Balthasar Hubmaier's Use of the Church Fathers: Availability, Access and Interaction
2010; Volume: 84; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0025-9373
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies
ResumoAbstract: While scholarship during past half-century has provided insights into reception of Church fathers among magisterial reformers, little attention has been given to Anabaptist altitudes toward patristics. Yet Balthasar Hubmaier exhibited an impressive familiarity with Church fathers, especially given his short-lived Anabaptist career and imposed itinerancy. The arrival of patristic manuscripts from Byzantium into Italy, where they were translated into Latin for a wider readership, expedited preparation of monumental editions of Church fathers, especially north of Alps. Once in Hubmaier's hands, these patristic sources functioned as historical and apologetical witnesses to post-apostolic survival of doctrines such as believer's baptism and freedom of will. Hubmaier embraced fathers--in contrast to scholastic theologians and papacy--for their faithfulness to Scripture and as co-affiliates within one, universal Church to which he also belonged. ********** In contrast to scholarly attention devoted to interaction of Renaissance humanists and magisterial reformers with Church fathers, investigations into reception of fathers by Anabaptist leaders have been relatively sparse.(1) Since 1961, when eminent Renaissance scholar Paul Oskar Kristeller challenged historians to explore whether or to what extent newly diffused ideas of these Greek [Christian] authors an influence on theological discussions and controversies of Reformation period, (2) numerous studies have appeared on general reception of fathers during Reformation era along with many detailed analyses on use of fathers by such figures as Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, (3) Erasmus, (4) Johannes Oecolampadius, (5) Martin Luther, (6) Huldrych Zwingli, (7) Beatus Rhenanus, (8) Martin Bucer, (9) Philip Melanchthon, (10) John Calvin, (11) Andreas Musculus (12) and Theodore Beza. (13) Although nothing comparable exists yet in Anabaptist scholarship, several theologians and historians have acknowledged value of investigating Anabaptist reception of Church fathers. Historian Peter Erb, for example, has challenged scholars of Radical Reformation to be attentive to the abiding influence of Fathers, chief among whom were Augustine and Gregory. Trained in a society which no longer reads, Erb continues, modern scholars often too quick to leap to closest chronological similarity for a source, being unaware that Augustine's monitions were much more familiar to our sixteenth-century ancestors than they are to us ... hat a study of early Christian literature as a source for ascetic forms for Anabaptists would be of value.(14) Jonathan Selling has also lamented absence of significant analysis of Radicals' use of patristic writers either for arguments of doctrine or ordinances, (15) a sentiment echoed by theologian Chris Heubner, who notes that Mennonite theology too often skips directly from New Testament to sixteenth century ... We should recall that patristic and medieval sources are part of our tradition ... too. (16) This essay begins to fill this void by examining way in which Anabaptist theologian Balthasar Hubmaier (c.1480-1528) used Church fathers and conditions that shaped his exposure to patristic treatises, epistles and commentaries. Hubmaier's significance within Anabaptist movement has been a point of debate from very beginnings of Radical Reformation. Although many of his contemporary opponents clearly identified him as a prominent Anabaptist leader, (17) later historians of movement have been more ambivalent. Baptist scholars like Henry Vedder, Torsten Bergsten, Rollin Armour and William Estep have all emphasized Hubmaier's lasting impact on Anabaptist-and later, Baptist-tradition. Bergsten, for example, called Hubmaier a pioneer of Anabaptist movement, one of its most important leaders and thinkers whose views on baptism, Lord's Supper, church discipline and freedom of will exercised a considerable influence for a long time over a wide area among all Anabaptists. …
Referência(s)