Thomas Helwys and Sola Scriptura
The foundational theme of the Reformers’ work was sola scriptura, Scripture alone. Each Reformer exhibited a strong commitment to look to the Scriptures for the truth about all of life. They rightly believed that the Roman Catholic Church’s problems stemmed from its departure from the Word of God as its rule in faith and practice.
However, every Reformer struggled between their commitment to sola scriptura and their cultural context. In Martin Luther’s (1483-1546) case, he was overjoyed by the knowledge that salvation came by God’s grace through faith, but he was unwilling to give up priestly vestments and infant baptism. Among the early English General Baptists, John Smyth gladly accepted believer’s baptism but then allowed “natural reason” to blind him to Christological heresy.
Against Smyth, Thomas Helwys (1575-1616) stood strong in his commitment to sola scriptura and explained the depth of Smyth’s errors from God’s Word. For Helwys, the limited knowledge of man could not compete with the revealed Word of God.
John Smyth’s Christology
During the early seventeenth century, two Christological views were popular among the Dutch Mennonites. Both views attempted to protect the sinless nature of Christ but in so doing abandoned orthodoxy.
Melchior Hoffman (1495-1543) was a journeyman preacher from Swabia who held an odd assortment of beliefs including some concerning the incarnation of Jesus.[1] According to Hoffman, Jesus took no flesh from Mary. Instead, Christ brought “celestial” or “heavenly” flesh with him from heaven that “passed through [Mary] as water through a pipe.”[2] Thus, Christ’s human nature was a “direct divine creation.”[3]
Caspar von Schwenckfeld (1489-1561) tried to explain Christ’s sinless nature another way. Schwenckfeld worked with Martin Luther to reform his hometown during the 1520s. However, the two men separated in 1525 because Schwenckfeld held that a spiritual experience of God was the core of religion. Therefore, the physical aspects of Christianity, such as the church and sacraments, were unnecessary. In accordance with his spiritualist views, Schwenckfeld argued that Christ became flesh in Mary’s womb through a special act of creation. This divine flesh was not susceptible to the Fall in any way.[4]
For some reason, the Dutch Mennonites, almost alone, adopted Hoffman’s and Schwenckfeld’s Christology.[5] Some held one view while others adhered to the other. Regardless, both argued that “Mary contributed nothing to the Christ child’s nature,” and thus “Christ could be the perfect sacrifice for man’s sin since he had inherited nothing of Adam’s corruption.”[6]
When the Smyth-Helwys congregation sought relief from persecution in Amsterdam, they became well-acquainted with the local Waterlander Mennonites. Through his relationship them, Smyth seems to have adopted Schwenckfeld’s Christology and considered Hoffman’s permissible.[7] In The Last Booke of John Smyth, Smyth clearly states that he believes that Jesus did not receive His body from Mary, but he is unwilling to break fellowship over this point.[8] Smyth founded his position, at least in part, on his medical knowledge.
“Modern” Medicine
Smyth graduated from Christ’s College in Cambridge in 1594. Like all university students, he was required to study the liberal arts, yet Smyth’s intellectual interests extended even further. He attended many of the free lectures provided by the faculty on a variety of subjects but was especially interested in the study of “physic” or medicine.[9]
Accordingly, Smyth attended several medical lectures offered by the faculty. There he learned about the recent invention of glass eyes and the latest discoveries about the stomach’s actions and the liver’s ability to “make blood.”[10] These studies put Smyth on the cutting edge of medical knowledge. In fact, Smyth’s medical training was such that he practiced medicine for the rest of his life.[11]
Particularly relevant to our discussion is the “modern” understanding of procreation in the early seventeenth century. Medical conceptions of pregnancy at that time suggested the man’s “seed” found purchase in the womb and grew there through the woman’s nourishment, but she transferred no DNA (as we would call it) to the unborn child.[12]
Smyth allowed this “modern” medical view of pregnancy to influence his Christology. He used the terms first flesh and second flesh to distinguish between what the father and the mother gave to the fetus. According to him, the mother provided the second flesh, which was limited to nourishment. The Father produced the first flesh, which, when nourished, became a child. In this way, Smyth argued that Jesus did indeed receive “flesh” from Mary but only the “second flesh.”[13] Coggins’s concludes that Smyth came to this Christological and medical position through a “dualistic theology” brought forward from the medieval period, but Smyth’s own words contradict this position.[14]
Defending his Christology against Helwys’s attacks, Smyth argues that Helwys is ignorant of “Nature and natural reason,” which should trump historic church doctrine.[15] He knew as well as Helwys did that the orthodox Christian church had always held that Jesus was descended of the line of David through Mary. But his cutting edge medical knowledge told him that Mary had given only nourishment to the body which God supplied in her womb. Therefore, he adopted a Schwenckfeldian Christology. For Helwys, Smyth’s “natural reason” argument was unconvincing because it contradicted Scripture.
