AnaBaptist- Documentation and Information for Those of You Who May Be Interested

7/15/2019 AnaBaptist- Documentation and Information for Those of You Who May Be Interested

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The Anabaptist Vision by Harold S. Bender was given as a presidential address tothe American Soceity of Church History in 1943. Published the following year, it soon became a classic essay. The Anabaptist Vison "forged Mennonites into a community of memory rooted in the 16th century, a community with strong religiousimpulses embodied in nonviolent service, devout discipleship, and a primary identity with the people of God, the church" (From the biograpahy by Albert N. Keim).

The Anabaptist Vision [1]by Harold S. Bender

"Judged by the reception it met at the hands of those in power, both in Church and State, equally in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, the Anabaptistmovement was one of the most tragic in the history of Christianity; but, judgedby the principles, which were put into play by the men who bore this reproachfulnickname, it must be pronounced one of the most momentous and significant undertakings in man's eventful religious struggle after the truth. It gathered up thegains of earlier movements, it is the spiritual soil out of which all nonconformist sects have sprung, and it is the first plain announcement in modern historyof a programme for a new type of Christian society which the modern world, especially in America and England, has been slowly realizing an absolutely free andindependent religious society, and a State in which every man counts as a man, and has his share in shaping both Church and State."

These words of Rufus M. Jones [2] constitute one of the best characterizations of Anabaptism and its contribution to our modern Christian culture to be found inthe English language. They were brave words when they were written thirty-fiveyears ago, but they have been abundantly verified by a generation of Anabaptistresearch since that time. [3] There can be no question but that the great principles of freedom of conscience, separation of church and state, and voluntarism in religion, so basic in American Protestantism and so essential to democracy, ultimately are derived from the Anabaptists of the Reformation period, who for thefirst time clearly enunciated them and challenged the Christian world to followthem in practice. The line of descent through the centuries since that time maynot always be clear, and may have passed through other intermediate movements and groups, but the debt to original Anabaptism is unquestioned.

The sixteenth-century reformers understood the Anabaptist position on this pointall too well, and deliberately rejected it. The best witness is Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich, whose active life-span covers the first fifty years of the history of the Swiss Anabaptists and who knew them so well that he published two extensive treatises against them in 1531 and 1561. According toBullinger, the Swiss Brethren taught that:

One cannot and should not use force to compel anyone to accept the faith, for faith is a free gift of God. It is wrong to compel anyone by force or coercion toembrace the faith, or to put to death anyone for the sake of his erring faith. It is an error that in the church and sword other than that of the divine Word should be used. The secular kingdom should be separated from the church, and no se

cular ruler should exercise authority in the church. The Lord has commanded simply to preach the Gospel, not to compel anyone by force to accept it. The true church of Christ has the characteristic that it suffers and endures persecution but does not inflict persecution upon anyone. [4]

Bullinger reports these ideas, not in commendation but in condemnation urging the need of rigid suppression. He attempts a point by point refutation of the Anabaptist teaching, closing with the assertion that to put to death Anabaptists isa necessary and commendable service.



But great as is the Anabaptist contribution to the development of religious liberty, this concept not only does not exhaust but actually fails to define the true essence of Anabaptism. In the last analysis freedom of religion is a purely formal concept, barren of content; it says nothing about the faith or the way of life of those who advocate it, nor does it reveal their goals or program of action. And Anabaptism had not only clearly defined goals but also an action programof definiteness and power. In fact the more intimately one becomes acquainted with this group the more one becomes conscious of the great vision that shaped their course in history and for which they gladly gave their lives.

Before describing this vision it is well to note its attractiveness to the masses of Christians of the sixteenth century. Sebastian Franck, himself an opponent,wrote in 1531, scarcely seven years after the rise of the movement in Zurich:

The Anabaptists spread so rapidly that their teaching soon covered the land as it were. They soon gained a large following, and baptized thousands, drawing to themselves many sincere souls who had a zeal for God.... They increased so rapidly that the world feared an uprising by them though I have learned that this fearhad no justification whatsoever. [5]

In the same year Bullinger wrote that "the people were running after them as though they were living saints." [6] Another contemporary writer asserts that " Anabaptism spread with such speed that there was reason to fear that the majority of the common people would unite with this sect." [7] Zwingli was so frightened b

y the power of the movement that he complained that the struggle with the Catholic party was "tub child's play" compared to the conflict with the Anabaptists. [8]

The dreadful severity of the persecution of the Anabaptist movement in the years1527-60 not only in Switzerland, South Germany, and Thuringia, but in all the Austrian lands as well as in the Low Countries, testifies to the power of the movement and the desperate haste with which Catholic, Lutheran, and Zwinglian authorities alike strove to throttle it before it should be too late. The notorious decree issued in 1529 by the Diet of Spires (the same diet which protested the restriction of evangelical liberties) summarily passed the sentence of death uponall Anabaptists, ordering that "every Anabaptist and rebaptized person of eithersex should be put to death by fire, sword, or some other way." [9] Repeatedly i

n subsequent sessions of the imperial diet this decree was reinvoked and intensified; and as late as 1551 the Diet of Augsburg issued a decree ordering that judges and jurors who had scruples against pronouncing the death sentence on Anabaptists be removed from office and punished by heavy fines and imprisonment.

The authorities had great difficulty in executing their program of suppression,for they soon discovered that the Anabaptists feared neither torture nor death,and gladly sealed their faith with their blood. In fact the joyful testimony ofthe Anabaptist martyrs was a great stimulus to new recruits, for it stirred theimagination of the populace as nothing else could have done.

Finding, therefore, that the customary method of individual trials and sentenceswas proving totally inadequate to stem the tide, the authorities resorted to th

e desperate expedient of sending out through the land companies of armed executioners and mounted soldiers to hunt down the Anabaptists and kill them on the spot singly or en masse without trial or sentence. The most atrocious application of this policy was made in Swabia where the original 400 special police of 1528 sent against the Anabaptists proved too small a force and had to be increased to1,000. An imperial provost marshal, Berthold Aichele, served as chief administrator of this bloody program in Swabia and other regions until he finally broke down in terror and dismay, and after an execution at Brixen lifted his hands to heaven and swore a solemn oath never again to put to death an Anabaptist, which vow he kept. [10] The Count of Alzey in the Palatinate, after 350 Anabaptists had



been executed there, was heard to exclaim, "What shall I do, the more I kill, the greater becomes their number!"

The extensive persecution and martyrdom of the Anabaptists testify not only of the great extent of the movement but also of the power of the vision that burnedwithin them. This is most effectively presented in a moving account written in 1542 and taken from the ancient Hutterian chronicle where it is found at the close of a report of 2,173 brethren and sisters who gave their lives for their faith. [11]

No human being was able to take away out of their hearts what they had experienced, such zealous lovers of God were they. The fire of God burned within them. They would die the bitterest death, yea, they would die ten deaths rather than forsake the divine truth which they had espoused....

They had drunk of the waters which had flowed from God's sanctuary, yea, the water of life. They realized that God helped them to bear the cross and to overcomethe bitterness of death. The fire of God burned within them. Their tent they had pitched not here upon earth, but in eternity, and of their faith they had a foundation and assurance. Their faith blossomed as a lily, their loyalty as a rose, their piety and sincerity as the flower of the garden of God. The angel of theLord battled for them that they could not be deprived of the helmet of salvation. Therefore they bore all torture and agony without fear. The things of this world they counted in their holy mind only as shadows, having the assurance of gre

ater things. They were so drawn unto God that they knew nothing, sought nothing,desired nothing, loved nothing but God alone. Therefore they had more patiencein their suffering than their enemies in tormenting them.

. . . The persecutors thought they could dampen and extinguish the fire of God.But the prisoners sang in their prisons and rejoiced so that the enemies outsidebecame much more fearful than the prisoners and did not know what to do with them....

Many were talked to in wonderful ways, often day and night. They were argued with, with great cunning and cleverness, with many sweet and smooth words, by monksand priests, by doctors of theology, with much false testimony, with threats and scolding and mockery, yea, with lies and grievous slander against the brotherh

ood, but none of these things moved them or made them falter.

From the shedding of such innocent blood arose Christians everywhere, brothers all, for all this persecution did not take place without fruit.

Perhaps this interpretation of the Anabaptist spirit should be discounted as tooglowing, coming as it does from the group itself, but certainly it is nearer tothe truth than the typical harsh nineteenth-century interpretation of the movement which is well represented by the opening sentence of Ursula, the notable historical novel on the Anabaptists published in 1878 by the Swiss Gottfried Keller, next to Goethe perhaps the greatest of all writers in the German language:

Times of religious change are like times when the mountains open up; for then no

t only do all the marvelous creatures of the human spirit come forth the great golden dragons, magic beings and crystal spirits, but there also come to light all the hateful vermin of humanity, the host of rats and mice and pestiferous creation, and so it was at the time of the Reformation in the northeast part of Switzerland. [12]

Before defining the Anabaptist vision, it is essential to state clearly who is meant by the term "Anabaptist", since the name has come to be used in modern historiography to cover a wide variety of Reformation groups, sometimes thought of as the whole "left wing of the Reformation" (Roland Bainton). "the Bolsheviks of



the Reformation" (Preserved Smith). Although the definitive history of Anabaptism has not yet been written, we know enough today to draw a clear line of demarcation between original evangelical and constructive Anabaptism on the one hand, which was born in the bosom of Zwinglianism in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1525, andestablished in the Low Countries in 1533, and the various mystical, spiritualistic, revolutionary, or even antinomian related and unrelated groups on the otherhand, which came and went like the flowers of the field in those days of the great renovation. The former, Anabaptism proper, maintained an unbroken course in Switzerland, South Germany, Austria, and Holland throughout the sixteenth century, and has continued until the present day in the Mennonite movement, now almost500,000 baptized members strong in Europe and America. [13] There is no longer any excuse for permitting our understanding of the distinct character of this genuine Anabaptism to be obscured by Thomas Müntzer and the Peasants War, the Munsterites, or any other aberration of Protestantism in the sixteenth century.

