The Intellectual Depth of Anabaptism

[Wayne in Maine]

I see the "bible" as a collection of individual books, not a comprehensive single text. For that reason my Christocentric "gospel" starts with the New Testament writings that document the mission and message of Jesus (The Word made flesh) whose theme was the good news of the Kingdom of God: its advent, its characteristics, and how to be a member of it. I recognized this in the writings of the early Anabaptist (there are a lot of pre-Menno writings of the Swiss Brethren out there!) and resonated with them ,which is how I came to be where I am in my comprehension of "the gospel" today. There may or may not have been a coincidence that the Erasmus Greek New Testament was all the rage in intellectual circles of the early 16th century, New Testament was translated and published in German long before the Old Testament, and that the focus of the earliest Anabaptists was on these writings.

How do you square that with the Book of Hebrews? Or with Stephen's testimony upon his martyrdom? Or the themes of prophet, priest, king, temple, and Eden in the New Testament? Or all the Old Testament quotations in the Gospels when describing who Jesus is? Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus was not "Plan B", Jesus was pre-existent, part of God's plan from the beginning.

I'm not sure what you are saying Boot. The Gospels tell about who Jesus is, as the very relevation of what God showed himself to be when He walked among us in the flesh. Stephen's testimony, the letter to the Hebrews, Paul's theological musings, all point to that Jesus. You cannot truly begin understand the Christ, the Messiah until you have heard him speak in the synagogue, on the road, by the sea, on the mount, on the plain. You cannot understand Him until you have seen the blind see, the lame walk, the dead rise. It is after you have observed the Word Made Flesh that the prophesies and the exegesis of Old Testament texts begin to truly make sense. It is where the armed liberator of the Jewish Nation is finally understood to be lamb of God sacrificed for our sins.

I agree that the Bible is a collection of writings that were only later gathered together, "When God Spoke Greek" is an excellent description of how that happened. But I also agree with The Bible Project - these writings are different accounts of one story that leads to Jesus, and once you understand them, the story is coherent.

I'm not so sure about the Christicentricity of the song of Solomon....

But the Bible is an old book, strange to our ears, especially much of the Old Testament, and most of us need some guidance to grasp the Old Testament. I sure did.

It would have been nice if the conversation on the Emmaus road was documented.

[Wayne in Maine]

I concur that a true Biblicism will recognize that from beginning to end the central theme of Scripture is salvation through the Messiah of God, Jesus.

Well... I have to disagree with that. I am not sure that the "bible" has such a theme; there is no "scarlet thread".

I see the "bible" as a collection of individual books, not a comprehensive single text. For that reason my Christocentric "gospel" starts with the New Testament writings that document the mission and message of Jesus (The Word made flesh) whose theme was the good news of the Kingdom of God: its advent, its characteristics, and how to be a member of it. I recognized this in the writings of the early Anabaptist (there are a lot of pre-Menno writings of the Swiss Brethren out there!) and resonated with them ,which is how I came to be where I am in my comprehension of "the gospel" today. There may or may not have been a coincidence that the Erasmus Greek New Testament was all the rage in intellectual circles of the early 16th century, New Testament was translated and published in German long before the Old Testament, and that the focus of the earliest Anabaptists was on these writings.

Sorry I misunderstood you. I did not intend to “put words in your mouth”. But I do see it that way. It starts out with just little hints, but by the time you get to the Prophets it’s almost full-bore. I might say that I was just conditioned to think that way, but in the Gospel of Luke you find the account of when Joseph & Mary took the infant Jesus to the temple, and Simeon & Anna recognized him as the one they had been expecting. And there were others as well, those who were anxiously waiting for the Messiah. On what basis? The Spirit of God was involved, of course, but it was based on the OT Scriptures.

Boot answered this way:

How do you square that with the Book of Hebrews? Or with Stephen's testimony upon his martyrdom? Or the themes of prophet, priest, king, temple, and Eden in the New Testament? Or all the Old Testament quotations in the Gospels when describing who Jesus is? Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus was not "Plan B", Jesus was pre-existent, part of God's plan from the beginning.

