However, Franck also does not want to be an Anabaptist (stanza 4) since their theological stance appears to be superficial as well. As he states, because of their religious radicalism, they are being persecuted by everyone else in the world. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that they seem to be closer to God than all three other religious groups because of their spiritual freedom.
In the fifth stanza, Franck ridicules all those sects that insist that they understand Christ better than everyone else and have a more direct connection to Him, although the opposite then proves to be the case. No one truly prays to God or venerates Him properly. They all “fehlen der Bahn, / wenig die warheit fassen” (stanza 5, 10–11; go amiss in their track, and few grasp the truth). The only way to reach Christ would be to stay away from all churches, to pursue humbleness and patience (stanza 6, 4), even at the risk of being ridiculed by the world (stanza 6, 6), which ultimately would allow the truly devout person to find God personally.
The last stanza of his song sums up poignantly the critical position assumed by the poet and deserves to be quoted in full, here in a slightly modernized version:
Wer nun in Gottes Reich will
der flieh davon!
Nach Christo soll er trachten.
Er bleibt in Demut und Geduld,
such Christi Huld,
lass sich die Welt verachten:
Ob ihm schon feind
all Menschen seind,
die Welt ihm gram
um Christi Nam’
sein Kron’ wird nicht verschmachten.36
[He who desires to enter God’s realm
should flee (from this world)!
He should long for Christ.
He should maintain humbleness and patience,
search for Christ’s mercy,
and contempt the world:
Even if all people
hate him,
and even if the world is angry with him
in the name of Christ,
he will not lose the crown.]
The song concludes with an epimythion, which summarizes the essential message: The Catholics mislead people, the Lutherans are equally victims of error, the Zwinglians have missed the goal outright, the Anabaptists are simply wrong, and only those who simply pursue Christ will establish the right church in His name.
In his letter to Johannes Campanus from February 4, 1531, he supported the Antitrinitarian stance embraced by Servet, arguing against any need to carry out acts of piety. The external church had left the earth after the arrival of the Anti-Christ, which would make unnecessary any rituals and liturgical customs (305), but God had allowed his own light to sink into the heart of all people, including the heathens and the Muslims: “Denn gott ist kein anseher der person, sonder ist den griechen als dem barbarischen vnd türckischen, dem herren als dem knecht, sofern sie das liecht das auff sie gedruckt ist vnd einen ewigen schein jrem hertzen gibt, behalten” (306; God does not consider the person, [but loves them all], such as the Greeks, the Barbarians, and the Turks, and the lord and the servant, as long as they keep in mind the light that has come upon them and illuminates the heart eternally).37 At the same time, he called the four church fathers the apostles of the Anti-Christ (307) and blamed them for not having understood the basic divine teachings. He demanded the return to the internal church and hence to ignore the external church, a common battle cry of most Spiritualists at that time. At the end of his letter, he makes a final swipe against the two leading Reformers, Luther and Zwingli, claiming “man solt balder aus einem türcken, denn aus einem bösen christen oder schriftgelerten einen rechten christen machen” (323; that one could rather make a true Christian out of a Turk than out of an evil Christian or theologian). All this does not sound very positive with respect to the non-Christians, since they serve him primarily as a contrastive foil to ridicule and reject the opponents within the Reform movement. However, this letter simply opens the perspective toward a more broadly and inclusively conceived notion of religious people who all could be turned to God if they only allowed the divine light to shine on their heart.
Franck was mostly concerned with awakening a critical awareness in his readers and was strongly opposed to the development of the politico-religious principle, ‘cuius regio, eius religio’, giving the territorial dukes absolute power over their subjects’ religious needs.38 In short, with Franck, we face a most outspoken critic of all dogmatic thinking who deeply challenged the secular and the religious authorities of his time and insisted on a very personal relationship between the individual and God. In terms of tolerance, we may conclude that this poet insisted on a deeply spiritual approach to God, free from all institutional constraints. He did not consider Jews or Muslims in that context, but he certainly carved out a space of freedom for himself and his readers within the Christian context.
Even though Franck did not establish a circle of followers, he exerted a considerable influence, as the many editions of his various works indicate. His Von dem greulichen Laster der Trunckenheit was published fifteen times in High German and then even translated into Low German and Czech, and his Baum des Wissens into Latin, English, and Dutch. The extensive criticism that Franck received, intriguingly parallel to the enormous popularity of his texts among the broader audience, and the many responses to his ideas by intellectuals throughout the subsequent centuries, including Baruch Spinoza, Immanuel Kant, Karl Jaspers, and Rudolf Bultmann, underscore the great appeal and intrigue that Franck could exert both during his own life time and posthumously upon a rather diverse audience, attracting many supporters and also detractors.
He was not one of those Protestant or Anabaptist thinkers who would have agreed with any categorization; instead, he always maintained an independent mind and insisted on searching for God outside of the biblical text. This would not make him into a tolerant thinker at first sight, but we will observe specifically how much he tried hard to move away from traditional judgments in the religious context to free the individual from formal requirements imposed by the Church and to find common ground with representatives of other faiths on a global level.