There may be some excuse, however, for a failure on the part of the uninformed student to see clearly what the Anabaptist vision was, because of the varying interpretations placed upon the movement even by those who mean to appreciate and approve it. There are, for instance, the socialist writers, led by Kautsky, who would make Anabaptism either "the forerunner of the modern socialism" or the "culminating effort of medieval communism," and who in reality see it only as the external religious shell of a class movement. [14] There are the sociologists withtheir partial socioeconomic determinism as reflected in Richard Niebuhr's approach to the social origin of religious denominations. There is Albert Ritschl, wh

o sees in Anabaptism an ascetic semimonastic continuation of the medieval Franciscan tertiaries, and locates the seventeenth-century Pietists in the same line;[15] and Ludwig Keller, who finds Anabaptists throughout the pre-Reformation period in the guise of Waldenses and other similar groups whom he chooses to call "the old-evangelical brotherhood," [16] and for whom he posits a continuity fromearliest times Related to Keller are the earlier Baptist historians (and certainMennonites) who rejoice to find in the Anabaptists the missing link which keepsthem in the apostolic succession of the true church back through the Waldenses,Bogomils, Cathari, Paulicians, and Donatists, to Pentecost. More recently thereis Rufus M. Jones who is inclined to class the Anabaptists with the mystics, and Walter Koehler who finds an Erasmian humanist origin for them.

However, there is another line of interpretation, now almost 100 years old, whic

h is being increasingly accepted and which is probably destined to dominate thefield. It is the one which holds that Anabaptism is the culmination of the Reformation, the fulfillment of the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, and thus makes it a consistent evangelical Protestantism seeking to recreate without compromise the original New Testament church, the vision of Christ and the apostles.This line of interpretation begins in 1848 with Max Göbel's great Geschichte des christlichen Lebens in der Rheinisch-Westfälischen Kirche, continues with the epoch-making work of C. A. Cornelius, particularly in his Geschichte des Münsterschen Aufruhrs (1855-1860), follows in the work of men like Johann Loserth, Karl Rembert, and John Horsch, and is represented by such contemporaries as Ernst Correll of Washington and Fritz Blanke of Zurich. A quotation from Göbel may serve to illustrate this interpretation:

The essential and distinguishing characteristic of this church is its great emphasis upon the actual personal conversion and regeneration of every Christian through the Holy Spirit.... They aimed with special emphasis at carrying out and realizing the Christian doctrine and faith in the heart and life of every Christian in the whole Christian church. Their aim was the bringing together of all thetrue believers out of the great degenerated national churches into a true Christian church. That which the Reformation was originally intended to accomplish they aimed to bring into full immediate realization. [17]

And Johann Loserth says:



More radically than any other party for church reformation the Anabaptists strove to follow the footsteps of the church of the first century and to renew unadulterated original Christianity. [18]

The evidence in support of this interpretation is overwhelming, and can be takenfrom the statements of the contemporary opponents of the Anabaptists as well asfrom the Anabaptists themselves. Conrad Grebel, the founder of the Swiss Brethren movement, states clearly this point of view in his letter to Thomas Müntzer of1524, in words written on behalf of the entire group which constitute in effectthe original Anabaptist pronunciamento:

Just as our forebears [the Roman Catholic Papal Church] fell away from the trueGod and the knowledge of Jesus Christ and of the right faith in him, and from the one true, common divine word, from the divine institutions, from Christian love and life, and lived without God's law and gospel in human, useless, un-Christian customs and ceremonies, and expected to attain salvation therein, yet fell far short of it, as the evangelical preachers [Luther, Zwingli, etc.] have declared, and to some extent are still declaring; so today, too, every man wants to besaved by superficial faith, without fruits of faith, without the baptism of testand probation without love and hope, without right Christian practices, and wants to persist in all the old fashion of personal vices, and in the common ritualistic and anti-Christian customs of baptism and of the Lord' s Supper, in disrespect for the divine word and in respect for the word of the pope and of the anti

papal preachers, which yet is not equal to the divine word nor in harmony with it. In respecting persons and in manifold seduction there is grosser and more pernicious error now than ever has been since the beginning of the world. In the same error we, too, lingered as long as we heard and read only the evangelical preachers who are to blame for all this, in punishment for our sins. But after we took the Scriptures in hand, too, and consulted it on many points we have been instructed somewhat and have discovered the great and hurtful error of the shepherds, of ours too, namely that we do not daily beseech God earnestly with constantgroanings to be brought out of this destruction of all godly life and out of human abominations, and to attain to true faith and divine instruction. [19]

A similar statement was made in 1538, after fourteen years of persecution, by anAnabaptist leader who spoke on behalf on his group in the great colloquy at Ber

ne with the leaders of the Reformed Church:

While yet in the national church, we obtained much instruction from the writingsof Luther, Zwingli, and others, concerning the mass and other papal ceremonies,that they are vain. Yet we recognized a great lack as regards repentance, conversion, and the true Christian life. Upon these things my mind was bent. I waitedand hoped for a year or two, since the minister had much to say of amendment oflife, of giving to the poor, loving one another, and abstaining from evil. ButI could not close my eyes to the fact that the doctrine which was preached and which was based on the Word of God, was not carried out. No beginning was made toward true Christian living, and there was no unison in the teaching concerning the things that were necessary. And although the mass and the images were finallyabolished, true repentance and Christian love were not in evidence. Changes wer

e made only as concerned external things. This gave me occasion to inquire further into these matters. Then God sent His messengers, Conrad Grebel and others, with whom I conferred about the fundamental teachings of the apostles and the Christian life and practice. I found them men who had surrendered themselves to thedoctrine of Christ by " Bussfertigkeit" [repentance evidenced by fruits] . Withtheir assistance we established a congregation in which repentance was in evidence by newness of life in Christ. [20]

It is evident from these statements that the Anabaptists were concerned most ofall about "a true Christian life," that is, a life patterned after the teaching



and example of Christ. The reformers, they believed, whatever their profession may have been, did not secure among the people true repentance, regeneration, andChristian living as a result of their preaching. The Reformation emphasis on faith was good but inadequate, for without newness of life, they held, faith is hypocritical.

This Anabaptist critique of the Reformation was a sharp one, but it was not unfair. There is abundant evidence that although the original goal sought by Lutherand Zwingli was "an earnest Christianity" for all, the actual outcome was far less, for the level of Christian living among the Protestant population was frequently lower than it had been before under Catholicism. Luther himself was keenlyconscious of the deficiency. In April 1522 he expressed the hope that, "We who at the present are well nigh heathen under a Christian name may yet organize a Christian assembly." [2l] In December 1525 he had an important conversation with Caspar Schwenckfeld, concerning the establishment of the New Testament church. Schwenckfeld pointed out that the establishment of the new church had failed to result in spiritual and moral betterment of the people, a fact which Luther admitted, for Schwenckfeld states that "Luther regretted very much that no amendment of life was in evidence." [22] Between 1522 and 1527 Luther repeatedly mentionedhis concern to establish a true Christian church, and his desire to provide forearnest Christians ("Die mit Ernst Christen sein wollen") who would confess thegospel with their lives as well as with their tongues. He thought of entering the names of these "earnest Christians" in a special book and having them meet separately from the mass of nominal Christians, but concluding that he would not ha

ve sufficient of such people, he dropped the plan. [22a] Zwingli faced the sameproblem; he was in fact specifically challenged by the Swiss Brethren to set upsuch a church; but he refused and followed Luther's course. [23] Both reformersdecided that it was better to include the masses within the fold of the church than to form a fellowship of true Christians only. Both certainly expected the preaching of the Word and the ministration of the sacraments to bear fruit in an earnest Christian life, at least among some, but they reckoned with a permanentlylarge and indifferent mass. In taking this course, said the Anabaptists, the reformers surrendered their original purpose, and abandoned the divine intention.Others may say that they were wise and statesmanlike leaders. [24]

The Anabaptists, however, retained the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, enlarged it, gave it body and form, and set out to achieve it in actual experience

. They proceeded to organize a church composed solely of earnest Christians, andactually found the people for it. They did not believe in any case that the size of the response should determine whether or not the truth of God should be applied, and they refused to compromise. They preferred to make a radical break with 1,500 years of history and culture if necessary rather than to break with theNew Testament.

May it not be said that the decision of Luther and Zwingli to surrender their original vision was the tragic turning point of the Reformation? Professor Karl Mueller, one of the keenest and fairest interpreters of the Reformation, evidentlythinks so, for he says, "The aggressive, conquering power, which Lutheranism manifested in its first period was lost everywhere at the moment when the governments took matters in hand and established the Lutheran Creed, [25] that is to say

, when Luther's mass church concept was put into practice. Luther in his later years expressed disappointment at the final outcome of the Reformation, stating that the people had become more and more indifferent toward religion and the moral outlook was more deplorable than ever. His last years were embittered by the consciousness of partial failure, and his expressions of dejection are well known. Contrast this sense of defeat at the end of Luther's outwardly successful career with the sense of victory in the hearts of the Anabaptist martyrs who laid down their lives in what the world would call defeat, conscious of having kept faith with their vision to the end.



