16th Century German Spiritualism I

In Spiritual and Anabaptist Writers, George Williams and Angel Mergal have a taxon called “Rational Spiritualism.” They write that “rational or speculative Spiritualism, grounded more in the spiritus of man in the Spiritus sanctus, emphasizes the universal aspects of Christianity and may go on to the contemplation of the order of nature” (Williams and Mergal, 33). German rational spiritualist, such as Sebastian Franck, Paracelsus, and Agrippa “allegorizes the Bible into a cosmic philosophy, mystical contemplates the celestial flesh of Christ and delights in the correspondences between the microcosm and macrocosm” (Williams and Mergal, 33). Although this taxon is regarded by them as part of the Reformation, Williams and Mergal regard German Rational Spiritualism as a “philosophy of religion more than a way of life, and a way of life far more than an organization of it…has no community-creating impulse, and passes from church history into general intellectual history the moment is completely clarified” (Williams and Mergal, 34). On Williams and Mergal’s view, Franck, Paracelsus, and Agrippa, are spiritual anarchists who have no interest in forming any type of church, but are exponents of a “philosophy of religion.”

A better explanation of "German rational spiritualism" than Williams and Mergal's Christian anarchists, who have a philosophy of religion, is Wittgenstein's concept of a "private language game": "In the second case one might speak of a subjective understanding. And sounds, which no one else understands, but which I appear to understand might be called a private language" (Wittgenstein, 94). Franck, Paracelsus, and Agrippa are not following Luther, Calvin, and the Anabaptists' language games, because the former’s doctrines are not meant to generate rule following for a group, but to entertain their private visions; while the latter are far more plain and simple in their respective language games, so to generate rule following among people (i.e., Churches). Williams and Mergal only say that the German Rationalists spiritualists’ views are too difficult for the common folk and so Franck, Paracelsus and Agrippa’s views cannot be used to build a church. So their language games cannot be spoken or understood easily by others. 

None of the German rational spiritualists are burned at the stake or decapitated by the Lutherans and Catholics. On my view, their works are "private language games," which are too difficult for the Lutherans, Catholics, or Anti-Baptists to understand. So the Lutherans and Catholics do not burn or decapitate Franck, Paracelsus, or Agrippa. This fact itself is proof that German spiritualism is a "private language game." The Lutherans have no objections to burning witches and decapitating Anti-Baptists (such as Thomas Munster, who saw himself as Savonarola type prophet), nor torturing, murdering, and burning Catholic clergy. Catholics have no problem in burning the Anti-Baptist Michael Sattler in Rottenburg, 1527, and Lutherans. Franck, Paracelsus, Agrippa’s anti-church/anarchical and highly philosophical views about God probably helped them escape the attention of the Lutherans and Catholics. Their views are, on the one hand, far more heretical and radical than the Anti-Baptists (who are regarded by Lutherans and Catholics as heretical and radical). On the other hand, they are so obscure that the authorities cannot understand their views, but only "appear to understand them."

Consider Frank's "private language game." In “A Letter John Campanus,” Franck argues that the Eucharist, infant baptism, and all the sacraments of the Church are the outward church, which is part of the Anti-Christ. The true church died after the apostles died, because the sacraments are the invention of the early Church fathers who have corrupted the Apostles’ Church so much that they transformed the Church from inner Church to the outer Church. “I believe that the outward church of Christ, including all its gifts and sacraments, because of the breaking in and laying waste by Anti-Christ right after the death of the apostles, went up into heaven and lies concealed in the Spirit and in the truth” (Franck, 149).

While Lutherans and Catholics argue about the meaning of the Eucharist, and Anti-Baptist object to infant baptism, Franck wants to eliminate all the sacraments, because none of them are part of the true Apostolic church, but corruptions of the world (Anti-Christ) and divert attention from the inner light of God, which has been removed from this world and sealed by the Apostles in heaven. All the sacraments of outer Church are the inventions of early church fathers and are not part of the Apostle’s faith: "Clement, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, Chrysostom, Hilary, Cyril, Origen, and others which are merely utter child’s play and quite unlike the spirit of the apostles, that is, utterly filled with commandments, laws, sacramental elements, and all kinds of human invention” (Franck, 148). To speak of religion without sacraments is like having a language without nouns, so his theological language game is so alien to his adversaries they cannot understand it, because he speaks without following the rule of using sacraments (or, nouns).  

