Caspar Schwenckfeld on the Person and Work of Christ: A Study of Schwenckfeldian Theology at Its Core

The Protestant Reformation was hardly a unified protest against the doctrines and practices of the Medieval church. Aside from the mainstream Lutheran Anglican and Reformed divisions a variety of eddies and side currents also flowed through reform in the sixteenth century. There were Anabaptists of course as well as Spiritualists Mystics Pantheists Anti-Trinitarians and others in the so-called Radical Reformation. One of the most intriguing of these smaller too-marginalized movements were the Schwenkfelders named for the Silesian lay theologian Casper Schwenckfeld von Ossig (1489-1561). An irenic voice in the raucous controversies of the sixteenth century Schwenckfeld pioneered a Reformation of the Middle Way that sought to avoid the extremes of the day. He started as an admirer of Luther but developed a more spiritual interpretation of Christs presence in the Sacrament. Venturing further along this vector he emphasized the spiritual dimension in all ecclesiastical externals including preaching the ministry baptism and church. Themes involving Christology and Soteriology however fill all 19 volumes of the Schwenckfelds writings - the Corpus Schwenckfeldianorum - and form the very center of Schwenckfeldian theology still espoused by the Schwenkfelders of eastern Pennsylvania. In brilliant fashion this study illumines that core.