A summary of Jacob Frank, an 18th-century messianic figure, describes him as a Sabbatean dissident leader who preached "redemption through sin," rejecting the Torah in favor of antinomian rituals, including transgressive sexual practices. Excommunicated by rabbinic Judaism, he and his followers underwent a mass conversion to Catholicism, a move viewed with suspicion by ecclesiastical authorities of the time and historians today. Imprisoned by the Inquisition, his movement eventually declined, leaving a legacy of disruption and subversion. While historically accurate, such a summary fails to identify the spirit that animated Frank and his followers—a spirit that is not a mere aberration but a consistent manifestation of what can be called the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit. This spirit, born from the rejection of the Logos, resurfaces throughout history in increasingly degenerate forms, from the political messianism of Bar Kokhba to the sexual messianism of Frank, and finally, to the secular messianism of Marx and Freud. The inability to comprehend this historical and theological continuity led the Church, during the Second Vatican Council, into a naive dialogue with forces that have historically always sought its subversion.
📜Heresy as Essence, Not DeviationThe Frankist movement cannot be understood merely as a heresy within Judaism. It is, in fact, the logical and grotesque manifestation of post-Christian Judaism, which fundamentally defined itself by its rejection of Christ, the incarnate Logos. When the Jewish leaders at the foot of the cross chose Barabbas, the political revolutionary, over the Suffering Servant, they sealed the fate of their people to a perpetual cycle of false messiahs promising an earthly paradise. Sabbatai Zevi and Jacob Frank are the inevitable successors to Bar Kokhba. They represent the ceaseless search for a messiah who does not redeem man from sin but liberates him from the constraints of the moral law for political and power-driven ends. The rejection of a suffering messiah leads inexorably to a warrior messiah, and when military victory becomes impossible, the war turns inward, against the moral law itself. Frank, by declaring the Torah no longer valid, was merely taking the Talmudic premise—which distorts and supplants the Torah—to its nihilistic conclusion. The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit is not a dissent from Judaism; it has been its essence ever since Judaism, in its modern form, became an anti-Logos ideology.
⚤Redemption Through Sin: Sexual Liberation as a Political Weapon
Frank's central doctrine, "redemption through sin," is the theologizing of sexual liberation as a form of political control and social destabilization. This idea is not mere antinomianism but a direct assault on the moral order (Logos) that underpins Christian civilization. By promoting orgiastic rituals and the deliberate transgression of the commandments, Frank was weaponizing disordered sexual passion as an instrument to destroy the Church and the society it shaped. This pattern repeats itself throughout the history of revolutions. The Anabaptists in Münster, under the leadership of John of Leyden, instituted polygamy as a divine decree to consolidate their power. Similarly, in the 20th century, cultural Bolshevism, driven by figures like Wilhelm Reich, used "sexual liberation" to undermine bourgeois morality and prepare the ground for political tyranny. The tactic is always the same: promise liberation from the moral superego in order to enslave man through his uncontrolled id. Frank was a pioneer in this form of cultural warfare, understanding that the destruction of the Christian sexual order was a prerequisite for the destruction of its political and religious order.
🎭False Conversion as a Revolutionary Tactic
The mass conversion of Jacob Frank and his followers to Catholicism in 1759 was not an act of faith but a maneuver of subversion. This event echoes the converso problem in Spain, where forced or insincere conversion created a fifth column within the Church, undermining its integrity and sowing mistrust for centuries. The acceptance of duplicity, the idea that one can profess one faith externally while adhering to another secretly, is a profoundly Talmudic principle, designed for survival and subversion within host cultures. By "converting," Frank sought not salvation but protection from Christian authorities to continue his war against rabbinic Judaism and, ultimately, against the very Church that sheltered him. He exploited Christian charity as a weapon, turning an act of mercy into an opportunity for infiltration.
🇻🇦Vatican II and the Ignorance of the Enemy
This historical lesson on the nature of Frankist subversion was completely ignored by the Fathers of the Second Vatican Council. In drafting documents like Nostra Aetate, the Church hierarchy acted with profound naivete, believing they were engaging in dialogue with the "people of the Old Testament." In reality, their interlocutors, such as Jules Isaac, were the intellectual heirs of the same revolutionary spirit that animated Frank, albeit in a more sophisticated and secularized form. The campaign for the Church to repudiate the "teaching of contempt" and the accusation of "deicide" was not a request for reconciliation but a demand that the Church deny the truth of the Gospels and, therefore, its own foundation. By yielding to this pressure, the Church opened its doors to a form of subversion more subtle, but no less dangerous, than that of Jacob Frank. The post-conciliar dialogue became a Trojan horse, through which the anti-Logos ideology that defines the Jewish Revolutionary Spirit could enter the citadel of faith. The Church, by failing to recognize its historical enemy, disarmed itself in the face of a cultural war that continues to this day—a war in which theological clarity has been traded for sentimental ambiguity, with disastrous consequences for Catholic faith and morals.
📖References
Jones, E. Michael. The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History. South Bend: Fidelity Press, 2008.