At this time his standpoint was strictly Lutheran, and he attacked the Sacramentarians and Anabaptists. But in his Turkenchronik (1530) his radicalism began to find expression. Here he treats of "ten or eleven nations or sects of Christianity" of which none possesses the full truth, and at the close he intimates that beside the three faiths, the Lutheran, the Zwinglian and the Anabaptist, there would soon arise a fourth, an invisible spiritual Church which would be governed by the eternal invisible word of God without any external means such as ceremonies, sacraments and sermons. Thus Franck appears as the representative of a mystic spiritualism which placed him in strong contrast with ecclesiastical Protestantism.
Ha, ha.....yet...
2 comments:
I like that expression: 'ecclesiastical Protestantism' - it puts a name to something that I am uncomfortable with. Now, being uncomfortable with an idea, a practise, an event, a group - anything - is always worth a little investigation. I mean, what is it that is uncomfortable? I may be bordering the limits of my being but, and I feel this is more the case here, it may be that inner development is hemmed and edged and otherwise restrained from some greater attainment by the institutions, practises and general authority emerging out of the institutions implied here. There is I suppose always something radical within the sphere of mysticism (& there are schools of mysticism that are completely adrift without even knowing it) and yet, if you understand these things - accepting that the mysteries of the Work certainly weave into mystical terrain - the issues are mostly pragmatic, being rooted in reality but reality a good way above imaginary I.
I think it's legitimate to be uncomfortable with ecclesiastical Protestantism (and any other branch of Christianity).
I'm often struck by the surprising fact that things like baptism being the entrance into the visible church have no actual biblical support. Or things like the fact that there is no set church polity outlined in the New Testament. It's all mostly hangover Jewish Old Testament ritual and human-nature legalism that takes over.
Also the fact that these things become, to use Bunyan's language, Villages of Morality and are not the Way. They become dead detours.
An Anglican judge said to Bunyan in a court of law "why don't you attend your local church?" -- Bunyan answered: "Because I see it no where commanded in Scripture."
What all DO have to be careful of is simply not having the Spirit and not seeing the Word as authority. If your authority is something other than the Word of God then you are in as empty a state as the Village of Morality types.
Also, one can of course see that there are - or can be - real Spirit-quickened (I'll put it that way) Christians in the more traditional churches and all that. But if it's not for you it just isn't. And any attempts by the church Christians to accuse you of this or that because you're not in some church is pure Romanist, Kingdom of Darkness tempting. It is a call to fear man more than God.
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