Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Christian ethics and theology with an Anabaptist perspective
Valerie
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by Valerie »

Neto wrote:
Valerie wrote:
Neto wrote:Cornelius Hendrickz Hoen. Anyone know of any translation of his writings? His view of "Holy Communion" was rejected by Luther as too symbolic (no physical presence of Christ in the elements), but was of interest to Zwingli. He was Dutch, and died in 1524. (Early Dutch Anabaptist?)

http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Hoen,_ ... ._1523/24)
Interesting how this whole period became a time of following different people's personal views about everything- so in this case, Zwingli would be seen with favor?
I wasn't looking at it that way, actually. Just that at that point in his life, Zwingli was still uncertain regarding this doctrine (according to what I read), and the men considered the "beginning" of the "anabaptist movement" were still his students, or in his circle of influence. It may be that his understanding of the nature of the presence of Christ in the "communion elements" was influenced by Hoen's view, and that his considerations on the matter may have in turn influenced the Swiss anabaptists. (I mentioned this in respect to the possibility of at least some early Dutch influence on the formation of the anabaptist beliefs, through interaction with Zwingli during this early period.)

I found the following comments, probably from a Calvinist point of view (at https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc7.ii.vii.xi.html):
II. The Zwinglian Theory.—The Lord’s Supper is a solemn commemoration of the atoning death of Christ, according to his own command: "Do this in remembrance of me," and the words of Paul: "As often as ye eat this bread, and drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till he come."928 Zwingli emphasized this primitive character of the institution as a gift of God to man, in opposition to the Roman mass as a work or offering which man makes to God.929 He compares the sacrament to a wedding-ring which seals the marriage union between Christ and the believer. He denied the corporal presence, because Christ ascended to heaven, and because a body cannot be present in more than one place at once, also because two substances cannot occupy the same space at the same time; but he admitted his spiritual presence, for Christ is eternal God, and his death is forever fruitful and efficacious.930 He denied the corporal eating as Capernaitic and useless, but he admitted a spiritual participation in the crucified body and blood by faith. Christ is both "host and feast" in the holy communion.
His last word on the subject of the eucharist (in the Confession to King Francis I.) is this: —

"We believe that Christ is truly present in the Lord’s Supper; yea, that there is no communion without such presence .... We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in the communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a sacramental and spiritual manner by the religious, believing and pious heart."931

This passage comes so near the Calvinistic view that it can hardly be distinguished from it. Calvin did injustice to Zwingli, when once in a confidential letter he called his earlier eucharistic doctrine, profane."932 But Zwingli in his polemic writings laid so much stress upon the absence of Christ’s body, that the positive truth of His spiritual presence was not sufficiently emphasized. Undoubtedly the Lord’s Supper is a commemoration of the historic Christ of the past, but it is also a vital communion with the ever-living Christ who is both in heaven and in his church on earth.
Zwingli’s theory did not pass into any of the leading Reformed confessions; but it was adopted by the Arminians, Socinians, Unitarians, and Rationalists, and obtained for a time a wide currency in all Protestant churches, even the Lutheran. But the Rationalists deny what Zwingli strongly believed, the divinity of Christ, and thus deprive the Lord’s Supper of its deeper significance and power.
Sounds like 'mass' confusion then about it-
So what do we know? We know that what Jesus said really offended people about it, to the point that many left following Him because they couldn't handle what He said. I think if it was 'symbol ONLY' not only would He have clarified that, so that they wouldn't walk away-but He would have explained it that way later to His own. I think this is another one of those mysteries-we cannot explain how it happens, but by faith, it does- I was convinced of it by the early Church writings actually my readings are limited to David Bercot's Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs quotes by those in the faith/Church, and that remains today all through this Church age) who all seemed to be on the same page with believing in the real presence-by faith, by prayer, by the Holy Spirit- so many things of the faith, when involving the Holy Spirit, cannot be explained 'logically'- ie. the Holy Spirit causeing Mary to be pregnant, the presence of Christ in the wine & bread- as a mystery- some things we accept by faith. Most of the Gospel takes faith! The carnal mind cannot understand it-

53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.

54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.

55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.

56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.

57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.

58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.

59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.

60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?

61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?

62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?

63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

64 But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him.

65 And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father.

66 From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.


Now if you read the beginning of this chapter- you read the miracle 5 loaves & 2 fish feeding a multitude to the point where they gathered the leftovers- we cannot explain this either- these are mysteries, these are miracles- it takes faith.
Interestingly enough, one miracle there, leads into another miracle He conveys about what He says that made many upset and walk away- truly a 'symbol only' understanding would not have caused that.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by Bootstrap »

Neto wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:
Wayne in Maine wrote:One problem with reading or studying the old Anabaptist writings is that there are so few of them available in English, or even in modern German.
If someone would just scan them and put them online, it would make it a lot easier for other people to translate them. I have often had difficulty finding the originals. And a directory of what can be found online would be extremely helpful.
This?
https://archive.org/details/ned-kbn-all-00013994-001

(I don't know, as I do not read Dutch.)
That's the complete writing of Menno Simons, thanks for the link. I would love to have a directory of other writings like that. I guess the next target is Dirk Philips ;->

Here's the title page of the complete writings of Menno Simons:

Image
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CADude
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by CADude »

Bootstrap wrote: I would love to have a directory of other writings like that. I guess the next target is Dirk Philips ;->
There is a rough copy of Dirk Philips handbook available online (in English). The one I found was shared out publicly via someone's Google Drive folder. It was something I had to download and then it was a really rough HTML file that had a lot of misspellings thanks to a bad OCR job.

