In his treatise On
Spiritual Warfare, Chelčický expounded his pacifist non-resistant ethic
expressing criticism of both Catholic Just War Theory as well as the militancy
of the Taborites. He uses Paul's spiritual warfare paradigm in Ephesians 6 to
argue that our battles are with the demonic realm and are fought by faith. He
follows through on the implications of New Testament teaching with a thorough
criticism of Christendom and the violence inherent in the Church-sanctioned
feudal order. This violence extends to a discussion of economics and Chelčický
is unrelenting in his denunciations of a supposedly Christian system which in
the end used the sword to crush the weak and puts profits over the basic needs
of people. Again, it is no surprise that later Marxist historians took interest
in Chelčický and the Waldensians who (once again) espoused identical views on
these points. If we can risk making a judgment, Chelčický would share in many
of the criticisms levied by Marxists at the injustice of such an economic
system but he would not share in their conclusions, solutions or general
philosophic assumptions.
Chelčický's writings often returned to the critique of
Christendom, denouncing it as anti-Christian. Like Hus and Wycliffe, Chelčický
pursued questions regarding predestination and the Invisible Church in his On the Holy Church published in the
1420's. In this work he wrestled with the nature of the Church and the error of
equating it with a geographical or political boundary as opposed to a
separatist body marked primarily by New Testament obedience. On this point Chelčický
definitively breaks with the later Anabaptists and the Reformers for while he
posits a separatist Believer's Church he seems to understand the dynamics of
how this is manifested in the New Testament. Predestination was used by
Wycliffe, Hus and others as a means of attacking the Visible-Temporally focused
and ordered nature of Roman Catholicism but at the same time Chelčický insisted
the Church is visible and utilises meaningful concepts of how its identity and
status is manifested in time. Salvation for Chelčický is not rooted in an Evangelical-type
experience but is marked out by the rites of the New Testament accompanied by a
holy and obedient life. He differs in this respect from the later Magisterial
Reformers and Protestant Scholastics who would build vast interlocking
theological systems centered around doctrines such as Sola Fide or predestination. Chelčický seemed unconcerned with
erecting a system or in constructing a developed theology. Rather he wanted his
thought and life to reflect, mirror or parallel Biblical doctrine taken prima facie as opposed to being filtered
and re-worked into a coherent but necessarily modified form. He represents what
Rudolf Říčan
calls a 'consistent, straightforward, and uncompromising Biblicism'. This is
but one of many points in which Pre-Reformational proto-Protestants are by some
reckonings not 'Protestant' at all (formally speaking) but instead represent a
different strain of Christian thought, a protestant movement to be sure but of
a different order than the heirs of Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and Cranmer.
Following Wagner's biographical chronology, On the Triple Division of Society was Chelčický's
next work. In it he explicitly attacks the scholastic based and defended order
of Christendom, exposing the many scholastic errors concerning the
interpretations of Romans 13. Critical of the clergy, nobility and even
theologians like John Wycliffe, Chelčický identifies the Roman Catholic order
with the Whore of Revelation and accuses it of so polluting the Church as to
make it indistinguishable from the world. He targets Eusebius and the Donation
of Constantine which though later proved spurious nevertheless represented the
ideology, ethos and basis for Papal domination of Western Europe.
In this work Chelčický distances himself from not only
Christendom but later Marxists, Anarchists and Libertarians who would claim him
as a precursor. Chelčický certainly rejected feudalism but his main contention
with the system was that it purported to be Christian. His interests were not
in asserting the rights of class or in dismantling government. On the contrary
he believed government necessary. Cynical regarding human nature and capacity Chelčický
recognises the need for a state but believes Christians should have nothing to
do with it.
In subsequent works he would tackle issues surrounding
the Eucharist and the various controversies which Hussite factionalism had
generated. The spectrum was broad ranging from the more or less Catholic
Utraquists who retained Transubstantiation to other Utraquist factions who held
to views similar to what Luther would advocate more than a century later. The
Taborites anticipated the sacramental-symbolic views of many later Protestants
and the Pikart faction went even further and embraced a purely symbolic commemorative
view represented in our day by most Evangelicals and Baptists.
