The Perfectionism of the Early Unit as Fratrum

The writings of the Bohemian Brethren dating from the sixteenth century and the end of the fifteenth accuse the founding generation of their Unitas of a spirit-breaking perfectionism and an unwarranted idealism ("high thinking") about the moral achievements, or inner "corrrection" (opraveni) available to those born anew in Christ. According to the later documents, the expectations which were placed upon the early Brethren by their spiritual leaders were "above measure and sobriety," made them live in constant fear and anxiety, and took away from them the hope of salvation. The revolution which took place within the Unitas toward the end of the fifteenth century liberated the Brethren from the demand to carry out to the letter the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount as spelled out in Matthew 5: 21-48, permitting them to have an active part in the political and social order of the day. It also released them from the apparently unbearable pressure to show their new birth by lives free from sin. The revolutionary official Agreement of 1495 setting aside the authority of the Brethren's older writings refers to the abiding frailty of even the greatest saints and states that the hope of salvation cannot be based on the achievement of perfection by the Christian

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Fifteenth · Idealism · Mount · Order (exchange) · Perfection · Perfectionism (psychology) · Political science · Politics · Sermon · Theology · Classics · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformation and Early Modern Christianity · Religious studies · Social Psychology

• The Bohemian Brethren and the Protestant Reformation

  Open Access•Craig D Atwood, Craig Atwood•Religions•2021

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