Why Obey ?

General Christian Theology
GaryK
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by GaryK »

buckeyematt2 wrote:
GaryK wrote: buckeyematt2, I'm wondering if you have read David Bercot's book "The Kingdom That Turned the World Upside Down" and if you have what your thoughts are about it?

I don't know what your thoughts are about the direction of many "conservative Anabaptist" churches, but I believe one of the big reasons for what I consider a wrong direction stems directly back to the attempt to assimilate the Protestant Evangelical "gospel" into an Anabaptist worldview. It has produced a hybrid that, in my view, hasn't had a good outcome.

I think there is an endeavor being made by some to rediscover the "heirloom" variety of Kingdom Christianity Bercot writes about in his book. It's been a while since I've read the book but I believe radical obedience to the teachings of Jesus is a pretty major thread throughout.
I did read it, and have it at home...I'd have to review it again. If I remember correctly, I didn't always agree with him - particularly where he disparaged the hymn, "On Christ the Solid Rock I Stand", and some other theological nuances. (I'd have to review the section on Pelagius and Augustine as well to see if he comes down in favor of Pelagius, or in between). But I thought it was a good call to kingdom living overall.

While I'm a member of a Beachy congregation, my own views are somewhere in the range of the BMA or maybe the Oasis Tabernacle in Sugarcreek, OH. So personally, I see a lot of recent changes (both in standards, and in emphasis on grace rather than works, etc.) as good things, becoming more Biblical rather than traditional, and as necessary correctives to some holdover Amish thinking and traditions. I understand some NMB's here (not saying you are an NMB, I don't know) approach it from the other angle, where Anabaptism is a necessary correction to things in mainline evangelicalism, so they might be more inclined to conservative attitudes and rejection of evangelicalism. And a question for you - Where and how do you think something started to go wrong? Just considering the Beachys as an example, what do you think about the revivalist or "evangelical" transformation of the Beachys in the mid-1900s - did something go wrong there? Should they have stayed more Old Order? After all, the revivalists borrowed theology from Mennonite evangelists who in turn borrowed from Protestants.
http://gameo.org/index.php?title=Beachy ... _1946-1977
I grew up Beachy and was under that umbrella for 50 + years.

I remember in 2009, while teaching a class on Anabaptist history at CBS, it saddened me to discover that less than 100 years (if I'm remembering correctly) after the beginning of the Anabaptist movement they began retreating into the "quiet in the land" mode. I think this is where things started to go wrong. What followed produced the Amish split from the Mennonites and a further departure from the genius of the early Anabaptist movement. I believe the "evangelical" revivalist movements were attempts to "fix" the natural outcome of the "quiet in the land" worldview that seemed to have become very inward focused.

I wonder how well Beachys and others of that day knew early Anabaptist history because it puzzles me that they would adopt an approach that had its roots in a movement that in many cases violently persecuted the early Anabaptists. I think they would have been much better served to try to rediscover the early Anabaptist vision that promoted the kind of Kingdom Christianity Bercot writes about rather than adopting the "theology from Mennonite evangelists who in turn borrowed from Protestants." I'm doubtful that such an approach would have remained very Old Order in nature but I do believe it would have produced a much different result than we see today because the premise for change would have much more solid.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by KingdomBuilder »

buckeyematt2 wrote:
Josh wrote:But Jesus never described "repentance" as mere mental assent or signing up for a new belief system; his model was "Go and sin no more."
I agree. I don't either. And most evangelicals don't either - IMO. See just a couple more examples.
Most evangelicals do- IMO.....
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MattY
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by MattY »

GaryK wrote:I grew up Beachy and was under that umbrella for 50 + years.

I remember in 2009, while teaching a class on Anabaptist history at CBS, it saddened me to discover that less than 100 years (if I'm remembering correctly) after the beginning of the Anabaptist movement they began retreating into the "quiet in the land" mode. I think this is where things started to go wrong. What followed produced the Amish split from the Mennonites and a further departure from the genius of the early Anabaptist movement. I believe the "evangelical" revivalist movements were attempts to "fix" the natural outcome of the "quiet in the land" worldview that seemed to have become very inward focused.