I was thinking along similar lines (I saw your reply at noon, but didn't have time to make any response until this evening, and I really should be doing some other business bookwork), to suggest that you go through the NT and remove all of the quotations from the OT. Actual quotations would be a start, but so much of the thought and presentation is building on the OT Scripture. (Sort of got me in trouble in our Bible translation project, because when we saw how we had people responding to ‘Jesus the evil spirit chaser’, all with no admission or recognition of even any need for ‘Jesus the sin chaser’, we turned to the OT, aiming to show the need of a sacrifice. But we were not allowed to publish it, because the head of the translation department refused to allow it to consultant checked, saying that ‘it would not be surprising if someone came to the village in 20 years and found them doing OT sacrifices’.) And I guess you would need to remove all of the things Jesus said that assumed those OT characters were real people.

You completely misunderstand me if you think I want to remove the Old Testament from the bible or purge the Old Testament references from the Gospels. The later is precisely why I give priority to the Gospels - the God who became flesh and dwelt among us, about whom the Gospels unambiguously testify, is what those old testament prophesies point to, there is no speculation any more about the character of the Messiah, his mission or message. See! This is how God is fulfilling what we never quite understood before.

where I beg to differ is where it is suggested that the very narrative upon which we depend for the anticipation of the Christ is to be questioned or doubted in those cases where it presents a different view of history than that surmised by the science of today, or of any other period in history. Once the historical narrative is doubted, then how can one continue to rest confidently in the non-narrative elements?

So you believe that the earth is flat, that it is at the center of the universe surrounded by a solid dome on which the celestial bodies move and which creates a “bubble” over the earth which is otherwise surrounded by water?

I think the historical veracity of Christ's resurrection is a sufficient basis for the reliability of what His chosen emissaries documented of His life and teachings. He Himself encouraged us to scatter seed, which is the word of the kingdom, some of which will fall on good soil yielding a hundred fold of what was sown. I don't think it is helpful to the building of the kingdom or the propagation of the word of the kingdom to build theme parks that attempt to demonstrate that geologists are wrong about sedimentation or physicists are wrong about radioactive decay. Quite the opposite, I think that kind of fundamentalist flat-bible biblicism encourages superstition, abuse of the written word and drives away many who would otherwise commit to following Jesus and building His kingdom.

The scriptures are full of types and shadows or what we might call "models" of reality. Our minds are no less finite than the patriarchs and prophets who penned the books narrative our modern minds want to comprehend as "literal history". We have more sophisticated tools for observing and analyzing nature, such that we no longer believe that the earth is flat and no longer debate as to whether the sun moon and stars move along the inner surface of the solid dome spread over the earth or if they move inside the crystal dome that holds back the waters above us.

No, I don’t think the earth is flat. But your description is interesting because the traditional Banawa view is rather similar – based on what they have observed in their isolated existence. Their version says that the blue of the sky is a hard dome – they have a story about some people who built a tower to get up there, to escape some other people who had turned into jaguars. Anyway, the sun and the stars hang from it on cords. The story did not include any explanation of how the sun ends up on the other side again in the morning. When questioned further, they said that it probably went underneath. It is possible, however, that this myth/story is based on something they heard from a rubber collector or a priest, back in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. (They do also have an old story about Jesus, but it is hardly recognizable, and you have to understand their world view before it makes any sense at all.)

The natural, naked eye cosmology of almost all pre-scientific peoples of the world is of a flat earth surrounded by a dome on which the stars and moon and sun are fixed and movable along that dome. I have always admired the old Hutterite Oma I once heard about who said that one need only go out on the prairie and stare up at the sky to see that Genesis is correct in how it describes the world, flat earth and all. If she had other tools of observation and analysis she would likely change her mind (I'm not about to try to convince her!) But there is no way I would try to convince anyone of the veracity of the resurrection stories of Jesus or His claim to be God by opening Genesis and teaching its naked eye cosmology to a trained Physicist. We modern Christians are so hung up on our presuppositions about the word of God and the bible that we fight the wrong battles against the wrong people and fail to scatter the seed, which is the word of the Kingdom. We often crush the sprouting shoots growing in the good soil under the heel of a modern fundamentalist hermeneutic that was foreign to the bright young men who not only scattered the seed of the kingdom they had discovered when they asked "What if this Jesus really means every word that he said?" but many of them died a martyr's death for testifying to and living this truth, just as the apostles and many of the early disciples of Jesus did.

