Along with the reform movement, led at first by Luther and Zwingli, another movement arose that understood that those reformers had not gone far enough in their adherence to the NT Scriptures. That is why it has been called the “Radical Reform”. It is from this group that the modern Baptists that we will study next arise.
THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN
Where do Baptists come from? Baptist historians do not give the same answer to this question. Some associate the origin of the Baptists with antipedobaptist groups that appeared very early in the history of the Church. These historians think that the Baptist denomination has a spiritual relationship with those groups that opposed infant baptism, such as the Novatians (3rd century), the Donatists (4th century), the Paulicians (5th century), the Waldensians (5th century), XII), and so on.
Others hold that Baptist history goes back to the time of the apostles. These historians, called “successionists” because of their insistence on being able to trace a succession of Baptist believers that some lead back to John the Baptist, claim to possess all the links in a chain that leads back to the early church.
But, while it is true that the non-conformist spirit that characterized Baptists can be traced throughout the history of the Church, and that the Baptist movement bears a certain relationship or kinship with some of these medieval groups, the Baptist denomination as such Born in England in the 17th century. It is from this point that we can verify an unbroken line of Baptist churches to this day. As the historian Justo Anderson rightly points out:
The Baptist is an apostolic Christian, since a church, although newly organized, is based on the New Testament, is more apostolic than that Church that can trace its succession to the apostles, but has departed from apostolic principles. The question of veracity is much more important in the study of Baptist history than the question of antiquity, because the antiquity of principles is very different from the antiquity of organization.
And further on he adds: “This is the dilemma of Baptist history. It is, at the same time, old and new.”
THE PRECURSORS
A. The beginnings in Zurich
At this point in our history, we must go back a few years to the beginning of the reform in Zurich.
As we saw in Lesson 5, the reform movement in Switzerland began with Zwingli’s conversion. Due to his humanist background, Zwingli soon gathered around himself a group of young intellectuals, interested primarily in the study of the Greek classics. In 1521 this group was joined by a young man named Conrad Grebel (1448-1526), who had begun his humanist studies a few years earlier at the universities of Basel, Vienna, and Paris. Zwingli introduced these young men to the study of the Greek New Testament, in such a way that some of them not only made professions of faith, but also became zealous reformers. Grebel was one of them.
But soon some problems arose. Less than three years later, some of these young men came to certain convictions other than Zwingli’s; among the points of divergence was the matter of infant baptism and the relationship of the Church to the state. Since they could not come to an agreement with their mentor and teacher, on January 21, 1525 a group of 15 men met in the house of Félix Manz to determine what they should do, since the municipality of Zurich had given them eight days to retract their convictions and have their children baptized. One of those present that night provided the following account:
It happened that we were together until a tremendous anxiety fell upon us… We fell on our knees before the Most High God and prayed that he would show us his divine will… because it was not a thing of flesh and blood that impelled them, since they well knew that it meant suffering . After the prayer, Jorge Cajacob got up and asked Conrado Grebel to baptize him with the correct Christian baptism based on his faith and knowledge.
Grebel baptized Cajacob (also known as Blaurock) who immediately proceeded to baptize everyone else. This is how the first church of the Swiss brothers was established. “It is clear that this was the most revolutionary action of the Reform. No other event so completely symbolized the break with Rome. Here, and for the first time during the reformation, a group of Christians dared to form a Church after what was thought to be the model of the New Testament.”
From that moment Grebel dedicated himself to intense evangelistic work; they began to have cults in the houses and to practice the baptism to believers, reason why they were called “anabaptistas” or “rebaptizadores”. This unleashed a strong persecution against them. Grebel was finally arrested and imprisoned in November 1525 along with Blaurock and Manz. Grebel was able to escape imprisonment from him and publish a treatise on baptism; but he died a victim of the plague about August, 1526.
B. Balthazar Hubmaier (1480-1528)
Along with this movement originating in Zurich, something similar was happening in Moravia, in relation to the ministry of Baltasar Hubmaier, one of the most important men in the Anabaptist movement. Hubmaier was born near Augsburg, into a humble family. He studied at the University of Freiburg, where he was a student of John Eck. Both professed great admiration for each other, so that when Eck left the University of Freiburg to teach at the University of Ingolstad, Hubmaier followed him, eventually receiving his Doctor of Divinity degree there on September 29, 1512.