On Franck's view, the Early church fathers invent the Eucharist, infant baptism, and all other alleged Christian sacraments by mixing them imperfectly with pagan forms of worship and ritual and sacraments of the Old Testament. God no longer accepts the sacraments of the Old Testament or pagan ritual, because Christ brought His light to earth, which means none of the Old Testament sacraments (like circumcision) are recognized by God. All of these outward ceremonies of the world are gone, because Christ has been born to this world free from the Anti-Christ (original sin), but “because of Anti-Christ and degenerate through misuse” (Franck, 150) the light of Christ has been blocked by early Church fathers’ inventions of outer church sacraments. 

By ridding the true Church of all sacraments, the division between religions is no longer real, because God’s light is unity, not division. The outer church with its sacraments causes division and strife with other outer churches. Division and strife are the ways of the world (four elements) which belongs to the Anti-Christ. Christ is unity not strife, so removal of the sacraments is the light of Christ. “Consider as thy brothers all Turks and heathen, wherever they be, who fear God and work righteousness, instructed by God and inwardly drawn by him, even though they have never heard of baptism, indeed, of Christ himself, neither of his story or scripture, but only of his power through the inner Word perceived within and made fruitful” (Franck, 156). Christ is the light of all man’s religious belief, regardless of scripture, ceremonies, and other religious perversions. Only fear of God and righteousness in work are the true signs of light of Christ, not any baptism or Eucharist. “The Turks to this day consider all images to be an abomination” (Franck, 160).

 In 280 Paradoxes or Wondrous Saying (1534), Franck develops the hermeneutic of opposition to move beyond images and to discover the truth by paradox: “Thus always judge the opposite of everything” (Franck, 33). In Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition, truth is not part of Scholastic scientia, which involves self-evident principles or necessary demonstration. Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition is meant to move you beyond the outer appearance of things and direct you to the truth of things in themselves. This is so characteristic of Wittgenstein's "private language game." "What does it mean when we say: I cannot imagine the opposite of this or What would it be like otherwise--For example when someone has said that my images are private" (Wittgenstein, 90). Understood in this way, truth never involves an assertion, which is under the jurisdiction of the laws of Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. Instead, truth always involves an existential encounter. Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition involves struggling to comprehend something by its opposite in order to have a complete understanding of the subject. Consider his definition of paradox: “Dear friends and brothers, the Greeks call any statement a paradox which is at once certain and true, but which is considered by the entire world and by those who live in a carnal manner to be less than true” (Franck, 1).

Franck’s definition of paradox is certainly not the Scholastic or Aristotelian definition (contradiction in terms); instead, paradox is meant to show truth which remains hidden due to false images by the devil or Anti-Christ. "It might be said: if you have given yourself a private definition of a word, then you must inwardly undertake to use the word in such and such a manner" (Wittgenstein, 93)." Accordingly, Franck has a private definition of paradox. The Anti-Christ is division, which is the root of paradox, because the Anti-Christ is in opposition to Christ. God allows the Anti-Christ to cloak the truth, because “not that God is against them, but he simply knows them to be incapable and unworthy of truth…therefore God picks [the truth] up before their eyes and hides the spirit, the mind of Christ” (Franck, 3). Paradox reveals to those, who are worthy, the difference between the utterance or image of Anti-Christ and the truth in the mind of Christ. “Does not Christ say clearly that he speaks veiled through parables and allegorical language so that his secret covered by the cloak of the letter—may remain within the school, hidden from the godless and received by his children only” (Franck, 3). Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition explains his belief that only the apostles understood Christ, and that the early Church fathers had no understanding of Christ, because his messages are only given to his direct disciples and hidden from the godless (Early Church Fathers).

