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• Anabaptism and Socio-Economic Reality

• Early Anabaptism had the power to be socially
  subversive as illustrated by the story of
  Adelheit Schwarz (Snyder, pp. 307-310).
• The social structure of the 16th century was
  constructed upon hier-archies which were assumed
  to be divinely ordained and established. But the
  evangelical reforming movement challenged some of
  the established structures of cultural
  Christianity, particularly the privileged social
  status of clergy.
• Luthers reforms had unintended consequences
  when common people turned to the Bible
  themselves, they found democratic social and
  economic principles.
• The principle enunciated by Luther of the
  priesthood of all believers was radical in its
  democratization of religion.
• Early Anabaptists emphasized the work of the Holy
  Spirit that transcended social boundaries and
  structures.

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• Anabaptism linked the inner life to concrete,
  outer expressions of that inner life. The
  Anabaptists believed that the inner change
  wrought by the Spirit in every person had to be
  manifested not only in pious acts, but in
  practical life decisions that were in conformity
  with the social and economic ordering of
  scripture. (Snyder, p. 312).
• Economic and social questions lay just below the
  surface of the Anabaptist movement Many of the
  same religious, social, and economic impulses
  that fueled the so-called Peasants War were
  considered legitimate issues within the
  Anabaptist movement (Snyder, p. 313)
• Examples of Anabaptist writings on economic
  relations see sidebars 4, 5, and 6 on pp.
  313-4. The principle of sufficiency was accepted
  by virtually the whole movement as noted by the
  quote from Menno Simons.

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• Three principles in the Anabaptist critique of
  economic practices of the 16th century
• Anabaptists were critical of the poverty they saw
  around themselves.
• Anabaptists were suspicious of trade and commerce
  as livelihoods, extolling rather honest hand
  labor. (Snyder, p. 314)
• Anabaptists rejected charging of interest on
  loans (usury)
• The emphasis on economic structures, however, was
  to lead to schism. Was the sharing of ones
  goods a voluntary act to which the individual
  believer might be summoned by conscience? Or was
  it to be legislated by the true church? This
  questions gained the greatest importance in
  Moravia.
• Jakob Hutter in 1533 brought a stricter view of
  the true community to the group of Anabaptists
  who had fled Nicholsburg. Hutter insisted that
  the community of goods be legislated by the
  church. (See sidebar (8) on p. 316).

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• Gender Roles
• Central to Anabaptism was the idea of yielding
  individually to the grace of God and making a
  personal choice to accept it with its
  consequenceswater baptism, visible commitment to
  the community of believers and its discipline,
  and sharing of ones goods.
• There was, however, a tension or paradox in
  Anabaptismindividual choice led to commitment to
  the visible church on earth, which, in turn,
  required the limitation of individual choice in
  accountability, obedience, and conformity to that
  body.

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• Gender roles in Swiss Anabaptism
• Early Swiss Anabaptism emerged as a movement in
  its own right due to the emphasis on the work of
  the Spirit. Spiritualistic manifestations among
  the early Swiss Brethren were not uncommon and
  appeared among both men and women. Snyder cites
  examples of early Swiss Anabaptist women who
  played prominent leadership roles.
• Literal reading of the New Testament as
  emphasized by the Schleitheim Articles would
  later protect Swiss Anabaptism from some of the
  excesses that appeared in other places, but such
  literalist readings also limited the roles open
  to women.

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• Gender roles in South German Anabaptism and
  Hutterite Communities
• The strong spiritualist emphasis in South German
  Anabaptism likewise made room for leadership
  roles for women. Snyder cites examples of Ursula
  Binder and Helena von Freyberg on p. 320.
• Hutterites, however, emphasized strongly the
  biblical rule of life necessary for communal
  living, and the roles available to women were
  correspondingly restricted. For example, Snyder
  cites the writings of Peter Ridemans
  Rechenshafft (Account) of 1545 which emphasizes
  traditional hierarchical order of creation (see
  sidebar (9) on p. 321).

