Support For Reformation Beliefs Among The Pre-Reformation Hussites (Part 1)

In other posts, I've discussed other groups that were forerunners of the Reformation to some extent, the Waldensians and the Lollards. I've occasionally discussed the Hussites as well, but not as much. What I want to do in this series of posts is provide more examples from the Hussite movement. Though that movement continued into the Reformation era and beyond, my focus here will be on the pre-Reformation Hussites.

Craig Atwood wrote, "Since it began before Luther's reform, the Czech Reformation is often ignored by Reformation historians, even though it anticipated many of the themes of the sixteenth-century reformations....Luther's work was a dramatic episode in a two-hundred-year period of reformation and division in the Western church. Many scholars today refer to an 'age of reform' to indicate that there was more than one reformation....He [John Huss] also asserted that the Bible and plain reason, not canon law, are the final authority in the church. Some of Hus's most important ideas became part of general Protestant teaching during the sixteenth century." (The Theology Of The Czech Brethren From Hus To Comenius [University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2009], 4, 6)

However, Atwood is often critical of Protestantism and frequently refers to how various Hussites rejected sola scriptura, rejected sola fide, etc. Still, he sees a lot of continuity between the Hussite movement and Protestantism and occasionally refers to Hussite support for some of the most significant characteristics of Protestantism. For example, "In the negotiations leading up to the Council of Basel in 1434, Prokop Holy insisted that scripture alone should be the rule by which to decide doctrine and church practice." (129) Atwood goes as far as to refer to a fifteenth-century confession of the Taborites as "the first Protestant confession of faith ever written...In terms of worship and doctrine, the Church of Tabor may be considered the first Reformed church, but it survived as a church for only one generation." (124, 129).

Murray Wagner, who seems to have thought there was a higher degree of continuity between the Hussites and Protestants, made comments like the following on issues of authority:

Standing in theological and ethical affinity with Anabaptist sectarians, the Waldenses and the Czech Brethren sought to make the authority of Scripture and the example of the apostolic church the exclusive guides to Christian life. These primitivist reformers intended to restructure a deteriorated and acculturated medieval church by reconstituting a pre-Constantinian community of believers….

In May 1432, nearly a year after the Hussite victory at Domazlice, the Council of Basel sent envoys to meet Czech representatives in the Bohemian city of Cheb. They gathered to establish the conditions under which the Hussites would be heard at the council. At Cheb, the Bohemian Reformation won the greatest theological success of its long struggle. In an agreement known as the Iudex compactatus in Egra, the Council's delegates conceded that the conflict would be settled by appeal to the authority of the Scriptures. The agreement elevated the Bible above any ecclesiastical authority and thus formalized the principle of sola scriptura, known in Bohemia as the "Judge of Cheb," nearly a century before the Lutheran Reformation adopted the position….

Nearly every church reform movement has claimed at least some self-justification on the basis of sola scriptura. Certainly Chelcicky was simple and direct in his reading of the Bible, but his scriptural hermeneutic was too complex to be explained as the uniquely inspired insight of a Bible-believing Christian. Most aptly put, his sectarian use of the Scriptures was molded under the influence of ideas imported from beyond Bohemia but locally defined by a proximate tradition of domestic piety and moral reform….

The radicals [the Taborites, a subgroup among the Hussites] pressed for immediate enforcement of The Four Articles, demanded the expulsion of priests and magistrates deemed unworthy of office, and insisted on the imposition of penalties against public sins. While the burghers rejected the behavioral strictures of a puritan commonwealth, the Utraquist masters resisted the principle of sola scriptura since subordination to Scripture might have subverted the position of the university as doctrinal authority of the Czech Reformation.

Repudiated, the Taborites left for South Bohemia to lay the foundations of their own Christian society….

Wyclif's greatest influence on Chelcicky was the English reformer's stern insistence on the Bible as the one source of Christian authority. Though the Scriptures gave Chelcicky and Wyclif conflicting messages, both sought to reject anything not explicitly supported by the Bible. Even if angels themselves added or removed a single jot or tittle of holy writ, wrote Chelcicky, he would discount it all as a corruption of the text. It was his rigid adherence to the principle of sola scriptura that led him to contradict Wyclif's societal theology [Chelcicky being a pacifist]….

The rejection [by some Hussites] of any dubious practices deemed to be abnormal enlargements upon orthodox belief took its authority from a fundamental reading of the Bible; namely, practices without an overt scriptural warrant were to be abolished or avoided as superfluous additions to the simple faith of the primitive church.

(Petr Chelcicky [Scottsdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1983], 20, 35, 45, 57-58, 76, 123)

On the invisible church:

The doctrine that proved to be most threatening to the papacy derived from Hus' concept of the church. He had adopted Wyclif's revived Augustinian definition of the church as the invisible congregation of the elect. Hus, like Wyclif, recast the doctrine to provide a practical test for making visible those Christians predestined for salvation, or at least those excluded from election. The reprobate, which may include clergy, can be identified by behavior that appears in glaring contradiction to that of the early apostles. (29)

Writing of Hussites more broadly, not just Huss, Atwood comments, "The Unity also accepted Hus's Augustinian understanding of the church as the invisible body of the elect, although they refined his thought in some intriguing ways." (75) For a discussion of how they viewed the visible church and the relationship between the invisible and visible churches, see page 177, for example.