I wonder how well Beachys and others of that day knew early Anabaptist history because it puzzles me that they would adopt an approach that had its roots in a movement that in many cases violently persecuted the early Anabaptists. I think they would have been much better served to try to rediscover the early Anabaptist vision that promoted the kind of Kingdom Christianity Bercot writes about rather than adopting the "theology from Mennonite evangelists who in turn borrowed from Protestants." I'm doubtful that such an approach would have remained very Old Order in nature but I do believe it would have produced a much different result than we see today because the premise for change would have much more solid.
Thoughtful reply, thanks. Two points come to my mind.

(1) Persecution profoundly influenced Anabaptist and shaped how we think. But is it okay, or will it be okay, to sometime let go of the past suspicion of Lutherans and Presbyterians/Reformed - not to unite or agree with them on our fundamental and distinctive disagreements like infant baptism, predestination, eternal security, and going to war, but to evaluate the things they do or say simply on the merits? They have changed their views on church and state, religious liberty, etc. Not everything has to tie in to the sins of their ancestors - at least, I don't view them that way.

(2) More directly relevant, Billy Graham was a Baptist. Baptists have never been persecutors and always advocated religious freedom and a moderate form of church/state separation (e.g. Roger Williams).
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Neto
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by Neto »

KingdomBuilder wrote:
buckeyematt2 wrote:
Josh wrote:But Jesus never described "repentance" as mere mental assent or signing up for a new belief system; his model was "Go and sin no more."
I agree. I don't either. And most evangelicals don't either - IMO. See just a couple more examples.
Most evangelicals do- IMO.....
"Nominal Christians" do, pretty much regardless of where they attend services. Evangelicals I have known who were serious about their Christian life never did. (I know people in the Old Order who appear to be 'Christian' only in their doctrinal confession. Just take the opposition toward baptizing someone who confesses to not having been a person of new birth when they 'got wet' the first time. This attitude is prevalent in not only the Amish groups, but I have heard it from Beachy people as well.)
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Neto
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by Neto »

buckeyematt2 wrote:Persecution profoundly influenced Anabaptist and shaped how we think. But is it okay, or will it be okay, to sometime let go of the past suspicion of Lutherans and Presbyterians/Reformed - not to unite or agree with them on our fundamental and distinctive disagreements like infant baptism, predestination, eternal security, and going to war, but to evaluate the things they do or say simply on the merits? They have changed their views on church and state, religious liberty, etc. Not everything has to tie in to the sins of their ancestors - at least, I don't view them that way.
I agree. In Bible college I became good friends with a Lutheran classmate. He already had a degree in Agricultural Science, so I suggested that he check with MCC for service opportunities. He worked in Bolivia for several years, and I was ashamed to realize that he was being truthful when he wrote me from there, telling me how wild the Mennonite young people he worked with were, and that they never made any attempts to speak the Gospel alongside their service there. I do think that one of the biggest dangers facing our congregations in this time comes from Evangelical books & radio, so I'm not selling out to them. I just don't think it is necessary to paint them all as apostates in the process of warning our people about the real dangers of Evangelicalism. There are things we can learn from them if we are discerning, people of the Book.

Another issue I have thought a good deal about lately relates to the early anabaptists' view of the purity of the Church in comparison to that of the State church groups. For the anabaptists of that time, the Church was to be pure, while the Protestants regarded the local church much as the Children of Israel are presented in the Old Testament era - there were the true Children of Israel in the midst of the nation, a remnant of those who were "seeking the Kingdom". I fear that we are now more like the early Protestants than we are like the early anabaptists.
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MattY
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by MattY »

