Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom. (Reviews).

Gerrit Voogt, Constraint on Trial: Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert and Religious Freedom.

(Sixteenth Century Essays & Studies, 52.) Kirksville, Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2000. 268 pp. $45 (cl), $30 (pbk). ISBN: 0-943549-71-X (cl), ISBN: 0-943549-84-1 (pbk).

In Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 1997, Jacques Dupuis, S.J., fashions a "theology of the faith of man," one which holds that the Spirit of God dwells in all religious communities. By dialogue and by a focus on reality and existence rather than on abstraction and essence, Dupuis sees in the plurality of religious traditions the plan of God. Citing Nicea, Chalcedon, and Trent among other Councils in his criticism of Dupuis, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, presented a Notification on the book "to safeguard the doctrine of the Catholic faith from errors, ambiguities or harmful interpretations." Dupuis shares the existentialism and the desire for toleration that Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert called for in Synod on the Freedom of Conscience, 1582, and Trial of the Killing of Heretics, 1590. Due to the tension inherent in exchanges between advocates of utopian toleration and guardians of a religious faith, both anticipated resistance.

Because Coornhert (1522-90) promoted the vernacular and wrote chiefly in Dutch, knowledge outside of his homeland of his role in the Radical Reformation and in the search for toleration has been limited. To remedy this neglect, Gerrit Voogt's Constraint on Trial presents, in the days and works genre, the complex political and religious milieu in which to locate Coornhert's contribution to the debates on human perfectibility and, especially, on toleration. A talented etcher and engraver, Coornhert supported William of Orange against the Hapsburgs and suffered imprisonment and exile. In 1572 he accepted the role of secretary of the free States Assembly of Holland to promote toleration between Catholics and Protestants. The presence in Coornhert's Netherlands of Anabaptists, Arminians, Calvinists, Catholics, Erastians, Gomarists, Libertines, Lutherans, Mennonites, Nicodemites, Remonstrants, Sacramentarians, and Zwinglians indicates not only the freedom of religion created by the revolt against Rome but also the potential for seething sectarian disputes. In addition to the terrors of war, many of the Dutch had to fear a "Calvinist Inquisition" (Servetus died at the stake in 1553) as well as one of the Spanish type, which Philip 11 had tried to strengthen by increasing the number of Catholic bishoprics from four to fourteen, each of which was to have two Inquisitots. At a time when most held toleration in disdain, Coornhert, perhaps uniquely, extended it not only to all Christian sects and to all religions but even to all atheists.

Voogt shows how Coornhert mingled concepts from Stoicism, scepticism, and a spititualism related to Erasmian evangelical humanism to design his perfectibilist creed and to counter intolerance. The Stoic's dependence on reason to achieve perfection makes virtuous and vicious conduct derive from knowledge or the lack of it mote than from the will and the operation of grace. Like many Stoics, Coornhert has been praised for his individualism and reproached for his pride. Although scepticism is difficult to reconcile with the Stoic's confidence in the power of reason, Montaigne's motto and emblem, "Que sais-je?" beneath scales in balance, might be the rational response to sectarian divisiveness. With great frequency, Coornhert warned that we must postpone or abstain from judgement on religious issues. In Synod on the Freedom of Conscience, Coornhert, in two columns, juxtaposed sixteen Catholic errors against the same sixteen of Protestants. Avoiding the relativism often linked with toleration, Coornhert held that the Roman Catholic Church was the truly Apostolic one, though he felt that it had been deformed by venality and reliance on the sword. Often placed among the Libertines, Coornhert considered himself a Catholic, not a Papalist. When he attended Mass, he left after the sermon and in his later days apparently ceased practicing.

