Thomas Müntzer (c. 1489–1525) was a university-trained pastor and theologian. Martin Luther recommended him to be the pastor of St Catharine’s Church in Zwickau (117 km south of Leipzig). There he came into contact with three fiery souls, Nicholas Storch (c. 1500–25), Thomas Dreschel, and Marcus Thomas Stübner who became known as the Zwickau Prophets. The prophets had a highly realized eschatology. They expected that the visible church should be pure, i.e., unmixed with any unbelievers or hypocrites. That eschatology and their reading of redemptive history (in which they set the New Covenant against the Old Testament in substance) led them also to reject infant baptism. Müntzer followed them in this and like many others in the radical and Anabaptist movement(s), he also rejected the Protestant doctrine of the Word and Spirit, i.e., their conviction that the Scriptures are the unique and uniquely authoritative, saving Word of God containing the law and the gospel (sola Scriptura). He fled to Prague, where he wrote his Prague Manifesto. After a period of wandering we find him in Allstedt, in 1523 where he continued to develop his eschatological and apocalyptic vision for society and the church. He published increasingly radical texts in this period leading Luther to call for him to be tried by the theology faculty of Wittenberg.

As the pressure mounted upon the Elector Saxony (Johann Friederich I, 1503-54) to resolve the growing crisis Müntzer made matters worse. So, on July 13, 1524, the elector, the chancellor, and others gathered in the castle, in Allstedt (about an hour west of Leipzig), to hear Müntzer preach. He took as his text Daniel 2. He denounced the theologians of Wittenberg, Luther chief among them, as fat and lazy. They fancied themselves keepers of Scripture but they did not those “divine secrets” that God reveals to his friends.He mocked the expository preaching of the Scriptures as “babbling” in favor of being “‘overshadowed’ by the power of the divine Word.” In the words of Hans-Jürgen Goertz, for Müntzer, “it was not Holy Scripture, but the divine spirit which was the sole reliable authority. Scripture was important to Müntzer because it bore witness to the way of salvation, but it was not itself that way…he distinguished sharply between spiritual and creaturely realms: salvation springs from the spirit not Scripture, since Scripture in essence, is creaturely.”

In his Allstedt sermon on Daniel 2, he proclaimed that the Spirit of God is now actively revealing the Word. “Therefore,” he implored, “my precious rulers of Saxony, step up boldly onto the cornerstone (Christ)”; “you must do it for the sake of the gospel.” Now is not the time for grace and love but for the elect to suffer “a heavy cross and much distress.” Now is the time for the enemies of Christ to be brought before him and slain (Luke 19:27). Now is the time for the altars and images of idols to be destroyed and burned. He called upon the princes to act now lest the Lord remove their sword from them. He positioned them as a latter-day Nebuchadnezzar and offered himself as their Daniel, “for the godless have no right to live except as the elect are willing to grant it to them.”

Even before the Allstedt sermon, he had elaborated doctrine of Word and Spirit in his 1521 Prague Manifesto, where he announced a “new song” [“of praise of the Holy Spirit”] and recalled bitterly how the ministry of the “pestiferous priestlings” had been utterly useless to him because they had not yet “emptied” their minds nor had then been filled seven times by the seven-fold Spirit. All they had were the “icy words of Scripture,” stolen from the biblical books. They are false prophets to whom God has not spoken, who deceive God’s people, usurp God’s words, because “they deny that my spirit speaks to men down the centuries.” They scorn those “who affirm that the holy spirit speaks, and testifies to us…”. Those false liars and their “stinking lips” are ripe for judgment. These men “live out this abomination, breathe it forth, and vomit it out. What mortal man would call them chaste dispensers of the manifold grace of God and the undaunted preachers the live, and not the dead word? For they have been ordained at the hands of the papist corrupter and anointed with the old of sinners that flows down from the head to the heels.” “In short,” he wrote, “these men have a lying pen, for the reject the living word (which no created being can understand unless it is ready to suffer), and the usurp words which they will never ever hear themselves.”

