The centrality of Andreas Karlstadt in shaping Anabaptist soteriology

Andreas Bodenstein Karlstadt (1486-1541) developed an alternative evangelical soteriology by combining Luther's new theology with German mysticism and Augustinian spiritualism, which was largely adopted by the early Anabaptists. Both Karlstadt and Anabaptists accepted Luther's forensic justification with the principles of sola gratia and sola fide, but their main concern was not the imputation of Christ's righteousness but regeneration and inherent righteousness through mortification (Gelassenheit), which they described as the death of the old man and the resurrection of the new man in Christ. They unanimously affirmed free will and its cooperation with saving grace which is offered to all people, and interpreted predestination as the divine foreknowledge of future human decision to believe. Further, the Augustine's distinction of the letter and the Spirit helped them to get out of Luther's antithesis of the law and the gospel and to construe the law binding to Christians. Anabaptist soteriology was thus neither legalistic, as Luther and mainline reformers charged it, nor was it purely Lutheran or Zwinglian, as the Bender School claimed. Karlstadt's influence best explains why the soteriological thoughts of Hans Denck, Balthasar Hubmaier, and Melchior Hoffman are not just evangelical but also mystical and Augustinian.