Having defined genuine Anabaptism in its Reformation setting, we are ready to examine its central teachings. The Anabaptist vision included three major points of emphasis; first, a new conception of the essence of Christianity as discipleship; second, a new conception of the church as a brotherhood; and third, a new ethic of love and nonresistance. We turn now to an exposition of these points.

First and fundamental in the Anabaptist vision was the conception of the essenceof Christianity as discipleship. It was a concept which meant the transformation of the entire way of life of the individual believer and of society so that itshould be fashioned after the teachings and example of Christ [26] The Anabaptists could not understand a Christianity which made regeneration, holiness and love primarily a matter of intellect, of doctrinal belief, or of subjective "experience," rather than one of the transformation of life. They demanded an outwardexpression of the inner experience. Repentance must be "evidenced" by newness ofbehavior. "In evidence" is the keynote which rings through the testimonies andchallenges of the early Swiss Brethren when they are called to give an account of themselves. The whole life was to be brought literally under the lordship of Christ in a covenant of discipleship, a covenant which the Anabaptist writers delighted to emphasize. [27] The focus of the Christian life was to be not so muchthe inward experience of the grace of God, as it was for Luther, but the outwardapplication of that grace to all human conduct and the consequent Christianization of all human relationships. The true test of the Christian, they held, is discipleship. The great word of the Anabaptists was not "faith" as it was with thereformers, but "following" (nachfolge Christi). And baptism, the greatest of Ch

ristian symbols, was accordingly to be for them the "covenant of a good conscience toward God" (1 Peter 3:21), [28] the pledge of a complete commitment to obeyChrist, and not primarily the symbol of a past experience. The Anabaptists had faith, indeed, but they used it to produce a life. Theology was for them a means,not an end.

That the Anabaptists not only proclaimed the ideal of full Christian discipleship but achieved, in the eyes of their contemporaries and even of their opponents,a measurably higher level of performance than the average, is fully witnessed by the sources. The early Swiss and South German reformers were keenly aware of this achievement and its attractive power. Zwingli knew it best of all, but Bullinger, Capito, Vadian, and many others confirm his judgment that the Anabaptist Brethren were unusually sincere, devoted, and effective Christians. However, sinc

e the Brethren refused to accept the state church system which the reformers were building, and in addition made "radical"" demands which might have changed theentire social order, the leaders of the Reformation were completely baffled intheir understanding of the movement, and professed to believe that the Anabaptists were hypocrites of the darkest dye. Bullinger, for instance, calls them ' ' devilish enemies and destroyers of the Church of God." [29] Nevertheless they hadto admit the apparent superiority of their life. In Zwingli's last book againstthe Swiss Brethren (1527), for instance, the following is found:

If you investigate their life and conduct, it seems at first contact irreproachable, pious, unassuming, attractive, yea, above this world. Even those who are inclined to be critical will say that their lives are excellent. [30]

Bullinger, himself, who wrote bitter diatribes against them, was compelled to admit of the early Swiss Brethren that

Those who unite with them will by their ministers be received into their churchby rebaptism and repentance and newness of life. They henceforth lead their lives under a semblance of a quite spiritual conduct. They denounce covetousness, pride, profanity, the lewd conversation and immorality of the world, drinking andgluttony. In short, their hypocrisy is great and manifold. [31]

Bullinger's lament (1531) that "the people are running after them as though they



were the living saints" has been reported earlier. Vadian, the reformer of St.Gall, testified, that " none were more favorably inclined toward Anabaptism andmore easily entangled with it than those who were of pious and honorable disposition." [32] Capito, the reformer of Strassburg, wrote in 1527 concerning the Swiss Brethren:

I frankly confess that in most [Anabaptists] there is in evidence piety and consecration and indeed a zeal which is beyond any suspicion of insincerity. For what earthly advantage could they hope to win by enduring exile, torture, and unspeakable punishment of the flesh? I testify before God that I cannot say that on account of a lack of wisdom they are somewhat indifferent toward earthly things,but rather from divine motives. [33]

The preachers of the Canton of Berne admitted in a letter to the Council of Berne in 1532 that

The Anabaptists have the semblance of outward piety to a far greater degree thanwe and all the churches which unitedly with us confess Christ, and they avoid offensive sins which are very common among us. [34]

Walter Klarer, the Reformed chronicler of Appenzell, Switzerland, wrote:

Most of the Anabaptists are people who at first had been the best with us in promulgating the word of God. [35]

And the Roman Catholic theologian, Franz Agricola, in his book of 1582, Againstthe Terrible Errors of the Anabaptists, says:

Among the existing heretical sects there is none which in appearance leads a more modest or pious life than the Anabaptist. As concerns their outward public life they are irreproachable. No lying, deception, swearing, strife, harsh language, no intemperate eating and drinking, no outward personal display, is found among them, but humility, patience, uprightness, neatness, honesty, temperance, straightforwardness in such measure that one would suppose that they had the Holy spirit of God. [36]

A mandate against the Swiss Brethren published in 1585 by the Council of Berne s

tates that offensive sins and vices were common among the preachers and the membership of the Reformed Church, adding, "And this is the greatest reason that many pious, God-fearing people who seek Christ from their heart are offended and forsake our church [to unite with the Brethren]". [37]

One of the finest contemporary characterizations of the Anabaptists is that given in 1531 by Sebastian Franck, an objective and sympathetic witness, though an opponent of the Anabaptists, who wrote as follows:

The Anabaptists... soon gained a large following,... drawing many sincere soulswho had a zeal for God, for they taught nothing but love, faith, and the cross.They showed themselves humble, patient under much suffering; they brake bread with one another as an evidence of unity and love. They helped each other faithful

ly, and called each other brothers... They died as martyrs, patiently and humblyenduring all persecution. [38]

A further confirmation of the above evaluation of the achievement of the Anabaptists is found in the fact that in many places those who lived a consistent Christian life were in danger of falling under the suspicion of being guilty of Anabaptist heresy. Caspar Schwenckfeld, for instance, declared, "I am being maligned,by both preachers and others, with the charge of being Anabaptist, even as allothers who lead a true, pious Christian life are now almost everywhere given this name." [39] Bullinger himself complained that



...there are those who in reality are not Anabaptists but have a pronounced averseness to the sensuality and frivolity of the world and therefore reprove sin and vice and are consequently called or misnamed Anabaptists by petulant persons.[40]

The great collection of Anabaptist source materials, commonly called the Täufer-Akten, now in its third volume, contains a number of specific illustrations of this. In 1562 a certain Caspar Zacher of Wailblingen in Württemberg was accused of being an Anabaptist, but the court record reports that since he was an envious manwho could not get along with others, and who often started quarrels, as well asbeing guilty of swearing and cursing and carrying a weapon, he was not considered to be an Anabaptist. [41] On the other hand in 1570 a certain Hans Jäger of Vohringen in Württemberg was brought before the court on suspicion of being an Anabaptist primarily because he did not curse but lived an irreproachable life. [42]

As a second major element in the Anabaptist vision, a new concept of the churchwas created by the central principle of newness of life and applied Christianity. Voluntary church membership based upon true conversion and involving a commitment to holy living and discipleship was the absolutely essential heart of this concept. This vision stands in sharp contrast to the church concept of the reformers who retained the medieval idea of a mass church with membership of the entire population from birth to the grave compulsory by law and force.

It is from the standpoint of this new conception of the church that the Anabaptist opposition to infant baptism must be interpreted. Infant baptism was not thecause of their disavowal of the state church; it was only a symbol of the cause.How could infants give a commitment based upon a knowledge of what true Christianity means? They might conceivably passively experience the grace of God (though Anabaptists would question this), but they could not respond in pledging theirlives to Christ. Such infant baptism would not only be meaningless, but would in fact become a serious obstacle to a true understanding of the nature of Christianity and membership in the church. Only adult baptism could signify an intelligent life commitment.

An inevitable corollary of the concept of the church as a body of committed andpracticing Christians pledged to the highest standard of New Testament living wa

s the insistence on the separation of the church from the world, that is nonconformity of the Christian to the worldly way of life. The world would not toleratethe practice of true Christian principles in society, and the church could nottolerate the practice of worldly ways among its membership. Hence, the only wayout was separation ("Absonderung"), the gathering of true Christians into theirown Christian society where Christ's way could and would be practiced. On this principle of separation Menno Simons says:

All the evangelical scriptures teach us that the church of Christ was and is, indoctrine, life, and worship, a people separated from the world. [43]

In the great debate of 1532 at Zofingen, spokesmen of the Swiss Brethren said:

The true church is separated from the world and is conformed to the nature of Christ. If a church is yet at one with the world we cannot recognize it is a truechurch. [44]

In a sense, this principle of nonconformity to the world is merely a negative expression of the positive requirement of discipleship, but it goes further in thesense that it represents a judgment on the contemporary social order, which theAnabaptists called "the world," as non-Christian, and sets up a line of demarcation between the Christian community and worldly society.