Luther reacted to pointing him toward Scripture and Müntzer reacted by radicalizing even further. “If someone had never had sight or sound of the Bible at any time in his life he could still hold the one true Christian faith because of the true teaching of the spirit, just like all those who composed the holy Scripture without any books at all.” By Easter, 1525 we find Müntzer at the vanguard of a widespread and violent peasant revolt in Thuringia (in central Germany) and the Black Forest. He took leadership of the rebellion and cast it in eschatological terms.

Müntzer portrayed himself as the Noah of this new age and the judgment floodgates were about to open. When the princes had enough the struck back with savage intensity, murdering as many as 6,000 peasants. Blood ran in the streets. Müntzer, who had escaped, fell ill, was captured, interrogated, tried, tortured, and put to death. To the end he stood by his vision of himself as a latter-day Josiah and of the righteousness of imposing the eschatological order on the basis of the Mosaic laws. The spirit of “theonomy” is neither new nor Reformed.

Guy de Bres’ Response

Müntzer is instructive in a variety of ways. First, he illustrates several ways in which at least some of the Anabaptist radicals differed from the magisterial (i.e., the Lutheran and Reformed) Reformation. Müntzer and others rejected the Protestant view of Scripture. Müntzer‘s doctrine of revelation bears rather more resemblance to Karl Barth’s (and the PCUSA Confession of 1967) than it did to that of the Augsburg Confession (1530) or the Belgic Confession (1561). Indeed, the author of the Belgic Confession, Guido de Brès (1522–67) wrote a treatise on the Anabaptists before he wrote the Belgic Confession and in treatise he interacted with Müntzer‘s doctrine of revelation.

He began his critique by focusing on Müntzer‘s claim “that ministers and preachers of the gospel were not sent of God, but are ministers of the dead letter.” He objected to their claim “That the writing of the Old Testament, and preaching of the eternal word, was not the word of God, but was only the testimony of thereof; and that we must search for the word in the internal part, i.e., in our hearts, where God hath put it, that we need not go far to seek it from without us…”

There be some who have daily some new command from God, to make known unto their brothers and strangers. Some are rapt into an ecstasy, and have their appearance and countenance changed, lying upon the ground certain hours. Some Tremble and Quake for two or three hours together; after that, when they are come unto themselves, they prophesy and speak strange things, as if they had been in another world, or as if they had fallen from out of heaven: and they account to have that in common with the Apostle, when he was taken up into the third heaven.

As for that which they tax the ministers, to be ministers of the dead letter, one may plainly see the Lord’s taking vengeance upon the outrage offered to his holy Word; smiting them with the spirit of giddiness, for having despised the true and only means of coming unto God, which is the Scripture and the Word of God. In the passage of the Corinthians where Paul says, ‘The letter kills, and the Spirit quickens;’ let any closely consider, against whom the Apostle disputes, and they will understand his drift. It is very evident that Paul in this place, had to do with false Apostles, who preached and extolled the Law without Christ, and caused the people to recoil from salvation purchased by Christ, and the grace of the new covenant, whereunto the Lord had promised to write his Law in the heart of the faithful: the Law then being separated from Christ, as a body without a soul; and nothing comes from it but death, to those that are under it: it does nothing but beat and strike the ears, without any quickening the soul, until by faith we are sent from it to Christ, as from the
usher to the Master; and then the Law will be found such as David sings it, ‘The Law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul; the testimony of the Lord is faithful, making Wise the simple: the commandments of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart,’ etc. Thus, must we understand how it is said, ‘The Letter kills:’ Paul called the Law, ‘The killing Letter,’ and says, ‘The Spirit quickens,’ i.e., The Ministry of the Gospel, which he opposed to the naked Law; and he himself calls his preaching ‘The Ministry of the Spirit.’

