… The Schwenkfelder Church, 100th Anniversary 2009

Part 2: The Fundamental Principles of the Schwenkfelder Tradition

This is the second in a series of Caspar’s Corners celebrating the 100th Anniversary of The Schwenkfelder Church. This Caspar’s Corner examines the founding document upon which the first organization was founded in 1782: The Fundamental Principals, or as they called it the Constitution of the Schwenkfelder Society. Our thanks to Dr. Peter Erb for reflection on this founding document.

“So, what is it that Schwenkfelders believe?” The question isn’t simply a twenty-first century one. It’s been asked many times before. Just after the Revolutionary War, it was raised again, as it had been over the previous 200 years, but in 1782 when the answer was finally formulated and adopted, the disappointment which struck the average reader of those seventeen fundamental propositions must have been as great as that which faced the average Schwenkfelder struggling through Joshua Schultz’s (1808-1892) English translation of them in the mid-nineteenth century, or that average Schwenkfelder’s child or grand child, newly incorporated as a member of “The Schwenkfelder Church” in 1909.

Things have not changed in 2009 – a full century later. In fact, we are faced today with even a greater problem as we face the first of the seventeen propositions: “That every person who wishes to be a member of this Church should be deeply concerned to have a proper foundation and an approved ideal (prototype.) After which they shall conform themselves in all things, and according to which they shall constitute their bond of union.” And then, to muddy the mind more there is Schultz’s twisted footnote: “The foundation is the Divine nature itself with the emanation of its virtues, (to whose likeness man is ordained,) but more particularly in the works of creation, of redemption, and of sanctification, according to the teaching of Divine revelation. This ideal is the pattern which the Apostles, particularly Paul, have laid down in their sketch (Abrisz) to the Christian churches, among which the epistle to the Ephesians is a concise masterpiece.”

Not only are we as far away from the original 1782 Schwenkfelder “Fundamentals,” as our eighteenth-century American forebears were from Schwenckfeld, but we are also a century and a half distance from the Joshua Schultz’s dense prose translation and his denser theological presuppositions. For today’s reader of “The Fundamental Principles” the first reaction is not “So, what is it that Schwenkfelders believe?” but: “Yes, certainly I `wish to be a member of this Church,’ but how on earth am I to `be deeply concerned to have a proper foundation and an approved ideal’ when I have no idea what these terms mean and am doubly confused by the explanation of `ideal’ as `prototype’, and Reverend Joshua’s rambling footnote about `the Divine nature itself with the emanation of its virtues’?!”

But have no fear: the whole matter is not as difficult as it first appears. According to the first proposition each Schwenkfelder is to be concerned with a proper foundation. According to the footnote, that foundation is God’s nature, according to the third proposition God’s nature is love. The first concern of a Scwhenkfelder as a result is participation in God’s love, “that excellent out-flowing virtue which binds together God and human beings.” Secondly, each Schwenkfelder is to be concerned as well with “an approved ideal.” What the term “ideal” meant seemed to be problematic for the 1782 writers, as it did for Joshua Schultz, the translator. As a result they tried the word “prototype” and then, in the second proposition, rethought their approach and switched to the word “model” and then “mark or goal.” But there was now doubt in any of these cases what these terms were intended to reflect. The approved “model” they were always to have before their eyes, as a fixed or approved mark or goal” was, to quote third proposition again, “their unity in this bond of perfection,” in other words “love.

And where to discover the form of this love? The fourth proposition sums it up simply and directly:

“If they build themselves up upon this foundation principle of the divine nature, namely, love, then will their one single immovable chief design be and remain (a) the glory of God, and (b) the advancement of the general good of each fellow member.”

The word “model” is here replaced with yet another synonym, “design,” but the point remains the same – rooted in love, Christians model themselves on a single model, prototype, or design. Call it what you will, its end is the same as its beginning: love, directed toward God in worship and toward neighbor as oneself. Of this straight-forward creed, the propositions that follow say no more and certainl