While the debate raged and synodical meetings were
convened, Chelčický played his part even in one well known instance in which
the Taborite Bishop Mikuláš met him near a
fish pond in 1422 on the road outside Chelčice, a place that can still be seen
today. There's something almost poetic about it, powerful men meeting in halls,
men with swords and banners, men contending for power in the kingdom... and
then there's Petr Chelčický
being visited by some of these same figures but not in a grand hall. No, Chelčický's
venue is bucolic, in the shaded paths among the woods and fields of Southern
Bohemia. It is from there that he speaks to the world.
In the end Chelčický held to a substantive presence
view of the Eucharist though he refused to be categorised as being in agreement
with either the Centrist Utraquists or Wycliffe. Though his views were more or
less the same, his road to understanding the doctrine was not through
philosophical intricacies and metaphysical dissection but through submission to
Divine mystery and revelation. The debates are tedious and it's clear there
were misunderstandings and occasions of people talking past one another. Chelčický
harboured certain fears regarding symbolic views that congregants were
downplaying the necessity of continuous grace and calls to perseverance. Their
symbolism resulted (he believed) from what today we would call an over-realised
eschatology, believing that we could already live as those in glory, freed from
all sin (and its power) and all fear of condemnation and apostasy. He believed
it led to license and there were problems on the Hussite fringe with severe
antinomianism, in one case so severe that Jan Žižka would
lead a Taborite army to destroy a group known as the Adamites who had fallen
into gross sin.
Throughout the course of these debates in must again be
noted that while Chelčický anticipates many doctrines later associated with the
Anabaptists, he's not one of them. His views of the Sacraments are at odds with
Anabaptist thought, a point that comes out clearly in Wagner's biography.
Affiliated with Baptist institutions and writing for a series on the study of
Anabaptist and Mennonite History, Wagner takes sharp issue with Chelčický at
several points. He fundamentally disagrees with him regarding the Supper and
accuses of him of inconsistency in that he clearly retained paedobaptistic
views. Wagner erroneously assumes that all such views are part and parcel
expressions of Constantinian Sacralist Christianity and Chelčický should have
logically eschewed them. But Chelčický was far too grounded in the Scripture
and less concerned with philosophical coherence putting him at odds with the
rationalistic and 'common sense' proclivities of Anabaptists and the later
Baptists that would attempt to 'claim' him as one of their own. He knew that
paedobaptism could be abused but the problem with its abuse was not the
doctrine itself but how it was appropriated and thus distorted by Constantinian
Christendom. Under that model infant baptism was merely a rite of citizenship.
This Chelčický rightly rejected.
Again, it is only among the Waldensians that Chelčický
finds a parallel. By later Reformational standards the Waldensians were too
Catholic and yet clearly the group or more properly groups were unified in
their rejection of Rome and Papal Supremacy. They along with Chelčický
represented a theology that would more or less disappear in the centuries
following the Reformation. The ideas survived but were never unified in a
particular faction or confessional body. Chelčický advocated for a Believer's
Church but at the same time held to both a substantive presence in the
Eucharist, paedobaptism and he also believed penance (which obviously was for
him more than a mere change of mind) could also be considered a sacrament.
However he divorced it from the priesthood. Penance was not something to be
prescribed nor was there any need for sacramental absolution. Rather he
believed that repentance should manifest itself in demonstrative action, a view
easily verified by Scripture even though later Protestants would quibble or at
times express hostility to such notions. Petr wasn't afraid to follow the
Scriptures even if it seemed like he was conceding something to the Catholic
order and yet at the same time (as Říčan notes) his Biblicism was committed to the principle of
rejecting 'all which does not agree with Christ's word'.