For de Brès, who represented the Reformed consensus, two of the great problems with Müntzer’s theology, piety, and practice were that he did not distinguish between the law and the gospel (remember, de Brès was a Reformed minister, not a Lutheran) and that Müntzer was what we today (after Topeka and Azusa Street) call “Pentecostal” or “Charismatic” in his theology, piety, and practice. In de Bres’ account we recognize something like Pentecostals and Charismatics call “tongues,” and being “slain in the Spirit,” and, of course, the appeal to continuing, extra-canonical revelation. Müntzer flatly rejected sola Scriptura. He marginalized Scripture and expository preaching as a “dead letter.” He appealed to personal, private, continuing revelation and de Brès, like Calvin, and the rest of the Reformed rejected both of these views as gross errors.

De Bres responded forcefully by arguing that Timothy was not instructed to receive new revelations, but rather to be studious in the Scriptures. “It is not the office of the Holy Spirit, that which Christ promised, to dream of dreams, of new and unknown revelations, or to hold forth new doctrine: but it is the work of the Spirit of God, to confirm us in that which he has already spoken, by the Prophets and Apostles, seeing also that the Lord promises not to send us another doctrine, saying, “Hold fast that which you have until I come, Rev. 2.24, Gal. 1.8,9…”. He attacked Müntzer as a false prophet, equating him with Mohammed. He appealed to Colossians 2:18 and Jeremiah 23 to warn against false prophets and he appealed to the objectivity of the Scripture as the norm against which to judge the claims to new revelation.

In de Brès’ rejection of Müntzer’s theology, piety, and practice we get a window into the original (and inherent) conflict between the Reformation doctrine of Word and Spirit and its consequent piety, and practice and the original (and inherent) conflict between Pentecostalism/Charismatic theology, piety, and practice. Luther famously critiqued the Anabaptists as having swallowed the Holy Spirit “feathers and all.”

The wall between the two systems, the Reformation Word and Spirit system versus the Pentecostal/Charismatic system remained fairly stout through into the middle of the 20th century. With rise of and evangelical incorporation of the “Charismatic” movement (as distinct from the Topeka/Azusa Street Pentecostals) followed by so-called “Third Wave” Pentecostalism (e.g., the “Signs and Wonders” movement, the Kansas City Prophets et al.) the wall separating the tiny little confessional Reformed world in North America (and elsewhere) from the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements has developed some serious leaks. Many of the so-called “New Calvinists” take for granted aspects of the Pentecostal/Charismatic paradigm. It is entirely uncontroversial in their circles to claim to receive continuing revelation or even to perform quasi-Apostolic “miracles” (if one has enough faith). Indeed, controversy seems to arise mainly when the confessional Reformed remanent objects to the attempted synthesis of Müntzer’s theology, piety, and practice with Calvin’s but object we must and we shall.

Calvin’s Response

Above we considered Thomas Müntzer’s continuationist (as its called now) doctrine of revelation, his relation of the Word of God to the Holy Spirit in contrast to that of the author of the Belgic Confession (1561), Guido (or Guy) de Brès. John Calvin, however, made the same arguments against the same groups. E.g., in Institutes 1.9.1 he attacked, in the very same terms used by de Brès, the notion that there is special revelation from the Spirit beyond the Holy Scriptures. In the sections just prior he argued extensively against the Romanists that one of the principal offices of the Spirit is to confirm the Scriptures and to illumine but not to supplant or even to augment the Scriptures. Indeed, he accused those who argued for continuing revelation beyond Scripture of forsaking Scripture and of seeking another way of reaching God. They have been “carried away with frenzy.” Those who make such claims (of receiving continuing revelation) are “giddy” and haughty. They exalt “the teaching office of the Spirit” but “despise all reading” and “laugh at the simplicity of those who, as they express it, still follow the dead and killing letter.” Willem Balke summarizes Calvin’s critique of this aspect of Anabaptist theology (from the 1539 Institutes): “Calvin insists that the opinion of the Holy Spirit is revealed in Scripture and that the Holy Spirit is not imparted except through the Scriptures. Revelation is no ongoing process. Revelations beyond Scripture can just as well originate in the spirit of Satan as in the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit is inseparably bound to holy Scripture.”¹

Balke was right. In the 1559 edition of the Institutes, Calvin preserved these arguments.