He was then ordained a priest and appointed as a preacher and chaplain of the University, becoming vice-rector in 1515. The following year he left Ingolstad and received an invitation to become the parish priest of Regensburg Cathedral. There he became embroiled in an anti-Semitic campaign that eventually led to the expulsion of the city’s Jews, later turning the abandoned synagogue into a Catholic chapel dedicated “to the beautiful Mary.”
Very soon this chapel began to receive an increasing number of parishioners, as word had spread that various miracles were taking place almost daily in the new chapel. This provoked the envy of the local monks as they saw their income and prestige dwindle. It was perhaps this factor that led Hubmaier to move to the city of Waldshut in 1521. There he continued his work like any parish priest of the Middle Ages.
But in June 1522 he made a trip to Basel where he met Erasmus and Heinrich Glarean (who was Grebel’s teacher). There he also came into more direct contact with the Reformation, so that on his return to Waldshut he decided to study the NT further. Everything seems to indicate that this was the year of his transformation. From that moment on, Hubmaier’s preaching made it clear that he had embraced the Reformation and, above all, that he had placed his faith in Christ. In the midst of this process, Hubmaier receives the invitation to return to Regensburg, where the inhabitants were deeply surprised by the obvious change in his former pastor. A short time later he returned to Waldshut again, determined to continue the reform there.
On March 1, 1523, he made contact with Zwingli and other leaders of the reform in Switzerland, including Conrad Grebel. On his return to Waldshut he drew up a document of 18 articles which would be the guide for reform in the city. In these articles Hubmaier clearly established the doctrine of justification by faith, the fruits of love that true faith produces, the rejection of the mass as a sacrifice, the rejection of celibacy and the voluntary baptism of believers.
The following year he married Elizabeth Hugline, who turned out to be a faithful and courageous wife. But his reforming activities soon caught the attention of Ferdinand I of Habsburg (son of Felipe el Hermoso and Juana I of Castile and, therefore, brother of Carlos I of Spain and grandson of the Catholic kings Ferdinand and Isabella). He first sent a commission to the City Council asking that the preacher be removed, but they refused to do so. Then came a letter from the Austrian government, again asking them to remove “the so-called doctor and preacher of the people, and to choose in his place another suitable and pious preacher who did not uphold the damned doctrines of Luther. ”
As the pressure continued to mount, Hubmaier decided to leave the city to avoid armed intervention. In September 1524 he went to the city of Schaffhausen. There he wrote one of the most important treatises in the literature that produced the reform, entitled: “Concerning heretics and those who burn them”, where he openly proclaimed against religious persecution of any kind and the use of the sword or fire to combat heresy, while advocating for freedom of worship. “It is clear to everyone now, even the blind, that a law to burn heretics is an invention of the devil. Truth is immortal.” This phrase became the motto of his life.
In October of that year, Hubmaier returned to Wadlshut, where he was hailed as a hero by the people. Even the town hall threw a party in his favor. By this time, his convictions about baptism had settled in his mind, as we see in a letter he sent to a friend on January 16, 1525: “The meaning of this sign and symbol (baptism), the pledge of the faith unto death hoping for the resurrection of the future life, has to be regarded as more than a sign. Its meaning cannot be understood by children, that is why infant baptism is absurd.” Later, in April of that same year, Hubmaier was baptized with about 60 people.
In May 1525, Zwingli published a pamphlet entitled “On Baptism, Anabaptism, and Infant Baptism,” in which he refuted the Anabaptist concept of believer’s baptism. Hubmaier responded in July with a work titled “The Christian Baptism of Believers.” This book “is considered by many to be the best defense of believer’s baptism ever written.” This work provoked another debate in Zurich which ended with the banning of the Anabaptists and the imprisonment of Hubmaier, who had fled to Zurich when Austrian troops entered Waldshut.
Some think that Hubmaier may have hoped to convince Zwingli; but what actually happened was that he was required to recant or be expelled from Zurich immediately. Fearing that he would fall into the hands of Ferdinand I, Hubmaier backed down. But very soon he retracted his retraction and attacked infant baptism after a sermon by Zwingli, for which he was immediately imprisoned. But he was heavily pressured and backed down again.
Once released, Hubmaier headed for Nikolsburg (in the present-day Czech Republic), one of the most…