Speaking further regarding the sacraments, Chelčický
was not a Donatist in the sense of tying efficacy to the moral character of the
administrator. While in many ways his views vis-à-vis Christendom smacked of
Donatism, when it came to ecclesiology his views are closer to Augustine. He
believed in ordination but did not grant it the sacramental character that Rome
did. Again, as Wagner will admit this view finds it only parallel among the
Waldensians. Chelčický also denied marriage to be 'sacramental' in nature and
echoing other Hussites he deemed Confirmation as being without basis. This
author is unaware of whether or not Chelčický ever addressed the topic of
paedocommunion. The ancient practice (which continues today in the East) fell
out of favour in the West during the Scholastic period. Certain Utraquist
groups had revived it and Chelčický's theology would certainly seem to favour
it but I do not know if it was practiced by the congregations he had contact
with.
In the Postilla sermons
(written about 1434) Chelčický dealt
with a variety of topics. The Taborite movement had been decimated at Lipany by
The Bohemian League an alliance of Utraquists and Catholics. While Tabor would
survive until the 1450's the movement was effectively broken and many Taborite
and other Hussite rural cells were now isolated. Chelčický (it would seem) was
producing sermons not only for his local congregations but for the larger
broken communities of Bohemian dissenters among which the sermons were
circulated. In addition to outlining the basic concepts of Scripture, Chelčický
denounces Purgatory, priestly intercessory prayers, Christians utilising
violence and even the many ecclesiastical and liturgical traditions which had
crept into common practice. Rejecting the Mass, Chelčický also criticised the
use of organs and choirs, certain forms of fasting, processions, saint worship
and pilgrimages. He continued in his criticism of Christendom and a system in
which professed Christians sat in luxurious ease while their brethren engaged
in back-breaking labours to support the system and then died in their
wars. Identifying with the poor, he
attacked the lords and burghers and certainly the clergy. Chelčický believed
that salvation was not to be found in the mainstream of Christendom but in
living a separated cross-bearing life.
In his apocalyptic tracts Chelčický identifies the
Papacy with the antichrist and blames Rome for turning Christianity into a
wasteland. He lays out not only the state of things spiritually speaking but
argues for what Wagner calls an 'ahistorical' idealism and longing that
despises the mundane order. Of course what Wagner labels as ahistorical impulse
is in reality a deep appreciation for the ethos of New Testament eschatology.
Apocalypticism always contains the implicit danger of a radical response, of
groups responding to the world crisis with violence, as a last-stand defence or as a means, a catalyst to foment the final confrontation. Chelčický can never
be charged with either of these all too common extremes. He was unwavering in
his commitment to nonresistance and pacifism and that Christians were called to
suffer and take up the cross before ever lifting the sword.
His final work of consequence was The Net of Faith written sometime around 1440. This work summarises
his previous efforts. Using the drag-net imagery from the Gospels, the Church
is identified with the net that is (according to Chelčický) rent asunder by two
great whales, the pope and the emperor, the foundations of Christendom. The
True Church is identified as a persecuted remnant in no need of princes and
executioners to enforce Church discipline. The Church is of a different order
and secular society cannot be ruled by Christian law. Likewise the secular
order is at cross purposes with that of the Church. Never shall the twain meet
and yet Christians are called to submit and suffer when necessary. The state is
violence and thus Christians cannot participate in it.
He deals with Constantine and the Donation and the
changes wrought by the Christianisation of the Roman Empire. He castigates the
scholastics who framed the speculative and fictitious theology that supported
it and their perverse reasoning that justified Christendom and its system of
violence, wars and crusade. He condemns the nobles for their violence and
oppression of the poor, for their bogus claims of Christian profession, for
their high living and false sense of honour.
Chelčický also levies criticism at city life and the growing middle
class. He attacks the influence of money and the avarice of nobility, merchants
and mendicant orders.
The parochial system comes under scrutiny, which by
implication includes the whole order of Christendom. The idea that the Church
is integrated within the Feudal order, within the state, is to Chelčický,
nothing less than apostasy. People are forced to attend out of political
obligation and coercion and the false Church seeks to keep them entertained
with ostentatious ceremony and entertainments.
