Itt-Ott, 1992 (25. évfolyam, 1/119-3/121. szám)

1992 / 1. (119.) szám

rotten parts,” saying that if they did not change their views they would end up in prison. After this he requested and received police support from the city council in the name of the Lutheran faithful of Kolozsvár, so that they could jail those of the Helvetic faith.

It is a commonly occurring historical phenomenon that as long as a political or religious group is in the minority, it loudly proclaims tolerance. However, as soon as it finds itself in a position of power, it becomes impatient and bigoted. Stoeckel, a Lutheran colleague of Dávid’s, was just as contemptuous of the views of the Helvetic believers: “If the Helvetic dogma consists of that, it is fit not only to greet the Turks and the Jews, but the Devil himself.”

Francis Dávid’s Roads to Damascus

After his Roman Catholic beginnings as a priest, Dávid had become a Lutheran pastor and bishop in his search for truth. It is possible that Melanchthon’s deep influence accompanied the sensitive Dávid back from Germany to Transylvania. However, according to the inner logic of things intellectual, the orthodoxy that was developing within Lutheran circles ended up enclosing its followers in an already obsolete scholastic inflexibility which infected Dávid himself. The Helvetic concept promised to dispel this theological tension, this dogmatism, and in his spiritual homelessness Dávid set out on his third road leading to Damascus.

In 1559, Dávid had scarcely finished his successful debate with the radical Stancaro when he continued into theological crossroads. He adopted the rapidly spreading Helvetic dogma, whose followers, the Sacramentalists, he had attacked two years earlier. It would be difficult today to determine the exact reason for his decision. His Lutheran opponents, German Saxons, accused him of being a disturber of religious peace, and they did not even reply to the new principles of faith which Dávid published under the title In Defense of Orthodoxy in the Lord’s Supper. This was his first Helvetic work and he justified, with rationalistic methods, the Helvetic teaching of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper, which he had previously strongly condemned. He now stated that outside of the Lord’s Supper there was no real sacrament.

One can observe the impact of the history of reformed religious interaction and its constantly changing pattern. Several times he proved the thesis of the nihilist of Greek philosophy: “The one thing that is constant is change.”

Hardly had Dávid’s conversion to the Helvetic confession become known when he influenced the ruler of Transylvania to call together a synod for the defense of the Helvetic faith, and he was even able to formulate the topics for debate at the synod: Defensio orthodoxiae claudipolitanae et religiorum recte docentium in ecclesiis transylvanicis.

So in the defense of the Lord’s Supper, Dávid endeavored to bring together the conflicting ideas of Saxons and Magyars on the subject, but on the basis of the Helvetic teaching. When this undertaking did not succeed, he resigned from the episcopacy of the Lutheran Church. In one of his later writings, Rövid magyarázat

24 rrr-on 25. évf. (1992), 1.(119.) *zám

[A short explanation], which appeared in 1567, he mentioned in retrospect his reason for turning away from the Lutheran Church. It was because the mystic presence of Christ was too speculative for him. As justification he then published Heinrich Bullinger’s pertinent article, written in 1551, the Libellus epistolari, which was of a syncretic character and reconciled the various Helvetic opinions.

On this third stumbling down the “road to Damascus” Dávid started out with Péter Melius Juhász, the Helvetic Reformed bishop, who was active in Debrecen. They went to Transylvania together to organize a Reformed Church. In this capacity Dávid was elected bishop at the Diet of Torda in 1564, and he was even successful in obtaining legal and official freedom for the Reformed Church.

Fairly soon he lost his way. He could not escape from Calvinist syllogisms and the rationalism that went with them, nor from his own humanistic inclinations. Neither could he harmonize the radical Biblical anthropology of humanism and the Biblical relativism of Erasmus. Later, however, Erasmus’ Biblical relativism accompanied Dávid in his thinking to the very end. Perhaps he did not do it consciously, but Dávid was soon introducing intraconfessional relativism into the religious life of the churches he had reformed. He thus developed step by step his own subjective concept of salvation, imagining that in this way he could find an absolute, objective truth. For him, as for all latterday Faustian men, the struggle was for complete knowledge, without recognizing that man;’s understanding of God was and must always be incomplete. Naturally his pseudo-religious idea placed all emphasis on reason only.2

The Radical Influence of Servetus and Blandrata on the Theology of Francis Dávid

Giorgio Blandrata was among the Italian humanists who represented a new Mediterranean paganism in the spiritual life of Europe. When Blandrata, after successfully bringing about the disintegration of the Protestant Church in Poland, left for Transylvania, he needed a well-prepared theologian through whom he could spread his theological views. As physician and amateur theologian, he found a position at the voivode’s court which also assured him his authority. He was successful in winning over the dynamic preacher, Francis Dávid, around 1564 and 1565. One of Dávid’s faithful apologists, László Iván, registered this important moment in the history of religion:

The single decisive turn in the life of Francis Dávid took place in 1565. We can give thanks for the coming of this turn in Dávid’s life to God’s Providence, which brought him the works of the Spanish renewer of faith, Michael Servetus. While reading these works, Dávid experienced that great adventure through which he was actually born again to the world... Servetus became the guide who was to lead Dávid to salvation. Sometime after the Diet of Nagyenyed in 1564, Blandrata gave the books written by Servetus to Dávid. The reading of the Restitutio Christianismi released in Dávid the triumphant feeling of having hit upon the road leading to truth (Iván 1936, 122).