Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
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Bootstrap
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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Valerie wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:I find the Orthodox liturgy beautiful and worshipful, but I also find it quite unlike what we see in New Testament worship or in the earliest writings of the church such as the Didache.
A couple of thoughts- because I can agree with you for the most part- except for one thing- I still don't think that every single thing the NT church did & practiced was written down like a manual or text when it comes to worship. And as I read through 1 Corithians 12-14,, if we use that 'picture' of the Church as a representation of the NT Church, I think the Pentecostals are closest to the NT Church- because they are the only ones I have worshipped with that seem to take those chapters seriously-
If you omit tongues, I think there are many other churches that take a similar approach to worship - prayers, sharing, and even hymns / teachings come from the worshippers, and the elders discern what is good. The Didache shows how this is combined with communion. If I were to start a church, it would probably follow this kind of approach.

Most Mennonite churches I have been a member of include an extended time of prayer and sharing. Not quite what you see in 1 Corinthians, but it contains a lot of these elements. There is simply no place for that in many high church liturgies, and the more formal the liturgy, the more everything is prescribed and top-down, and the more central the liturgy itself is to what the church is.

In general, the high churches are run by the clergy for the people. Mennonite churches are based on a brotherhood model - ideally, even the pastor is just one of the brethren, though we too can sometimes exalt our pastor beyond what I see as biblical.

So we really do have a very different idea of what a church should look like.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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Valerie wrote:A good read of Revelations, speaks into the liturgy & worship of the NT Church, God has always been about ritual, the difference is, when our hearts are unattached to it, then it is dead- but He is the one that instituted worship to include incense, not the pagans (although satan always counterfeits what God does) and then Malachi 1 prophetically teaches that the Gentiles too, will include incense in their worship when they are brought into the Church, and so they did, and so they do, and it had nothing to do with paganism, nor does much of what you convey in your post. It is the other way around.
But before Nicea, the writings of the early church were clearly against incense. See Incense in Ante-Nicene Christianity.

This is one of many things that changed in a big way under Constantine. Incense was a big part of pagan worship and Old Testament worship, but the early church uniformly taught that it should be understood allegorically in Christian worship, and that making physical offerings to God was not right.

In the Old Testament, the temple was a building, the offering was incense or a sacrificed animal, and God spoke only to a select few. In the New Testament, we are all built together to be God's temple, his spirit is among us all in our worship and in each of us, and Jesus himself is the sacrifice. In the Revelation, God himself is our light, and we need no other.
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Wayne in Maine
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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Neto wrote:
Wayne in Maine wrote:Hierarchy may have been the wrong word, though absent the modern fundamentalist idea that the bible is a single book with a single author, the Anabaptists did seem to have a "canon within a canon", much as the Jews held the Law above the prophets.

I will say in answer to Neto that the consensus, or at least the common assumption of most scholars of Anabaptism I have read, is that the Anabaptists emphasized the New Testament, particularly the Sermon on the Mount and the sayings of Jesus. One writer, on making this observation, stated "Anabaptist New Testament Biblicism appears to have been shaped solely by an individual and collective desire to follow Christ."

John Oyer stated: "The Anabaptists always preferred the New Testament over the Old Testament..." and notes that in the 16th and 17th century scripture cited in preaching narrowed even further to the Gospels, particularly Matthew's gospel.

William Estep, in "The Anabaptist Story" calls attention to Anabaptist Christocentrism. They understood God's revelation to be progressive such that the New Testament alone was the rule of faith and practice for the Anabaptists. (William Estep, The Anabaptist Story 140-145)
Thank you for your response. I was hoping for some primary sources, and wonder how anyone today could know what Scripture texts were cited in preaching that long ago, unless they are consulting the printed sermons that are still used over & over in some anabaptist groups, often barring the use of original sermons. But not all anabaptist traditions went that direction, so it sounds like a generalization to me, possibly based on a rather small representation.

I fully agree that anabaptism is Christocentric, and almost certainly always was. But the whole of Scripture is also Christocentric. I have certainly noted a reluctance in our own congregation to have any Sunday School study in the OT, and although sermons often cite OT Scriptures, this is predominantly in topical presentations. I didn't do a Scripture citation study when I read through Martyrs' Mirror, but my impression is that they cited a very wide range of Scripture passages. Predominantly in the NT I would say, but not predominantly in the direct quotations of Jesus. Regarding progressive revelation, my understanding is in the context of Jesus himself as the final revelation, not the NT as the final revelation.
I have some primary sources (quoted by others) I will try to post when I have time. One could do a statistical analysis of scripture citations in original sources I suppose, I may still have a copy of a book that listed all the scripture cited in Martyr's Mirror.

From what I have seen, the idea expressed by Estep comes primarily from the debates and disputations between the earliest Anabaptists and their detractors regarding how to approach the Old testament in light of the words of Jesus actually contravening Old Testament "allowances". But I have come across some explicit statements made by some early Anabaptist leaders that reinforce the idea, and there may be more which are the source of this conclusion.

I suspect too that the concept where Jesus is considered the ultimate author of all of the Bible is more of a product of modern Protestant Fundamentalism than something commonly held in the 16th century.