Chelčický was effectively advocating for what would
become the Free Church pattern, an idea that wouldn't return in earnest until
the 19th century. Even 16th and 17th century
Congregationalism would not really grasp this. Practically speaking American
congregations were forced into the Free Church pattern but it all too often
reflected a political reality resulting from the First Amendment, not a deliberate separatism. There are some
exceptions of course but for Europe in particular the Free Church ideal did not
really come into play until the 19th century.
Chelčický would live out his remaining years in near
rural seclusion though he still took great interest in the affairs of the
Church. The political compromises of the 1430's allowed for dissenters to live
in peace though the Utraquists continued to turn in a Rome-ward direction and
eventually even some of the centrist Utraquists fell under difficulty. After
more than two decades of political turmoil the decimated Taborites went
underground or died out. Through marriage to the Luxembourgs the Habsburgs
gained control of the Bohemian throne, a key political position in that it (the
Bohemian crown) held an Electoral vote in the Holy Roman Empire.
The Utraquist George of Podebrady seized the throne
upon the death of the childless Ladislaus the
Posthumous and would rule Bohemia for the next thirteen years. His reign
was marked by war as Matthias Corvinus of Hungary invaded attempting once more
to return Bohemia to the Roman fold. Podebrady installed Utraquist Jan Rokycana
as Archbishop of Prague and yet at the same time attempted to annihilate the
Taborite remnant.
It was in this environment that Rokycana's nephew, one Řehoř was leading a new group of separatists and through his
uncle's urging they came into contact with the Brethren of Chelčice and
their leader, Petr. The subsequent history isn't entirely clear. They were
greatly impressed with Chelčický's
positions but apparently chose to relocate to Kunvald on the estate of
Podebrady in the north near the Polish border. It was there in 1457 that they
formed the Jednota Bratrská (Unitas Fratrum in Latin) or as it is
known in the English speaking world, the Unity of the Brethren. This Utraquist
dissident group which may have contained Taborite elements would centuries
later become known as the Moravian Church.
Greatly influenced by Chelčický, they would
subsequently abandon most of his ideas as well as those of the similar minded
founder Řehoř. Chelčický didn't live to see it though. He died sometime around 1460,
his last work being dated to 1457, right around the time the Unitas group was
forming up and settling in Kunvald.
Lukas
of Prague would become one of the key leaders in the 1490's and would take them
in a different direction. While the group maintained its pacifism, Lukas would
take them back into mainstream non-separatist Christian circles. They were
still subject to persecution but ideologically the Unitas Fratrum reneged on Řehoř
and Chelčický's rejection of
Christian statecraft. This precipitated a split and the Minor Party continued
on (for a time) holding to Řehoř's and Chelčický's teachings.
Lukas would denounce Chelčický, slander his character
and it was later under his leadership that the Unitas would come into contact
with Martin Luther and the Reformation. The Unitas Fratrum would suffer greatly
in the wars that followed the Reformation, especially in the Thirty Years War
and the brutal Jesuit campaign of Counter-Reformation that followed in its
wake. They were reduced to desperate conditions literally living in caves and
forests and many fled to Poland, Holland and elsewhere. As a group they would
eventually find a refuge in Saxony in the early 18th century. It was
there they came into contact with Lutheran Pietism and would become the
Moravians we know today.
While much of the theology changed, the peace testimony
of Chelčický survived and played out in the missionary movements on the
American frontier and elsewhere. It was the Moravian missionaries who were able
to flourish among the American Indians as a result of their non-political agenda,
a mindset which divorced their missionary work from the assumptions of Western
Christendom. They sought to make converts but also respected the Indians and
their culture and in no way did the missionaries act as agents of imperialism.
Consequently the Moravians along with the Quakers were virtually the only
Christian groups the Indians came to respect and at times even invite into
their villages.
