Is church discipline really necessary? One sixteenth-century Anabaptist reformer certainly thought so. A contemporary of Luther and Zwingli, Balthasar Hubmaier believed that church discipline was so important that he included the doctrine in every major area of his theology. Not only did church discipline appear in his doctrine of humanity, salvation, and the church, as a theoretical construct, but he also included practical instructions regarding its implementation in the life of the church. In this book Goncharenko examines Hubmaier's teaching on discipline and considers its relevance to the church today.