleas for religious freedom and worship according to conscience in European history. Hubmaier said that heretics are those who reject the Bible’s teachings, not godly believers. Heretics should be gently instructed, not persecuted. Hubmaier said that people who burn heretics do not follow the teachings of Christ, but become heretics themselves. They reject the teaching of Matthew 13, the parable of the wheat and tares. They attempt to separate the wheat from the tares which is God’s task, not human government or the church.
“Secular authorities have the right to punish the wicked, but they do not have the right to punish heretics – that is for God to do.” An important distinction is being made here between the right of the secular authorities to adjudicate on matters of faith and their right to uphold other laws and maintain the peace.
Just a few years earlier, Hubmaier had been involved in the persecution of Jews. Now, he insisted that heretics, Turks and Jews be won to the truth through moral persuasion alone, not by fire or the sword. Though this is part of our mental landscape today, Hubmaier was one of the first to say it or write it. It took extraordinary independence of mind and courage to do so.
As a historical footnote, many years later, the colony of Rhode Island would be founded by Roger Williams and John Clarke – both Baptists who had read the works of Hubmaier. On Rhode Island, liberty of conscience was given to all, and it was because of the Baptists that the provision in the US Constitution against religious coercion was placed. The US became a model for other countries regarding freedom of conscience, and much of it can be traced back to Hubmaier.
Using violence at all was a matter of division among the Anabaptists. Some advocated pacifism, which meant believing all war was wrong, all uses of force were wrong, and that Christians should not be a part of an army, a police force, or even support the civic authorities with taxes. The other extreme were Anabaptists who took up the sword themselves – Thomas Müntzer – led an army of 8000 peasant rebels.
Hubmaier found the balance. The sword should not be used to compel people religiously. But at the same time, the government is ordained by God:
‘The sword has been given to the authorities so that they can maintain the common peace of the land with it.’ Again: ‘… we should provide them (the authorities) with services, labour dues, watch duty and taxes. This is so that we are able to live in temporal peace with one another, for having temporal peace is not contrary to the Christian life.’
In January of 1525, he debated Zwingli in Zurich on the matter of baptism. Ulrich Zwingli had been growing in dispute with other Anabaptist leaders in Zurich. Grebel, Manz, William Reublin and Blaurock said Zwingli was not willing to go far enough, to be consistent in reforms.
Hubmaier returned to Waldshut in 1525. He was baptised by William Reublin, with 60 other adult believers. The following week, Hubmaier continued the radical reformation in Waldshut, where more than 300 people were baptised, including the majority of the City Council.
Zwingli and Hubmaier wrote for and against infant baptism, the debate becoming more intense and heated. The Anabaptists in Zurich were summoned and warned against any further teaching. Hubmaier was also in trouble. The Peasants Rebellion had been going on since, and Hubmaier had assisted and helped some of the peasants. He himself called for submission to authorities, but it was too late. He was implicated, and the Austrian authorities were after him.
He fled to Zurich in early 1526, hoping for refuge. Instead, Ulrich Zwingli betrayed him. He was arrested and confined. Hubmaier asked for a debate, which was granted, with ten men present. Hubmaier quoted statements that Zwingli himself had made, where he said that children should not be baptized until they had been instructed in Christian faith. Zwingli responded that he had been misunderstood.
Hubmaier was tortured on the rack. He agreed to recant. But the next day, he deeply regretted that and stated, “I will not recant.” He was placed in prison again, and tortured on the rack, and he recanted.
Zwingli needed credibility in the city, because Dr Hubmaier had been well-known as a Zwingli supporter. His forced recantation was read out in three churches of the area.
Today, it is popular to argue that baptism is a non-issue. I hardly think Hubmaier would have agreed while being tortured on the rack. His changeableness troubled him deeply – he wrote about it in a booklet called Short Apology in 1526.
“You remind me of something I had almost forgotten. I must whisper it in your ear my Zwingli. All arguments which you use that one should baptize children will also force you to let them come to the Supper….Note what a new carnival of misery your unfounded contradiction sets up.”
“He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned.”
“Think better, my Zwingli. For if baptism of those previously instructed and believing is a heresy, then Christ is the first archheretic. For he ordered that one should first preach, afterward believe, and third baptize, Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:16.”
