Wednesday, October 4, 2023

It is the 4th of October, 2023. Welcome to the Christian History Almanac brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org, I’m Dan van Voorhis.

 

It is common, especially amongst those in the Reformation tradition, to speak of the “proto-Reformers”, that is, of those theologians in the Middle Ages whose theology resembles that of the coming Reformation.

I might suggest that this has two problems- it suggests the inevitability of the Reformation and it comes very close to suggesting that what the Reformers were teaching was a new theology- something against which many of them would vehemently argue.

Rather, we might better see a continuum of theologians teaching the doctrines of grace from the early church to the present- an approach the reformers themselves would surely prefer. And it was such for Luther who would write of a somewhat obscure Dutch theologian- if you had only read his works and then mine, you would think I stole everything from him. He was Wessel Gansfort- a character about whom we know some things and must leave others to the recesses of lost history. Wessel Gansfort, or Goesevort, was born around 1400 in Groningen- that in the very northern parts of the Netherlands.

His schooling was interrupted either by his parent's death or by their extreme poverty- nevertheless, a local woman of some means with a son Wessel’s age arranged for him to continue his education at Zwolle with the Brethren of the Common Life. This was the group that included Thomas A. Kempis (the author of The Initiation of Christ) and would be a factory for turning out theologians critical of the late medieval Papacy.

Here, Wessel grew uncomfortable with what he thought were superstitions. He didn’t carry a rosary or book of hours for prayer, leading some to wonder if he prayed at all. He responded that he prayed the Lord’s Prayer as that was what the lord himself taught us to pray.

He would not receive a tonsure or be ordained as a priest. This would limit his ability to receive a doctorate to teach. He traveled widely, although this is probably exaggerated. Some accounts have him learning Greek in Greece and traveling to Egypt to study Hebrew texts. It is more likely that in Rome, he met Byzantine preachers, possibly fleeing from the fall of Constantinople in 1453. In Basel, he met Johannes Reuchlin, who would become a renowned teacher and expositor of Hebrew.

He traveled to Paris, where he disputed with the Thomists (the followers of Thomas Aquinas). He would criticize the lionized theologian- something dangerous. But his disputation skills and broad reading were such that he was renowned (especially by the Nominalists- another group with similarities to the later Reformers) and was called the “lux Mundi” or “light of the world”.

In Rome, he would meet Francesco della Rovere and become friends with this man later named Pope Sixtus IV. In an oft-told story, the Pope told Wessel he could have whatever he wished, and so Wessel asked for a Greek New Testament and a Hebrew Old Testament from the Vatican Library. Shocked, the Pope suggested he take something valuable like a Bishopric. Wessel said he saw no value in that- despite it coming with a considerable income.

Another story popping up in the various biographical sketches of Wessel includes a fellow student trying to get him to get involved in the adoration of the Virgin Mary. He is said to have replied: why don’t you lead me to Christ who so graciously invites the heavy laden to come to him?”

He rejected the authority of the Pope over that of Scripture. He taught that the Gospel promises in Scripture are the highest authority and anything, even other portions of Scripture, are subordinate to them. He believed that the task of creating unity in the church belonged not to a single pontiff but rather to the Holy Spirit. He rejected the idea of plenary indulgences granted by the Pope and also against the Thomist doctrine of Transubstantiation. His writing on the “spiritual reception” of the body and blood of Christ would be a point with which Luther would later disagree, and so these positions of his writings were sent to Huldrych Zwingli and printed by him for the Swiss Reformation.

He made his way back to Zwolle to teach where he was himself taught. There, as an old man, perhaps blind, he told his students that amidst his failing health, his one hope was Christ crucified. Wessel Gansfort, the Dutch agitator against the Papacy in the late Middle Ages, would die on this, the 4th of October in 1489.

 

The last word for today is what we call the “prayer of St. Francis,” as this is the feast day for that famous saint we have highlighted on this show. The prayer was not written by Francis, but it is a good one nonetheless:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

to be consoled as to console,

to be understood as to understand,

to be loved as to love.

For it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

 

This has been the Christian History Almanac for the 4th of October 2023, brought to you by 1517 at 1517.org.

The show is produced by a man if granted one wish by the Pope, would have one request: a lifetime supply of Mountain Dew: Code Red. He is Christopher Gillespie.

The show is written and read by a man who would ask for the popemobile- I’m Dan van Voorhis.

You can catch us here every day- and remember that the rumors of grace, forgiveness, and the redemption of all things are true…. Everything is going to be OK.