For the Bohemian Brethren, the contacts with the Magisterial Reformation produced mostly negative results. Swept up into the political struggle, the theology and ethics of the Reformation produced worldliness and compromise in their lives. The net sum was that their movement was forced to pay a vicious price in the aftermath of the Schmalkaldic War. Though attempting to keep their distance at times, they were now part of the larger Protestant movement and (willingly or not) they were caught up in the catastrophe and bloodletting known as The Thirty Years War.
The
resulting flawed epistemology born of Magisterial Reformation influence, led
them to champion Protestant princes like Gustavus Adolphus which all the more
invited the ire and backlash of the Habsburgs, Jesuits, and others. They
learned bitterly that Protestant warfare was in the end the same rape, theft,
and murder produced by all armies. In the lead up to what would later become
the Thirty Years War, the Hungarian-Calvinist hero, Stephen Bocskay (in his
capacity as Duke of Transylvania) invaded Habsburg-controlled Moravia in 1605.
Some of the Unitas thought he would be a liberator, a deliverer from their
persecutors. By the end of his campaign southern Moravia was devastated, the
Unitas suffering terribly as a result. Once again Protestant 'reform' and
statecraft proved unattractive and alien to New Testament Christianity.
And
yet because of the hardships they had endured, when the Habsburg Emperor Rudolf
signed the 1609 Letter of Majesty granting religious tolerance for Protestants,
the Unitas was quick to embrace the protections and sponsorship offered by
Protestant lords. Some of these same lords would revolt against Habsburg ruler
Ferdinand in 1618 and scheme to place the Palatinate Elector Frederick V on the
Bohemian throne in 1619. The result was the devastating and seminal Battle of
White Mountain in 1620, the opening salvo of The Thirty Years War. The brief Protestant
'golden age' of 1609-1620 quickly came to a violent end. The
Counter-Reformation instigated by Ferdinand would ravage Bohemia and all but
eliminate its Protestant populations.
As a
result of the context and the skewed thinking it produced, even renowned Brethren
leaders such as Jan Amos Komensky (Comenius) were held captive to hopes fed by
false prophets such as Nicolaus Drabik (Drabicius). At times it seemed as if whoever
predicted the fall of the Habsburgs, the restoration of Protestant Bohemia, and
the protected status of the Brethren was given a voice and treated as credible.
As a boy Comenius had suffered from the Bocskay invasion of Moravia in 1605,
and yet he continued to place his hope in a Protestant victory – this despite
the fact that more than once he experienced the 'blessings' of Protestant
armies come to aid his land. The Dutch soldiers who came to Prague in the
aftermath of the 1618 uprising and defenestration brutalised the population
leading to a peasant uprising against them.
Comenius
suffered terribly throughout his life and yet he had 'hitched his wagon' to the
Protestant cause. He also learned that as the leader of relatively small sect,
his mainstream Protestant brethren viewed him as a limited political asset and
consequently when the settlements came at Westphalia in 1648, the Brethren
received nothing and would continue to suffer from the Counter-Reformation
backlash.
It
didn't help when Comenius and other Brethren stood with and collaborated with
the Swedes who invaded the continent in defense of the Protestant cause – and
for their own Continental ambitions. The vicious Swedish campaign in Poland in
the late 1650's played a significant part in the population's final turn
against Protestantism.
The
overall story is both sad and inspiring. It's easy to judge in hindsight. It's
difficult to know how to respond to the situations they sometimes faced. The
world was aflame. And yet, the old paths and testimonies were abandoned. Suffering
was inevitable but under the flawed leadership of men like Comenius, a great
deal of integrity was lost.
Comenius
is fascinating and it's nearly impossible not to find his life story moving and
yet his overall testimony is marred. In addition to his Protestant politicking
and his adherence to numerous false prophets, he also employed a flawed
epistemology. It produced an irenic and accommodating theology which in some
respects is praiseworthy. For good or ill it certainly opened the door to the
Brethren's later embrace of Lutheran Pietism. But also rooted in Baconian
empiricism it set the Brethren of a different course in terms of worldly
knowledge and the type of philosophy, education and scholasticism that would
later embrace Biblical Criticism and the like. On the one hand he sought a
minimalist theological construct, and on the other he sought what could be
described as a unified theory in the realm of knowledge – a kind of Protestant
version of what the Roman Catholic Scholastics had sought in the medieval
period.
Lauded for his innovations and advocacy in the realm of
education, I'm not sure he was the best leader for the Brethren in that
context.
The
Rican work ends with the formation of Herrnhut at which point the Unitas begin
the transformation into the Moravians – in some respects a break with their
past and in other respects an improvement on the paths the group had taken
during its fellow-traveler years with the Magisterial Reformation.
The
book ends with a supplementary essay by Amedeo Molnar in which he discusses and
contrasts elements of the First and Second Reformations – a paradigm he is
known for. He correctly notes that the First Reformation was characterised by
Kingdom ethics as found in the Sermon on the Mount and he also identifies the
apocalyptic element to their thought but does not seem to connect its relation
to their separatism. He does identify the bourgeois element and character to
the Second or Magisterial Reformation and the consequent shift in ethics and
theology. He correctly notes one of the unique aspects to Unitas history is the
fact that the ethos of both the First and Second Reformation survived
congruently in Brethren thought for some time, making them unique.
However,
beyond this point I think many of his conclusions in the essay are wrong and
misguided. Strangely, he accuses the First Reformation of succumbing to
charismatic temptation while the Second Reformation was founded on the
principle of Sola Scriptura. This is odd because the First Reformation groups
were primarily driven by Scriptural Literalism and the undeveloped theology of
the Unitas (that Molnar is critical of) was a result of their commitment to
Biblicism and an unwillingness to speculate and rely on philosophy in the
development of theology.
Additionally,
it was only when the Unitas came into contact with and fell under the influence
of the Magisterial (Second) Reformation that its leadership fell prey to
Charismatic utterance – a chapter of the larger Reformation history that many
Confessionalists today choose to ignore. The extreme nature of the crisis particularly
during the devastation brought by the wars of religion produced this and we see
similar phenomenon in places like Germany, Scotland and among the Camisards. In
the end his essay is interesting but not above critique.
Overall
I heartily recommend the book. Like many other Church histories it lacks
general context and it could use more in the way of maps and a better index.
The lack of scholarly apparatus doesn't concern me but footnotes in this case
could be used to help provide some of the larger context in terms of general
history. Because it lacks this, the book will prove inaccessible to many
readers. Lacking a knowledge of the period's general history and geography the
book will prove for some readers, cryptic, difficult and more a burden than a
blessing.