Let us apply Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition to religious sacraments, which is the central topic of his letter to “Letter to John Campanus”: “Neither fasting, prayer, almsgiving, nor begging is worship of God. Rather we beg, pray, give, and fast exclusively for ourselves” (Franck, 29). To believe that these rituals are on behalf of God is pure foolishness, since nothing can be added or subtracted from God. God is unmovable, indivisible, and perfect unity. The sacraments are grounded upon a delusional blasphemy: man’s belief that his efforts can add or subtract from God’s being. If man truly believes in Eucharist, baptism, or other religious sacraments mean something to God, then man must believe he can add or subtract from God’s essence. Such a belief is non-sense, because “none of the creatures can either give Him anything back or take anything away” (Franck, 27). Man can only think in images, because, as Proclus mentions, “as long as [man] operates with images, [man] cannot enter the soul and that which is in [himself]” (Franck, 18). Eucharist, baptism, fasting, and almsgiving are the images which man operates to try to understand God, but they are the opposite of God, “for how are [we] to name or define [God] who is all in all, yet none of the things which we are able to name, show, see, write” (Franck, 18).

When we perform a sacrament on behalf of God, we assume what we say, write, and show correspond to God, but such an assumption is false, because these are the images which impede our understanding. Franck thinks of the sacraments as Wittgenstein considers the possibility of parrot with understanding: "But couldn't we imagine God's suddenly giving a parrot understanding, and its now saying things to itself?" (Wittgenstein, 110). Analogously, how can preforming the Eucharist or baptism have anything to do with God who cannot be named, for God contains all the predicates of creation, but none of them singularly? God is all, but nothing specifically. “God is all in everyone” (Franck, 19). Christian sacraments, on the other hand, reflect the limitation in our understanding of God due to thinking only in images, which reflect our own prejudices, customs, and preferences about God. These sacraments are meaningless, as the utterances of a parrot, because they are vain deflections from “what shall we poor, little worms boast of in the presence of such majesty” (Franck, 29). A bundle of disconnected depravities are grounded upon our images of our prejudices, customs and preferences about ourselves, not God, so these human depravities amount to the Anti-Christ. Or,to believe that the sacrements correspond to God is as meaningful as considering the possibility that the utterances of Parrot correspond to any understanding. 

Franck’s usage of Anti-Christ and Christ is meant to demonstrate the same point as Hieronymus Bosh’s painting “The Garden of Earthly Delights”: we do not have the same perspective as God, our perspective is governed by relativity of the world (time and place); while God’s perspective is completely opposite from ours, because He sees outside of the sequence of time and place. “This [is the] perverse judgment of a perverse and crazy world” (Franck, 44). According to Franck, everything in this world is backwards from God’s perspective. The devil’s has possession of this world, so everything is organized for his benefit. “And that which is and is called the devil, namely the flesh and consequently contrary to the spirit by nature and disposed only to flesh, to that which is visible, and carnal” (Franck, 43). The world of the flesh, of time, and of the visible is the images of the Devil. The Catholic Church and the Papal States declaring war on Milan, dealing with earthly princes and Kings, its power and wealth is the Anti-Christ from God’s perspective, because God sees its false images, as images of earthly power and not the spirit of Christ. “It shall always be thus with this perverted world, to the very end: Christians will be Anti-Christians and Anti-Christians, Christians” (Franck, 45).

Franck’s hermeneutic of opposites is a method in attaining God’s perspective of the world, because God sees things oppositely than us. Unlike Savonarola’s mystical hermeneutics, he does not guarantee prophetic knowledge, but an ability to try to attain God’s perspective of the world. His hermeneutic of opposites is no different than Bosh’s painting: an attempt to see the world, as mad and perverse, as God. Applying his hermeneutic of opposites, Franck derives this conclusion: “For Christ, as always, is now and ever shall be the world’s anti-Christ” (Franck, 45). Catholics who war against Milan, the Turks, Lutherans, and other states and religions are “the children of the devil” (Franck, 44). Lutherans who wage war against the Catholics, and Anti-Baptists are no different than Catholics: Anti-Christ. Conversely, those organized religions, who call heretic and burn, are the true Christians: “Vice Versa, what they put to death, persecute and blaspheme as Anti-Christians and heretical, [God] blesses and acknowledges to be Christians, the holy children of God” (Franck, 45).