I'm especially intrigued by the statement (from Werner Packull) that: "Anabaptist New Testament Biblicism appears to have been shaped solely by an individual and collective desire to follow Christ." I would certainly like to know what he has read of Anabaptist writings to bring him to that conclusion, but it resonates with me personally and my view of the propagation of the good news of the kingdom and the response of the hearers as expressed by Jesus in the parable of the sower: some who hear the good news of Jesus simply desire to follow Him and respond accordingly.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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Neto wrote:
Wayne in Maine wrote:Hierarchy may have been the wrong word, though absent the modern fundamentalist idea that the bible is a single book with a single author, the Anabaptists did seem to have a "canon within a canon", much as the Jews held the Law above the prophets.

I will say in answer to Neto that the consensus, or at least the common assumption of most scholars of Anabaptism I have read, is that the Anabaptists emphasized the New Testament, particularly the Sermon on the Mount and the sayings of Jesus. One writer, on making this observation, stated "Anabaptist New Testament Biblicism appears to have been shaped solely by an individual and collective desire to follow Christ."

John Oyer stated: "The Anabaptists always preferred the New Testament over the Old Testament..." and notes that in the 16th and 17th century scripture cited in preaching narrowed even further to the Gospels, particularly Matthew's gospel.

William Estep, in "The Anabaptist Story" calls attention to Anabaptist Christocentrism. They understood God's revelation to be progressive such that the New Testament alone was the rule of faith and practice for the Anabaptists. (William Estep, The Anabaptist Story 140-145)
Thank you for your response. I was hoping for some primary sources, and wonder how anyone today could know what Scripture texts were cited in preaching that long ago, unless they are consulting the printed sermons that are still used over & over in some anabaptist groups, often barring the use of original sermons. But not all anabaptist traditions went that direction, so it sounds like a generalization to me, possibly based on a rather small representation.

I fully agree that anabaptism is Christocentric, and almost certainly always was. But the whole of Scripture is also Christocentric. I have certainly noted a reluctance in our own congregation to have any Sunday School study in the OT, and although sermons often cite OT Scriptures, this is predominantly in topical presentations. I didn't do a Scripture citation study when I read through Martyrs' Mirror, but my impression is that they cited a very wide range of Scripture passages. Predominantly in the NT I would say, but not predominantly in the direct quotations of Jesus. Regarding progressive revelation, my understanding is in the context of Jesus himself as the final revelation, not the NT as the final revelation.
By this standard, we should also canonise the Apocrypha. Early Hutterite sermons quote liberally from it.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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"Anabaptist New Testament Biblicism appears to have been shaped solely by an individual and collective desire to follow Christ."
My coming to God was motivated by an individual desire to follow Christ, although I wasn’t sure how to do that.

When I discovered plain Anabaptism, I found a group of other people doing the same thing, and they helped me learn what following Christ actually is.

The Bible is our best source of information about God and Christ. But the Bible’s only value is how it points us to Christ and teaches us about him. There is no way to the Father except through Jesus.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

Post by Wayne in Maine »

Josh wrote:
"Anabaptist New Testament Biblicism appears to have been shaped solely by an individual and collective desire to follow Christ."
My coming to God was motivated by an individual desire to follow Christ, although I wasn’t sure how to do that.

When I discovered plain Anabaptism, I found a group of other people doing the same thing, and they helped me learn what following Christ actually is.

The Bible is our best source of information about God and Christ. But the Bible’s only value is how it points us to Christ and teaches us about him. There is no way to the Father except through Jesus.
That's interesting to consider in light of the OP. Some are inclined toward Eastern Orthodoxy because they desire worship, some are attracted to Evangelical Protestantism because they desire eternal life. Like you, I am drawn to the early Anabaptists because like them, I desire to follow Jesus.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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Wayne in Maine wrote:That's interesting to consider in light of the OP. Some are inclined toward Eastern Orthodoxy because they desire worship, some are attracted to Evangelical Protestantism because they desire eternal life. Like you, I am drawn to the early Anabaptists because like them, I desire to follow Jesus.
I want all three ...
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

Post by Wayne in Maine »

Bootstrap wrote:
Wayne in Maine wrote:That's interesting to consider in light of the OP. Some are inclined toward Eastern Orthodoxy because they desire worship, some are attracted to Evangelical Protestantism because they desire eternal life. Like you, I am drawn to the early Anabaptists because like them, I desire to follow Jesus.
I want all three ...
Ecumenical.

In all seriousness. I think there are very distinct "paths" that we follow according to what motivates us and what we perceive the meaning message of Jesus to be or why we approach this religion called "Christianity" in the first place. For most (the group I left out) they seek to conform to their culture and its religion be it Roman Catholicism, Mennonitism, or Episcopalianism...
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

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I like the word "devotion". It involves worship, love, loyalty, serving ... I don't see these things as distinct in the life of a mature believer.

Of course, worship can take many forms physically, what matters is the inner heart. But if worship is not accompanied by love, loyalty, and serving, it's not really worship. You can't have true worship without true discipleship.
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Re: Why Anabaptists and Mennonites are not Orthodox

Post by Neto »

Tue Oct 24, 2017 11:05 am
Josh wrote:By this standard, we should also canonise the Apocrypha. Early Hutterite sermons quote liberally from it.
I was reading through my notes from reading through Martyr's Mirror, and I recall a statement made by someone there, saying that one ought not found any doctrines or precepts on those books, although they did often quote from them. (I've started typing them out, but haven't gotten that far, at least the words I searched on did not come up in my document.)
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