But I should like to know from them what this spirit is by whose inspiration they are borne up so high that they dare despise the Scriptural doctrine as childish and mean. For if they answer that it is the Spirit of Christ, such assurance is utterly ridiculous. Indeed, they will, I think, agree that the apostles of Christ and other believers of the primitive church were illumined by no other Spirit. Yet no one of them thence learned contempt for God’s Word; rather, each was imbued with greater reverence as their writings most splendidly attest. And indeed it had thus been foretold through the mouth of Isaiah. For where he says, “My Spirit which is in you, and the words that I have put in your mouth, will not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your seed … forever” [Isa. 59:21 p., cf. Vg.], he does not bind the ancient folk to outward doctrine as if they were learning their ABC’s; rather, he teaches that under the reign of Christ the new church will have this true and complete happiness: to be ruled no less by the voice of God than by the Spirit. Hence we conclude that by a heinous sacrilege these rascals tear apart those things which the prophet joined together with an inviolable bond. Besides this, Paul, “caught up even to the third heaven” [2 Cor. 12:2], yet did not fail to become proficient in the doctrine of the Law and the Prophets, just as also he urges Timothy, a teacher of singular excellence, to give heed to reading [1 Tim. 4:13]. And worth remembering is that praise with which he adorns Scripture, that it “is useful for teaching, admonishing, and reproving in order that the servants of God may be made perfect” [2 Tim. 3:16–17 p.]. What devilish madness is it to pretend that the use of Scripture, which leads the children of God even to the final goal, is fleeting or temporal?

Then, too, I should like them to answer me whether they have drunk of another spirit than that which the Lord promised his disciples. Even if they are completely demented, yet I do not think that they have been seized with such great dizziness as to make this boast. But in promising it, of what sort did he declare his Spirit would be? One that would speak not from himself but would suggest to and instill into their minds what he had handed on through the Word [John 16:13]. Therefore the Spirit, promised to us, has not the task of inventing new and unheard-of revelations, or of forging a new kind of doctrine, to lead us away from the received doctrine of the gospel, but of sealing our minds with that very doctrine which is commended by the gospel

In Institutes 1.9.2 he argued that we know what the Spirit says by reading the Scriptures. In 1.9.3 he made the same argument as de Brès regarding the Spirit and the Letter. “They censure us for insisting upon the letter that kills,2 but in this matter they pay the penalty for despising Scripture. For it is clear enough that Paul there [2 Cor. 3:6] contends against the false apostles, who indeed, in commending the law apart from Christ, were calling the people away from the benefits of the New Testament, in which the Lord covenants “to engrave his law in the inward parts of believers, and to write it in their hearts” [Jer. 31:33 p.].”

This background helps us to understand what the Reformed churches mean when we confess, in Belgic Confession art. 7, “We believe that those Holy Scriptures fully contain the will of God, and whatsoever man ought to believe unto salvation is sufficiently taught therein.” We know what the Spirit says through the Scriptures. We are convinced from Scripture that the Scripture is sufficient for the Christian faith and the Christian life. This essential to the Protestant doctrine Sola scriptura.

Reformed Theology Is Not Pentecostal

Our conviction of the sufficiency of Scripture places us at odds with much (if not most) of contemporary evangelical expressions of Christianity, over which has flowed a tsunami of neo-Pentecostalism beginning in 1800 with the Cane Ridge revival and again in the Topeka, Kansas and Azusa Street (Los Angeles) revivals just after the turn of the 20th century, and again with the rise of the Charismatic movement in the 1970s and Third Wave Pentecostalism.

The temptation to try to synthesize the Reformed doctrines of grace with Charismatic/Pentecostal spirituality and piety is almost too much for some. Recently I became aware of an article from last November featuring a leading “New Calvinist” who confesses that being “Reformed and charismatic” (in the theological sense) makes him an “orphan.” I submit that he is wrong. It makes one a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a “Reformed charismatic.”

