No Turning Back (either to Christendom or Secularism)

[joey_the_ox]

This is a bit of a detour from HK’s original post, but I’ve noticed many people in a journey into Anabaptism get sidetracked into universalism.

Not a detour exactly. I’m curious as to why you think that might be?

I'm also curious to hear what Josh thinks about this.

I came across the following lines in The Devil's Redemption by Michael J. McClymond:

From the early sixteenth century to the middle of the seventeenth century, as Europe was convulsed with conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, one looks hard to find any instances of Roman Catholic or magisterial Protestant authors who publicly espoused universalism. However, such views were voiced among the so-called Radical Reformers. In fact, there were enough cases of Radical Reformers espousing universalism that some early Protestant confessions of faith gave the erroneous impression that the Anabaptists were all universalists. Rightly or wrongly, such views among the Anabaptists were often attributed to Origen. In his classic work The Radical Reformation (3rd ed., 2000), George Hunston Williams claims that Hans Denck, Clement Ziegler, Augustine Bader, and Anthony Pocquet (or Pocque) all taught in the 1520s the possible salvation of all human beings and even of Satan and the demons. These ideas flourished particularly during the earliest stages of the Radical Reformation.

(I want to be quick to say that I'm not attempting to draw a line from "some early Radical Reformers may have been universalists" to "there is a connection between contemporary Anabaptism and universalism" or anything like that.)

[Josh]

This is a bit of a detour from HK’s original post, but I’ve noticed many people in a journey into Anabaptism get sidetracked into universalism.

Not a detour exactly. I’m curious as to why you think that might be?

My best guess is that their attraction to Anabaptist was essentially a progressive one. We note that universalism is very rare in an Enlightenment setting. It's relatively common today., and it really exploded under 19th century progressivism in America.

Anabaptism attracts people who are "radical", that is, desiring a return to roots, but also seems to attract people who are progressive - which can be mistaken for "radical". The progressive's mistake was that they thought man's condition could be improved and ultimately perfected outside of a radical change from Jesus Christ, following Jesus' teachings, and living a separated, apocalyptic lifestyle as taught in the New Testament. The progressive's lifestyle is quite anti-apocalyptic: it is focused on making life on earth all there is to hope for, thus we need to try to make it as good as possible.

Outsiders often confuse the horse for the cart in contemporary plain Anabaptism, thinking that the end goal of why Anabaptists live the way they do is so they can maintain a multi-generational lifestyle of driving black cars, or black buggies, or wearing plain clothes, or eating health, non-GMO, organic food, or not saying "darn" and "heck", and so on. This is, essentially, the progressive vision.

The apocalyptic, Radical Reformer's vision is that the Lord may indeed return very soon, and that we also need to make sure that our children and our children's children do not slip and fall away from the faith, and in particular start going to war. (I became convinced of this from reading early Hutterite literature, which focused a great deal on why one's lifestyle should basically live in service to passing on the ideals of non-resistance.) They tended to feel that the church got the rest of Christianity "right" - they just erred very badly in the use of force, going to war, and the logical consequences of that, like infant baptism. Thus there wasn't a need to reform or remake the rest of Christianity. Nor was there a need to somehow try to make society "progress".

The radical reformers often did engage in many acts of mercy to people such as setting up hospitals, alternative service, and so on, but not in order to "progress" society to some ideal - it was instead simply as an opportunity to show loving care and concern to individuals, out of a belief that is what a Christian should spend his life doing.

The radical Anabaptist finds it is a "narrow way and few there be that will find it"; different groups of Anabaptists disagreed on just how narrow, but they all shared a concern that many people were heading to eternal doom.

The progressive, on the other hand, found that the concept of an eternal doom feels unjust and un-progressive, and generally set themselves to get busy to try to redefine using complex theology why eternal doom is not possible. Ultimately the end of the universalists was empty churches that tended to get converted into museums or bed-and-breakfasts - which is what the apocalyptic Anabaptists feared would happen if they did not keep the faith. We should not confuse the goals of the two just because the two both prefer to grow and eat from backyard gardens.

[HondurasKeiser]

Heck, even my wife on the way home the other day mentioned, off-handedly that everything feels like it's coming to an end - not that Christ is necessarily coming back tomorrow - but that the current structures and securities and givens and assumptions are crumbling.