A logical outcome of the concept of nonconformity to the world was the concept of the suffering church. Conflict with the world was inevitable for those who endeavored to live an earnest Christian life. The Anabaptists expected opposition;they took literally the words of Jesus when He said, " In the world ye shall have tribulation," but they also took literally His words of encouragement, "But beof good cheer; I have overcome the world." Conrad Grebel said in 1524:

True Christian believers are sheep among wolves, sheep for the slaughter; they must be baptized in anguish and affliction, tribulation, persecution, suffering,and death; they must be tried with fire and must reach the fatherland of eternalrest not by killing them bodily, but by mortifying their spiritual, enemies. [45]

Professor Ernest Staehelin of Basel, Switzerland, says:

Anabaptism by its earnest determination to follow in life and practice the primitive Christian Church has kept alive the conviction that he who is in Christ isa new creature and that those who are identified with his cause will necessarilyencounter the opposition of the world. [46]

Perhaps it was persecution that made the Anabaptists so acutely aware of the conflict between the church and the world, but this persecution was due to the factthat they refused to accept what they considered the sub Christian way of lifepracticed in European Christendom. They could have avoided the persecution had t

hey but conformed, or they could have suspended the practice of their faith to amore convenient time and sailed under false colors as did David Joris, but theychose with dauntless courage and simple honesty to live their faith, to defy the existing world order, and to suffer the consequences.

Basic to the Anabaptist vision of the church was the insistence on the practiceof true brotherhood and love among the members of the church. [47] This principle was understood to mean not merely the expression of pious sentiments, but theactual practice of sharing possessions to meet the needs of others in the spiritof true mutual aid. Hans Leopold, a Swiss Brethren martyr of 1528, said of theBrethren:

If they know of any one who is in need, whether or not he is a member of their c

hurch, they believe it their duty, out of love to God, to render help and aid. [48]

Heinrich Seiler, a Swiss Brethren martyr of 1535 said:

I do not believe it wrong that a Christian has property of his own, but yet he is nothing more than a steward. [49]

An early Hutterian book states that one of the questions addressed by the SwissBrethren to applicants for baptism was: "Whether they would consecrate themselves with all their temporal possessions to the service of God and His people." [50] A Protestant of Strassburg, visitor at a Swiss Brethren baptismal service in that city in 1557, reports that a question addressed to all applicants for baptis

m was: "Whether they, if necessity require it, would devote all their possessions to the service of the brotherhood, and would not fail any member that is in need, if they were able to render aid." [51] Heinrich Bullinger, the bitter enemyof the Brethren, states:

They teach that every Christian is under duty before God from motives of love, to use, if need be, all his possessions to supply the necessities of life to anyof the brethren who are in need. [52]

This principle of full brotherhood and stewardship was actually practiced, and n



ot merely speculatively considered. In its absolute form of Christian communism,with the complete repudiation of private property, it became the way of life ofthe Hutterian Brotherhood in 1528 and has remained so to this day, for the Hutterites held that private property is the greatest enemy of Christian love. One of the inspiring stories of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is the successful practice of the full communal way of life by this group. [53]

The third great element in the Anabaptist vision was the ethic of love and nonresistance as applied to all human relationships. The Brethren understood this tomean complete abandonment of all warfare, strife, and violence, and of the taking of human life. [54] Conrad Grebel, the Swiss. said in 1524:

True Christians use neither worldly sword nor engage in war, since among them taking human life has ceased entirely, for we are no longer under the Old Covenant.... The Gospel and those who accept it are not to be protected with the sword,neither should they thus protect themselves. [55]

Pilgram Marpeck, the South German leader, in 1544, speaking of Matthew 5, said:

All bodily, worldly, carnal, earthly fightings, conflicts, and wars are annulledand abolished among them through such law... which law of love Christ... Himself observed and thereby gave His followers a pattern to follow after. [56]

Peter Riedemann, the Hutterian leader, wrote in 1545:

Christ, the Prince of Peace, has established His Kingdom, that is, His Church, and has purchased it by His blood. In this kingdom all worldly warfare has ended.Therefore a Christian has no part in war nor does he wield the sword to executevengeance. [57]

Menno Simons, of Holland, wrote in 1550:

[The regenerated do not go to war, nor engage in strife.]... They are the children of peace who have beaten their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, and know of no war.... Spears and swords of iron we leave to thosewho, alas, consider human blood and swine's blood of well-nigh equal value. [58]

In this principle of nonresistance, or biblical pacifism, which was thoroughly believed and resolutely practiced by all the original Anabaptist Brethren and their descendants throughout Europe from the beginning until the last century, [59]the Anabaptists were again creative leaders, far ahead of their times, in thisantedating the Quakers by over a century and a quarter. It should also be remembered that they held this principle in a day when both Catholic and Protestant churches not only endorsed war as an instrument of state policy, but employed it in religious conflicts. It is true, of course, that occasional earlier prophets,like Peter Chelcicky, had advocated similar views, but they left no continuing practice of the principle behind them.

As we review the vision of the Anabaptists, it becomes clear that there are two

foci in this vision. The first focus relates to the essential nature of Christianity. Is Christianity primarily a matter of the reception of divine grace through a sacramental-sacerdotal institution (Roman Catholicism), is it chiefly enjoyment of the inner experience of the grace of God through faith in Christ (Lutheranism), or is it most of all the transformation of life through discipleship (Anabaptism)? The Anabaptists were neither institutionalists, mystics, nor pietists,for they laid the weight of their emphasis upon following Christ in life. To them it was unthinkable for one truly to be a Christian without creating a new life on divine principles both for himself and for all men who commit themselves tothe Christian way.



The second focus relates to the church. For the Anabaptist, the church was neither an institution (Catholicism), nor the instrument of God for the proclamationof the divine Word (Lutheranism), nor a resource group for individual piety (Pietism). It was a brotherhood of love in which the fullness of the Christian lifeideal is to be expressed.

The Anabaptist vision may be further clarified by comparison of the social ethics of the four main Christian groups of the Reformation period, Catholic, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Anabaptist. Catholic and Calvinist alike were optimistic aboutthe world, agreeing that the world can be redeemed; they held that the entire social order can be brought under the sovereignty of God and Christianized, although they used different means to attain this goal. Lutheran and Anabaptist werepessimistic about the world, denying the possibility of Christianizing the entire social order; but the consequent attitudes of these two groups toward the social order were diametrically opposed. Lutheranism said that since the Christian must live in a world order that remains sinful, he must make a compromise with it. As a citizen he cannot avoid participation in the evil of the world, for instance in making war, and for this his only recourse is to seek forgiveness by thegrace of God; only within his personal private experience can the Christian truly Christianize his life. The Anabaptist rejected this view completely. Since forhim no compromise dare be made with evil, the Christian may in no circumstanceparticipate in any conduct in the existing social order which is contrary to thespirit and teaching of Christ and the apostolic practice. He must consequently

withdraw from the worldly system and create a Christian social order within thefellowship of the church brotherhood. Extension of this Christian order by the conversion of individuals and their transfer out of the world into the church isthe only way by which progress can be made in Christianizing the social order.

However, the Anabaptist was realistic. Down the long perspective of the future he saw little chance that the mass of humankind would enter such a brotherhood with its high ideals. Hence he anticipated a long and grievous conflict between the church and the world. Neither did he anticipate the time when the church wouldrule the world; the church would always be a suffering church. He agreed with the words of Jesus when He said that those who would be His disciples must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Him, and that there would befew who would enter the strait gate and travel the narrow way of life. If this p

rospect should seem too discouraging, the Anabaptist would reply that the life within the Christian brotherhood is satisfyingly full of love and joy.

The Anabaptist vision was not a detailed blueprint for the reconstruction of human society, but the Brethren did believe that Jesus intended that the kingdom ofGod should be set up in the midst of earth, here and now, and this they proposed to do forthwith. We shall not believe, they said, that the Sermon on the Mountor any other vision that He had is only a heavenly vision meant but to keep Hisfollowers in tension until the last great day, but we shall practice what He taught, believing that where He walked we can by His grace follow in His steps.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Copyright 1944 by Herald Press, Scottdale, Pa. 15683. Order The Anabaptist Vision from Herald Press.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Harold S. Bender led and nurtured his people during one of the most cataclysmiceras in human history. He became a leader because the times demanded a leader and because his particular qualities of personality and character commended him tohis people.



Bender lived his life within the framework of conventional Mennonite tradition and piety. However, successful leaders not only reenact the tradition: they guidethe symbols and institutions which maintain it. Almost all of Harold Bender's life and energy was devoted to the care and direction of Mennonite institutions.

Successful leaders must possess ideas powerful enough to shape the identity of their followers. Among the most powerful ideas are those which link a meaningfulpast to a purposeful future. Bender's influential 1944 essay, "The Anabaptist Vision," did just that. It forged Mennonites into a community of memory rooted inthe 16th century, a community with strong religious impulses embodied in nonviolent service, devout discipleship, and a primary identity with the people of God,the church. (From the biography by Albert N. Keim.)

History of The Anabaptist VisionBy Albert N. Keim

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The Anabaptist Vision is legendary among North American Mennonites, as is its author, Harold S. Bender (1897-1962). The Vision gave Mennonites a respectable history and a useful theology during time of crisis. For all its formative influence, its creation and delivery were inauspicious-a small detail in Bender's frenetic schedule. Albert Keim, who has since written a major biography of Bender, describes the creation and presentation of the speech, which was later printed andread widely. jes--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the stout black-clad chairman opened the meeting with a brisk prayer, he gavethe appearance of a middle-aged priest. His receding hairline, dark eyes, stron

g nose and a mouth that smiled easily conveyed a sense of congenial intelligence, the personality of a good parish priest. But the coat was Mennonite, and its wearer was Harold S. Bender, dean and acting president of Goshen College. At thatmoment he was the presiding president of the fifty-fifth meeting of the American Society of Church History.