Along with defending a biblical view of baptism, he also rejected both the Catholic, and Lutheran views of the Supper.
Hubmaier was an ardent biblicist. There are over 430 different chapters from Scripture referenced in the text of Hubmaier’s works.
“Therefore says Christ, Search the Scriptures. He does not say, Follow the old customs – though I did nothing else when I was the first time with you. However, I did it ignorantly. Like others, I was blinded and possessed by the doctrine of men.”
He said, “You know Zwingli, that the Holy Scripture is such a whole, consistent, genuine, infallible, eternal, immortal Word that cannot wear away nor can the smallest letter or smallest point be changed.”
Hubmaier is known for his favourite slogan, attached to all his works: Truth is immortal.
In his letter to the Swiss Reformer, Oecolampad, Hubmaier exhorts him into debate by saying, “However, do [your debating] with bright and clear Scriptures, or you will truly come to shame in the matter, however scholarly you are. For truth is immortal.”
Unlike some of his opponents, Hubmaier had a humility about his own teaching:
“if they should not be right and Christian, I beg you all through Jesus Christ our only Savior, I plead and admonish you by reason of the last judgment, please correct me in a brotherly and Christian way with the Scripture; for I may err, I am a human being; but a heretic I cannot be.”
Hubmaier was allowed to leave Zürich quietly at the end of April. He spent a few months respite and successful ministry in Augsburg along with Hans Denck, whom Hubmaier baptized, and gathered a congregation of eleven hundred members.
Hubmaier was still in many ways a Reformer of Catholicism in his own mind, though a Reinstitutionist in his actions. His pleas for the restoration of believers’ baptism flowed from his longings to see a disciplined universal church composed of the genuinely saved. Infant baptism had failed to produce such a church.
After a brief stay in Augsburg he went to Nikolsburg in Moravia which served, for a time, as an Anabaptist place of refuge. There he wrote many of his publications. Under his leadership, and the patronage of its Lord Leonhard von Liechtenstein, the city became an Anabaptist centre with an estimated 2000 baptised citizens. Thousands of people followed Hubmaier to Moravia and to the new communities emerging there.
His freedom was to be short-lived. Political changes meant he and other Anabaptist leaders were targets for arrest. In 1527, Hübmaier and his wife were seized by Austrian authorities who had put enormous pressure on von Liechtenstein to hand him over. They were taken to Vienna. Hubmaier was held in the castle Gratzenstain until March 1528, where he wrote a defense of his faith for the king. Many visited him and asked him to recant his teachings.
After torture on the rack, he was tried for heresy and convicted to die for his alleged role in the peasants’ uprisings in Waldshut and for Anabaptist heresy. On March 10, 1528, he was taken to the public square. His wife exhorted him to remain steadfast.
He spoke words of comfort to himself by reciting Bible verses. When he arrived at the scaffold, accompanied by a great crowd of people and followed by an armed company, he raised his voice and cried out, “O my gracious God, grant me grace in my great suffering!”
Turning to the people he asked pardon if he had offended anyone, and pardoned his enemies. Gunpowder was rubbed into his beard. When the wood was already in flames, he cried out, “O my heavenly Father! O my gracious God!” and when his hair and beard burned, “O Jesus!” Choked by the smoke, he died. To the spectator it appeared that he felt more joy than pain.
A few days later, Elsbeth was thrown from the large bridge over the Danube with a stone tied about her neck and drowned.
Hubmaier, the one who wrote against burning heretics became the ultimate illustration of his own work. Here was a godly, devoted pastor, a student of the Scriptures, a courageous leader, who was being burned for his beliefs. Who were the heretics? Hubmaier lived with absolute devotion to the Scriptures, even if it went against common opinion. He called for freedom of conscience, even for those he disagreed with. He was willing to die for these things.
Today, those who worship according to freedom of conscience, who baptise believers only, who enjoy autonomous local churches live in the shadow of men like Hubmaier who gave their lives in belief of those convictions. They were the first cracks in the dam wall that was to burst.
But why could Hubmaier’s views not be killed with his burning? “do not be afraid of me, nor will I be afraid, for divine truth is immortal. Even if it may for a time be imprisoned, scourged, crowned, crucified and laid into a grave, it would nevertheless rise again victorious on the third day and reign and triumph for ever.”