Not to over-focus on the decline/collapse aspect of my OP but I just read Freddie deBoer's latest and though it deals entirely with the extant political factions in the U.S.; it is an apolitical take on the decline of politics, terminology and ideology in the Left-Right divide. I found it spot-on and, more importantly, emblematic of my "everything is falling apart" sense of the moment. I should add too with a nod to Barnhart; I don't fear the "falling apartedness" or what comes next - mine is one of clear-eyed resignation and assurance that throughout it all Christ remains on his throne.

What we are living through is definitional collapse. Our moment is one in which anything is possible because nothing means anything. Every last set of orienting principles in politics is being dissolved in the acid bath of culture war, before our very eyes. I am telling you: never in my lifetime have political terms meant less. You can easily imagine a world where vaccine skepticism was left-coded - indeed, in the Trump years it was! - but in this particular reality your thoughts on vaccines overrule your feelings about the means of production. That condition is the product of pure contingency, chance; there is no a priori reason the left-of-center would treat vaccination status as a definitional landmark. But right now that is what yelling people yell about, and there is no ideology anymore, no ideas, only Yooks and Zooks.

In other words there is a vacuum of meaning, in our politics, and the really scary question is what will fill it. The right strongman, whether R or D, could ride in and get 65% of the electorate to support him as he casually dispensed with law and democracy, giving the people the firm hand they so desire. We’ve just been lucky that our recent leaders have been so corrupt, feckless, and decrepit that no one’s taken the reins. But we won’t be lucky forever. If Obama tried to seize dictatorial power he’d do so with the permission of half the country. I would bet my life on it.

I think that in the next decade the most salient political evolution won’t be towards the right or towards the left. It’s that politics will become corporeal again for a caste that has enjoyed keeping it in the realm of the theoretical. A lot of people who have had the comfort of treating politics as entertainment their whole lives will find it suddenly, unspeakably real. I think chaos is coming.

[HondurasKeiser]

I have now read the essay. I find the conclusion a bit disappointing. Hart's fundamental piece of advice seems to be the following:

Christian thought can always return to the apocalyptic novum of the event of the Gospel in its first beginning and, drawing renewed vigor from that inexhaustible source, imagine new expressions of the love it is supposed to proclaim to the world, and new ways beyond the impasses of the present.

In a sense I agree with this, but in another sense this is so broad that any number of discordant lines of thought could find a place for themselves under this mandate. Hart seems to recognize this lack of specificity:

The ultimate result, if Christians can free themselves from the myth of a lost golden age, may be something wilder and stranger than we can at present conceive, at once more primitive and more sophisticated, more anarchic in some ways and more orderly in others.

What will the result be like? Who can say? The one thing that is certain to Hart is that it will not be Christendom:

Whether such a thing is possible or not, however, it is necessary to grasp that where we now find ourselves is not a fixed destiny. It becomes one only if we are unwilling to distinguish the opulent but often decadent grandeur of Christendom from the true Christian glory of which it fell so far short.

I get the feeling that Hart has written the final half of the essay with the specter of "integralism" looming over his head. He really does not like integralism, as evidenced by the following:

There are any number of reasons, for instance, for dismissing the current vogue of right-wing Catholic “integralism”: its imbecile flights of fancy regarding an imperial papacy; its essentially early-modern model of ecclesial absolutism; its devotion to a picture of Christian social and political order that could not be any less “integralist” or any more “extrinsicist” and authoritarian in its mechanisms; the disturbingly palpable element of sadomasochistic reverie in its endorsement of various extreme forms of coercion, subjugation, violence, and exclusion; the total absence of the actual ethos of Christ from its aims; its eerie similarity to a convention of Star Trek enthusiasts gravely discussing strategies for really establishing a United Federation of Planets. But the greatest reason for holding the whole movement in contempt is that it is nothing more than a resentful effort to reenact the very history of failure whose consequences it wants to correct.

This bears a strong resemblance to some of Hart's rhetoric against "infernalists." I think that in both cases Hart can be unfair in his caricatures.

Curiously enough, my sometimes Catholic, sister had nearly the exact same critique of the essay as you did - she found the end to be unsatisfyingly vague and she thinks he can be too pretentious in his writing.

[joey_the_ox]

Not to over-focus on the decline/collapse aspect of my OP but I just read Freddie deBoer's latest and though it deals entirely with the extant political factions in the U.S.; it is an apolitical take on the decline of politics, terminology and ideology in the Left-Right divide.

Haha I read that and considered quoting it on this thread, then decided deBoer might be a bit much .