The paradox reveals truth only insofar as God’s perspective is opposite to man. Franck’s belief about God makes paradox not negation of the truth, but the affirmation of truth. Accordingly, paradox is outside the realm of Aristotle’s logic and metaphysics. Franck’s hermeneutic of opposites, however, depends upon two assumptions which conform beautifully to Wittgenstein's concept of a "private language game." First, God’s perspective is opposite to man, and that Christ is the proof of that fact. Another assumption of Franck’s hermeneutic of opposites is the world is the devil’s domain, which is the anti-thesis of God. His assumptions are close to the Manichaean heresy, because Manicheans believed in two almost equal opposing forces in the cosmos: one good, the other bad. On Franck’s view, Satan is God over the carnal and corporeal world, because Satan inherited those domains after the fall of Adam. All our images of the world or sense data come from Satan.

Rene Descartes’ evil genius of the First Meditation (1632) is a similar view: the evil genius deceives us in all our sense experience. Descartes only considers the evil genius as a metaphysical hypothesis. Franck’s two assumptions, however, are founded on the metaphysical conviction that sense experience or Proclus’ images are byproducts of the Devil. Franck’s metaphysical conviction would not need to be proven in Premodernity, because such a conviction is included in Canon Law: the devil can be the source of sense data. In the Malleus Maleficarum (1487), Kramer and Sprenger argue that “all things are caused by devils through illusion or glamour, in the manner we have said, by confusing the organ of vision by transmuting the mental images in the Imaginative faculty” (Kramer and Sprenger, 121). Like Descartes, Franck expands the devil’s ability of deceiving our sense data to all our sense data, while Kramer and Sprenger limit devil’s ability only to the bewitched. Unlike Descartes, Franck believes this to be the case and reality per se, not a metaphysical hypothesis: “For God has decided to be the world’s opposite—leaving appearances to the world and keeping the truth and the thing itself for himself and his own” (Franck, 171).   

 Franck’s strategy to prove the hermeneutics of opposites is simply assuming the second assumption and having the first assumption as proof for his second assumption, which ironically, likewise, proves the first assumption. He reiterates his second assumption: “Since Satan is an extremely gracious God in this matter, anxious to do according to a person’s will, to oblige him and acquire for him a good leisurely, easy-going life, honor, possessions and whatever else might please the flesh, he must be God to all persons who are carnally minded” (Franck, 40). Bishops, Cardinals, and the Pope are worshipers of wealth, power, and honor. They display their wealth with their sacraments. They display their power and honor by waging war on others. They do this not for the true God, but to their true master: Satan. Ergo, all clergymen are the clergy of the Anti-Christ.

He expands the second assumption to include the idea that man has the possibility of transcending sensual world due to his alter ego, which can function as a receptacle for Christ/God. “Everyone has alter ego with in, he renders by one to whom he renders service in submission through renunciation of the opposite part” (Franck, 124). Man has the ability to free himself from the world and its sense data through an “alter ego,” but he must renounce the world and the truth value of its appearances. He must open himself up to the true spirit of God and Christ, which means regarding everything perceived in this world as it’s opposite. “Now only those believers who surrender and sacrifice themselves in faith to live for God, are called Saints by Paul” (Franck, 124). 

All true messengers of God are regarded as Anti-Christ by the world. Jesus Christ was crucified by the Romans on behalf of Hebrew clergy, because they regarded him as a heretic. Paul and Peter were made martyrs by the Romans on the grounds of atheism, because they did not have a historical recognizable god. Franck says “it’s Christ, similarly, and all his messengers [Apostles] have to be the Anti-Christ, heretics, messengers of the devil, whom they kill in their divine zeal” (Franck, 41). Franck concludes only a “perverse world turns everything around and it appears as non-sense” (Franck, 42). In short, only if the world is perverse and mad, does Franck’s hermeneutics of opposites point to wisdom? This world is perverse, because everything we see, feel, taste, smell, and touch comes from the Devil. Our sensual images belong to the Devil. To defend his position, he only has to juxtapose the teachings of Christ in Scripture and the alleged Christian religions (Catholic and Lutheran) and their respective actions to make his point about the perversity of the world.