Chelčický's ideas about the Kingdom and nonresistance
would be picked up or echoed by the Anabaptists in their rejection of the
Magisterial Reformation. Anabaptist origins are obscure but it's not
unreasonable to believe they emerged in ways similar to what happened with the
formation of the Unity of the Brethren in Bohemia. Parties of dissidents came
together and were influenced by different camps and thinkers. The 15th
century was a time of Inquisitorial persecution and the Reformation of the 16th
century generated a certain degree of instability and chaos. Groups formed and
broke and people were on the move. The Anabaptists which appeared at this time
would repudiate many theological points once held by the Waldensians and Chelčický
but in other ways they carried on in the same spirit... at least for a season.
They too had their defectors and in the early days there were militants as seen
during the events surrounding the German Peasant's Revolt of 1525-1526.
Chelčický's influence lives on but as time and
situations change, the nature and sources of his thought are ripe for
misunderstanding. Marxists see the genesis of class warfare in his thought.
Anarchists believe he represents an early stage of their paradigm. The
Anabaptists and Moravians are most likely to be interested in him for
historical reasons and yet he doesn't quite fit their models either. He
represents a type of Protestantism that existed for centuries before the
Reformation and yet largely disappeared with its arrival. Some would regard Chelčický's
views as undeveloped, primitive and inadequate, even extreme and thus they
might argue his views were rightly superseded. They remain historically
interesting but irrelevant and obsolete.
On the contrary I would argue that Chelčický and the
Proto-Reformers represent a true spirit of Biblicist Christianity, one that was
somewhat lost during the Reformation, obscured and eventually choked. There was
something of a revival or return to his Biblicist ethos in the 19th
century but it too was subsumed by cultural and ecclesiastical influences. Has
the time come for Chelčický to be reconsidered once more? Has the time come for
the Waldensians to be revisited? Christendom and Christianity are presently in
a state of turmoil and trauma. Ideas are moving rapidly and sweeping changes
are being made across the Christian spectrum. Some are calling for a return to
the Confessions and to the historical roots of the Reformation. This might help
to address some problems but more
likely than not it will only start the cycle over again and repeat the same
errors. Chelčický's path, while not an easy one and one that will never be
popular with the masses should be reconsidered. Contrary to some thinkers he
does not represent an anomalous blip on the historical perspective but the
culmination of pre-Reformation Protestantism, a Biblicist Christianity that is
of a different order than the Magisterial Protestant factions born in the wake
of 1517. There's a lost heritage to be found and one that has been deliberately
ignored and obscured by many a historian. It is not part of the Western
cultural mainstream and thus its mindset, questions and answers are of a
different nature.
The time has come to consider these questions once
again and it is our prayer that the spirit of the Waldensian and Chelčice Brethren will once more inhabit the
Earth and bear witness to wayward Christian brethren and the myriad enemies of
Christ's Church, many of whom are presently leading denominations and
institutions even within conservative Protestantism. Our world is more complex
than Chelčický's 15th century, but the principles are the
same and in reality so are most of the actors. Though the number of factions
appears to be numerous beyond count in reality they can easily be reduced to
the handful of groupings that surrounded the debates and trials of the Hussite
Crisis.
These are things to consider and pray about as we work
through Scripture, the history of the Church and as we contemplate the
difficulties and spiritual battles of our own day.
__________________
Select Bibliography:
Rudolf Říčan, The History of the
Unity of the Brethren,
first published in 1957 (translated 1992) The Moravian Church in America,
Bethlehem Pennsylvania
Karl Kautsky, Communism
in Central Europe in the Time of the Reformation, 1897, T. Fisher Unwin,
London England
Leo Tolstoy, The
Kingdom of God is Within You, 1894, William Heinemann, London England
Howard Kaminsky, A
History of the Hussite Revolution, 1967, University of California Press,
Oakland California
Murray L. Wagner, Petr Chelčický, 1983, Herald Press,
Scottdale Pennsylvania
Malcolm Lambert, Medieval
Heresy, 1977 (3rd edition 2002), Blackwell Publishing, Hoboken
New Jersey
Peter Chelčický/Howard Kaminsky, Treatises on Christianity and the Social Order, 1964, University of
Nebraska Press, Lincoln Nebraska
See also: