Before I discuss the specific Lollard sources I have in mind, I should say more about the Lollards in general. The term "Lollards" (often spelled "lollards", with a small "l", these days) is a term that refers to people with a large variety of views. There wasn't one view of justification that was advocated by all of them, just as they also differed widely on other issues. My citation of some Lollards who advocated justification apart from baptism isn't intended to be a claim that all Lollards held that view.
In addition to holding a diversity of beliefs, the Lollards were diverse in many other ways. They varied a lot in their education and social standing, for example.
The latest scholarship I've seen maintains that a majority of the Lollards who were brought to trial renounced their views (J. Patrick Hornbeck II, et al., A Companion To Lollardy [Boston, Massachusetts: Brill, 2016], 160). However, keep the following in mind:
- Whether a view was held by a source is a different issue than whether it was held consistently. Refuting a claim that a belief was absent only requires the former, not the latter. If I denied that anybody claimed to be a follower of Jesus prior to his crucifixion, you could cite Peter and Judas as counterexamples, even though Peter denied knowing Christ and Judas betrayed him. Their later distancing of themselves from Christ doesn't change the fact that they identified themselves as followers of Christ before that.
- And Peter illustrates another point. He went on to repent of his denials of Christ and even died as a Christian martyr. That's also true of some of the Lollards, who returned to the beliefs they'd renounced after renouncing them.
- Most isn't all. Some of the Lollards didn't renounce their beliefs when put on trial.
- I suspect that a large majority of Lollards never went to trial. Not everybody who held a belief would have been known by the authorities to have held it. Furthermore, the authorities didn't always put an equal amount of effort into putting people on trial. As Hornbeck notes in his book cited above, "most years saw only a few heresy trials take place anywhere in England, and a number of years witnessed not a single trial….some bishops valued the prosecution of heresy more highly than others…whether a bishop chose to proceed against one, two, a dozen, or more heresy suspects in his diocese was, in most cases, a decision largely dependent upon factors external to the lollard communities under persecution. The impending convocation of a church council or regional meeting of clergy, the accession to the throne of a new monarch, or the outbreak of civil war all affected the speed and vigor with which bishops pursued heresy suspects, as did other factors, local, national, and international." (179, 186-87) Belief in justification through faith alone, including the specification that justification occurs apart from baptism, seems to have been somewhat common among the Lollards who were put on trial, so there probably were some people who held such views without having gone to trial. That's the nature of life. Spouses influence one another, parents influence children, friends influence each other, etc. Some people are more vocal than others about their beliefs, and even what's done in response to the most vocal people will vary from one context to another. It's highly unlikely that the authorities always had the will and ability to put every relevant person on trial. The Lollards who did go to trial surely were a minority, probably a small minority, of those who held Lollard views. And the Lollards who never went to trial wouldn't have renounced their beliefs at a trial, which makes the issue of renouncing irrelevant to them.
Having said all of that, let me begin with an early Lollard who illustrates some of the points I've made above. Maureen Jurkowski wrote:
Of all the early Lollard preachers who risked life and limb to spread Wycliffite doctrine, the most interesting, it can be argued, was Walter Brut. He was remarkable in a number of ways. Firstly, he was the only known early Lollard of Welsh descent. Secondly, he was a layman, and a highly literate one at that, although he does not appear to have practised a profession that necessitated the sort of education that he had evidently acquired; specifically, he possessed an extensive knowledge of the Bible, patristic authors, canon law and academic modes of argumentation. Indeed, an earlier tradition of scholarship maintained that he was also Walter Bryt, a Welsh astronomer, fellow of Merton College, Oxford, and author of the textbook Theorica planetarum, although it remains unclear whether Walter Brut and this astronomer were one and the same. Thirdly, he held some extraordinary opinions on the role of women in the Church, first highlighted by Margaret Aston in 1980. Not only were women entitled to preach, he wrote, but they could even administer the sacraments if necessary. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it is these progressive views on women which have recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny by literary scholars, and excerpts from his writings have been edited for an anthology of medieval texts on women aimed at undergraduates. He also held pacifist views, denouncing war and capital punishment. Such views were common enough among the early Lollards - and even among some of the so-called 'Lollard knights' - but they are interesting in the context of what follows here.
For all the attention that his writings and opinions have received, however, very little about the man himself - that is, his family background, career and estates - has been published. Almost all of what has been written derives from the record of his heresy trial of 1393 in the register of John Trefnant, bishop of Hereford, and a related manuscript of disputations of issues arising from the trial. The trial was itself a noteworthy event - one of the most extraordinary Lollard heresy trials ever recorded. It was conducted, first of all, in the presence of what K.B. McFarlane deemed 'an absurdly large body of doctors' - some twenty-three clerics in all, among them the chronicler Adam of Usk and the reformed Wycliffite fellow Nicholas Hereford - and Bishop Trefnant also took opinions from others not present, including William Woodford, a Franciscan friar who had debated with John Wyclif himself. Secondly, at the bishop's request, Brut gave written responses to the questions put to him in Latin, receiving back written refutations from the panel of doctors. It is clear that Bishop Trefnant was well aware of the calibre of man with whom he was dealing, even if we are not.
("Who Was Walter Brut?", The English Historical Review, vol. 127, no. 525 [April 2012], pp. 285-86)
Brut renounced his Lollard views at the trial. Jurkowski mentions that there were "thirty-seven heretical conclusions" he abjured (295). It seems unlikely that his mind was changed on so many issues in so short a period of time, especially given how informed he was about the issues before the trial started. He probably gave in to pressure more than he changed his mind. (In his book cited above, Hornbeck makes the point that heresy trials were, figuratively speaking, conducted under the shadow of the stake at which you would be burned if you were convicted.) We don't have much information about Brut's life after the trial. He died less than a decade later, fighting against England in a Welsh insurgence. He probably never gave up his Lollard beliefs, at least some of them, inwardly, despite the outward renouncing of them at his trial, and I suspect he advocated them outwardly again at some point. What incentive would he have had to not do so once he became involved in the insurgence? He died in rebellion against the British authorities, though in a different context than the one surrounding his heresy trial. He was "put to death (ad mortem positus fait) after a judgment of treason made in the military court of the constable and marshal of England." (page 298 in Jurkowski's article) Jurkowski repeatedly notes how much support Brut had from others during his years of advocating Lollard views (286, 294-95, 301-302). There's some complexity and ambiguity here, since Brut could be supported for a variety of reasons that would vary from one source to another. But his influence on so many people should caution us against thinking of him in too much isolation. His view of justification probably was expressed to and accepted by some of his supporters prior to his trial. It seems unlikely that he would have been the only person in his circle who held his view of justification.
In a recent book, Susan Royal quotes some of Brut's comments on the relationship between justification and baptism. (Quotations of Lollards are often in the form of an old version of English rather than modern English, so they're difficult to interpret at times.) Brut commented, "Are not all baptized with the holy Ghost and with fire? But yet not with materiall fire, no more is the lotion of water corporally necessary to washe awaye sinnes, but onely spirituall water, that is to say, the water of fayth….Christ sayth, he that beleueth and is baptized, shallbe saued. He sayth not, he that is not baptized: but he that beleueth not shall be damned." (Lollards In The English Reformation [Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 2020], approximate Kindle locations 3880, 3892)
Royal also cites other Lollards advocating justification apart from baptism. "Christen people be sufficiently baptized in the bloud of Christ, and nedeth no water" (3927). Royal writes, "Every one of the seven traditional sacraments of the medieval church was called into question or even rejected wholesale by some lollards….the Kent heresy proceedings of 1511-12 reveal that defendants were asked about each of the seven sacraments, and every one was recorded to disavow baptism as necessary or profitable for a person's soul." (3678, 3959)
Hornbeck's book cited earlier contains a lot of similar material:
Two defendants at the end of the fifteenth century, both in Coventry and Lichfield diocese, confessed that they had taught that all the works people accomplish in their lifetimes are soteriologically insignificant….
In several cases [heresy trials], Thomson showed, "[John] Foxe [the author of Foxe's Book Of Martyrs] fails to note that a member of the accused denied the spiritual profit of baptism, an opinion which would have been considered heretical after the Reformation, and which in consequence would have spoiled the picture of the…Lollards as early protestants who suffered at the hands of a brutal persecuting Roman Church."…
Other Norwich suspects were accused of or confessed to believing similar things, for instance that a person is "sufficiently baptized" by receiving Christ's law and commandments….A few suspects were accused of other errors, including that it is just as good to be baptized in a ditch as in a baptismal font, that baptism is simply unnecessary to salvation, and that baptism can be accomplished without a priest….
Foxe neglected to mention that several dozen lollards had denied the necessity of baptism, with some arguing that a child born to baptized Christians had already been baptized in her mother's womb.
(116, 118-19, 174)
In closing, I want to make some comments about issues of interpretation. When Protestants cite pre-Reformation sources in support of their beliefs, it's common for their critics to respond by saying that the sources in question could or should be interpreted otherwise. But the most natural way of interpreting the Lollards' views expressed above seems to be that they believed in justification apart from baptism. And why would so many Roman Catholic authorities persecute these Lollards and raise these baptismal issues at their trials if these Lollards actually meant to express the same view those Catholic authorities held? Why would John Foxe, a Protestant with a higher view of baptismal efficacy than what's attributed to these Lollards, have found the Lollards' views as problematic as he seems to have found them? So, not only do the text of the Lollards' comments and early descriptions of their views seem to be most naturally taken as referring to justification apart from baptism, but that also seems to be how multiple sources who were the Lollards' contemporaries or lived shortly afterward interpreted them.
Let's say somebody wants to suggest that some or all of the Lollard views cited in this post are only referring to how people can be justified apart from baptism in exceptional cases. That sort of response is problematic in both ways described above. First of all, we don't begin with a default assumption that people are describing exceptional situations, so the burden of proof is on the shoulders of those who want us to read a source, like these Lollards, that way. The comments in question don't suggest exceptional circumstances, and reading that sort of qualifier into the text is a less natural interpretation. Secondly, people like the Catholic authorities who persecuted the Lollards and John Foxe, who wrote about the Lollards, allowed for exceptions in their baptismal theology, such as Catholicism's concepts of a baptism of desire and a baptism of blood. Why would they have objected to these Lollards' views if the Lollards were just expressing agreement with those objectors about exceptional situations?
People often oversimplify or exaggerate the views of their opponents. And people sometimes misrepresent their own views, because of carelessness in their thinking, choosing their words poorly, or whatever else. Typically, though, there's some substance to the disagreements we perceive, even if it's misrepresented to some extent. Most likely, Catholic authorities kept expressing disagreement with Lollard baptismal doctrine because there were genuine disagreements involved. Remember, these persecutions of the Lollards lasted for a triple-digit number of years. Many Lollards and many Catholic authorities were involved in many exchanges on these baptismal issues. It's unlikely that all of their perceived disagreements about baptism were just unfortunate misunderstandings among people who actually agreed or only disagreed in insignificant ways. Most likely, there really were disagreements, and those disagreements really were substantial ones.
I disagree with some of the Lollards' views of baptism. For example, if the comments about baptism being of no benefit are an accurate representation of what the Lollards in question believed, and they meant to exclude benefit in every context rather than more narrowly, then I disagree with that view. Baptism is beneficial in multiple contexts, such as glorifying God, the sanctification of the person being baptized, the sort of salvation in the context of sanctification (not justification) referred to in 1 Peter 3:21, and so on. But my focus in this post isn't on agreement with the Lollards about everything they said concerning baptism. Rather, my focus is on agreement with them that baptism isn't a means of justification.
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