Helwys and Sola Scriptura
According to Helwys, believing that Mary did not contribute to Jesus’s body “destroyed” a person’s faith in Christ.[16] Nor was it possible to avoid taking a stance on the issue. In An advertisement, Helwys addresses each approach to the doctrine, showing their errors from Scripture.
Helwys first considers the heresy of Hoffman. He argues that it is unbiblical to hold that Christ’s flesh was brought with Him from Heaven since such a body would have been what Paul would have called a heavenly body. In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul explains that heavenly bodies are glorious, powerful, and immortal while earthly bodies are weak, corruptible, and mortal.
Helwys points out that such a body doesn’t mesh with Jesus’ description in Hebrews 4:15 as a high priest who can sympathize with our infirmities. Drawing from a variety of passages in the Gospels, Helwys shows that Jesus experienced hunger, a troubled soul, and physical weakness. Considering this evidence, Helwys asks if such a body can be considered heavenly. “If so,” he concludes, “there is misery in heaven which cannot be.”[17]
Turning his attention to Schwenckfeld. Helwys first states that this approach fails under the same arguments as does Hoffman’s. If Christ’s flesh was “full of infirmities” as he had shown from the Gospels, then Schwenckfeld can’t argue that Jesus’ flesh was perfect flesh created in Mary’s womb. Returning to 1 Corinthians 15, Helwys refuted the possibility that Jesus’ suffering was in appearance only, arguing along with Paul that Christ most certainly died and was resurrected.
Considering the twelve apostles, Helwys notes that they never questioned Christ’s death. Rather, they were so convinced of His death that “they began to doubt of His resurrection.”[18] Helwys points out that if Hoffman and Schwenfckfeld deny the truth of Christ’s frailty and death, then neither can they affirm the resurrection. Paul explains that earthly bodies are sown in corruption, dishonor, and weakness only to be raised as heavenly bodies incorruptible, glorious, powerful, and immortal.
If Christ had a heavenly body from the moment of His conception in Mary’s womb, then He neither died nor was resurrected, and all of our hopes are dashed. For this reason, Helwys states, “It will be given to them according to their faith. If they do not repent they will have a Savior but in show.”[19]
Helwys lastly addresses those who claim not to know where Jesus received His flesh. He argues that people who hold this position have taken seriously the Scriptural account of Jesus’ earthly body but are unwilling to give up their preconceptions about the process of procreation. In fact, he accuses them of ignorance and doubting.[20] In the face of their doubts, he holds up Romans 1:3 and 9:5, pointing out that Jesus “is of the seed of David and of the Israelites according to the flesh.”[21] Further, Galatians 4:4 states that Jesus was “born of a woman,” fulfilling, according to Helwys, the promise of Genesis 3:15.[22]
Helwys concludes his argument against these doctrines by stating the severity of the situation: “Those, therefore, among you that will not know and believe that Christ is the seed of the woman, conceived in her womb, by the power of the most high overshadowing her, will never be saved by Christ the promised seed of the woman.”[23] Because these teachings presented a false Christ, there was no salvation in them. For this reason, he pleads with them to stop “running so violently to condemnation,” but to humbly accept the clear teachings of Scripture.[24]
Conclusion
Our day isn’t as different from the sixteenth century as we may think. The men and women of the Reformation had as many difficulties as we do in applying Scripture faithfully to their lives. For John Smyth, cutting-edge medical knowledge was too persuasive for him to cling to the clear teachings of Scripture and the historic teachings of the church. Thomas Helwys, on the other hand, held firm to Scripture, trusting that the wisdom of this world was but a passing fancy. Let us follow Helwys.