The place of the meeting was Room 104 in Milbank Chapel at Columbia University in New York City. It was 3:20 in the afternoon on Tuesday, December 28, 1943. Themeeting began twenty minutes late because the train Bender was traveling on from Indiana arrived late in New York, a not unusual occurrence under the conditions of wartime travel. Travel during that week after Christmas was even worse thanusual because the railroad unions were threatening a strike to get higher overtime pay.

By the time Harold arrived in New York City, Roosevelt had ordered the army to take over the railroads. There would be no strike. Actually Bender was fortunateto be at the meeting. It was only at the last minute that a Pullman berth becameavailable, and his twenty-hour rail journey to New York became possible.

As presiding officer, Bender's first order of business was the sad announcementof the death of Dr. Thomas Clinton Pears, Jr., just 48 hours earlier. Pears, from Philadelphia, had been the long-time secretary of the society. The 25 memberspresent then elected Professor Matthew Spinka to be acting secretary. After seve



ral other items of business, two papers were read. The most engaging paper was by David M. Cory on "The Religious History of the Mohawk and Oneida Tribes of theIroquois Confederacy." Interspersed during the reading of the paper were a number of songs in the Iroquois language sung by two members of the Iroquois tribe.It provided a colorful accent to the otherwise decorous proceedings of the society meeting.

At seven o'clock the Society held its annual dinner at the Columbia University Men's Faculty Club. The address of the outgoing president of the society followedthe dinner. Harold Bender entitled his address The Anabaptist Vision. The 30-minute speech was followed by what the minutes described as "a very lively discussion which would have undoubtedly continued much longer were it not for lack of time, for President Bender had to leave soon afterwards by plane to attend a meeting in Chicago." [1]

As president, Bender also chaired the Council of the American Society of ChurchHistory. The council was the governing body of the church history society. At the conclusion of the presidential address the council retired to one of the Men'sFaculty Club chambers for their annual meeting. Bender presided. Only six of the ten members of the Council were present. Acting secretary Spinka reported on memberships. During the year membership had declined slightly.

Total membership was 369. Included in the membership were Mennonites Cornelius Krahn, C. Henry Smith, and Harold's two colleagues on the Mennonite Quarterly Rev

iew editorial board, Robert Friedmann and Ernst Correll. The previous year JohnC. Wenger had resigned his membership and Guy Hershberger had been dropped fromthe rolls for failure to pay society dues.

New council members were elected, Harold being one of them. He was also appointed chair of the committee on program and local arrangements for the 1944 meetingin Chicago. The other members of his committee were University of Chicago Professors Sidney Mead and Wilhelm Pauck. In his last action as President Bender appointed his friend Roland Bainton to preside at the meeting of the society the nextday.

That done he caught a taxi to LaGuardia Field and boarded a plane for Cleveland,where sometime after midnight he caught the train to Chicago. Just after lunch,

at 12:30 he was at his place as secretary of the executive committee of Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) in one of the conference rooms at the Atlantic Hotel,ready for a day and a half of intense meetings dealing with the burgeoning Civilian Public Service program. [2]

In the busy, hectic life of Harold Bender in 1943, the 42-hour dash to New YorkCity was a minor episode. During the Fall of 1943 he served as acting presidentof Goshen College in addition to being dean while the president of the college,Ernest Miller, attended Princeton Seminary.

As chair of the Mennonite Peace Problems Committee he was preoccupied with the growing criticism coming from conservatives in the church regarding the CivilianPublic Service (CPS) program. He was also in charge of the educational program a

t the CPS camps, which required frequent travel to CPS locations. As secretary of MCC he carried on a huge correspondence. And he was editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review. Somehow he also found time to teach two courses.

In the midst of such a maelstrom of activity it is no wonder that Bender was able to give very little time to the writing of The Anabaptist Vision. As late as December 16, less than two weeks before it was to be given, it had not been written. [3] When he finally got to the writing, he wrote it in just a few days. Hiswife Elizabeth Horsch Bender remembered that she "was just amazed how he got that whole thing done and ready to give ... in no time at all: two or three days."



[4]

In the rush of preparation he did not take time to do the careful source citations the essay required. Because the annual presidential address was published inChurch History, Bender had to go back and insert the necessary research apparatus. Sometime in January 1944 a Goshen College student saw Harold and Elizabeth and John C. Wenger sitting at the long table in the Historical Library at the college surrounded by great mounds of books, intently searching for references. Thestudent remembered John C. Wenger's gleeful chuckle as he announced "I've foundanother one." [5] They were busy preparing The Anabaptist Vision for publication.

Thus the classic and seminal essay in Mennonite history was created. Written inhaste, read to a tiny audience of less than 20 academicians, none of whom were Mennonite, in a richly paneled dining room at an Ivy League University in the heart of New York City, Harold Bender could not have imagined what his presidentialaddress would ultimately become, nor guessed how powerful its influence would be, both on the world of Anabaptist scholarship and on the self-understanding ofhis own people, the Mennonites. He did not know that he had produced a classic.

Concepts of The Anabaptist Vision

Bender began the essay by acknowledging what most church historians accepted astrue in 1943; the seeds of modem religious liberty were planted by the Anabaptists. But, he argued, religious liberty was not the true essence of Anabaptism. Rather "Anabaptism is the culmination of the Reformation, the fulfillment of the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, and thus makes it a consistent evangelicalProtestantism seeking to recreate without compromise the original New Testamentchurch." [6] The Anabaptists "retained the original vision of Luther and Zwingli, enlarged it, gave it body and form, and set out to achieve it in actual experience." [7]

The content of the Vision was three-fold, said Bender. The key element was discipleship, "a concept which meant the transformation of the entire way of life ofthe individual believer and of society so that it should be fashioned after the

teachings and example of Christ..." The focus of the Christian life was not so much the inward experience of the grace of God, as it was for Luther, but the outward application of that grace to all human conduct." [8]

Second, the Vision embodied a new concept of the church. Bender put it this way:"Voluntary churchmembership based upon true conversion and involving a commitment to holy livingand discipleship was the absolutely essential heart of this concept." [9] He contrasted this with the acceptance by the reformers of the medieval mass church.

The third element of the Vision was the ethic of love and nonresistance applied,as he put it "to all human relationships." [10] He ended the essay with an action statement: "The Anabaptist vision was not a detailed blueprint for the recons

truction of human society, but the Brethren did believe that Jesus intended thatthe Kingdom of God should be set in the midst of the earth, here and now, and this they proposed to do forthwith. We shall not believe, they said, that the Sermon on the Mount or any other vision that He had is only a heavenly vision meantbut to keep his followers in tension until the last great day, but we shall practise what He taught, believing that where He walked we can by His grace followHis steps." [11]

Formative Influences on the Development of The Anabaptist Vision Essay



How did Bender arrive at the concepts in The Anabaptist Vision address? Since the original address is not available we cannot determine how much the original differed from the published version, which appeared first in the March, 1944, issue of Church History, and then in the April Mennonite Quarterly Review. But sincehe did not spend two months of intensive research in preparation--it was "dashed off" as Elizabeth put it--it serves as an accurate guage of Harold Bender's understanding of Anabaptism at an intuitive level. He wrote what was in his understanding at the time: a kind of condensation of what he believed and knew.

By 1943 Harold Bender had been working in the field of Anabaptist studies for 20years, In 1923-24 he and Elizabeth Horsch Bender spent a year on a Princeton-sponsored fellowship in Europe at the University of Tiibingen. During that year hediscovered the fertile possibilities of European Anabaptist sources. Invited tojoin the faculty of newly reopened Goshen College, Harold and Elizabeth returned in the Fall of 1924 with Ernst Correll in tow. Correll had just completed a Ph.D at the University of Munich under Ernst Troeltsch, where he had written aboutthe economic situation of eighteenth century Swiss Mennonites.

Within a few months the two young faculty members, (Harold was 27, Correll 30) had founded theMennonite Historical Society, and announced ambitious plans to publish a two volume work on Conrad Grebel, the first volume to be completed in 1925 to celebratethe four-hundredth anniversary of Grebel's baptism and the beginnings of the Sw

iss Brethren. (It would actually be 1950, 25 years later before Bender's Grebelbiography would be published.) In 1927 the two founded the Mennonite Quarterly Review with Harold as editor. The journal quickly established itself as the premier publication in Anabaptist studies, helped greatly by the prolific research and writing of his father-in- law, John Horsch. During that time Harold was also beginning the collection of Anabaptist sources which would make Goshen College, by 1943, the best center for Anabaptist research in America.

In 1930 and again in 1935 Harold studied at the University of Heidelberg, completing his dissertation on Grebel in one of those frantic Harold Bender efforts. In less than six weeks during June and July of 1935, working day and night, he wrote and typed, in German, the dissertation which got him his Ph.D. During the 1930's, interspersed with his college dean duties (he became dean of Goshen Colleg

e in 1931) Bender published a number of installments of his Grebel research in the Mennonite Quarterly Review.

No great work of any kind can ever be separated from the individual who producesit. When Bender produced The Anabaptist Vision, it was not the work of an esoteric academician, but of a busy administrator and church leader. In 1943 the 46-year-old Bender was at the height of his powers, bothas a scholar and as a church leader. He was surely the ablest of the contemporary church leaders. Only Orie Miller matched him, but Orie lacked the intellectualacumen of Bender. What they shared, however, was an ability to straddle conservative-liberal issues. By the 1940's Harold had developed that ability into something of an art form.

