In the spring of 2009 I was fortunate enough to do an independent study on Martin Bucer with Dr. Amy Nelson Burnett. Dr. Burnett is one of the foremost scholars on the South German Reformation as well as a phenomenally-gifted teacher. One of my favorite memories of class with Dr. Burnett was one day when she walked into the lecture hall right as class was scheduled to begin. Slightly flustered she set her brief case down on a table, opened it, and began searching for her lecture notes. After about 30 seconds she said, “Well, I seem to have left my notes in my office… Eh, that’s OK.” She then went on to lecture for the next 75 minutes without ever consulting her notes. This was, by the way, a 300 level course. It wasn’t some introductory level class that an instructor could teach in their sleep. It was a meaty course on the history leading up to the Reformation and the years immediately after it began. The lecture, as I recollect, was on the role of priests in the 14th century church. And she spoke on it for 75 minutes without notes. (This is all to say that if you are a student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and you don’t take a class with Dr. Burnett you’re a fool.)
Over the next week or two, I’m going to publish the paper I wrote for her in installments. I’m going to begin today by publishing the introduction, which will begin below the jump.
The Strasbourg reformer Martin Bucer has been called many names throughout history. Martin Luther once labeled him a “chatterbox,”[1] while some of his opponents called him, “a false Christian, a sophist, a hypocrite and an insincere scribe.”[2] Paradoxically however, the most recurring labels for Bucer throughout history have centered around his tireless work for church unity. Biographer Martin Greschat refers to him as a “champion for Protestant unity,” and historian James Kittelson has called him a, “fanatic for unity.”[3] Peter Matheson, another historian, called him an “ecumaniac.”[4] Indeed, given Bucer’s remarkable work as a unifier, leading the effort to resolve the first eucharistic controversy and his attempt to unify the German church, such titles are understandable.
The difficulty facing historians in understanding Bucer’s ecumenical efforts, however, is to portray him rightly. While it may be easy to caricature a leader known for unifying diverse groups as a weak-kneed milquetoast politician devoid of conviction, such an image could not be further from the truth in the case of Martin Bucer. Bucer’s convictions were strong and thoroughly evangelical, sometimes pushing him toward greater unity and sometimes pushing him toward division. What distinguished Bucer from the other early reformers was two-fold: First, his understanding of Christianity as centering around faith in Christ and love for others naturally led to ecumenical tendencies. Second, his theology centered around his understanding that Christianity was inescapably a public faith. Bucer was quite willing to have strong, robust disagreement, and even at times to divide from other Christians when the issue at hand struck at the heart of his theology. Bucer did not lack conviction. Rather, Martin Bucer was a convinced evangelical with a theology that necessitated Christian unity, but who was quite willing to divide when the issue at hand struck at the vitals of his theology. To prove this, we will examine his break with the Roman church, his relationship with Luther, and his frequent disputations with the Anabaptists of Strasbourg.
Before we can examine how Bucer’s theology shaped his interactions with the three groups mentioned above, we need to define Bucer’s theology broadly speaking and his ecclesiology specifically. Bucer’s theology was simple, publicly-oriented, and dialogical. For those reasons – and particularly the final two – the social aspects of Christianity was at the center of Bucer’s theology in much the same way that personal assurance of salvation was at the center of Luther’s theology.
The simplicity of Bucer’s theology is largely a product of his humanistic background, both in his hometown of Selestat and in his extensive study of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Selestat, an Alsatian city in the southwestern corner of the Holy Roman Empire, was known for producing two things – wine and humanists. It was home to a major Latin school where Bucer studied until he turned 15 in 1506. During his time there he would have learned Latin and been introduced to a uniquely Selestatian humanism that combined humanistic learning with a conservative sort of piety that was fiercely loyal to the Catholic church.
Though his time at the Latin school came to an end in 1507 when he joined the Dominican order, his interest in and indebtedness to the humanist movement would continue. He continued to read the Paris humanist Jacque Lefevre d’Etaples, as well as Scholastic texts, such as Peter Lombard’s Sentences which was the de facto textbook of medieval scholasticism. A catalog Bucer kept of his own books indicates that he also read extensively in Erasmus and began to study Greek and Hebrew at this time as well.[5]
When he moved to Heidelberg to continue his education, he was immersed in two very distinct authors. First, he became well-versed in Aquinas, the preeminent theologian of the Dominican tradition who would help Bucer formulate his understanding of the centrality of love of others to the Christian life. Second, he became increasingly fascinated with the writings of Erasmus. Erasmus presented the ideal blending of robust intellectualism with devout Christian piety. Indeed, it was a blending similar to what Bucer witnessed while growing up in Selestat. Erasmus also emphasized the simplicity of the Christian faith, advocating the philosophia Christi that emphasized faith and love, while deemphasizing external behaviors. Bucer adopted this simplicity in his own theology and it actually became one of his cornerstones. Indeed, he later wrote in a dialogue, “What is there that is useful or necessary for the Christian person to know that Erasmus Roterodamus did not fully teach almost excessively long before Luther?”[6] Moreover, in the 1510s and 20s, Erasmus was one of the foremost champions of church unity, making him a wonderful example for the future “fanatic for unity.”
[1] Martin Greschat, Martin Bucer, a Reformer and His Times (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004) p. 190.
[2] Ibid., p. 204.
[3] James Kittelson, “Martin Bucer and the ministry of the church,” in Martin Bucer, Reforming Church and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 83.
[4] Peter Matheson, “Martin Bucer and the Old Church,” in Martin Bucer, Reforming Church and Community, 5-16 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 7.
[5] Ibid., p. 19.
[6] Friedhelm Kruger, “Bucer and Erasmus.” Mennonite Quarterly Review 68 (1994) : 11.
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