[joey_the_ox]

Curiously enough, my sometimes Catholic, sister had nearly the exact same critique of the essay as you did - she found the end to be unsatisfyingly vague and she thinks he can be too pretentious in his writing.

On the pretentiousness, if you haven't already seen it, this is a good-humored parody.

[HondurasKeiser]

Curiously enough, my sometimes Catholic, sister had nearly the exact same critique of the essay as you did - she found the end to be unsatisfyingly vague and she thinks he can be too pretentious in his writing.

On the pretentiousness, if you haven't already seen it, this is a good-humored parody.

Alan Jacobs for the win.

[ohio jones]

But right now that is what yelling people yell about, and there is no ideology anymore, no ideas, only Yooks and Zooks.

Slightly off topic, but I've often wondered if Ted Geisel knew any Zooks of the Menno variety. I'm guessing he did not, but then again....

[joey_the_ox]

I should add too with a nod to Barnhart; I don't fear the "falling apartedness" or what comes next - mine is one of clear-eyed resignation and assurance that throughout it all Christ remains on his throne.

On this note I recently read something by St. Gregory the Great, in one of his homilies:

When the misfortunes of the world are multiplying and the shaking of the celestial powers announces the terror of the judgment, raise your head, rejoice in your hearts; indeed, while the world ends, of which you are not friends, the redemption you desired approaches.

[joey_the_ox]

My best guess is that their attraction to Anabaptist was essentially a progressive one. We note that universalism is very rare in an Enlightenment setting. It's relatively common today., and it really exploded under 19th century progressivism in America.

Anabaptism attracts people who are "radical", that is, desiring a return to roots, but also seems to attract people who are progressive - which can be mistaken for "radical". The progressive's mistake was that they thought man's condition could be improved and ultimately perfected outside of a radical change from Jesus Christ, following Jesus' teachings, and living a separated, apocalyptic lifestyle as taught in the New Testament. The progressive's lifestyle is quite anti-apocalyptic: it is focused on making life on earth all there is to hope for, thus we need to try to make it as good as possible.

Outsiders often confuse the horse for the cart in contemporary plain Anabaptism, thinking that the end goal of why Anabaptists live the way they do is so they can maintain a multi-generational lifestyle of driving black cars, or black buggies, or wearing plain clothes, or eating health, non-GMO, organic food, or not saying "darn" and "heck", and so on. This is, essentially, the progressive vision.

The apocalyptic, Radical Reformer's vision is that the Lord may indeed return very soon, and that we also need to make sure that our children and our children's children do not slip and fall away from the faith, and in particular start going to war. (I became convinced of this from reading early Hutterite literature, which focused a great deal on why one's lifestyle should basically live in service to passing on the ideals of non-resistance.) They tended to feel that the church got the rest of Christianity "right" - they just erred very badly in the use of force, going to war, and the logical consequences of that, like infant baptism. Thus there wasn't a need to reform or remake the rest of Christianity. Nor was there a need to somehow try to make society "progress".

The radical reformers often did engage in many acts of mercy to people such as setting up hospitals, alternative service, and so on, but not in order to "progress" society to some ideal - it was instead simply as an opportunity to show loving care and concern to individuals, out of a belief that is what a Christian should spend his life doing.

The radical Anabaptist finds it is a "narrow way and few there be that will find it"; different groups of Anabaptists disagreed on just how narrow, but they all shared a concern that many people were heading to eternal doom.

The progressive, on the other hand, found that the concept of an eternal doom feels unjust and un-progressive, and generally set themselves to get busy to try to redefine using complex theology why eternal doom is not possible. Ultimately the end of the universalists was empty churches that tended to get converted into museums or bed-and-breakfasts - which is what the apocalyptic Anabaptists feared would happen if they did not keep the faith. We should not confuse the goals of the two just because the two both prefer to grow and eat from backyard gardens.

Josh, I find your explanation interesting, and I'm still thinking through it. What do you think about the quote from McClymond I reproduced above that associates some of the Radical Reformers with universalism in a non-contemporary setting? Or to phrase it more directly, was there something about the Radical Reformation that led to the universalism (since it didn't really arise for Catholics or magisterial Protestants)? Or do you think that the universalism was just a random historical accident and didn't really have anything to do with the fact that some of those who professed it were also associated with the Radical Reformation?

(I personally don't know enough to have much of an opinion either way, or maybe there is a third, better explanation.)