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• Gender roles in Melchiorite Anabaptism
• Women were prominent in the Melchiorite
  Anabaptist community of Strasbourgof 18
  prophets in Hoffmans Strasbourg fellowship, 8
  were women.
• Two women deserve specific mention Ursula Jost,
  whose visions were published in 1530, and Barbara
  Rebstock, who exercised direct leadership in the
  Strasbourg Anabaptist community as a long-term
  elder.
• Melchior Hoffmans openness to prophetic and
  leadership roles for women was not necessarily
  duplicated elsewhere in North German and Dutch
  Anabaptism. The Anabaptism of Münster, for
  example, was patriarchal, restrictive, and
  culminated in polygamy.
• After the fall of Münster, David Joris carried
  this patriarchal attitude onward and sought to
  impose it on the Melchiorites of Strasbourg in
  his attempt to have his prophetic and leadership
  authority recognized.

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• Menno Simons and the Mennonite tradition
• While David Joris and the Melchiorites of
  Strasbourg differed on gender roles in the
  prophetic office, Menno Simons foreclosed the
  prophetic office to men and women alike.
• Menno Simons Christocentric, literal biblicism
  had the effect of limiting leadership roles of
  women in the Mennonite community. Leadership by
  women continued, but on an informal basis.
• Conclusion
• Increased reliance on literal readings of
  scripture as the rule for life and conduct of the
  church led away from the spiritually-discerned
  call to individuals and toward authority
  possessed by male leadership of the community.

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• Marriage among Anabaptists
• Despite the ascetic strands woven into
  Anabaptism, the Anabaptists did not endorse
  celibacy as a more-spiritual estate than
  marriage.
• Luther saw no value in celibacy since salvation
  was a gift of grace by faith, and remaining
  celibate was, to Luther, simply one more futile
  example of human beings trying to put themselves
  in good stead with God.
• The Anabaptists, however, saw marriage as within
  the process of sanctification and so found
  themselves occupying a theological middle ground
  between late medieval Christianity (with celibacy
  regarded as a more-spiritual estate than
  marriage) and the main stream of Protestant
  reform.
• Mixed marriages (Anabaptists with
  non-Anabaptists) were a significant problem in
  the early days of the Anabaptist movement. There
  were many cases of abandonment, bigamy, polygamy,
  and other abuses.

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• Marriage and Anabaptism (continued)
• The general move away from spiritualism and
  toward Christocentric New Testament biblicism
  brought order to the practice of marriage among
  Anabaptists.
• After 1550, marriage practices in Anabaptist
  communities had become suprisingly uniform (p.
  334) with marriage restricted to within the
  community and under the control of the elders of
  the congregations.

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• Anabaptism and Religious Reform

• The question of outer marks of faith and
  inner realities was fundamental to early
  Anabaptism.
• Testimonies of Balthasar Hubmaier (1527), Pilgram
  Marpeck (1544), and Menno Simons (1539) on this
  questionall emphasize the necessity of linking
  external observances with the inner life.
• Anabaptists did not view ceremonies like baptism
  and the Lords Supper as sacraments in the
  Catholic sense.
• Spiritualists within the Anabaptist movement gave
  less emphasis to external ceremonies and were
  willing to dispense with them altogether.
• Literalists emphasized obedience to the words of
  Jesus as recorded in the New Testament.
• Others (represented by Pilgram Marpeck) made the
  case for a middle way between the spiritualist
  rejection of outer ceremonies and the literalist
  approach.

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• Spiritualism and Hans Denck
• Denck exemplified the spiritualist approach.
• Denck distinguished commandments, customs, and
  laws
• Commandments were observances that could not be
  set aside or ignored. The highest commandment
  was to love God and neighbor.
• Customs were those ordinances that reminded human
  beings of the divine. External ordinances (e.g.,
  baptism) ordained by scripture fell into this
  category. While customs were not bad, they were
  secondary at best.
• Laws were the human decrees made for the ordering
  of society. Laws pointed to nothing beyond
  themselves.
• Dencks de-valuation of external ordinances was
  evidence of his belief in a dualistic reality in
  which the physical world was of no use in the
  life of the spirit except as a proving ground.