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[1] Hoffman wandered Scandinavia and northern Germany preaching passionately about the coming day of the Lord and claiming to be the prophet Elijah reborn. For more information, see G. R. Elton, Reformation Europe 1517-1559 (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), 98-99.
[2] James Robert Coggins, John Smyth’s Congregation: English Separatism, Mennonite Influence, and the Elect Nation (Waterloo, Ontario: Herald, 1991), 123; and William R. Estep, Renaissance and Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), 218.
[3] W. T. Whitley, “Biography,” in The Works of John Smyth: Fellow of Christ’s College, 1594-8, vol. 1 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1915), ciii.
[4] Coggins, 123.
[5] Ibid. Historian James Coggins suggests that the Mennonites adopted these views because they were “nonempiricists” who were influenced by a medieval spirit/matter dualism. However, as historian and theologian Kevin L. Hester has pointed out in conversation, the medieval church never allowed their mysticism to change their views on the incarnation. See Coggins, 124.
[6] Coggins, 123.
[7] Historian James Coggins states that it is unclear which view Smyth adopted, but he surely “accepted that Christ’s flesh was not derived from Mary” (Coggins, 124). However, Smyth agreed to Hans de Ries’s Short Confession with its Schwenckfeldian Christology and “defended Schwenckfeld’s views in his Defense of that confession” (Coggins, 124). Historian and theologian Jason K. Lee’s warning that the authorship of the Defense is in doubt and thus isn’t a reliable source for understanding Smyth’s Christology is well taken (Jason K. Lee, The Theology of John Smyth: Puritan, Separatist, Baptist, Mennonite [Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003], 239). Still, the authorship of The Last Booke of John Smyth is not in doubt, and in that work Smyth states that he believes Jesus only took nourishment from Mary (John Smyth, The Last Booke of John Smith called the Retraction of His Errours, and the Confirmation of the Truth, in W. T. Whitley, The Works of John Smyth Fellow of Christ’s College, 1594-8, vol. 2 [London: Cambridge University Press, 1915], 758-59).
[8] Smyth, 758-59. For a further discussion of this point, see Lee, 238-40.
[9] Whitley, xxix.
[10] Ibid., xxx.
[11] Ibid.
[12] Aristotle may have been the first to suggest this understanding of conception and pregnancy, but it was still popular in the seventeenth century. See Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book or the Whole Art of Midwifery Discovered ed. Elaine Hobby, Women Writers in English 1350-1850 (1671; edited reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 52-53.
[13] Smyth, 758-759.
[14] Coggins, 124.
[15] Smyth, 758. Coggins improperly describes the early seventeenth century as “nonempirical” (Coggins, 124). While Empiricism, as a philosophical method, would not reach full flower until the seventeenth century, men like Copernicus and Galileo were already employing empirical study, or “natural reason,” by the early seventeenth century. In fact, one could argue that when Thomas Aquinas made Aristotelian philosophy acceptable in the West, the first pangs of empiricism’s birth were felt.
[16] Thomas Helwys, An advertisement or admonition to the congregations, which men call the New Fryelers, in the Lowe Countries written in Dutch and published in English (1611), in Joe Early Jr., The Life and Writings of Thomas Helwys, Early English Baptist Texts (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 96.
[17] Ibid., 97.
[18] Ibid., 99.
[19] Ibid., 97.
[20] Ibid., 101.
[21] Ibid. Helwys mistakenly listed his references as Romans 2:3 and 9:5, but clearly was referring to Romans 1:3 and 9:5.
[22] Ibid.
[23] Ibid., 101-02.
[24] Ibid., 97.
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