The Reformation and Friends: Thomas Müntzer
Stuart Masters, in the first of a three-part series, writes about early Quakers and some key figures in the Radical Reformation
The early Quaker movement emerged out of the radical wing of the Reformation, and was influenced by the ideas of a range of radical religious groups and individuals. One such figure is Thomas Müntzer (1489-1525). He was a German theologian who became a rebel leader during the German Peasants’ War. Although initially a follower of Martin Luther, he believed that the questioning of traditional authority, promoted by the mainstream Reformers, should not be confined to the spiritual sphere, but should also be applied to politics and economics.
Thomas Müntzer preached a radical message of the coming of God’s kingdom, as an egalitarian society, in which all things would be shared in common. After the battle of Frankenhausen, in May 1525, he was captured, tortured and executed. Despite this, his ideas have remained influential, and he has become a revolutionary hero and martyr for generations of religious and political radicals.
There appear to be strong similarities between aspects of the message preached by early Friends during and following the English civil war and Thomas Müntzer’s spirituality and theology. I have identified six key areas of connection, supplemented by short quotations from his writings.
The great apostasy
Like early Friends, Thomas Müntzer believed that true Christianity had become corrupted shortly after the death of the apostles at the end of the first century. Instead of living under the direct inspiration of the Spirit of Christ, the Church had begun to focus instead on outward human authorities, such as a set-apart priesthood:
I have read here and there the history of the early fathers, and I find that the immaculate, virginal church, after the death of the pupils of the apostles, soon became a whore because of the seductive priests.
- Prague Manifesto, 1521
Radical anticlericalism
Müntzer’s passionate anticlericalism was characteristic of the religious radicalism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. He accused the priesthood of being a barrier between people and God. Because they were unable to hear the divine voice themselves, the clergy taught that divine revelation had ceased. However, true ministers turned people to the divine voice which could be heard within them. God, acting as an inward teacher, undermined the authority of the priesthood:
So, as long as heaven and earth stand, these criminal, turn-coat priests will not be of the slightest use to the churches, for they deny the voice of the bridegroom, which is the real and certain sign that they are devils pure and simple.
- Prague Manifesto, 1521
Müntzer drew deeply on the Medieval mystical tradition, claiming that, through the Holy Spirit, God was directly available to all people. This had the effect of undermining both the authority and the purpose of the institutional Church. We see early Friends making a similar point, when they proclaimed that Christ had come to teach his people himself:
I affirm and swear by the living God: anyone who does not hear from the mouth of God, the real living Word of God, and the distinction between Bible and Babel, is a dead thing and nothing else. But God’s Word, which courses through the heart, brain, hair, bone, marrow, sap, might and strength surely has the right to canter along in quite a different way from the fairy-tales told by our clownish, testiculared doctors. Otherwise no one can be saved; otherwise no one can be found.
- Prague Manifesto, 1521
Deification as liberation
Müntzer asserted that the Holy Spirit alone had the power to transform people. It could bring them into union with God, and liberate them from fear of the earthly powers. He understood this as a process of deification in which the Spirit restored the original harmony between creature and Creator. Such inner transformation had revolutionary implications, since it ended human dependence on the powers of this world, and established God’s reign of justice and liberation:
Just as happens to all of us when we came to faith: we must believe that we fleshly, earthly men are to become Gods through Christ becoming man, and thus become God’s pupils with him – to be taught by Christ himself, and become divine, yes and far more – to be totally transfigured into him, so that this earthly life swings up into heaven.
- Testimony on the First Chapter of Luke, 1524
Christian universalism
Because he believed that all people could enjoy a direct and intimate relationship with God, unencumbered by the limitations of nation, race, creed or social status, like early Friends, Müntzer preached a form of Christian universalism. The Spirit had been poured upon all flesh, and so, in addition to professing Christians, the true people of God could include the Jew, the Turk and the righteous Pagan:
If we Christians should ever want to unite… with all the elect of all dispersions, races and religions…we must know how a man feels who was brought up among unbelievers, but has come to know the true work and the true meaning of God without having been assisted by any book.
- A Manifest Exposé of False Faith, 1524
The world turned upside down
For Müntzer spiritual transformation led inexorably to social transformation, establishing the Kingdom of God on earth through the Lamb’s War. Spiritual regeneration would prompt a revolutionary transformation of church, government and society. The Spirit of Christ would conquer the earthy powers. The powerful would be brought low, and the lowly would be raised up. God’s revolution would turn the world upside down:
Go to it; go to it, while the fire is hot! Don’t let your sword grow cold, don’t let it hang down limply! Hammer away ding dong on the anvils of Nimrod, cast down their tower to the ground! As long as they live, it is impossible for you to rid yourselves of the fear of men. One cannot say anything to you about God as long as they rule over you. Go to it, go to it, while it is day! God goes before you; follow, follow!
- To the People of Allstedt, 1525
Biblical understanding
In terms of the anticlerical, mystical, charismatic, universalist and apocalyptic aspects of his theology, Müntzer’s vision appears to share a great deal in common with that of the early Quaker movement; in particular, by maintaining a rigorously biblical and Hebraic understanding of the Holy Spirit, Müntzer avoided the rigid spirit-matter dualism often associated with the Radical Reformation spiritualists.
The key issue on which Müntzer and early Quakers differ concerns the method by which the Kingdom of God is to be established on earth. Both Müntzer and early Friends believed that the people of God were being enlisted to fight with God in a war to destroy all evil and injustice. For Müntzer this required an outward war, and the physical destruction of the powers.
For early Friends, however, the Lamb’s War was primarily a spiritual struggle focused on conquering evil within the human heart and within Creation. Given that many early Friends had been soldiers in the New Model Army, taking part in a bloody civil war, which they hoped would establish God’s kingdom, it is not surprising that their apocalyptic language, and assertive tactics, often led those in power to fear that the movement, like Müntzer and the rebellious peasants, was intent on violent revolution.
In the midst of the turmoil of the Interregnum, Quakers shared many of Thomas Müntzer’s ideas. However, it was the Christian communism of the Diggers, and the apocalyptic violence of the Fifth Monarchists, that most closely enacted his revolutionary practice.
