WESSEL, ves’sel, JOHANN (WESSEL HARMENSS GANSFORT or GOESEVOYRDT).
Life (§ 1). Writings (§ 2). Basal Religious Principles (§ 3). Johann Wessel, or, better, Wessel Harmenss Gansfort or Goesevoyrdt, the pre-Lutheran Reformer and one of the Brethren of the Common Life, was born at Groningen, Holland, about 1419, and died there Oct. 4, 1489. While his name is a matter of some doubt, it is most probable that his baptismal name was Wessel, that he assumed the name of Johannes while living with the Brethren at Zwolle, that the name Harmenss comes from the local custom of carrying the father’s name (in this case Harmen) with the addition meaning “‘ son,” that he Latinized his name Wessel as Basilius, while Gansfort is the name of a Westphalian village. Wessel’s preparatory studies were carried on at Zwolle, and he matriculated at Cologne in Oct., 1449. His early days at Zwolle
1. Life.
Christology (§ 4). Doctrine of Justification (§ 5). Doctrine of the Church (§ 6).
Penance, Confession, Absolution (§.7). Indulgences and Purgatory (§ 8).
had an abiding influence upon him, though that influence was not controlling; his predilections for the logical and the philosophical were strong, so that while the reverential tendencies of Zwolle affected him, the narrowness of conception there current repelled him. How far Wessel was influenced by the teachers at Cologne is not determinable, though his realism seems to have come through the Thomistic traditions fostered there. He seems to have found his way to Bernard, Augustine, and Plato, and then to have been influenced by Humanism (q.v.). He learned Hebrew and Greek. His interests were very wide, and he journeyed to Heidelberg and Paris to take part in the dispute between nominalism and realism, in the course of which he abjured realism for nominalism, a fact which may be of significance
Wessel
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for his later life, since nominalists were the antipapal party. It appears possible that he lived at Paris for sixteen years, without other definite purpose than to teach and learn. His humanistic interests and his acquaintance with Cardinal Bessarion led him to Rome, where he was found about 1470. Thence he returned to Paris, where he influenced such men as Reuchlin and Agricola, and where he won the title of magister contradictionum by his questioning spirit. A more restful place was sought by him in Basel, and he declined an invitation from the bishop of Utrecht to go to that place. By Apr., 1479, he was back in his own home. He lived part of the time at the Clarissa cloister at Groningen, and part of the time with the Brethren at Agnetenberg near Zwolle.
He frequently visited the flourishing abbey of Adewert, and found a friend and protector in Bishop David of Utrecht. He was surrounded by a circle of admiring friends and pupils and enjoyed friendly intercourse with such older men as the abbot of Adewert, Heinrich von Rees, the philologist Rudolf van Langen, and Paulus Pelantius. He taught a religiously deepened and theologically directed Humanism. After a period of gloomy doubting that threatened to rob him of his entire faith, he was able before his death to say, “‘ I know nobody but Jesus crucified.’”” He was buried in the church of the cloister at Groningen, where a memorial stone was laid in 1637, replaced by another between 1730 and 1742.
The extant literary productions of Wessel date from the last decade of his life. They are chiefly
short treatises in the form of apho- 2. Writings. risms arranged under special theolog-
ical topics. His intercourse with the “religious”? at Groningen and Zwolle led him to compose two books as guides in practical religion, neither of them published, however, before his death. The one dealt with prayer, the other was the Scala meditationis. After his death Cornelius Hoen (Honius) of The Hague industriously collected Wessel’s manuscripts. What he found was sent to Luther and Zwingli, so that a collection of the tractlike treatises appeared with the title Farrago uberrima (Wittenberg, 1522 and 1523). The fact that few of Wessel’s productions have come down may be explained by the remark of the book-dealer Adam Petri, that the mendicant monks acted with fiery zeal against Wessel’s papers.
Wessel’s basic religious principles are essentially those of Augustine, through whom he reached the Platonic conclusion that God is Absolute Being; he is the necessary existence, as opposed to the finite and incidental. The end of man is to raise himself to this stage of absolute being by complete self-surrender and self-denial. But such elevation above everything earthly is impossible without divine mediation. God has sent down the fulness of his being through the son, the virgin, and the angels, who act as intermediaries. Nature is the ordinary expression of the will of God, while miracle is the will of the same God expressed in what is unusual. As far as his relations to his immediate physical environments are concerned, man
