Fall 1526

Once he obtained the opportunity to lead the territorial church in Nikolsburg, Balthasar Hubmaier set to work developing liturgies for baptism and the Lord’s Supper that would reflect distinctive Anabaptist beliefs about these two special moments in congregational life. He believed that by publishing the pastoral prayers, exhortations, and Scriptural quotations that he and his fellow pastors were sharing with the congregation in Nikolsburg, they could become a model for leaders in other Anabaptist congregations, thus bringing greater unity to the disparate movement.   

There was some urgency in developing a liturgy for baptism, in particular, because Lord Leonhard of Liechtenstein, his patron, desired to be rebaptized in the autumn of 1526. It could be expected that many local people in the territory would indicate a desire to follow suit. Following the model that Hubmaier observed from Lutheran and Reformed reformers who had opportunities to develop new “orders” for territorial churches, Hubmaier believed that it was important to integrate his theological emphases into the liturgies that churches in the Liechtensteins’ Moravian lands would use in their services.  

In the “Form for Water Baptism,” Hubmaier emphasized up front that a candidate for baptism should “first present himself to his bishop” and be “questioned whether he is sufficiently instructed in the articles of the law, gospel, faith and the doctrines which concern the Christian life.”¹ This service would therefore be the culmination of a period of instruction in which both the congregation and the candidate were intentional partners. It was for those who had formed the desire not just to be baptized, but to receive instruction and submit to the law and discipline of the church.

Through gestures and words, Hubmaier represented the congregation’s important role in the entire baptism service—an aspect that would have stood in notable contrast with those churches where infant baptism was performed, since families brought infants to church to be baptized throughout the week apart from congregational worship services. As the person to be baptized is presented to the congregation, he envisioned the bishop calling “all brothers and sisters to fall to their knees, to call upon God with fervent devotion, that he might graciously impart to this person the grace and the power of his Holy Spirit and complete in him what he has begun.”  Before asking the candidate a series of creedal questions about his personal beliefs, the bishop additionally framed this inquiry with an evocation of the church at Pentecost: “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy believers, kindle the fire of thy love in them, thou who hast assembled by manifold tongues, the people into the unity of faith. Hallelujah, hallelujah!”  Here the congregation’s members reminded themselves that they were participants in a church gathered from various nations and joined through voluntary baptism, like the church born at Pentecost, in contrast to a territorial church where membership was assumed by national birthright.

Hubmaier also represented a robust notion of the “priesthood of all believers” in the baptism service. Among the questions posed to the candidate for baptism, the bishop specifically addressed willingness to submit to the admonishment of fellow members, not just to clergymen. “If now you should sin and your brother knows it, will you let him admonish you once, twice, and the third time before the church, and willingly and obediently accept fraternal admonition,” he asked.  After performing the baptism, the bishop would also symbolically invest the new member of the church with a power that once had been guarded by bishops as the exclusive domain of the ordained: the “power of the keys” to bind and loose. Laying his hands on the head of the baptized, he would say: “I testify to you and give you authority that henceforth you shall be counted among the Christian community, as a member participating in the use of her keys, breaking bread and praying with other Christian sisters and brothers. God be with you and your spirit. Amen.”² Through this conclusion of the service, Hubmaier conveyed his notion that baptism was a pivot point from receiving instruction in faith to assuming responsibility for the care of others’ souls alongside one’s spiritual sisters and brothers, terms that indicated equality in both authority and responsibility.  Thus preparedness to exercise as well as accept spiritual admonishment and discipline from the congregation was an important part of the “baptismal pledge.”³                  

Thus, it is not a surprise that Hubmaier emphasized that the Lord’s Supper should be used as an opportunity for members to confess their sins to God and to one another; all members would then be acting in the traditional mediating role of priests, lifting up prayers of repentance for one another and proclaiming assuring words of the “death of the Lord” to one another “so that people have a picture of the boundless goodness of Christ” in forgiving their sins.⁴  The Lord’s Supper was not simply a symbolic remembrance of the forgiveness Christ extended on the cross, however. Hubmaier believed it should also be a symbol of the “true fellowship of the saints”—such a tight fellowship that members would be willing to lay down their lives for the church. Building upon his understanding of a “sacrament” as a pledge or oath, Hubmaier stressed that when “one holds fellowship” with the church “in the breaking of bread,” he is “thereby saying, testifying, and publicly assuring her, yea, making to her a … pledge and giving one’s hand on the commitment that one is willing henceforth to offer one’s body and to shed one’s blood thus for one’s fellow believers.”⁵ He thus composed a “Pledge of Love” that brothers and sisters would recommit themselves to alongside the communion service, focusing on expressions of brotherly love, including fraternal admonition. Through each of these elements Hubmaier reinforced a vision of the church defined by catechesis, congregation-wide confession of sins and proclamation of the gospel of Christ’s forgiveness, mutual discipline for the care of souls and avoidance of sin, and regular recommitments to the responsibilities of membership.  Though Hubmaier believed these emphases could be communicated and realized within a territorial church, they would become common marks of ecclesiology within the free-church movement.  

About This Series

This post is part of a series entitled “The Reformation at 500: Timeline of the Free-Church Movement.” Click here for more information on this series.

Featured image courtesy of the Wick’sche Sammlung, ca. 1575, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Ms. F 23, fol. 294.

1. A Form for Water Baptism,” trans. H. Wayne Pipkin & John H. Yoder, eds., Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1989), 387. ↩︎
2.  Ibid., 389. ↩︎
3.  Hubmaier explains in commentary that baptism is “truly” a “sacrament” in its original sense as used by Roman soldiers who pledged allegiance to their army—“a commitment by oath and a pledge given by the hand which the one baptized makes to Christ, our invincible Prince and Head, that he is willing to fight bravely unto the death in Christian faith under his flag and banner.”  Ibid., 391. See also 388 for his characterization of the pre-baptismal questioning as the “baptismal pledge.”  ↩︎
4. “A Form for Christ’s Supper,” in ibid., 394-95. ↩︎
5. Ibid., 397-98. ↩︎