125 - A Fellowship of Discontent

A Fellowship of Discontent
By Hans J. Hillerbrand
176 pp. New York, Harper and Row, 1967. $6.00.

Historians should do more biographies! It is often in biography that history really comes alive, especially for the casual reader. Biography recreates the past more nearly so wie es gewesen ist (albeit on a small scale), the host of little contextual details are assessed more carefully; a mosaic emerges in place of the abstraction and generalization. But biography is difficult to do well. Many a Christian saint of the past either lacks the color and diversity of character for dramatic treatment, or too many of the vital details of his life are no longer known. Then too, biography cannot simply be written-up research; it must be created like a work of art. The writer is called upon to enter the life of his subject not only with the detachment of the scholarly mind, but also with his open life of emotions and, in the case of Christian heroes, with his own identity of faith. Where this empathy is lacking-because of incompatibility, or some bias, or lack of sufficient and prolonged exposure to the person, or for other reasons-there good biography does not "come off." It may still be an informative account, accurate and helpful, but that is something else. It takes more than hard work and historical knowledge to write biography. Where the "feel" for the intended subject is lacking, re-writing efforts are generally of little help.

When read from this perspective the present collection of biographies of "five dissenting actors in the great drama of church history" is an exciting and successful attempt. The chapters on Müntzer and Franck are outstanding; Strauss also sparkles. Fox, for some reason, does not "come off," and Thomas Chubb does not leave one feeling impoverished for having known little about him before; there just was not enough Chubb to work with, as the author himself seems to have felt when he used the sub-title "A Life Hardly Exciting" (p. 103). Nevertheless, the chapters on Fox and Chubb add to our understanding of these men and of the events of their time.

Thomas Müntzer is receiving increasing attention in recent years, especially also in East European countries. Max Steinmetz, who is director

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of the Institute for German History in Leipzig, has published "Philip Melanchthon über Thomas Müntzer und Nikolaus Storch," in Philip Melanchthon 1497-1560 (Berlin, 1963), for example, and Gerhard Brendler, Die Frühbürgerliche Revolution in Deutschland (Berlin, 1961), as also "Das Täuferreich zu Münster, 1534/35" in Volume 2, series B, of Leipziger Übersetzungen und Abhandlungen zum Mittelalter (Berlin, 1966). In this country Eric Gritsch has just published a biography of Müntzer under the title Reformer Without a Church (Philadelphia, 1967). Author Hillerbrand has also published a chapter on him in B. A. Gerrish (ed.), Reformers in Profile (Philadelphia, 1967). In the present volume Müntzer emerges rather attractively as a serious reformer and the chaplain, rather than the leader, of the Peasant's Revolt. Unfortunately Müntzer became obsessed with the idea of helping God make history come out right; "Müntzer's failure was not so much that he proclaimed the wrong thing, but rather that at the wrong time and place he said the right thing. . ." (p. 30). It is likely that this and other studies referred to above will require a fresh assessment of the relation of Müntzer to incipient Anabaptism historically and ideologically. There is more congruence than the standard historiography has been willing to acknowledge.

Sebastian Franck (d. 1542) is portrayed as the defender of true inner spirituality rather than of external ceremony and tradition. This is not new, but has never been told more convincingly nor supported better with just the right quotation at the right time. His struggle with Martin Frecht, the leading minister at Ulm, and with the city fathers is told with real understanding. The man himself actually emerges in all his human strength and weakness. Given the continuing significance of Franck for our own time one might ask why he needs to be understood as standing "in the middle of the Reformation" (p. 63) rather than as a pioneer on the frontier of the modern age, particularly also since he seems to have been a forerunner of Ranke (p. 59) in historical method, a favorite of Dilthey (pp. 45, 53), and " the great herald of the future" (p. 53).

George Fox (d. 1690), the author believes, took "life and himself far too drably" (p. 67). The image of Fox the man emerges as much more eccentric than prophetic, and the queer anomaly of a spiritualist establishing a tradition symbolizes the ambiguities the author found unresolved in him. Thus Fox was "constrained and directed by the Scriptures" (p. 68) in all important matters, but rejected both the Scriptures and the church in favor of the "collective inner light" (pp. 91, 162). Fox's deviation from classical Protestantism was so marked as to make his connection with it "a tenuous one" (p. 68), but on the other hand he was "noteworthy only because he accentuated and intensified common Chris-

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tian notions" (p. 99). Fox knew nothing of either sin or grace (p. 71), but his "life and thought were shaped by a fundamental religious experience" (p. 162). The man whose life may best be described with the words of his own motto: "The power of the Lord was over all" remains an enigmatic "outsider" way back somewhere in history.

Thomas Chubb (d. 1747) shared with other English Deists the desire to find rational verification for biblical claims. The life of David Friedrich Strauss (d. 1874) is better known today than the other four, not least because the issues raised by his Life of Jesus are still with us. Hillerbrand succeeds admirably in locating the significance of Strauss within the history of Biblical viz. Gospel interpretation.

The author makes no particular attempt to justify the selection of these five men for discussion in one volume, but a pattern of dissent is implied. This may well be true. All were rebels against the ecclesiastical establishment and the ordering of either life or thought or both. Franck and Chubb had other things in common, but one might be hard pressed to illustrate any major degree of commonality between the dissent of Fox, Müntzer, and Strauss. Yet for all their radicality these men tell us as much about the church as about themselves, about the tragic "normality" of the "insiders" who, in the words of another rebel from nineteenth-century Denmark, know they cannot be wrong because there are so many of them. Author Hillerbrand has placed us greatly in his debt with this scholarly and creative work, bringing to life men whose lives and thoughts may well be as timely for us as the morning paper.

Cornelius J. Dyck
Mennonite Biblical Seminary
Elkhart, Indiana