I and a few other people I know have the skills, equipment, and knowledge to make this happen. But we need to get our hands on some books that are in fairly good condition, outside of copyright, and can be "sacrificed". The scanning process requires us to cut off the binding. It's also a time-consuming process so probably won't happen quickly. Along with this I'd like to see a good directory website made to hold copies of these things and links to other copies elsewhere online. We also have the skills for that, but time is the bigger problem. Also, these books can be quite expensive. Copies of Menno Simons writings are sometimes running around $95 to $125.
Last edited by CADude on Tue Nov 07, 2017 9:05 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by Bootstrap »

CADude wrote:I and a few other people I know have the skills, equipment, and knowledge to make this happen. But we need to get our hands on some books that are in fairly good condition, outside of copyright, and can be "sacrificed". The scanning process requires us to cut off the binding. It's also a time-consuming process so probably won't happen quickly. Along with this I'd like to see a good directory website made to hold copies of these things and links to other copies elsewhere online. We also have the skills for that, but time is the bigger problem. Also, these books can be quite expensive. Copies of Menno Simons writings are sometimes running around $95 to $125.
Most of what we are looking for is out of copyright - few original resources are new, at least in the original languages. And I would not be surprised if there are English or German translations of the major works that are out of copyright. Wayne keeps saying there are other works that really need to be translated, a list of these would be useful. Many of these works are quite short.

I would start by looking for things that are already at least scanned and possibly OCRd. I have been doing some of this for Greek resources, and we have saved a lot of work by making sure nobody else did it before we started in.
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Neto
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by Neto »

There are digital cameras that are of extremely high resolution. I suspect that this is how this Menno Symons book was 'scanned', which does not require any dismantling of the binding, etc. (I first saw an article about this in respect to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, back when I was still doing translation work.)

I have a Latin copy of John 'a Lasco's book against Menno, to which he responds in one of the booklets included in the Complete Writings (I forget which one right now). I tried to type it out in modern characters in order to use Google Translator to get it into Portuguese. (I know, Google translator can be atrocious. That's why I was planning to go to Portuguese, figuring that since it is a Latin language, it would do a fair job for what I wanted.) But the problem is that even after studying things about the archaic characters, I ran into the problem of extremely frequent abbreviations. The transcriber would have to know Latin well enough to know what word is being abbreviated in each case, in order to even transcribe it into modern characters that could then be entered into the automated translation tool. So I never got beyond a few sentences. (We had a forum member on MD, something like Abiva, who I thought at first knew Latin, but he said no.) (I had first looked for an English translation of it, and only started searching for the Latin version when it appeared that it had never been translated. A professor from college helped me find the link, and he may have 'assisted' me in getting access, I don't remember the details now. So I do not know the on-line source from which I downloaded it.)
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Re: Reading Menno Simons, Dirk Philips, etc.

Post by MaxPC »

Neto wrote:There are digital cameras that are of extremely high resolution. I suspect that this is how this Menno Symons book was 'scanned', which does not require any dismantling of the binding, etc. (I first saw an article about this in respect to the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls, back when I was still doing translation work.)

I have a Latin copy of John 'a Lasco's book against Menno, to which he responds in one of the booklets included in the Complete Writings (I forget which one right now). I tried to type it out in modern characters in order to use Google Translator to get it into Portuguese. (I know, Google translator can be atrocious. That's why I was planning to go to Portuguese, figuring that since it is a Latin language, it would do a fair job for what I wanted.) But the problem is that even after studying things about the archaic characters, I ran into the problem of extremely frequent abbreviations. The transcriber would have to know Latin well enough to know what word is being abbreviated in each case, in order to even transcribe it into modern characters that could then be entered into the automated translation tool. So I never got beyond a few sentences. (We had a forum member on MD, something like Abiva, who I thought at first knew Latin, but he said no.) (I had first looked for an English translation of it, and only started searching for the Latin version when it appeared that it had never been translated. A professor from college helped me find the link, and he may have 'assisted' me in getting access, I don't remember the details now. So I do not know the on-line source from which I downloaded it.)
Yes, those abbreviations are pesky: and the youngsters think they invented them in their text messages. :lol: There's also the issue of the two types of Latin that were used in that era: classical Latin and ecclesiastical Latin. I'll PM you some options to consider if you want to try to tackle that project again.
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