Today marks the 508th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, marking the day in 1517 when Catholic priest and professor Martin Luther’s 95 Theses appeared on the Medieval scene in Wittenburg, Germany.
Bill Leonard
The theses called the Roman Church to account for doctrines and practices Luther believed to be outside the boundaries of biblical doctrine, including the selling of indulgences, as a means of securing the grace of God in this world or in purgatory, as illustrated in these excerpts:
- Thus those indulgence preachers are in error who say that a man is absolved from every penalty and saved by papal indulgences.
- They who teach that contrition is not necessary on the part of those who intend to buy souls out of purgatory or to buy confessional privileges preach unchristian doctrine.
- Any truly repentant Christian has a right to full remission of penalty and guilt, even without indulgence letters.
- Any true Christian, whether living or dead, participates in all the blessings of Christ and the church; and this is granted him by God, even without indulgence letters.
Pope Leo X ultimately answered back in a treatise that began, “Arise, O Lord, and judge thy cause, a wild boar is loose in thy vineyard.”
“Reformation turmoil took Europe by storm as pockets of dissent descended on church and state alike.”
Reformation turmoil took Europe by storm as pockets of dissent descended on church and state alike. Lutheranism gained ground in Germany while Reformed theology took shape in Switzerland through the work of John Calvin in Geneva and Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich. These reformers rejected what they saw as papal authoritarianism and questionable biblical doctrines as illustrated in Luther’s attack on indulgences.
By the 1520s, wild boars were loose in many churchly vineyards as certain reformers turned on each other. Enter Balthasar Hubmaier and the Radical Reformation. Hubmaier, a contemporary of Luther, was a German Catholic theology professor, priest and masterful preacher who, in 1522, began moving toward Reformation ideas and doctrines.
A priest in Waldshut, Austria, he began to echo Reformation theology, confessing: “Within two years has Christ for the first time come into my heart to thrive. I have never dared to preach him so boldly as now, by the grace of God.”
In 1524, refusing to stand trial for heresy, he left Waldshut condemned as a “heretical preacher.” In response, Hubmaier wrote “Concerning Heretics and Those Who Burn Them,” probably the earliest statement for freedom of religion in the Reformation era.
In it, Hubmaier denounces the execution of religious heretics by European governments, Catholic and Protestant, writing: “Hence it follows that the Inquisitors are the greatest heretics of all, since, against the doctrine and example of Christ, they condemn heretics to fire, and before the time of harvest root up the wheat with the tares. For Christ did not come to butcher, destroy, and burn, but that those that live might live more abundantly (John 10:10). We should pray and hope for repentance, as long as man lives in this misery.”
He then offered this prophetic declaration: “A Turk (Muslim) or a heretic is not convinced by our act, either with the sword or with fire, but only with patience and prayer; and so we should await with patience the judgment of God.” In other words, non-Christians and heretics would not be converted by threats of brutal Christian action but by grace, therefore governments had no business executing or imprisoning them.
Hubmaier concluded the treatise, saying: “Now it is clear to everyone, even the blind, that a law to burn heretics is an invention of the devil. Truth is eternal.”
“Concerning Heretics” came at a time when Hubmaier was moving toward the beliefs and practices of the Wiedertaufer, or Anabaptists, a group that challenged the idea, retained by Catholics and Protestants alike, that to be born in a Christian state required (infant) baptism of all citizens into whatever form of Christianity prevailed in a particular region.
These “Radical Reformers” renounced their infant baptism and received a new baptism administered to those who first confessed faith in Christ. That action and the theology behind it made them heretics to Catholics and Protestants who acted to imprison or execute these Rebaptizers. Hubmaier received believer’s baptism in April 1525.
Seeking safety in Zurich, Hubmaier made his views on baptism known and was arrested, imprisoned and tortured so furiously by Protestants there that he recanted his Anabaptism. Released, he recanted his recantation, writing: “I may err — I am a man — but a heretic I cannot be, because I ask constantly for instruction of the word of God.”
Fleeing Zurich in 1526, Hubmaier and his wife found sanctuary in Nikolsburg, a region governed by Moravians. He preached widely, drawing many to Anabaptist baptism and views. In 1527 he was arrested and imprisoned by troops representing the king of Hungary. On March 10, 1528, Balthasar Hubmaier was burned at the stake in Vienna. When they rubbed gunpower and Sulphur into his beard Hubmaier confessed: “O salt me well, salt me well.”
His wife, Eliabeth Hugline, was ordered drowned in the Danube three days later.
Today, as debates related to religious liberty, Christian nationalism and church/state relationships swamp the American Republic and its churches, it seems important to remember these advocates of gospel faith and freedom, as personified Balthasar Hubmaier, whose religio-political writings, and personal courage shaped early Anabaptism and beyond.
“Truth is eternal,” Hubmaier said, as he tried to exercise religious liberty and gospel in a turbulent time. “Truth is unkillable,” another translation of “Concerning Heretics” concludes. In 2025, saying it that way seems shockingly meaningful, doesn’t it?
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
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Sometimes reforming: Martin Luther, the church and the rest of us | Opinion by Bill Leonard