The historical background of the Reformed rejection of continuationism or any other kind of special, extra-canonical revelation is vital in this case because our writer claims that the Reformed confession (theology, piety, and practice) somehow became “divorced” from charismatic (continuationist) theology, piety, and practice. This is historical nonsense. It is theologically untenable, and practically unstable. Yet, because this claim reflects the views and practice at least a few of the leading, influential self-described “New Calvinists” it is important to address it.

Let us change the metaphor. The problem is not that there has been a divorce but rather that this writer, like others, seeks to make a marriage that cannot be. The desire to merge Reformed and Pentecostal/Charismatic theology, piety, and practice rests on a deeply flawed assumption: that Reformed theology inherently lacks something that the Pentecostal/Charismatic theology, piety, and practice supplies. It does not. Rather, what is true is that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements belong to one paradigm, are two closely related species of one genus, and the Reformed theology, piety, and practice belongs to another paradigm, another genus.

A Difference In Paradigms

The Pentecostal/Charismatic paradigm is a species of mysticism and Pietism, the quest to experience God in ways he has not ordained. I call it the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience (QIRE). The Reformed have a high view of the person and work of the Holy Spirit—after all we credit the Spirit with granting new life sovereignly, freely; with granting us union with Christ through faith, for our sanctification, with feeding believers mysteriously on the “proper” and “natural” body of blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, for our glorification—but the Reformed theology and piety is often judged for not being Pentecostal. That is like judging a Ferrari for not being a Ford. They are both autos but they are quite different. Of course the Reformed reject the Pentecostal/Charismatic phenomena of “speaking in tongues,” and “being slain in the Spirit,” and of continuing revelation. We are satisfied with God’s Word written, inspired by the Holy Spirit himself and given to the church through the prophets and apostles and the continuationists frankly are not. Why else would they claim to have continuing revelations? I have been in the presence of continuationists who claimed to have an extra-canonical revelation from the Spirit, which they regarded as equally binding with Holy Scripture, to which none of the rest of the Christian world had access. I have read contiuationists make tortured arguments in defense of admittedly fallible revelations allegedly given by the Holy Spirit himself. None of this has anything to do with the Reformed understanding and confession of God’s Word nor with our piety, which is organized around the Word and the Spirit operating through the Word and through the holy sacraments. It has nothing to do with our practice, which is the gather in public worship, decently and in order, to hear the Word of God read and preached, to respond to God’s Word with his Word, and to receive the gospel made visible in the sacraments. In all this we are utterly dependent upon the free, sovereign work of the Spirit but in none of it do we seek to imitate Thomas Müntzer or his modern successors.

We wish our Pentecostal/Charismatic friends God’s blessing but we also wish that they would not try to re-create Frankenstein’s monster by appending Reformed theology to Müntzer’s theology, piety, and practice. We rejected the first time and we still reject it in our confessions. The law, the gospel, prayer (in known languages), and the due use of ordinary means is not a defective piety. It is the ancient piety and practice of the Christians (the Montanists notwithstanding). It is not obvious to this Reformed minister why we should regard piety and practice of Geneva, Heidelberg, and Edinburgh deficient and in need of a supplement from Zwickau or Münster.

Our conviction of the sufficiency of Scripture places us at odds with much (if not most) of contemporary evangelical expressions of Christianity, over which has flowed a tsunami of neo-Pentecostalism beginning in 1800 with the Cane Ridge revival and again in the Topeka, Kansas and Azusa Street (Los Angeles) revivals just after the turn of the 20th century, and again with the rise of the Charismatic movement in the 1970s and Third Wave Pentecostalism.

The temptation to try to synthesize the Reformed doctrines of grace with Charismatic/Pentecostal spirituality and piety is almost too much for some. Recently I became aware of an article from last November featuring a leading “New Calvinist” who confesses that being “Reformed and charismatic” (in the theological sense) makes him an “orphan.” I submit that he is wrong. It makes one a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a “Reformed charismatic.”