3. Basal Religious Principles.
is left to his own counsel, wherein his personality is recognized in its specific value as against absolute being. Man is essentially in the image of God, bearing the trinitarian characteristics of mind or memory, intelligence, and will’ The original state of man was less perfect’ than that of the angels, since he was on a lower stage. Hence the image of God required purification and perfection through the angels. The mind js to be purified by wise knowledge of God, intelligence is to be illumined by the sublime glorification of God, and the will is to be perfected through the blessed enjoyment of God. The Father works on the mind, the Word on the intelligence, and the Holy Spirit on the will. Evidently such a foundation, mingling together arbitrarily the metaphysical with the ethical, must have its effect upon the doctrine of sin. Sin is defined as an abiding below the ideal, remaining behind the goal of accomplishment. Distinction is made between sins of commission and omission, and the guilt which results from breach of the law which requires man to be perfect as God is perfect. Before the fall there were venal faults in a failure to attain the perfection required; in the fall there was additional the contempt of divine revelation. Wessel knew of a fall not only in the world of man but in that of angels: the former left an abiding degeneration; the latter had also its effects on man because of the intimate relations which existed between men and angels, the latter being mediaries, as stated above. The fallen angels also worked upon man, awakening self-love, in which original sin essentially consists. While man is not in a position alone to reach perfection, the conditions are always at hand for attainment of this, and Father, Son, and Holy Spirit cooperate to this end. In Wessel’s Christology the idea of completeness is put in the foreground as against the idea of redemption and reconciliation. Since 4. Chris- the creature from the beginning is in tology. need of reconciliation with the absolute God, the incarnation was determined upon and prepared. That apart from the fall the Word would have become flesh is affirmed. Why God became man is answered by the statements that it was in order that the community of the triumphant Church might not be deprived of its head, that the building of the holy temple might have its corner stone, that all creation might have its mediator, and that the whole army and people of God might have its king. The fall from life in God could be remedied and a return effected only through the flesh raised above every creature [through the incarnation]. The human in Christ was only the shell which the divine rulership and completeness was to fill. Wessel, in following out such a train of thought as the foregoing, was not satisfied with merely theoretical consequences. The individual character of the incarnation lay in the fact that in the whole life and particularly in the death of Christ existed the exposition of the content of the eternal Word. Thus the human side was at the fore in Wessel’s Christology. The significance of the priesthood of Christ was also emphasized, and in this the self-emptying of the Word had its part in that as the sacrificial lamb the sufferings of Christ and his death were an
equivalent which wrought satisfaction. There is not possible another victim for sin that is past, for when sin is remitted sin ceases; and when that takes place, righteousness begins. Wessel’s doctrine of the saving value of Christ’s death should not be confused with the theories of Anselm and Luther, although there are similarities of expression. The saving value of Christ’s death consists in the absolute devotion of love which makes an immediate impression not only on sinners but upon all the imperfect, awakens love in them, draws them unto itself, and equips them with the Spirit, which in turn becomes a means of the full knowledge of God. There can be no doubt that Wessel derived the salvation of the individual from a divine and absolute act of grace. As Christ was the 5. Doctrine first predestined one, so were all the of Justifica- members of the congregation of Christ tion. predestined. Wessel follows the tradition of Augustine and of other theologians before the Reformation. Faith is a gift of God, inclining the mind to accept the truth of the Gospel, and faith directs itself to the crucified Christ. Wessel’s conception of justification is the same as Augustine’s, viz., an imparting of God’s righteousness. Penitence is essentially contriteness of heart, a readiness to surrender self to the guidance of the divine revelation. It is a step in the process of the establishment of righteousness, and at a higher stage it becomes the right valuation of sin. In so far as penitence is pain, it is sorrow accompanying love because of inability to comprehend divine love in its full extent. The mystic love, which from the beginning operates in faith, can find satisfaction only in an ascetic liberation from the world. Victory over the world does not for Wessel mean the moral conquest and transformation of the world and of one’s own life, but rather mystic indifference to the world as compared with knowledge and contemplation of God. In this regard Wessel lacked the true Reformation spirit. His significance for the Reformation of the sixteenth century lies chiefly in his criticism upon ecclesiastical life. In the medieval view the Church was a kind of sanitarium able with its treasures of grace to provide for men eternal salvation. This 6. Doctrine view Wessel rejected, and regarded the of the Church as a communio to which all Church. belonged who were united to Christ in one faith, one hope, and one love. He did not stress, as did Augustine and his followers in the Middle Ages, the fact of predestination; he substituted for “the predestined’ the phrase “ the saints.” The external unity of the Church under one pope was not essential but incidental. In expressing this opinion Wessel shook the cornerstone of the medieval ecclesiastical structure. Regarding the external form of the Church as a matiter of indifference, Wessel saw no necessity for transforming it and thus his position remained essentially negative. Wessel denied to the Church all authority in matters of faith and all capacity to impart salvation with certainty. Neither the pope nor the Church is infallible. Many popes “ committed pestilential errors.” That Christians should submit blindly to the mandates of ecclesiastics is “ irra-