New Page

in life and soul, Saint John Part Six, and no-one understands the secrets of Christ's word unless Christ's
spirit is with them because that examines the depths of God's secrets, as Saint Paul says in Part Two of his
second epistle to the Corinthians."109 We cannot see him, however, so consistently adhering to the
hermeneutical consequence as Castellio had done in his treatise certainly read by the Hungarian
Antitrinitarian. It should be deemed important that the passage just quoted about Christ's disciples getting
instruction besides the Scripture is not included in Rövid útmutatás. In that sense we have the presence of
a downgraded, paler spiritualism with Dávid, appearing on two levels. First in his emphasizing the
mutually contradictory nature of various biblical passages on seeing which man is +bewildered", and
secondly in that consequently the person of the interpreter, and the road he has to make to get to the true
meaning of the Scripture, assume a crucial role.
On the other hand, significant differences follow from the optimistic anthropology which was formulated
in Castellio's more mature works and which was rather far from Dávid's world of ideas. The selfdenial
that the Hungarian Antitrinitarian demanded from his followers meant first of all getting rid of
human wisdom since +human cleverness and artfulness do not go well with God's word and instead of
this giving freedom for one's own and particular@kiváltképpen való explanation, all were ordered to
follow the explanation of God's spirit and to find the true meaning from the process of the whole good
Scripture."110 Castellio, on the contrary, forms a much more optimistic picture of the possibilities of man.
Though the fall has deprived him of liberum arbitrium, it has left libera voluntas intact and this makes it
possible for him to form judgements with the help of logos, spiritus and ratio, revealed in him and
virtually identical with each other. Thus with him everyday common sense, called assorted names
(Communis sensus, humanum iudicium, sensus hominis, sensus et intellectus hominis) is not obliged to
lay down its arms, indeed, it will become the most important principle, deeply permeated, of course, with
ethical elements for two reasons. For, on the one hand, it admits teachings that harmonize with a good and
gracious God and, on the other, it has to discard corporeal affections if it wants to be revealed. Thus the
assumption of an ethical disposition which makes the correct scriptural interpretation possible is
necessary exactly so that the communis sensus be operational.
These thoughts are not present in such explicit forms in the texts certainly known by Ferenc
Dávid. The ethical elements in them are not intertwined as yet with the apotheosis of communis sensus.
This may have had something to do with the presence of the prophetic tendency of Castellio's thoughts,
manifested also in the preface dedicated to the young King of England. The belief in a vates, capable of
making decisions in debated issues and endowed with special status, softened the difficulties in the
exegesis of the Scripture to transient, and blunted the urgency of the rules valid in the long run. Even so,
in staking out the right road indicated in the title of the short hermeneutical treatise, the element of
understanding, unlike in the case of Dávid, has a role: the first task of the believers is to believe as true
what is in the Scripture. Because not believing, they will not understand it either but will add profane
writings to sacred things. This is followed by the second element, identical with that in Dávid: man must
subject his will to God's. Common as the emphasis may be in their worlds of ideas on the contradictory
and obscure nature of the Scripture, Dávid, unlike Castellio, is scared by this and is led to the paradox
statement that the interpreter acts correctly if his presence in the interpretation means the annihilation of
his own self. This takes him near to the principle of the reformers but since the moral preconditions of
assuming the position are not automatically given, his position cannot be entirely identified with that. On
the other hand, the moral requirements (wearing the crucifix, self-denial) are not actualized to the extent
that they could not be metaphorically interpretable. Thus correct scriptural interpretation will not be the
privilege of the saints who have turned their backs to the sinful world as is the case with the Anabaptists.
The exclusivity, however, is not totally resolved since the required moral is not naturally given to man as
it is in Castellio's optimistic anthropology.
Thus we can see very well that the system revealed in the hermeneutical treatise of Rövid
útmutatás is full of contradictions and is to some extent immature. These contradictions, however, will
significantly diminish later. The emphasis on the ethical criteria will prove to be an enduring tendency but
38