Built on a foundation of complete commitment to the Mennonite church, and a readiness to give ground on non-essentials for the sake of basics, Bender was nearlyalways able to outflank his critics. The crisis which World War II created pushed Bender and Miller to the front and center of Mennonite leadership. The two together, Miller with his administrative genius, and Bender with his theological and intellectual prowess, out-matched every one else. CPS and the war emergency gave them thescope and challenge they needed. For two decades--the 1940s and 1950s--they dominated Mennonite church affairs. The Anabaptist Vision could thrive in that environment.



Bender was not an original thinker, but he had a formidable ability to organizeand digest large and complex bodies of information. The Anabaptist Vision must be understood in those terms, for it distilled not only Bender's ideas, but the ideas of those around him. Four persons had significant influence on the contentof the Vision.

Harold Bender could not have become Harold Bender, but for the work of ElizabethHorsch Bender. Her influence on the Vision was quite direct. In the summer of 1942 Elizabeth began work on her Master's degree at the University of Minnesota.Her topic was "The Mennonites in German Literature." She completed the work andthe degree in 1944. Harold, busy as he was, interested himself in the details ofthe research, even writing letters to help with her search for sources. [12] Her research revealed an enormous amount of misinformation about Anabaptists and Mennonites in literary sources.

Since she was writing the thesis during the fall and winter of 1943, her findings were fresh in Harold's mind and no doubt helped focus his concern to delineatethe character of Anabaptism. In fact, Harold quoted a passage in the Vision borrowed from Elizabeth's brilliant essay in the July 1943, Mennonite Quarterly Review, entitled "The Portrayal of The Swiss Anabaptists In Gottfried Keller's URSALA," in which Keller vilifies the Anabaptists. Bender borrowed Elizabeth's quotation of Keller as a kind of negative example of the "spirit of the Anabaptists."[13]

Guy F. Hershberger was present at the creation of the Anabaptist research focusat Goshen. He came to Goshen to teach in the fall of 1925 and was one of the founders of the Mennonite Quarterly Review and the Mennonite Historical Society. His field was American history (his dissertation was on the Quakers in Pennsylvania in the Colonial period). In the 1930s Bender as chair of the Mennonite Church's Peace Problems Committee authorized Hershberger to prepare a manuscript on nonresistance. For a variety of reasons the work was not completed until late 1943(Hershberger wrote the preface in February 1944).

It is significant that two Mennonite classics, Hershberger's War, Peace, and Nonresistance and Bender's "The Anabaptist Vision," were being written during the fall of 1943 at Goshen. Bender read Hershberger's manuscript during late 1943 in

preparation for its printing under the auspices of the Peace Problems Committee.Almost certainly Harold borrowed his opening quotation in the Vision, not fromthe original source, (Rufus Jones, Studies In Mystical Religion, 1909), but fromHershberger's War, Peace, andNonresistance, page 305. It is also interesting that before the book went to theprinters in early 1944 Hershberger completed his notating by citing The Anabaptist Vision, (from Church History and the Mennonite Quarterly Review) five timesas authority for his statements in the text and in his bibliographies. [14]

John Horsch was Harold Bender's father-in-law. In the 1920s and 1930s it was helpful to Harold to be John Horsch's son-in-law. It was a thin cover from conservative criticism, but it was a cover, nontheless. Harold and John Horsch had a congenial relationship. Harold had a high regard for Horsch's scholarship, while w

incing sometimes at his father-in-law's use of rhetorical sledgehammers in the heat of theological and historical combat. John Horsch died in October 1941 leaving the almost completed manuscript for Mennonites In Europe. Edward Yoder completed the editing and prepared it for publication.

Bender, as secretary of the Historical Committee of the Mennonite Church, proofread the completed manuscript, probably early in 1942. In five instances he borrows quotations from Anabaptist sources quoted in Horsch. [15] He also uses Anabaptist source quotations from articles Horsch wrote for the Mennonite Quarterly Review during the 1930s. [16] But the key term in the Vision, discipleship, never



appears in Mennonites In Europe. Harold Bender borrowed heavily from his father-in-law, but he was also forging ahead into a new framework. Comparing MennonitesIn Europe and The Anabaptist Vision is to compare two eras, one representing the previous 30 years; the other the next 30 years.

Another formative influence on Bender's Anabaptist understandings arrived at Goshen College in July, 1940, in the person of Robert Friedmann. The 49-year-old Friedmann, a Jewish Christian refugee from Vienna, quickly became Harold's best friend and closest collaborator in Anabaptist studies and research. Harold Benderbrought Friedmann to Goshen to help organize and catalog the Mennonite Historical Library collection. The roughly 2,500 volumes of the Historical Library had just been brought to the basement floor of the new Memorial library and piled on stacks all over the floor. It was Friedmann's task to identify and catalog the collection, something he was eminently capable of and eager to do. More than anyone else, Friedmann would turn Harold's mind toward the search for the essence ofAnabaptism.

Formative for Bender's emerging Anabaptist Vision was Friedmann's writing. Before being forced out of Vienna by the Nazis, Friedmann had begun a study of the relationship between Anabaptism and Pietism. In 1940 he published a two-part series in the Mennonite Quarterly Review which summarized his findings. Of necessityhe had to determine the essence of Anabaptism in order to compare it with Pietism. The essential difference Friedmann believed to lie in the Anabaptist stress on "Nachfolge Christi," which he translated discipleship. "Following Christ (Nach

folge Christi) that is a central word of the Anabaptists...," he wrote. "...thisconcept of discipleship demands a great and voluntary obedience in thought anddeed..." [17]

Even more important was Friedmann's essay published in Church History in 1940. The essay was entitled "Conception of The Anabaptists." [18] In The Anabaptist Vision essay, Bender followed that article more closely than any other. Friedmannbegan the article by describing what Anabaptists did not stand for. They were not "Schwarmer" as labelled by Luther. They were not eschatological rebels. They were not antitrinitarians. Nor could they be defined by what Roland Bainton called "Left Wing Protestantism." (Bainton was writing the article so captioned at the same time as Friedmann was writing his, and he let Friedmann see it before publication.) Bainton stressed adult baptism and separation of church and state as

the key marks of the "Left Wing." [19]

At the center of Friedmann's essay was a review of Toleranze und Offenbarung byJohannes Kuhn published in 1923. Whether Bender read Kuhn during his year at Tubingen is not known, but there is evidence that he may have. Friedmann argued that Kuhn for the first time gave Anabaptism "equal rank" with other church movements in history, and Kuhn highlighted five types of Protestantism. The third typeKuhn identified as "tauferishe Nachfolge," Anabaptist discipleship.

"Nachfolge," Friedmann believed, means to live in the spirit of the Gospel. In essence discipleship means love and the cross. Love meant brotherhood, social community, and even as in the Hutterites, community of goods. But love often led tothe cross. Suffering thus becomes the unavoidable fate of the true Christian on

earth. Kuhn, claimed Friedmann, had delineated the essence of Anabaptism. Bender would have read this essay and certainly discussed it at length with Friedmann, who was laboring to get Goshen College's historical library organized.

In 1942 Friedmann read an address at the Mennonite Cultural Conference entitled"The Anabaptist Genius And Its Influence On Mennonites Today." The point of thearticle was that in the crisis of World War II, Mennonites could benefit from what he called the "old" spirit of the fathers. Friedmann's main point will becomea key point in The Anabaptist Vision; that the reformers stopped, as Friedmannput it, "halfway." They failed to follow their convictions to the end. Unlike th



e reformers, Friedmann argued, the Anabaptists pursued the intent of the Reformation to its conclusion and the results were what he called "a Christian revolution." [20]

The Anabaptist Vision and History

The Anabaptist Vision has been criticized as a one-dimensional description of Anabaptism. Bender's mind liked sharply drawn silhouettes. So did his contemporaryMennonites. Searching for the essence of a thing is of necessity an exercise insimplification. Bender's Anabaptist Vision was such an exercise, and is both its strength and weakness.

Kenneth Davis has commented that Bender did not give much credence to other thanreligious factors as explanations for Anabaptism. To a large degree that was aproduct of his own research, focused as it was on Conrad Grebel and the Swiss Brethren. Economic, political and sociological phenomena were not in the range ofhis work. He was quite interested in such matters, but in his relatively narrow-focused research he had neither the time nor the training to pursue such concerns. The Swiss Brethren material he had mastered was virtually all religious. Kenneth Davis believes Bender used the theological and historical material at his disposal with great skill. But he did not nuance the implications very successfully. [21]

Recent historians of Anabaptism have disputed Bender's assertion that Anabaptismwas simply the "culmination" of the Reformation. Walter Klaassen's Anabaptism:Neither Catholic Nor Protestant(1973) is a case in point. Bender found the "culmination of the Reformation" argument attractive for two reasons. It helped give Anabaptism legitimacy in the eyes of academic historians, and in the Vision Bender predicted that it was "destined to dominate the field."

In the second place, it pleased contemporary Mennonites, nonresistants uneasy inthe midst of a world war. Being the heirs of principled reformers rather than religious heretics was good news. Mennonites were reassured; they were also Protestants, though with a difference.

Denny Weaver has helpfully pointed out that Bender believed in the popularly held "tripartite division of history." There was an original "golden" age, followedby a "dark" age. The third stage is the era of the "recovery" of the qualitiesof the original age. Bender's portrait of the Swiss Brethren in the Vision is ofsuch a golden era. The Swiss Brethren were pristine biblicists and heroic martyrs (the Vision has a long section on their heroism as a persecuted minority).

