The good professor has written a marvelous post on the Anabaptists today, which you can find here. (10:22 update for Dec. 28th). He writes, in part,
‘Whenever we downgrade good works, wherever we make sanctification some kind of appendage to justification, whenever we emphasize more what God does for us than what He does in us, we have become proponents of an unbalanced Christianity. The doctrine of justification by faith is taught in the Scripture, and I rejoice in it! But an emphasis on the forensic and juridical nature of our salvation can easily lead to a light emphasis on the “good works that God has foreordained that we should walk in them.”‘
And you might want to check out this view on the persecution of Anabaptists. Yep, I like ‘em.
December 28th, 2009 2:43 pm
Dr Black should stick to Greek and stay out of history. The Anabaptists were initially persecuted because of little things like taking over towns by force and killing those who did not submit to christian rule.
To quote the source of all knowledge (not tHHGttG but Wikipedia)
“Bockelson, better known in history as John of Leiden, was subsequently installed as king.
Claiming to be the successor of David, he claimed royal honours and absolute power in the new “Zion”. He justified his actions by the authority of visions from heaven, as others have done in similar circumstances. He legalized polygamy, and himself took sixteen wives. (John is said to have beheaded one wife himself in the marketplace; this act might have been falsely attributed to him after his death.) Community of goods was also established. After obstinate resistance the town was taken by the besiegers on June 24, 1535, and in January 1536 Bockelson and some of his more prominent followers, after being tortured, were executed in the marketplace. Their dead bodies were exhibited in cages, which hung from the steeple of St. Lambert’s Church; the cages still hang there, though the bones were removed later.”
This was a major turning point for the Anabaptists, afterwards they had a radical (pun intended) change of theology and went to absolute pacifism and the things we see as “Anabaptistic” today as seen in Dr. Blacks idealized statements of Anabaptism. The problem is that many of the things listed are generally part of the reformation and not isolated to Anabaptism and of those things that are isolated at the time to Anabaptism:
brotherhood instead of hierarchy
the way of peace instead of “just war”
the reign of God instead of a political kingdom
loyalty to their heavenly citizenship instead of to the principalities and powers
Spirit-orientation instead of forced structures of church life
every-member ministry instead of clergyism
individual conscience instead of theological conformity
volunteerism instead of professionalism
allegiance to Christ instead of allegiance to the state
are simply not Biblically defensible positions.
Christians are members of BOTH kingdoms not one or the other. Christ has placed “kings” over us all and part of their authority is to wage war and keep peace. Probably this idea that Christians belong only to the Kingdom of Christ is the largest single mistake the Anabaptists made. It lead to both Muster(above) and to the pacifism they later showed. In Munster they tried to establish Christ’s Kingdom by force and it went awry and they flipped to we are all members of the invisible kingdom with no earthly kingdom.
Many of their other positions were sufficiently twisted that if you read the position things sound fine until you look at how they define the position. For example: “baptism into Christ instead of baptism into a denomination” certainly sounds right until you realize they mean their invisible kingdom idea of Christ and if you are not baptized into that then you are not baptized and therefore not a Christian. See they take their own denomination, which even today Baptists leaders such as Big Al Mohler will deny Baptists are a denomination listen to his last President’s day address on his blog, and place it not as a denomination but the Kingdom of Christ: This if you are outside of it you are not a Christian.
As with anything context is key.
I do not know exactly where this Anabaptist resurgence has arisen, but it looks at an idealized view of Anabaptists. To be completely fair it is much like reformed guys taking a look back at the Puritans. Not every Puritan was like Edwards or Spurgeon or even Baxter. Reformed guys want to ignore the heresies that were the half way covenant and paedo communion. Some Baptists today want to change history, claim and idealized Anabaptist descent. some reformed guys want to do the same with the Puritans. Neither is true and by denying actual history and only looking at ideals we are doomed to make the same mistakes again.
not that I have any strong opinion on any of this of course
.
December 28th, 2009 2:46 pm
Wow, didn’t know that about ole good king John! Polygamy and all.
Otherwise, what else can I say?
December 28th, 2009 4:37 pm
R.K, rereading the comment, I just wanted to make clear that the other blogger made mention of the persecution of the Anabaptists.
December 28th, 2009 4:45 pm
Yes they did, however they fail to examine why the Anabaptists were persecuted. I talked to a Baptist friend of mine this morning, he seems to think that the Baptist re-identification with the idealized Anabaptist is due to an a priori rejection of Calvinism, in which he may be right.
Regardless historical and theological revisionism are just that, revisionism.
December 28th, 2009 4:49 pm
I would merely like to add, RK, that unlike others, you haven’t opted for that revisionism within the Reformed.
December 28th, 2009 5:03 pm
Doesn’t mean it would not be nice to. I would love it if the church had never failed or lost her way and wandered off with some strange idol or dogma, however that is not how God chose to allow His story (intended) to unfold.
Much like a piece of steel, the church needs to be forged. Like the finest silver or Gold she must be refined to remove the dross until we reflect our master’s face instead of our own.
The visible church is full of sinners (or finnerf depending on your script, oh how I love the geneva bible) as all of man is sinful and the visible church is made of man (of not by). Fortunately we are not made clean by our work, nor by our own righteousness, but rather from the imparted righteousness of our Husband, Christ. Further we are not punished for our transgressions against God but rather our Husband was in our place. So Christ did not make God’s wrath go away by imparting His righteousness on us solely , rather by both that and by receiving unto Himself the full wrath of God, that His bride, the Church, would accrue by the time of His second coming.
December 30th, 2009 12:00 pm
[...] he makes it clear that he is not trying to claim perfection for them. This relates to some recent discussion around the blogs on this [...]
December 28th, 2009 5:03 pm
Well said, RK, well said.