Ergo, Franck proves his first assumption, which defends his second assumption of his hermeneutics of opposites, which, likewise, reaffirms his first assumption. Christ is sacrificed by the Hebrew clergy, because they cannot recognize Him as Christ, except for the apostles, because of their sensual corruption. God sees Himself as Christ clearly, but the Hebrew clergy see Him as the opposite: heretic or Anti-Christ. Therefore, God sees the world oppositely from the world. The Hebrew clergy saw Christ as a heretic, because they saw Him through their senses the world of the devil. This world is not Christ’s, who is sacrificed, but is the Devil’s world. 

If religion is about the world (sense data) and has nothing to do with God, how do we know God? Another of Franck’s underlying beliefs is revealed: truth is not sense data, but truth comes from God through hidden or innate notions written in “our alter egos.” Like Descartes, Franck believes in innate notions from God, but believes they are the only source of truth, because we are more real in God than in ourselves. “It is true, nonetheless, in the truth and hiddenness of God who sees that which is hidden, rules secretly and truly maintains everything, even though the world may not either see or believe it” (Franck, 103). Accordingly, the alleged heretic, Christ, who is guided by the Holy Spirit, is the true Christian, but is put to death by the clergy of Hebrew religion due to their false perceptions of Jesus. Ironically, one has to renounce religion and the world in order to find the spirit of Christ and God’s innate notions. Franck’s hermeneutics of opposites leads to spiritual anarchy, no religion, because religion is the opposite of Christ, because religion involves sense data and the flesh. Or, as Wittgenstein says, "orders are sometimes not obeyed. But what would it be like if no orders were ever obeyed? The concept order would have lost its purpose" (Wittgenstein, 110). Accordingly, Franck wants to jettison religious order, so it loses its purpose. 

Playing with the definition of words is typical of a "private language game." Accordingly, many so-called non-Christians are true Christians, because their understanding of the world does not depend upon sense data, but the innate notions written on their alter ego by God: “Plato demands that in worship of the highest God all ceremonies be removed, as does Hermes Trismegistus” (Franck, 163). While the Catholic Church, Lutherans, and Anti-Baptists quarrel over sacraments, Plato and Hermes regard rituals and sacraments as non-sense, because God is beyond such human non-sense. How is possible for these non-Christian pagans, who do not have the benefit of Scripture, to understand such a profound religious truth? Plato and Hermes are inwardly spiritual men, who deny their senses, and reflect upon God’s divine hidden innate notions. An innate notion can be understood without the benefit from experience or Scripture, because it is a seed planted in the mind of man by God. Franck also has “drawn from Cornelius Agrippa in great abundance” (Franck, 190).

His hermeneutic of opposition can rely upon heretics, such as Agrippa, or pagan philosophers, such as Hermes and Plato, because everything is opposite from what it appears to us. Franck saying that 'everything is the opposite' is similar to "the proposition sensation are private, [which] is compatible to: One plays patience by oneself" (Wittgenstein, 90). The Catholic Church condemns Agrippa, as a black magician, who is in league with the devil. On Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition, Agrippa is the true Christian, while Catholic Church is the Anti-Christ. Plato, Hermes, and Agrippa are in opposition to this world, which means God sees them as true Christians, as God sees Christ in Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses of the Old Testament. Abel is murdered by his brother: “[Christ] has also been murdered in Abel from the beginning” (Franck, 143). Isaac is almost sacrificed by Abraham. Jacob climbs the ladder to God. Joseph is sold by his brothers only to save them out of Love. Christ infuses himself in Moses by speaking the word of God to him. Franck's game of opposites is no more meaningful than having patience with himself, because no one else will accept these oppositions.    