The obvious point of the Vision for Bender's people is the need and the opportunity to recapture the original vitality of Anabaptism. [22] There is a vast amount of commentary on The Anabaptist Vision, much of if revisionist in nature. It is not possible in the scope of this essay to review that material. [23]

Concluding Comments

Where did Bender get his title? In his previous writing he hardly ever used theterm "Vision." But thesuccess of the essay must have impressed him, for by October, 1944, in his briefinaugural address as the new dean of the Goshen College Bible School he will use the term vision frequently. The title of the essay, "The Anabaptist Vision," was certainly felicitous. Ponder such titles as "The Anabaptist Idea," or "The Essence of Anabaptism," or even "The Spirit Of Anabaptism." I doubt that Harold Bender spent much time searching for a "marketable" title. But the title captures,



in a profound way, both the spirit and the content of the essay.

It has been the purpose of this paper to reenact the writing of The Anabaptist Vision essay. In 1943Harold Bender was ready to write The Anabaptist Vision. But it might well have become just another forgotten American Society of Church History presidential address. It was not forgotten because the times were ripe for its message and meaning. Another paper will be needed to describe that fullness of time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Albert N. Keirn, professor of history at Eastern Mennonite College in Virginia,was at this time writing a biography of Harold S. Bender. The above essay is thetext of an address Keim gave to the Mennonite Church Historical Association meeting July 29, 1993, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Mennonite Historical Bulletin, October 1993, pp. 1-7.

Bender, Harold Staufferby Leonard Gross

(19 July 1897-21 Sept. 1962). Harold S. Bender was the leading worldwide Mennonite spirit in his time, ca.1930-1962. He remains best known for his essay, "The Anabaptist Vision" (1944)--a vision of faithful disciples gathered in the name and spirit of the Christ of peace. This vision permeated Bender's life and thoughtthroughout his lifetime. (See G. F. Hershberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, 1957*)

Bender was born in Elkhart, Ind. to George Lewis and Elsie (Kolb) Bender. At thetime, Elkhart was at the hub of the Mennonite Church (MC), thanks to John F. Funk's periodical, Herald of Truth, and the other programs in publishing, relief work, mission work, mutual aid, and education that developed there in the 1880s and 1890s.

Bender graduated from Elkhart High School (1914), Goshen College (Bachelor of Arts, 1918), Garrett Biblical Institute (Bachelor of Divinity, 1922), Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Theology, 1923), Princeton University (Master of Arts, 1923), and the University of Heidelberg (Doctorate of Theology, 1935). He attended the University of Tilbingen, 1923-24. In 1923 he married Elizabeth Barbara Horsch; their children were Mary Eleanor (b. 1927) and Nancy Elizabeth (b. 1933).

Bender taught one year at the high school in Thorntown, IN (1916-17) and two years at Hesston College (1918-20). From 1924 to 1962 he was professor at Goshen College in church history, Bible, and sociology. He was dean of Goshen College, 1931-44, and dean of Goshen College Biblical Seminary, 1944-62.

Bender's birth coincided with the Mennonite renaissance or awakening of the 1880s and 1890s, which was, in part, the result of a shift in language from German to English. Mennonites during this era began accepting much within their new English-speaking, North American culture, including higher education and a renewed i



nterest in missions, at home and abroad. Bender's own interest in education should be understood in this light.

Bender's formative years, on the other hand, came during a new era of MennoniteChurch (MC) leaders who attempted to establish a new Mennonite orthodoxy in doctrine and dress, with a certain codification of both, and imbued to some degree by Fundamentalism. Daniel Kauffman was the major leader at the time (ca. 1898-1930). His Manual of Bible Doctrines (1898, 1914, 1928) became the definitive wordfor many within the church at that time.

The significance of Bender's work may be seen in part in terms of how he dealt with these new trends, both Fundamentalist and Liberal, within the church. Benderchose a route and approach to vision that differed from both. It stood in contrast to the Kauffman view of doctrine and dress, not so much in criticizing it directly, but rather by circumventing it. Bender chose to express the Christian faith through the historical process and attempted to rediscover the Anabaptist vision of biblical faith and life. Bender believed he was not creating a new theology but was returning to and recovering an old faith, the faith of his own forebears. In 1927 he created a journal, Mennonite Quarterly Review (MQR), and in 1929 he founded a scholarly series, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, writing the first volume himself (Two Centuries of American Mennonite Literature).A dissertation on Conrad Grebel, one of the founders of Anabaptism (1935, published 1950); a biography of Menno Simons (1936); Mennonite Origins in Europe (1942); "The Anabaptist Vision" (1944); The Mennonite Encyclopedia (4 vols., 1955-59

); Biblical Revelation and Inspiration (1959); These Are My People (1962), indicate the scope of his efforts to bring about a return to the Anabaptist faith ashe understood it. Throughout all these decades he edited the MQR and published many shorter essays therin, , as well as in other scholarly journals and in church papers.

Bender's leadership in the life of the Mennonite Church (MC), worldwide Mennonitism, and in ecumenical contacts was evident, in part, through the long list of committees and organizations in which he was active. Central in Bender's vision,on all levels of interaction, was his concern for the way of peace and love as integral to the path Christians should take.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------* The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision has been reprinted in "The Dissent and Nonconformity Series," No. 22, (Number One Iron Oaks Drive, Paris, Arkansas 72855: The Baptist Standard Bearer, Inc., n.d.).

Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 5, p. 66-67. All rights reserved. Order the Mennonite Encyclopedia frrm the publisher, Herald Press.

Anabaptist Theologyby Robert Friedmann

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------This essay was Robert Friedmann's first-draft attempt at defining what should gointo the Mennonite Encyclopedia under "Theology, Anabaptist." The editors did not see fit to use this approach, but the essay was published in the Mennonite Historical Bulletin, April 1990. One reason for this may well have been the fact that Friedmann's analysis was based more on the Swiss and Hutterian traditions, w



ith less emphasis upon Dutch Anabaptism. Even so, the essay is of great importance. Its significance lies in part in its early date, 1958, but also in unique formulations. For here is none other than Friedmann's encapsulation of what laterwould appear as his Theology of Anabaptism (Herald Press, 1973). Friedmann's interpretation may prove useful, currently, in the light of present interests in the question of Mennonite merger, and in a conjoint Mennonite confession of faith.(Leonard Gross, Editor, Mennonite Historical Bulletin)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No Anabaptist ever wrote a book or tract approximating systematic theology, comparable to what the Reformers of the sixteenth century have done. Therefore, a discussion here can point only to an implied, not to an explicit system of theology or theological thought, underlying all other activities of the brethren. No Christian group can exist without such an implied set of ideas, whereas their detailed expounding depends rather on actual occasions of polemics or defense.

The question which is foremost in the present endeavor of formulating this "implied" theology of the Anabaptists is whether or not Anabaptists accepted by and large the theology of the Protestant Reformers (Luther or Zwingli, hardly Calvin), adding in addition only those aspects otherwise neglected. In other words, should Anabaptism be regarded as a sort of Protestantism, with simply a greater emphasis on practical works and conduct, otherwise in line with the Reformers? The

older outlook (such as that of John Horsch) was inclined to accept this viewpoint while at present it is felt that Anabaptist theology, as it gradually becomesbetter known, was in many ways as deeply different from Protestantism as the latter was different from Catholicism. Otherwise the violent opposition and persecution of the brethren would be hard to understand. According to this more recentviewpoint, Anabaptism was more than merely a radicalized Lutheranism or Zwinglianism, even though elements of both are found in Anabaptist thought.

While the great Reformers were in one sense or another Augustinians, Anabaptistswere unaware of--or at least were uninterested in--the teachings of that greatchurch father. As for the emphasis in biblical studies, the stress is shifted from Pauline doctrines, developed above all in the great Epistle to the Romans, tothe basic instructions and teachings of Christ himself as found in the Synoptic

gospels. The idea of discipleship therefore becomes foremost. In a rather general sense one could formulate this situation somewhat as follows: While for the Reformers the question of personal, individual salvation (from the taint of original sin and punishment for it) stood in the foreground, a question usually answered by the so-called "solafide" theology, the Anabaptists were primarily interested in the idea of Nachfolge (following Christ) which is based on an implied "theology of the kingdom of God."

Of course, the Anabaptists too were sure that this idea means, in the last analysis, "salvation" (from the powers of darkness), but salvation as taught by Luther was certainly not their primary concern. Their concern was rather obedience tothe Word of God which excluded from the outset too much thinking concerning one's own fate. Only by obedience can one become a "disciple" and thus be active to

wards the promotion of the kingdom of God. Original sin exists, of course, but must not necessarily prevent man from such a way of Nachfolge, if man only fightsin his own depth all the opposing forces.

Here we see immediately the great difference between them and the Reformers: there is no inescapable pessimism concerning man's capacity to obey God's commandments (including those of the Sermon on the Mount). The reason for this is that Anabaptism begins with the very idea of inner rebirth and a new and dedicated life, while Protestantism in general is inclined to despair of such an ability in man. Popularly, one might formulate the difference as an "emphasis on sanctificati



on" versus an "emphasis on justification"; such a formulation, however, is too simple to satisfy, and the finer differences will become clearer only as we studythe issue, point by point.