There are, however, geological facts that may be results of the great body of water that was above the ‘sky’ prior to the flood, causing, as some suggest, a single world-wide environment more similar to the tropics than to that with which most of us are accustomed. Mainly, however, I’d rather find out after my death or at the return of Christ that I ‘believed the Scripture too much’, than to find out I had ‘disbelieved it too much’.

If "believing scripture too much" is a prerequisite for "salvation" I guess I'm in trouble. But remember how little the best minds and scholars of the Law actually understood of the prophesies about the messiah and the very nature of God and His creation to the point that they handed God in the flesh over to a foreign governor to be tortured to death!" Let's not torture the word of God or the bible to death. Christians are not, "people of the book" that is idolatry, Christians are members of a kingdom, disciples of Jesus working out their salvation in fear and trembling with Joy even in suffering.

[Neto]

Well... I have to disagree with that. I am not sure that the "bible" has such a theme; there is no "scarlet thread".

I see the "bible" as a collection of individual books, not a comprehensive single text. For that reason my Christocentric "gospel" starts with the New Testament writings that document the mission and message of Jesus (The Word made flesh) whose theme was the good news of the Kingdom of God: its advent, its characteristics, and how to be a member of it. I recognized this in the writings of the early Anabaptist (there are a lot of pre-Menno writings of the Swiss Brethren out there!) and resonated with them ,which is how I came to be where I am in my comprehension of "the gospel" today. There may or may not have been a coincidence that the Erasmus Greek New Testament was all the rage in intellectual circles of the early 16th century, New Testament was translated and published in German long before the Old Testament, and that the focus of the earliest Anabaptists was on these writings.

Sorry I misunderstood you. I did not intend to “put words in your mouth”. But I do see it that way. It starts out with just little hints, but by the time you get to the Prophets it’s almost full-bore. I might say that I was just conditioned to think that way, but in the Gospel of Luke you find the account of when Joseph & Mary took the infant Jesus to the temple, and Simeon & Anna recognized him as the one they had been expecting. And there were others as well, those who were anxiously waiting for the Messiah. On what basis? The Spirit of God was involved, of course, but it was based on the OT Scriptures.

Boot answered this way:

How do you square that with the Book of Hebrews? Or with Stephen's testimony upon his martyrdom? Or the themes of prophet, priest, king, temple, and Eden in the New Testament? Or all the Old Testament quotations in the Gospels when describing who Jesus is? Hebrews makes it clear that Jesus was not "Plan B", Jesus was pre-existent, part of God's plan from the beginning.

I was thinking along similar lines (I saw your reply at noon, but didn't have time to make any response until this evening, and I really should be doing some other business bookwork), to suggest that you go through the NT and remove all of the quotations from the OT. Actual quotations would be a start, but so much of the thought and presentation is building on the OT Scripture. (Sort of got me in trouble in our Bible translation project, because when we saw how we had people responding to ‘Jesus the evil spirit chaser’, all with no admission or recognition of even any need for ‘Jesus the sin chaser’, we turned to the OT, aiming to show the need of a sacrifice. But we were not allowed to publish it, because the head of the translation department refused to allow it to consultant checked, saying that ‘it would not be surprising if someone came to the village in 20 years and found them doing OT sacrifices’.) And I guess you would need to remove all of the things Jesus said that assumed those OT characters were real people.

You completely misunderstand me if you think I want to remove the Old Testament from the bible or purge the Old Testament references from the Gospels. The later is precisely why I give priority to the Gospels - the God who became flesh and dwelt among us, about whom the Gospels unambiguously testify, is what those old testament prophesies point to, there is no speculation any more about the character of the Messiah, his mission or message. See! This is how God is fulfilling what we never quite understood before.

where I beg to differ is where it is suggested that the very narrative upon which we depend for the anticipation of the Christ is to be questioned or doubted in those cases where it presents a different view of history than that surmised by the science of today, or of any other period in history. Once the historical narrative is doubted, then how can one continue to rest confidently in the non-narrative elements?

