Wednesday, February 27, 2019

Spiritualist "Sleight" of the Reformation

That we henceforth be no more children,
tossed to and fro,
and carried about with every wind of doctrine,
by the sleight of men,... Ephesians 4:14

"Sebastian Franck (1499-1542). A well-educated man, he was ordained as a priest but soon became a member of the Lutheran clergy.

By 1530 he had moved to the spiritualist position and left the Lutheran church. In an early writing, he referred to the new sects of Lutherans, Zwinglians, and Anabaptists and declared that a fourth the spiritualist would reject all outward forms.

--The outward church, according to him, went up to Heaven after the death of the Apostles, so that for fourteen hundred years there had existed no true outward church or sacrament. The inner truth remained and was received by the faithful from the Spirit.
--All outward things in the church have been done away with and are not to be restored.
--He had a broad conception of the nature of the true church, declaring there were many Christians who had never heard of Christ, as among the heathen and Turks.
--Like Schwenckfeld, he believed that the Bible could not be understood except by those who are taught of God, and he advised against too much reliance on the literal word of Scripture
--One of Franck's numerous writings was a translation of Agrippa von Nettesheim's book on the vanity of the sciences. Since all knowledge is worthless, according to him, error and truth are equally distributed among Christians and non-Christians, orthodox and heretics.
--He claimed to have learned more from Plato, Plotinus, and Hermes Trismegistus than from Moses."
LynnNelson