In reading Anabaptist tracts of a quasi-theological nature (usually provoked bypolemics) one discovers quickly the absence of certain key words so familiar toeveryone from the writings of Luther or Zwingli:

1) There is first and foremost the almost complete absence of the term "originalsin"--or, if it appears, it shows but marginal significance. All the classicalloci quoted by Luther are absent (e.g., in Friedemann, see Mennonite Quarterly Review, 1952, 210ff.), and their answer that "the sons do not inherit the guilt of the fathers" (Ezekiel 18:4, 20) is utterly un-Lutheran. In other words, totaldepravity is unthinkable for men who have dedicated their lives to Nachfolge anddiscipleship. The reborn person knows ways and means to fight the "old Adam" inus, primarily by a life of nonconformity.

2) The term "atonement" is found nearly nowhere, and Anabaptists often express their opposition to the idea that inasmuch as Christ had ransomed us from the bondage of sin, we cannot do anything more but rely on this cosmic event and acceptit as a free gift (cf. "Sweet or Bitter Christ," Mennonite Encyclopedia, IV, 688-9). Man is not saved through Christ in his sin, but from his sin. The only known Anabaptist tract on this topic, from about 1530, Von der Genugtuung Christi ["On the Satisfaction of Christ," in: John Howard Yoder, Ed., The Legacy of Micha

el Sattler, 1973, 108ff.] does not really deal with the doctrine itself but onlywith the question: who may receive this divine grace? Only the disciple who dedicates himself altogether to a life of obedience is worth to receive this grace.Justification is Gerechtmachung, not only Gerechterklärung.

3) Salvation by faith alone: This formulation leads easily to confusion becausethe opposite formulation, "salvation by works," contains so much ambiguity thatthe issues become easily blurred. A passage by Riedemann may easily illustrate this situation. He violently opposes the accusation "as if we would seek to be good [fromm werden, the Anabaptist term for salvation] through our own works.... To this we say 'no,' for we know that all our work, insofar as it is our work, isnaught but sin and unrighteousness; but insofar as it is of Christ and done byChrist in us, so far is it truth--just and good...." (Riedemann, Account of our

Religion, 1950, p.36).

4) The term "sacrament" is of course totally absent in Anabaptist writings, butthe subject itself -- baptism and the Lord's Supper--was much discussed, more orless in a Zwinglian way (symbolism). That baptism means a "sealing up of the new birth" is of course specific with all groups favoring adult baptism. Often theAnabaptists call it with Titus 3:5 a "bath of rebirth"; to them it means a vowto walk the way of discipleship; till the end of life. Thus we might say that discipleship is more than mere "sanctification of life," rather it is sanctification after having experienced God's grace of actual (existential) justification (Gerechtmachung). Work under such condition is not a "marital act" (as with Catholicism) but the evidencing of faith in life-obedience to God's commandments. Peter's word, You are a royal people (1 Peter 2:9), is more central to Anabaptists t

han Paul's cry of despondency in Romans 7.

Once dedicated to this way the Anabaptist no longer worries about personal salvation. His way is not "salvation by works" (as opponents used to say and still say so now and then) but the Anabaptist knows that no salvation is thinkable without works which show the reality of one's conversion. The term "by faith alone" is too indefinite as to be well usable for such a vision.

II



Traditionally, theology is subdivided into several topics such as christology, soteriology, eschatology, and ecclesiology. Naturally, Anabaptist writings are unaware of this classification, but in broad outlines we may find some salient points to each topic in these writings:

1) Christology. It has to be stressed that the Anabaptists were thoroughly "orthodox" in their faith, i.e., they accepted without any reservation the ApostolicCreed and the doctrine of the Trinity. That holds true for all groups without distinction. Christ is the second person of the Trinity, the Son of God, fully manand fully God, who redeemed mankind by his death -- that is, by opening a new way to fight the powers of Satan, and also by opening God's immeasurable grace toall who will follow him in true sonship. The Anabaptists accepted the orthodox"old-evangelical" teachings -- prior and up to the time of the Nicene Creed. With Zwingli they eliminated all magical ideas, so often connected with the personof Christ. We should stress here also that the Anabaptists were soberly scriptural, that is, all kinds of fanaticism, enthusiasm and false spiritualism were foreign to them.

2) Soteriology. That humans are born in sin, is of course readily admitted; butthis birth does not mean a sort of fate which cannot be overcome or escaped. Thebasic presupposition of Anabaptist thought is the existential fact of inner rebirth, the total change of mind. Only individuals of this type could (and would)ever join the Anabaptist brotherhoods; those who passively despaired of any esse

ntial change of life could never understand the Anabaptists both in their everyday life and in their stand at trials. Faith meant to them more than merely a "creedal assent," it meant rather an experience leading to decision and commitment.

Naturally such an attitude will unavoidably lead to conflicts with the "world" (which lives in a mixture of powers derived both from light and darkness), and with it, to persecution. The Anabaptist, however, is prepared to accept it, what was aptly called the "theology of martyrdom," meaning the expectation of the cross for the disciple -- "cross," not as a marital event, but as a sign of one's own stand, challenging the world which will always contradict the path of Christ and his disciples. (Note: theology of martyrdom, i.e., the "church under the cross," is to be distinguished from a "theology of the cross," so well-known from later Pietism, but also from the writings of Thomas Müntzer and other writers of the

sixteenth century.)

The idea of a suffering church is not really a "theology" in the strict sense ofthe word, just as the idea of "discipleship" is not theology proper (though part of it). Discipleship (Nachfolge) is often called "obedience" in Anabaptist tracts. Neither this disciple-ship nor martyrdom as such has in itself any "saving"quality.

The central concepts of Anabaptist theology therefore have to be sought on a still deeper level. It was recently called the "theology of the two worlds," or kingdom-of-God theology (Robert Friedmann, "The Doctrine of the Two Worlds," in: The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, 1957, 105-18). Its basic idea is the primitive Christian dualism of God and Satan, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Sa

tan, light and darkness, Spirit and flesh, and the like. Facing this prime situation of all existence, each person has to decide for himself which one of the two sides he is ready to join. All the well-known radicalism of the Anabaptist such as martyrdom, community of goods, innerworldly asceticism, etc., has its rootsin this basic theological vision or outlook.

To this "kingdom-theology" might be added as a supplementary thought the idea of"covenant" (Bund). The Anabaptists have made their covenant with God (1 Peter 3:21) when accepting baptism, but more correctly God made his covenant with all those who are ready to be his children. Thus Anabaptists are "covenant people," h



aving committed themselves to unceasing enmity to whatever belongs to the princeof the world (such as violence, adultery, greed, hatred, etc.)

(Note: One author prefers to speak of two aeons rather than two worlds, but it appears that the aeon-theology belongs in a different context.)

3) Eschatology. Except for marginal figures such as Melchior Hofmann and his like, eschatology has nowhere been treated in detail by Anabaptists. And yet, theydraw courage and good cheer from an unelaborated-upon hope and confidence that "these are the last and most dangerous days." In other words, they believe that the kingdom of God has drawn near and will come at any moment. That gives them calmness in tribulation -- they are sure that God will not delay for long his coming. Again, Anabaptists were reading Peter ("new heavens and a new earth," 2 Peter 3:13) with more understanding in this regard than any one of the other epistles of the New Testament. But one should stress the point that Anabaptists were never adventists or millenarians of any kind. When, in 1527 at the famous Martyr'sSynod in Augsburg, this question came up, Hans Hut was expressly instructed tokeep back his own ideas concerning the near end of this world, and he kept his promise. Anabaptists were loath to indulge in speculations of this kind. Only asan undercurrent would they allow remarks of this kind. After all, the kingdom ofGod was not only coming, it was already "among us."

4) Ecclesiology. The Corpus Christi is here stressed over against the Corpus Christianorum. In other words, the brotherhood of dedicated Christians stands here

against the body of all baptized Christians, saints and sinners. The Catholics as well as the Reformers accepted the Corpus Christianorum, the concept of a Christian society at large, hence their opposition to the idea of an exclusive Corpus Christi[anum].

The church (Gemeinde, also Gemein, Gemeinschaft) and the brotherhood are with the Anabaptists one and the same, both a sacred and a secular body without separation of these two functions. No one can ever reach God except together with his brother. The Anabaptist church was once well-called the "fellowship of committeddisciples," and the Lord's Supper among them is the external symbol of this fellowship (occasionally called the "fellowship at the Lord's Table"). Brotherhood is more than a concern for the other's salvation, it is Gemeinschaft, community,both in things spiritual and worldly. It is essentially a love-relation (hence i

t implies more than merely an "ethic" of love).

At the same time this church is a disciplined church, a church which insists onsupervision by the bishop or Vorsteher, and naturally insists on the ban. More than once it was called a "church of order" (cf. Mennonite Encyclopedia, I, 595-a), the term itself occurring time and again in Anabaptist tracts. Of course, theworld of the children of God must be a world of order, and not one of confusionor arbitrariness. Whether Grebel or Riedemann, Marpeck or Menno Simons or DirkPhilips, they all stressed this element of order and discipline as part of the true church of God. It belongs as a second element to the first one of brotherlylove and cooperation and sharing.

III

These then are the salient elements of Anabaptist theology. Its core appears tobe the doctrine of the two worlds, with its corresponding idea that the Anabaptists' task is to attempt to realize the kingdom of God in the here and now, at least in part, and in weakness. The disciple knows the temptation of sin, but he has arrived at the decision where he will fight it and will try to follow the Master. This is possible only if he separates from the "world," but in a differentway from that of medieval monasticism.



That official Protestantism with its so profoundly different genius could not understand this vision and was bent to eliminate it altogether is regrettable butunderstandable. Only a period of slackening of this theology, and at the same time a converging towards a "general Protestant pattern" (around 1700, see GerhardRoosen as an example) could radically change outlook and persecution. (October,1958)

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