While at first supporting Luther’s teachings, he soon turned away from them, arguing that good Christians had to change their lives actively in order to receive God’s grace—certainly a notion far removed from Luther’s ideas of the passive agency (sola fide). The faithful should leave the world behind and probe in him/herself how to find God. Curiously, as Franck argued, the latter could not exist without people insofar as the Creation was God’s own manifestation. When searching for the good, the individual should disregard everything that would be uncertain and lacking in evidence.
Every human being would be able to discover God in him/herself and would not need the biblical word for that. In his Paradoxa (no. 8), for instance, Franck emphasizes that God created the world and people in order to recognize Himself. God would not know of Himself without the creatures that worship Him. Real life must be determined by the desire to find God in the human creature, through it, and through the world.39 Christ is not the word of God but a shadow and a figure of it, that is, a symbol of Himself (Paradoxa, no. 50).40 In this life, a fight constantly takes place, pitting good against evil. The Bible is, according to Franck, only a historical witness of God’s revelation, which entails that the individual still has to develop his own interpretation. Consequently, all church rituals, sacraments, sermons, and visual depictions, etc. would be only an illusion and could not help in discovering God because they represent formal aspects and do not take us closer to the divine spirit.
These Paradoxa, at times identified as Franck’s masterpiece, were reprinted at least eight times until 1690, that is, 1534, 1540, 1542, 1558, 1559, 1580, 1610, and 1690.41 Modern philosophers such as Wilhelm Dilthey, C. A. Hase, and Ernst Bloch recurred to them frequently. Proving to be most controversial, these theological reflections have triggered positive and negative responses throughout the ages. Franck formulated in the foreword most clearly what he intended to do, w
hich sheds light on the provocative nature of his thoughts. Although he idealized the Gospels as texts containing eternal truths, he also warns that the Scriptures represent a book with seven seals, which the ordinary person would hardly be able to open.
The text itself, the letters, would have to be regarded as the Anti-Christ’s sword that would kill Christ, or, even worse, it is a “Scriptura sine luce, vita et interprete spiritus, obsura lucerna, et occidens litera” (1; Scripture is without light, life and interpretation by the spirit, a dead letter and a dark lantern). God would address His faithful in the Bible, and other holy texts, but always only in allegorical terms, making it impossible for the faithless to understand the true meaning in part or fully. The biblical text would, hence, be, on the surface, nothing but dead letters: “darum ist der Buchstabe ohne das Licht des Heiligen Geistes eine finstere Laterne, den Paulus den Tod und einen Vorhand nennt” (5; therefore the letter is, without the light of the Holy Spirit, a dark lamp, which St. Paul calls death and a veil). The letter would be nothing but an eternal allegory, and only those who would be able to read more deeply behind the letters would be able to grasp the full truth (7). No formal approach would make the Holy Ghost accessible, which only the true faithful would be able to reach (8). In other words, here we are faced with yet another specific opposition to church organizations and public promulgations of what the true faith would be. For Franck, each individual would be called upon to find the truth him/herself within his/her own soul, and not through some institutional conditions and organization.
As much as Franck himself might be called a Spiritualist, he harshly condemned all those who relied on the biblical text for the establishment of their own church: “Demnach, weil der Buchstabe der Schrift gespalten und mit sich selbst uneins ist, kommen alle Sekten daraus. Der sticht den toten Buchstaben da an, dieser dort. Der versteht ihn, wie er da lautet, jener, wie er dort kling” (10; Therefore, because the letter of the Scripture is divided and in disagreement with itself, all the sects result from that. One stabs the dead letter here, the other, there. One understands it as it says something formally, the other as it sounds). External images easily mislead, so the faithful have to be extremely careful in distinguishing between the truth and the falsity (12). Considering the biblical text, Franck observes that it is filled with errors, as a result of normal human conditions.
However, he also warns not to condemn every form of error since those are the result of human weakness, which affects everyone (13). Nevertheless, there is enormous danger at hand once again because too many interpreters have arisen and claim their own authority to the detriment of the Holy Spirit (14). In particular, Franck warned of those popular preachers who believe that they can address their public with the full authority of the Bible and, yet, know really nothing. Even the ordinary church service would have to be viewed with suspicion, “weil Schein billig in ein Scheinreich gehört” (15; because false impression belongs to a deceptive world). God alone holds the full truth, beyond all deception. Consequently, none of Christ’s works would be truly appreciated in this world, where illusion matters more than truth (15).
The individual’s task, hence, would be: “Wer nun nicht irre gehen will, der bleibe nicht draußen an dem Schein, sondern grabe tief in den Acker und reise weit aus der Welt in sich selbst” (15; He who does not want to go astray, should not stay outside in the illusion, but should dig deeply in the plow field and travel far away from the world into himself). The truth is hidden and requires intensive efforts by the faithful to be recovered. Those who want to know must enter the temple and not stay outside, reading and listening about it. Instead, one must enter and experience it all oneself. In sum, “dieses Im-Geiste-Sehen und -Erfahren heißt die Schrift glauben” (16; this seeing in the spirit and in the experience means to believe the Scripture).
