Brad S. Gregory - Augustana College

gutduncken].” 27 In September of the same year, Conrad Grebel, like Zwingli a learned
reformer from Zurich, wrote to Thomas Müntzer, telling him, “I do not want to concoct,
teach, or establish a single thing based on personal opinion [eignem gütduncken].” 28
Another Anabaptist leader, Hans Hut, an heir to Müntzer‟s legacy in Germany, stated in
1527 that “God has forbidden us to do as we think fit [was uns guet dunkt]; rather, we
should do what he has commanded and hold to it and not deviate to the left or to the
right.” 29 All these reformers, along with others who rejected the Roman church‟s
authority, were on board with sola scriptura. Their shared goal was to discern and to
follow what God had revealed in scripture. The idea that biblical interpretation was in
principle a matter of individual opinion or preference was utter anathema to the early
evangelical reformers.
So much the more disconcerting, then, was the undesired outcome of their shared
commitment. From the early 1520s those who rejected Rome disagreed about what
God‟s Word said. Therefore they disagreed about what God‟s truth was, and so about
what Christians were to believe and do. “Yet you might ask,” Luther wrote in 1520,
“„What then is this Word, or in what manner is it to be used, since there are so many
words of God?‟” 30 These were great questions. Indeed, they were the most fundamental
27 “Darau aber volget, dz wir an die schrifft angehenckt seyn, das sich keiner nach seines hertzen
gutduncken richten dörfft, . . . ” Karlstadt, Ob man gemach, in Karlstadts Schriften, ed. Hertzsch, vol. 1, p.
75/31-33.
28 “. . . u eignem gütdunken nit ein einigs stuk erfinden, leren und uffrichten.” Conrad Grebel to Thomas
Müntzer, 5 September 1524, in Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer in der Schweiz [hereafter QGTS], vol. 1,
ed. Leonhard von Muralt and Walter Schmid (Zurich: S. Hirzel-Verlag, 1952), p. 17.
29 Hans Hut, “Von dem geheimnus der tauf . . .” [1527], repr. in Quellen zur Geschichte der Täufer, vol. 3,
Glaubenszeugnisse oberdeutscher Taufgesinnter, pt. 1, ed. Lydia Müller (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1938), p. 15.
30 Luther, Tractatus de libertate Christiana [1520], in WA, vol. 7 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger,
1897), p. 51/12-13: “Quaeres autem, „Quod nam est verbum hoc, aut qua arte utendum est eo, cum tam
multa sint verba dei?‟” Luther‟s own German translation of his Latin is significantly different, and for a
wider audience avoids any reference to “so many words of God”: “Fragistu aber „wilchs ist denn das wort,
das solch grosse gnad gibt, Und wie sol ichs gebrauchen?‟” Idem, Von der Freiheit eines
Christenmenschen [1520], in ibid., p. 22/23-24.
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