Like others in the Radical Reformation, Coornhert admired Erasmus, calling him a miracle and the only phoenix of all of Europe. Coornhert had been trained in legal matters by Erasmus' secretary, Quirinus Talesius, and at the end of his life had been completing a translation into Dutch of Erasmus' Paraphrasis. He seems to have developed radical views that exist in posse in Erasmus' works. Convinced that man could, by his own ability, obey God's commandments, he saw original sin as a human invention which had no foundation in Scripture. If there were an original sin, it would be, as Pelagius said, in our imitation of Adam. He held that infant baptism was a matter of dispute not settled by the ancient Fathers. For the weak who might need a rite like baptism, there would be two completely voluntary ceremonies, one as an infant and the other as an adult. He did not want a visible church to hold doctrines on original sin or on Calvin's supralapsarian predestination because they make a tyrant of God. This lofty esti mation of man, the practice of two baptisms, and the Pelagian position on original sin as an imitation of and not an inheritance from Adam can all be found in Erasmus, particularly, in his lengthy annotations on Romans 5:12 and 14. Because of the diversity of opinions on original sin, a major dogma in the Christian economy, Coornhert at the age of thirty-five mastered Latin and studied Greek so that he could investigate the Scriptures and the patristic sources on the issue.

Although Coornhert's vigorous, active life did not resemble Erasmus' life of the independent intellectual, he followed Erasmus' acceptance of the rational tradition of late medieval Christianity, rejecting the fideist and charismatic line. There is an uncompromising rationalism in Erasmus' philosophia Christi. Like Erasmus, Coornhert saw little need for systematic theology, he placed more importance on the Sermon on the Mount and dialogues on Christian subjects. The twelve articles in the Apostles' Creed contain the fundamental beliefs for all Christians. The study of Scripture rather than the performance of ceremonies will inspire ethics. Coornhert's Ethics, or Art of Living Well (1585) appears to be the first modern vernacular work on ethics.

A century before Coornhert, the General Council of Florence gave the axiom, extra ecciesiam nulla salus, its severest interpretation, damning all pagans, Jews, heretics and schismarics. At the opposite pole lay Coornherts' plea for toleration based on the parable of the wheat and tares (Mt. 13: 24-30) and, from the Sermon on the Mount, the Golden Rule (Mt. 7:12). Differing from Luther and Melanchron who claimed that Christian rulers must protect the wheat by punishing heretics, he followed Erasmus' interpretation of the parable, i.e., the master of the field constrains the servants who wish to suppress heresy by the sword; they should tolerate the heresiarchs who might amend and turn from tares to wheat. His reasoning on the Golden Rule -- "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the whole law and the prophets" -- enabled him to repudiate the application of the axiom mentioned above. Because defenders of a sect wish to be heard, it follows that th ey should give a hearing. Coornhert held that the Golden Rule was the chief law that God infused into nature. Thus, those who obey this natural law in any place or at any time enter the spiritual church and find salvation since the rule embraces the law, the prophets and Christ.

Reflecting elements found in Erasmus' Enchiridion, Coornhert's Spiritualist convictions provided his strongest motivation. Spiritualists tend to minimize and in some cases deny the value of externals like ceremonies and sacraments and emphasize unimpeded access to the Bible and to the Spirit. The Spiritualist believes in all-subduing power of truth and in the Platonic dichotomy between the world of flesh and that of spirit. Coornhert's Spiritualism encouraged toleration because the true Christians in all of the sects form the invisible church. The Spirit, restricted neither by time nor geography, unites with this church those outside of European Christendom who understand God's word as it is taught to them and who live sincere and tranquil lives.

Although an irenicist, Coornhert, known as the "gainsayer," seemed to thrive on controversy. Voogt's last chapter describes his debates on such issues as the comparative superiority of the Catholic over the Reformed churches, the features of the true church, the concepts of justification and perfectibility, and the harmful effects of the Heidelberg Catechism. In his last days, he defended the rights of the individual's conscience against the role of the state and the prince vis-a-vis religion as advanced in Jusus Lipsius' Politica. Even though Voogt's work has some needless repetition, it is a required read for those interested in the Radical Reformation. And, more importantly, Voogt gives us the best study in English of a major figure in mankind's search for toleration.