Continued from part one.
Where Bucer would differ slightly from Erasmus is that in his emphasis on the simplicity of the Christian faith centered around faith and love, Bucer would come to see that love as inescapably public in nature. However, Bucer’s ethical religion should be distinguished from the external religion of the late medieval church. Bucer’s ethical Christianity was about loving neighbors and treating them well – a completely different emphasis from the externalized religion of the late medieval church that emphasized the ceremonial. The public nature of Bucer’s basic theology will also become a defining aspect of his theology. Bucer’s first and last published works were both dedicated to addressing the question of how Christian faith applies to relations with other people, something which by nature will define how Christian faith relates to the public sphere.
In his first book, Instructions in Christian Love published in 1523 he writes, “The most perfect and blessed condition on earth is that in which a man can most usefully and profitably serve his neighbor.”[1] Though much changed in the next 27 years of Bucer’s life, his fundamental conviction that the Christian life was inescapably public did not. In his final book, De Regno Christi, published in 1550, he emphasized the centrality of the Kingdom, and by implication the public consequences of Christian confession, in the preface. In explaining why he wrote the text he says, “Thus it may be better understood how salutary and necessary it is both for Your Majesty and all classes of men in his realm, thoughtfully, consistently, carefully, and tenaciously to work toward this goal, that Christ’s Kingdom may as fully as possible be accepted and hold sway over us.”[2]
As an outworking of this emphasis, Bucer saw not only the church as a central means of advancing the kingdom, but also the state. Bucer saw both church and state as working toward the end of enacting the Kingdom of Christ. This conviction came from both practical and theological reasoning. On a purely practical level, the reformation was never formally established in a city until the magistrate there banned the Catholic Mass. Therefore, on a very real level, the reformation’s effectiveness was limited by the state’s willingness to support it. Steven Ozment sums it up well, “The first and most important measure of a reform’s success is its ability to become law… To enshrine reform in law obviously requires political support.”[3] As a result, Bucer “struggled, out of profound theological conviction, for a harmonization, as far-reaching as possible, of the Christian and civil communities.”[4] In another text, Bucer describes his understanding of the relationship between the church and the civil community in no uncertain terms.
“The civil authorities, who exercise the sword and the highest outward power, are servants of God; they ought, therefore, to direct all their abilities, as God in his law has commanded and as the Spirit of Christ himself teaches and urges in all whom he leads, to the end that through their subjects God’s name be hallowed, his kingdom extended and his will fulfilled – so far as they can serve thereto by virtue of their office alone.”[5]
In Bucer’s understanding of the Christian life as inescapably public, the church was entrusted to care for the spiritual well-being of its subjects, through the preaching of the Gospel, giving of the sacrament, and through church discipline. Meanwhile, the state was responsible for governing in a way that enacted Christian principles in the public sphere. Indeed, if the state failed in this, then the spread of the gospel was hindered. It was for this reason that Bucer was able to later support the banishing of certain Anabaptist leaders from Strasbourg. Also factoring into Bucer’s understanding of the state’s role in advancing the Kingdom of Christ was Bucer’s understanding of God’s law as being, “implanted in all creation as the order of all being.”[6] Bucer understood the law as a rough statement of the Gospel in that it explained to people how the Christian life was to be lived, which of course was a central concern of Bucer’s. Bucer understood God’s law as giving Christians instructions in how to love others. Therefore, this understanding of the law was central to Bucer’s Christian theology.
Finally, because the center of Bucer’s theology is love for others, all other theological questions must take place within that context. This led to his theology becoming dialogical, meaning it was not crafted solely in isolated study, as was often the case with other reformers, but rather it was molded through conversation with other Christians, especially his fellow Strasbourg pastors Matthew Zell and Wolfgang Capito as well as the Wittenberg reformer Philip Melanchthon and the Genevan reformer, John Calvin, who was mentored by Bucer for three years in Strasbourg. Greschat captures the dialogical nature of Bucer’s theology well, saying “Dialogue played a central role in Bucer’s thought and work, not only as a literary form but almost as a principle: in this way, the rights and the elements of truth in different positions, groups and convictions within the church, and also in society in general, could find appropriate expression.”[7]
[1] Martin Bucer, Instructions in Christian Love. John Knox Press, Richmond: 1952, p. 28
[2] Martin Bucer, Library of Christian Classics, Melanchthon and Bucer, ed. Wilhelm Pauck, 19 (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1969), p. 175-6.
[3] Steven Ozment, Protestants, the Birth of a Revolution (New York: Doubleday, 1991). p. 89.
[4] Martin Greschat, “The relation between church and civil community in Bucer’s reforming work,” in Martin Bucer, Reforming Church and Community (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994) p. 26.
[5] Ibid., p. 17.
[6] Martin Greschat, “The relation between church and civil community in Bucer’s reforming work,” in Martin Bucer, Reforming Church and Community, p. 18.
[7] Martin Greschat, “The relation between church and civil community in Bucer’s reforming work,” in Martin Bucer, Reforming Church and Community, p. 31.
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