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• Literalist Anabaptists (Grebel, Sattler, Menno
  Simons) shared the same dualism with the
  spiritualiststhe spiritual world was more
  important and the physical world was disjoint
  with the spiritual.
• Their reasoning for continuing to practice
  divisive external ceremonies was Jesus said to
  do so.
• The Contrast of Hans Bünderlin and Pilgram
  Marpeck
• Hans Bünderlin was baptized in 1526 in Augsburg
  and was active in Austria and Moravia. By 1528,
  he had moved to Strasbourg. By 1530, however, he
  had joined the ranks of the spiritualists,
  abandoning external ceremonies and the Anabaptist
  fellowships that continued to practice them.
• Bünderlin argued that the Catholic church had
  perverted ceremonial observance to the point
  where it should be abandoned.
• Since Christian faith is always inward, the
  restoration of the true church would begin with
  the abandonment of ceremonies.

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• Pilgram Marpeck argued for a visible church that
  retained the practice of ceremonies. The
  external order cannot be simply disregarded
  because it is through the external and visible
  realm that human beings are led into the inner
  and invisible one.
• Spiritualism and literalism in northern Europe
  Menno Simons and Nicolaas van Blesdijk
• The debacle of Münster supported the notion that
  far too much had been made of externals. The
  failed attempt to build a visible kingdom of the
  regenerated church at Münster gave impetus to
  those who argued that external observance should
  be de-emphasized and the inner life of the spirit
  emphasized.
• David Joris and his followers emphasized the
  inner life to the point that even participation
  in the ceremonies of state churches was of no
  particular importance. He and his followers
  could appear to be conforming to state church
  practices while maintaining their own mental
  distance.

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• Nicolaas van Blesdijk
• Became the leading exponent of spiritualism in
  northern Europe after David Joris (his
  father-in-law) withdrew from active leadership.
• He argued that the true way to serve God was by
  purity and truth in the heart of the individual
  and that these cannot be brought into being by
  ceremonies or external observances.
• Van Blesdijk and his followers came close to
  severing the connection between the inner life
  and the outward life that was a characteristic of
  Anabaptism.
• Menno Simons
• Menno Simons argued for external observances
  because they were commanded by Jesus as found in
  the New Testament.
• He did not take up the question of the
  relationship of the inner life to the outer life
  he instead sidestepped the question by citing the
  example and words of Jesus.

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• The Ban
• The Swiss Brethren position on the ban for
  enforcing church discipline was found in Article
  2 of the Schleitheim Articles.
• Pilgram Marpeck rejected the implicit legalism of
  the Swiss Brethren understanding of the ban.
  The measure of Christian obedience is not then
  adherence to law or the maintenance of purity
  according to a legal standard, but rather
  adherence to the mercy, patience, and love of
  Christ whose spirit had come to rule regenerated
  hearts. (Snyder, p. 351).
• Menno Simons early writings reflected an
  emphasis on placing Christ at the center of
  scripture and on individual regeneration. The
  later writings of Menno Simons focused more on
  the maintenance of the pure community with an
  increasingly-legalistic focus.
• Examples of rules for the ban, pp. 355-6.

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• Conclusion
• The spirit/letter tensions are quite evident in
  the formative years of the Anabaptist movement.
• Spiritualists avoided legalism but their
  arguments could be stretched to the point of
  severing the link between the inner life and the
  external life which was emphasized by
  Anabaptists.
• Legalists emphasized adherence to external
  ceremonies because they were commanded in
  scripture and application of the ban to maintain
  the purity of the faithful community.
• The middle way exemplified by Marpeck enunciated
  a less sectarian vision of the church and the
  Christian life. The Christian life for Marpeck
  was not the desperate defense of a perfect state,
  but rather a growing continually into the divine
  nature by menas of individual and communal
  spiritual disciplines. (Snyder, p. 359)