the mystical theology of valentin weigel - DataSpace at Princeton ...

Weigel is critical of what he finds in these theology books he picks up, seeing
nothing but petty quarrelling. He discusses one of these disputes, over the role of faith
versus works, listing the whole variety of positions on the issue. He begins: “so man vom
glauben redete, so wolte der ander werck haben, so man von fruchten redete, so wolte
Jener alleine einen ertichten glauben” and continues “der dritte sagte, die Sacramenta
weren nottwendig zum glauben oder zur seligkeitt.” 334 He lists several more theories in a
similar fashion, such that no position is elevated above another, none of them are
designated as true or false, and all are introduced not by a name but rather only by a
number. The effect of a list like this is to sap the polemical force these arguments might
have in the context of a disputation by not pitting one position against the other, and by
reducing these positions to such a long list, to suggest that Weigel finds the whole debate
tedious and petty. One position is just as worthless as another (“der dritte...der vierte...der
fünfte”).
At least by the standards of Augustine’s rule of charity (discussed in the
Introduction), these university theological debates are failed interpretations of the Bible,
encouraging not charity but rather enmity. One theologian turns against another,
reporting his colleague as a heretic to the secular authorities (“wie einer den andern fur
weltlicher obrigkeitt angabe”), who then receives a worldly punishment for a spiritual
error: “Incarcerirte, verJagte etc. von wegen der erbsunde, des freien willens, der person
Christi etc.” 335 The problem, concludes Weigel, is that these theologians lack illumination,
a light by which to properly see, and thus must strike out blindly in their disputations. If
blind people were pitted against one another in a sword fight in the dark (“als habe man
334 Weigel, Griff, 89.
335 Ibid, 90.
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