So you believe that the earth is flat, that it is at the center of the universe surrounded by a solid dome on which the celestial bodies move and which creates a “bubble” over the earth which is otherwise surrounded by water?

I think the historical veracity of Christ's resurrection is a sufficient basis for the reliability of what His chosen emissaries documented of His life and teachings. He Himself encouraged us to scatter seed, which is the word of the kingdom, some of which will fall on good soil yielding a hundred fold of what was sown. I don't think it is helpful to the building of the kingdom or the propagation of the word of the kingdom to build theme parks that attempt to demonstrate that geologists are wrong about sedimentation or physicists are wrong about radioactive decay. Quite the opposite, I think that kind of fundamentalist flat-bible biblicism encourages superstition, abuse of the written word and drives away many who would otherwise commit to following Jesus and building His kingdom.

The scriptures are full of types and shadows or what we might call "models" of reality. Our minds are no less finite than the patriarchs and prophets who penned the books narrative our modern minds want to comprehend as "literal history". We have more sophisticated tools for observing and analyzing nature, such that we no longer believe that the earth is flat and no longer debate as to whether the sun moon and stars move along the inner surface of the solid dome spread over the earth or if they move inside the crystal dome that holds back the waters above us.

No, I don’t think the earth is flat. But your description is interesting because the traditional Banawa view is rather similar – based on what they have observed in their isolated existence. Their version says that the blue of the sky is a hard dome – they have a story about some people who built a tower to get up there, to escape some other people who had turned into jaguars. Anyway, the sun and the stars hang from it on cords. The story did not include any explanation of how the sun ends up on the other side again in the morning. When questioned further, they said that it probably went underneath. It is possible, however, that this myth/story is based on something they heard from a rubber collector or a priest, back in the late 1800’s or early 1900’s. (They do also have an old story about Jesus, but it is hardly recognizable, and you have to understand their world view before it makes any sense at all.)

I didn't think that's what you wanted. It just seems to be a logical extension of what I understood to be your attitude toward the OT narrative. The question that still hands in the air is at what point in the OT narrative do the people spoken of become real historical figures.

The natural, naked eye cosmology of almost all pre-scientific peoples of the world is of a flat earth surrounded by a dome on which the stars and moon and sun are fixed and movable along that dome. I have always admired the old Hutterite Oma I once heard about who said that one need only go out on the prairie and stare up at the sky to see that Genesis is correct in how it describes the world, flat earth and all. If she had other tools of observation and analysis she would likely change her mind (I'm not about to try to convince her!) But there is no way I would try to convince anyone of the veracity of the resurrection stories of Jesus or His claim to be God by opening Genesis and teaching its naked eye cosmology to a trained Physicist. We modern Christians are so hung up on our presuppositions about the word of God and the bible that we fight the wrong battles against the wrong people and fail to scatter the seed, which is the word of the Kingdom. We often crush the sprouting shoots growing in the good soil under the heel of a modern fundamentalist hermeneutic that was foreign to the bright young men who not only scattered the seed of the kingdom they had discovered when they asked "What if this Jesus really means every word that he said?" but many of them died a martyr's death for testifying to and living this truth, just as the apostles and many of the early disciples of Jesus did.

There are, however, geological facts that may be results of the great body of water that was above the ‘sky’ prior to the flood, causing, as some suggest, a single world-wide environment more similar to the tropics than to that with which most of us are accustomed. Mainly, however, I’d rather find out after my death or at the return of Christ that I ‘believed the Scripture too much’, than to find out I had ‘disbelieved it too much’.

If "believing scripture too much" is a prerequisite for "salvation" I guess I'm in trouble. But remember how little the best minds and scholars of the Law actually understood of the prophesies about the messiah and the very nature of God and His creation to the point that they handed God in the flesh over to a foreign governor to be tortured to death!" Let's not torture the word of God or the bible to death. Christians are not, "people of the book" that is idolatry, Christians are members of a kingdom, disciples of Jesus working out their salvation in fear and trembling with Joy even in suffering.