The Hermetic myth of the eternal return is an underlying belief of Franck’s hermeneutics of opposition, which transforms his hermeneutic into more than allegorical interpretation of the Bible. Much of Premodernity has its roots in the Hermetica Corpus: “Eternity is the power of god, and cosmos is eternity’s work, but the cosmos has never come into being; it comes forever from eternity” (Hermetica, 37). Franck’s hermeneutic of opposition is a metaphysical claim about history. The Bible will repeat itself eternally in human experience, because the world is divided by those who believe what they perceive is real (Anti-Christ) and those who rely upon the innate notions from God written on their alter egos. "But the fairy tale only invents what is not the case: it does not talk non-sense--It is as simply as that" (Wittgenstein, 97). Franck is inventing a new interpretation of the Bible, as "the fairy tale," which makes sense in its own terms privately, but is simply not the case, according to general rules of interpretation. On Franck's view, the entire Bible has to be repeated again and again and must follow the same pattern : "Adam’s fall, the tree of knowledge, repentance; likewise death, life, suffering, the resurrection of Christ are each in its own way still in full swing, as well as all the other stories of the Bible” (Franck, 191).                     

The literary structure of the Bible is the historical narrative man, which repeats forever. The people of the Anti-Christ and Christ will turn upon one another in opposition forever. Everything that happens in the Old and New Testaments will happen structurally in human history. Jesus Christ has only come to earth once literally, but His one literal/historical coming is only landmark between the periods in the past of His interaction and His future interaction with man. In history, Christ will come eternally to this world in order to infuse man with the Spirit of God (or innate ideas). He has come multiple times in the Old Testament through Abel, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses, and He also comes to pagans through Hermes, Zoroaster, Pythagoras, and Plato.

Instead of coming externally, Christ comes internally inside of man’s soul. So typical of a "private language game" always involving private images: "Are the rules of the private language impressions [images] of rules" (Wittgenstein, 92). Franck uses his private image or impression to argue that the Bible is the mirror of human history and uses it to draw analogies, not allegories, between human history and the Bible: “The world still has its Pharaohs, Pilates, and Pharisees who again and again crucify Christ in themselves, though not outwardly, according to letter and historical reality. All this takes place in us internally” (Franck, 191). Cardinals, Bishops, and the Pope are the current Pilates, Pharisees, and Pharaoh. They kill Christ internally by their worship of the Anti-Christ, because Christ is not of this world, but of the Spirit. Catholics, Lutherans, and Anti-Baptists obsess over their rituals like the Hebrews of the Old Testament and perpetuate the Anti-Christ and the fall of Adam. Heretics, such Agrippa, Paracelsus and himself, will come as their counter weights, because they understand God’s innate notions. Christ will resurrect through them.

The Hermetic myth of eternal return is grounded upon two opposites, beginning and ending, but is constantly unified by God’s perception of Eternity and History. Unlike most Christians, Franck does not believe that world will ever end due to his Hermetic belief that as long as God is talking the cosmos will exist, Christ is the Word, and so the Cosmos will never end. “And if God were not still speaking this word today by which he maintains, bears, nourishes and continuously creates all things in nature, everything would instantly fall back into nothing” (Franck, 101). This cycle will never end, because the events of the Bible are constantly played out in history ad infinitum. Christ will never stop talking, so the world will never cease. “So, Christ is today, was and shall be eternity” (Franck, 143). Christ is the unity of past, present, and future of history. The beginning and the end are unified by Christ, who will never cease, as the word of God. History will never cease, because God through Christ will not stop talking to Himself through the pattern of the narrative of the Bible.

This cycle is not limited to the Bible itself, because “the Holy spirit, Christ, or the world of God, except for a few inwardly-turned, spiritual people such as Abraham, Hermes, Trismegistus, Job, Noah” (Franck, 142). Franck’s acceptance of the Hermetic eternal return transforms his rational Christian spiritualism to something far more radical, because most Christians believe that human history has a beginning and end. The Bible is the map to human history, which understood properly through the hermeneutic of opposition, can reveal God’s innate notions, which will reveal that all human images and sense data are part of Christ’s great counter weight, the Anti-Christ. By understanding the eternal return of the Bible and the hermeneutic of opposition, one can attain God’s perspective, as Bosh’s painting Earthly Delight tries to capture. Franck is a Premodern philosopher, who creates a Manichean hermeneutic and maintains the Hermetic belief of the eternal return, in order to try to attain God’s perspective of human history. He does so by rejecting all images and sense data, as the devil, and accepting a doctrine of innate notions. What a crazy "private language game?"