Human reason or reasonable humanity? Balthasar Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, and Menno Simons and the Catholic natural law tradition

In contrast to what is frequently assumed about the Radical Reformers of the sixteenth century, this thesis argues that three prominent early Anabaptists—Balthasar Hubmaier, Pilgram Marpeck, and Menno Simons—articulated theology that parallelled the medieval natural law tradition in their treatises concerning the relationship between church and state. I will show that natural law theology undergirded their belief that human reason is central to moral awareness, and that humans possess a significant degree of moral freedom and the ability to discern God's moral direction from the created order. These theological presuppositions informed the entreaties that Hubmaier, Marpeck, and Menno made to governing authorities for religious toleration for their Anabaptist followers, who were acknowledged even by their enemies to be model citizens. They also undergirded Anabaptist visions of how church and state should coexist, as well as Christian involvement in the state.;I conclude that Hubmaier, Marpeck, and Menno consistently show an orientation in which natural law prominently guides the Christian witness to the state. Natural law in the Anabaptist tradition works mainly through human reason understood as God-given human rationality. While natural law is an effective moral guide for all human beings, it is not an end in and of itself. Rather, it provides moral guidance which anticipates each person's encounter with the gospel message leading to faith in Christ. Natural law is, however, effective as a means of preserving order in human interaction where explicitly Christian faith cannot be presupposed.;My choice of these Anabaptist leaders reflects the diversity in early Anabaptism and is intended to demonstrate that the correspondences among the three are indicative of a significant theological current in early Anabaptism. My demonstration of the parallels between Anabaptist natural law arguments and those from the medieval tradition is based on observations made in a survey of four major streams of the natural law tradition. I also briefly outline the role which natural law played in the theologies of Luther, Calvin, and "classical" Anabaptism in order to provide a frame of reference to help show the divergence of Anabaptist theologies of church and state relative to the larger stream of Reformation thought.