I didn't mean to imply that this is a "prerequisite for salvation". But as to the rest of this part of your reply, I again put forward Simeon & Anna as "the best minds and scholars of the Law". (And there were others as well. Joseph of Arimathea, for example.)

[Wayne in Maine]

Sorry I misunderstood you. I did not intend to “put words in your mouth”. But I do see it that way. It starts out with just little hints, but by the time you get to the Prophets it’s almost full-bore. I might say that I was just conditioned to think that way, but in the Gospel of Luke you find the account of when Joseph & Mary took the infant Jesus to the temple, and Simeon & Anna recognized him as the one they had been expecting. And there were others as well, those who were anxiously waiting for the Messiah. On what basis? The Spirit of God was involved, of course, but it was based on the OT Scriptures.

Boot answered this way:


I was thinking along similar lines (I saw your reply at noon, but didn't have time to make any response until this evening, and I really should be doing some other business bookwork), to suggest that you go through the NT and remove all of the quotations from the OT. Actual quotations would be a start, but so much of the thought and presentation is building on the OT Scripture. (Sort of got me in trouble in our Bible translation project, because when we saw how we had people responding to ‘Jesus the evil spirit chaser’, all with no admission or recognition of even any need for ‘Jesus the sin chaser’, we turned to the OT, aiming to show the need of a sacrifice. But we were not allowed to publish it, because the head of the translation department refused to allow it to consultant checked, saying that ‘it would not be surprising if someone came to the village in 20 years and found them doing OT sacrifices’.) And I guess you would need to remove all of the things Jesus said that assumed those OT characters were real people.

You completely misunderstand me if you think I want to remove the Old Testament from the bible or purge the Old Testament references from the Gospels. The later is precisely why I give priority to the Gospels - the God who became flesh and dwelt among us, about whom the Gospels unambiguously testify, is what those old testament prophesies point to, there is no speculation any more about the character of the Messiah, his mission or message. See! This is how God is fulfilling what we never quite understood before.

I didn't think that's what you wanted. It just seems to be a logical extension of what I understood to be your attitude toward the OT narrative. The question that still hands in the air is at what point in the OT narrative do the people spoken of become real historical figures.

Or the events and cosmology described become historic and measurable reality?

Perhaps we are the problem in our expectations and beliefs about what "scripture" really is and what we can expect it to communicate to us. I bring up the flat earth cosmology because people who espouse the view that the bible was dictated by God to the prophets and apostles and that it is inerrant and a precise description of history and nature . These people have accommodated themselves to the observable, measurable fact that the earth is a semi-spherical body which, among other similar bodies, revolves around a distant star which is similar to other distant (and extremely distant) stars - even though that is not how the scriptures anywhere describe the cosmos. But they have not accommodated themselves to the fact that the same observational methods establish that the universe is vastly old, including the earth itself, and that a world wide flood occuring just 4000 years ago (cause by gates opening in a solid dome over the flat earth releasing the waters above it) cannot account for all of the geologic features and biological and human cultural diversity we see on the planet today.

The young earth creationist model as "gospel" (and lucrative enterprises for "Christian" theme park promoters and authors) or as proof of the veracity of their fundamentalist flat-bible theology (Ken Ham is not Anabaptist!) tramples on those "having heard the word with an honest and good heart [that's how Jesus describes them]" can accept the historic veracity of the resurrection as the step toward discipleship. But such thoughtful people are driven away by the insistence that those things which they plainly see with the tools of their craft are evil lies contradicted by ancient models in ancient texts, the purpose of which have nothing to do with physics or biology. I advocate for the them, as they are the type of men and women who would have joined Conrad Grebel and his fellow graduate students in challenging the traditions and dogma of "authority" and ferreted out the truth from the bare text revealing the message and mission of Jesus - the Word of God made flesh, the ultimate revelation of God's character who demonstrated how we ought to live, which is the authentic Gospel - the Good News of the Kingdom.