Books
Geoffrey Dipple. ‘Just as in the Time of the Apostles’: Uses of History in the Radical Reformation. Kitchener, ON: Pandora Press, 2005.
Reviewer
Jonathan Seiling, Emmanuel College, Toronto School of Theology
In this survey and analysis of the use of history in the Radical Reformation, Geoffery Dipple examines, critiques, and ultimately revises the conventional understandings promoted and inherited by past generations of Reformation historians. Anabaptists and others who belonged to the ‘radical’ wing of the Reformation were presumed until now to have shared a foundational, if not naïve, conviction or project of restoring the Church to its primitive state, which is called “restitutionism.”
Although various stages of revisionist scholarship challenged who was part of the original, genuine core of the Anabaptist movement, and who was to be excluded from that core, all scholars generally accepted the claim that the Radicals were New Testament primitivists (25).
Rather than viewing the Radicals as blatant restitutionists, Dipple’s research qualifies such general understandings. The Radicals can now be viewed more adequately as having developed historical visions, not as the basis for their reform agenda but as a later stage in the argumentation and defence of the visions for the Church they had already set forth on other grounds. Although the Apostolic Age was exalted as glorious by most, no one saw it as a complete model for reform (57).
The study begins by outlining and critiquing the dominant view of the Radicals’ primitivism, whereby Frank Littell (1964) had made a distinction between the Radicals’ use of history and that of the other major reformers. Dipple contends that a closer examination of Erasmus shows that his call to return to primitive sources was not as extreme as Littell and others depicted, nor did it establish a basis for the Radicals to build extreme views of restitutionism. For Erasmus, Christ and the Apostles did not establish a Golden Age but merely laid the basis for the Church’s development (35). Also for Luther, no period in history is considered normative since apostasy is constant throughout Church history (45).
After setting the stage for how the Radicals both shared and departed from approaches taken by Reformation humanists and Magisterial Reformers, in chapter 2 Dipple examines Thomas Müntzer and Andreas Karlstadt as transitional figures essential to understanding the origins of the radical traditions; they looked to the early Church primarily, if not solely, as the model Spirit-filled Church. For Müntzer the Spirit had ultimate authority in identifying the true nature of the Church (87).
Following more assessment of prior historiographic claims about the early movement, Dipple delineates in chapter 4 the so-called Evangelical Anabaptist vision and use of history. He also attempts to offer nuances in his account of Anabaptists and Spiritualists, where earlier historiography may have made sharper distinctions.
In chapter 5, Dipple compares Caspar Schwenckfeld and Sebastian Frank, demonstrating the wide gulf in how these two exemplary Spiritualist leaders portrayed history. Due to the difficulty of finding much common ground among the Spiritualists themselves, distinctions between Anabaptists and Spiritualists appear even less tenable. Next comes a comparative assessment of key leaders, in which Dipple qualifies the element of Spiritualism in key centres of the Anabaptist movement, particularly through the Melchiorites. The last chapter analyses conflict and ‘dialogue’ in the formulation of the Radicals’ historical vision as the movement progressed into the seventeenth century confessional period.
Although Dipple’s usual rigor and thorough analysis of primary texts approaches the topic with careful, balanced argumentation, there is one point where closer analysis would have produced a different conclusion. Within his description of the movement following from Hut, Dipple compares Schiemer and Freisleben, but he seems not to have given direct attention to Freisleben’s tract, On the Genuine Baptism of John, Christ and the Apostles (1528), and assumes that Freisleben sought a “transition to a more Swiss brethren ecclesiology” (140-41).
However, Freisleben, rather than following Schiemer’s supposedly sectarian ecclesiology, was in continuity with the more provisional attitude among early Radicals who held the sort of non-sectarian, restitutionist convictions that historians like Stayer and Goertz believed were predominant in the proto-Anabaptists’ use of history (120). Freisleben’s abandonment of Anabaptism shortly after writing his tract was due to his disagreement with those wanting the movement to wend toward a sectarian ecclesiology.
Dipple offers an important corrective to a widely held view in the field of Anabaptist and Radical Reformation studies. It dovetails nicely with other similar studies of the use of history within various Reformation-era traditions. While it remains focused on the central question of the Radicals’ vision and use of history, his study does not include significant analysis of the Radicals’ use of patristic writers either for arguments of doctrine or ordinances. In this sense it serves as a helpful point of departure for further studies that may now emerge on the path Dipple has cleared. It may even shed light on future studies that would seek to clarify the Radicals’ view and use of Scripture.
In an era all too gradually recovering from the use and abuse of history under the ‘Anabaptist Vision,’ this study is also a reminder of the dangers of using historiography as the basis for promoting a contemporary ideological agenda.