The historical background of the Reformed rejection of continuationism or any other kind of special, extra-canonical revelation is vital in this case because our writer claims that the Reformed confession (theology, piety, and practice) somehow became “divorced” from charismatic (continuationist) theology, piety, and practice. This is historical nonsense. It is theologically untenable, and practically unstable. Yet, because this claim reflects the views and practice at least a few of the leading, influential self-described “New Calvinists” it is important to address it.

Let us change the metaphor. The problem is not that there has been a divorce but rather that this writer, like others, seeks to make a marriage that cannot be. The desire to merge Reformed and Pentecostal/Charismatic theology, piety, and practice rests on a deeply flawed assumption: that Reformed theology inherently lacks something that the Pentecostal/Charismatic theology, piety, and practice supplies. It does not. Rather, what is true is that the Pentecostal/Charismatic movements belong to one paradigm, are two closely related species of one genus, and the Reformed theology, piety, and practice belongs to another paradigm, another genus.

The Pentecostal/Charismatic paradigm is a species of mysticism and Pietism, the quest to experience God in ways he has not ordained. I call it the Quest for Illegitimate Religious Experience (QIRE). The Reformed have a high view of the person and work of the Holy Spirit—after all we credit the Spirit with granting new life sovereignly, freely; with granting us union with Christ through faith, for our sanctification, with feeding believers mysteriously on the “proper” and “natural” body of blood of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, for our glorification—but the Reformed theology and piety is often judged for not being Pentecostal. That is like judging a Ferrari for not being a Ford. They are both autos but they are quite different. Of course the Reformed reject the Pentecostal/Charismatic phenomena of “speaking in tongues,” and “being slain in the Spirit,” and of continuing revelation. We are satisfied with God’s Word written, inspired by the Holy Spirit himself and given to the church through the prophets and apostles and the continuationists frankly are not. Why else would they claim to have continuing revelations? I have been in the presence of continuationists who claimed to have an extra-canonical revelation from the Spirit, which they regarded as equally binding with Holy Scripture, to which none of the rest of the Christian world had access. I have read contiuationists make tortured arguments in defense of admittedly fallible revelations allegedly given by the Holy Spirit himself. None of this has anything to do with the Reformed understanding and confession of God’s Word nor with our piety, which is organized around the Word and the Spirit operating through the Word and through the holy sacraments. It has nothing to do with our practice, which is the gather in public worship, decently and in order, to hear the Word of God read and preached, to respond to God’s Word with his Word, and to receive the gospel made visible in the sacraments. In all this we are utterly dependent upon the free, sovereign work of the Spirit but in none of it do we seek to imitate Thomas Müntzer or his modern successors.

We wish our Pentecostal/Charismatic friends God’s blessing but we also wish that they would not try to re-create Frankenstein’s monster by appending Reformed theology to Müntzer’s theology, piety, and practice. We rejected the first time and we still reject it in our confessions. The law, the gospel, prayer (in known languages), and the due use of ordinary means is not a defective piety. It is the ancient piety and practice of the Christians (the Montanists notwithstanding). It is not obvious to this Reformed minister why we should regard piety and practice of Geneva, Heidelberg, and Edinburgh deficient and in need of a supplement from Zwickau or Münster.

RESOURCES

1. How To Subscribe To Heidelmedia
2. Resources On Continuing Revelation
3. Zwingli Contra The Pentecostalism of the Catabaptists
4. Pentecostalism Is Not New
5. What The Spirit Is Doing?
6. de Brès Contra The Charismatics of His Day
7. Reformed and Pentecostal?
8. Rome, Pentecostals, and Credulity
9. Why This Reformed Christian Will Not Be Charismatic in 2018
10. Confessions of a Former Charismatic
11. Once More: Reformed and Charismatic?
12. Video:: Is It Possible to be a Reformed Charismatic?
13. Did Calvin’s Theology Need To Be Supplemented With Müntzer’s? (1)

NOTES

1. Willem Balke, Calvin and the Anabaptist Radicals, trans. William J. Heynen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1981), 98.