[1][2][3] Johannes Bünderlin was born in Linz, Upper Austria, and studied at the University of Vienna from 1515 to 1519, where he learned Hebrew, Greek and Latin, but left without taking a degree as he was unable to afford the tuition.
He became a Lutheran preacher in the employ of an Austrian nobleman, but in 1526 received adult baptism as an Anabaptist in Augsburg, where he probably met Hans Denck.
From Augsburg, Bünderlin went first to Nikolsburg, where Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hubmaier was arrested and later tortured and burned as a heretic.
[4] Bünderlin believed in a two-fold revelation of God, as the living Word in the soul of man, and through external signs and events.
"This union with the Spirit, of living upward toward the divine goodness instead of downward toward individual selfhood is an act of free will that results in Salvation.