In his first paradoxon (or paradox), Franck insists that we cannot ever understand the true nature of God because He alone knows what He is (17). Everything that can be described, touched, written about, listened to, and be grasped by the sense has nothing to do with God. If God does not reveal Himself and does not explain Himself to the individual, He will remain entirely obscure. In other words, Franck deeply objects to all those who claim to preach about God, and without mentioning any particular church here, he actually rejects them all and embraces a virtually mythical concept of what it would mean to learn about and recognize God.42 After all, there would not be any meaningful definition of God, since He rests in all and yet could not be seen, felt, described, or be shown to anyone. God is, as he explains, love, wisdom, goodness; a graceful, eternal life; and resting in all things and yet being outside of all objects.
Certainly drawing from the language as developed by late medieval mystics, such as Meister Eckhart and Johannes Tauler,43 Franck concludes: God is “ein unüberwindlicher, unsichtbarer, unbeweglicher, unwandelbarer Geist und Gott; unendlich, sich selbst allein allenthalben genug, bekannt, gleich und ähnlich” (19; an invincible, invisible, immovable, unchangable spirit and God, infinite, known to Itself alone fully, being the same and similar). Such formulations pull the rug under the feet of all representatives of any church and insist that the relationship between God and the faithful can only be based on personal familiarity and spirituality. Hence, all images or sculptures, texts or music reflecting God would be nothing but foolish and erroneous mirrors of the true being, which we could understand as a broad attack on all churches and all religious institutions, since they endeavor to capture God in images and concrete objects, which will certainly fail in every respect (21).
Following, Franck formulates that God is in everyone and in everything, except in sin (paradox 2), that God does not have a name (paradox 3), that God alone is truly good (paradox 4), that the people who have found God and embraced Him can be called fortunate (paradox 5), but also that no one knows God apart from God Himself (paradox 6): “Was Gott ist und will, weiß niemand außer Gott und der aus Gott ist” (27; What God is and wants, no one knows except for God and he who is from God). Hence, there is no accident or affect associated with God (paradox 33) because God is only through Himself and not contingent. All those who try to speak on behalf of God would fail in that regard and could not claim God for themselves: “sähen gern, daß er ihr Lied sänge und dem Fleisch zu willen würde” (79; they would like to see it that He were to sing their song and would e subject to the flesh). There would be no way for individuals to trace God and instrumentalize Him; he would only arrive in the life of the individual totally voluntarily (79). In other words, there would be no organizational, institutional structure that could functionalize God. For Franck, hence, true faith and any church would be contradictions. This then leads to the paradox 40: “Gott ist nicht näher, als wenn er fern ist” (81; God is not closer but when he is far away).
In another context, Franck emphasizes that all efforts to reach out to God by means of intellectual understanding would fail. Only the self-imposed tabula rasa could achieve the desired goal because then God could write Himself upon us. We must become, as he states, “eine reine lautere Tafel und ein jungfräuliches Pergament von allen menschlichen Künsten” (101; a pure, clean table and a virginal parchment void of all human arts). Only those who would turn their back to any church they might have belonged to would be empowered to find God because only then when they are free from all institutional preconditions would God turn to them (101). The more learned individuals are, the less would they be able to understand the very nature of God: “Je weiser einer in menschlicher Weisheit wird, desto törichter vor Gott” (103; The wiser someone becomes in human wisdom, the more foolish he will be before God).
Franck vehemently attacks all those who pretend to be pious and devout and yet prove to be hypocrites (paradox 80) insofar as they only claim formally to follow God’s laws and demonstrate deceptively their piety in public (116). All those ministers or priests who assume their post with the purpose of gaining honor and wealth would betray God badly, since they would regard Him r
eally as a tyrant. He calls them the “Heiligen der Welt” (116; saints of this world), rejecting them radically as liars and actors who would do the worst disservice to God. The author does not target Protestants or Catholics, but he implies all those who represent an official church. By contrast, those who are impious, sinners in this world and know about it, without pretending to be saintly, are much more welcome to God (117).
The more someone would enjoy the reputation of being a saint, the less God would love that person since they would just be “Weltfromme[ ] und falsche[ ] Propheten” (117; world pious and false prophets). We sense, here, a direct attack against the Catholic Church, but Franck probably also had Protestants in mind when he criticized the representatives of the official church of whatever denomination. True sanctity comes from God Himself, not from a person, so St. Peter would be just the same as Judas because God would not look at the accidentia, the externa, in one’s life, or the works, but at the essence of each individual. In this respect, the fool would count just as much as the wise person (paradox 81).
For many Christians, Franck’s paradox 82 must have been highly controversial and provocative because here he argues that God loves all people all over the world just as a father loves all of his children, irrespective of their deeds—a strong echo of what Boccaccio had to say in his Decameron and what Lessing was going to formulate in his Nathan der Weise. God selected the Jews as his favorite people to serve as role models for all others, hoping thereby that the rest of the world would feel ashamed about their misbehavior and come voluntarily to God and beg for pardon. Altogether, hence, despite the preferential treatment of the Jews, Franck insists that
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