This
week in our Contemplative Christianity course we're studying Protestant
Mysticism. We are giving special attention to the "Contemplative
Spirituals" of the 16th century who were part of the Anabaptist
movement. This is my spiritual tradition,
and I really value its best aspects. One of the most inspired
theologians in this movement was Sebastian Franck, who viewed himself as
part of an "Invisible Church." According to Franck:
"A [new] faith is well on the way to birth, which will dispense with external preaching, ceremonies, sacraments, ban [excommunication] and office as unnecessary, and which seeks solely to gather among all peoples an invisible, spiritual Church in the unity of the Spirit and of faith, to be governed wholly by the eternal, invisible Word of God, without external means.
"Only a free, non-sectarian, party-less Christianity which . . . stands freely on God’s word, in the Spirit . . . is of God. . . . Everyone without question can be pious by himself, wherever he is, yet no one should run hither and yon to look for, start or seek a special sect . . .
"The true Church is not a separate mass of people, not a particular sect to be pointed out with the finger, not confined to one time or one place; it is rather a spiritual and invisible body of all the members of Christ, born of God, of one mind, spirit, and faith, but not gathered in any one external city or place. It is a Fellowship, seen with the spiritual eye and by the inner man. It is the assembly and communion of all truly God-fearing, good-hearted, new-born persons in all the world, bound together by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God and the bonds of love . . . I belong to this Fellowship. I believe in the Communion of saints, and I am in this Church, let me be where I may; and therefore I no longer look for Christ in ‘lo heres or lo theres.’ [outward events]."
Photo: The sun peeks out from behind a cloud next to Hallett Peak; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; April 7, 2014
"A [new] faith is well on the way to birth, which will dispense with external preaching, ceremonies, sacraments, ban [excommunication] and office as unnecessary, and which seeks solely to gather among all peoples an invisible, spiritual Church in the unity of the Spirit and of faith, to be governed wholly by the eternal, invisible Word of God, without external means.
"Only a free, non-sectarian, party-less Christianity which . . . stands freely on God’s word, in the Spirit . . . is of God. . . . Everyone without question can be pious by himself, wherever he is, yet no one should run hither and yon to look for, start or seek a special sect . . .
"The true Church is not a separate mass of people, not a particular sect to be pointed out with the finger, not confined to one time or one place; it is rather a spiritual and invisible body of all the members of Christ, born of God, of one mind, spirit, and faith, but not gathered in any one external city or place. It is a Fellowship, seen with the spiritual eye and by the inner man. It is the assembly and communion of all truly God-fearing, good-hearted, new-born persons in all the world, bound together by the Holy Spirit in the peace of God and the bonds of love . . . I belong to this Fellowship. I believe in the Communion of saints, and I am in this Church, let me be where I may; and therefore I no longer look for Christ in ‘lo heres or lo theres.’ [outward events]."
Photo: The sun peeks out from behind a cloud next to Hallett Peak; Rocky Mountain National Park, CO; April 7, 2014
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