Neto wrote:
KingdomBuilder wrote:
buckeyematt2 wrote:
I agree. I don't either. And most evangelicals don't either - IMO. See just a couple more examples.
Most evangelicals do- IMO.....
"Nominal Christians" do, pretty much regardless of where they attend services. Evangelicals I have known who were serious about their Christian life never did. (I know people in the Old Order who appear to be 'Christian' only in their doctrinal confession. Just take the opposition toward baptizing someone who confesses to not having been a person of new birth when they 'got wet' the first time. This attitude is prevalent in not only the Amish groups, but I have heard it from Beachy people as well.)
I attended a singles conference/meet-up at Focus on the Family in Colorado a couple years ago - two years in a row, actually (kinda like a Penn Valley seminar, with several speakers and lots of time for socialization in between). The people I met there are not mental assent types, they are serious about their commitment to Christ.
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Adam
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by Adam »

buckeyematt2 wrote:
Adam wrote:Martin Luther, whose thinking undergirds Protestant thinking, said in his introduction to the New Testament that the gospel of John was to be far preferred to the other gospels because it had the true essence of the gospel while Matthew, Mark, and Luke didn't. Similarly, Paul is to be preferred over James, which he called an 'epistle of straw'. The result is the easy-believism that can, on the one hand, claim faith in Christ, while on the other hand, persist in sin. The attitude is that whether I continue in sin or not is not really important since all my sins were forgiven. It is that attitude that prompted Martin Luther to say, "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly." It is that attitude that Anabaptist teaching is completely against.
Luther was a contradiction wrapped in an enigma...on the one hand, he asserted Sola Scriptura, on the other hand, he basically assigned levels of inspiration or importance to various Scriptures depending on how he felt about them. Zwingli and Calvin, and of course the Anabaptists, didn't do this.
That is just the point. We don't all agree. The typical Anabaptist view of salvation is quite different than the typical Protestant view. This forum is more often going to present the typical Anabaptist view. My question is, Are you here to learn about Anabaptist views of things such as salvation, or are you here to convert people to the Protestant view?
Not that different, IMO. Mostly a matter of emphasis, misunderstandings, and rejecting a couple possible permutations of the other. Old Order theology is not evangelical, but Beachy theology - since the "evangelical transformation" of the mid-1900's - is; Anabaptists reject Calvinism and antinominianism, but so do some evangelicals, as that's not synonomous with evangelical.
I was speaking with a Lutheran friend of mine just a couple of months ago. He believes that God arbitrarily predestines people to heaven or hell. If you go to heaven, it is through nothing that you have done (i.e. a person's obedience doesn't play any role at all). If you go to hell, it is, and I quote, "your own d*mn fault" (even though God arbitrarily predestined you to hell). I pressed my friend on these issues and he admitted that they don't make sense to the human mind, but it is received by faith. Is that fairly consistent with what you believe? Or do you see fundamental differences in his view of salvation as compared to your view of salvation?

In your church, would you invite people from the TV Show "The Bachelor" to be special guest speakers? (The Bachelor is a show where a man starts out dating 20 or so different women and then slowly eliminates women to try to find the woman he wants to marry.) Would you hire a magician and a water tank torture chamber escape artist to be the featured part of the Sunday Easter service? Would you invite a Miss USA participant to be the featured speaker of a service, wearing very tight clothes on stage and then have her pose for pictures in a tight dress in the lobby after the service? These are things that are happening in popular Evangelical churches right now to try to make the gospel attractive to non-Christians.

I see these things as important, fundamental differences, not just matters of emphasis. Nevertheless, I recognize that there are Protestant and Evangelicals who truly demonstrate an obedient love/faith relationship with Jesus Christ (as well as Catholics, Orthodox, etc.). Similarly, I recognize that there are those within the Conservative Anabaptist faith who probably do not demonstrate an obedient love/faith relationship with Jesus Christ. My point is in no way to say that all Protestants or Evangelicals are off base. But I am looking at larger trends and concerns in general. From my experience in the Evangelical Church, I am quite concerned about the direction it is heading, and I think it stems from a theology that doesn't take obedience to the words of Jesus seriously. Rather, since we can't 'earn' our salvation, we don't need to worry about obedience, because if you are worried about obedience you are legalistic. But the New Testament seems to teach that obedience is a vital part of faith.
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KingdomBuilder
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by KingdomBuilder »

..through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith for the sake of his name among all the nations,
‭‭Romans‬ ‭1:5‬ ‭
Interesting wording I noticed this evening. Obedience and faith clearly correlated in the NT.
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Neto
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by Neto »

Adam wrote:
buckeyematt2 wrote:
Adam wrote:Martin Luther, whose thinking undergirds Protestant thinking, said in his introduction to the New Testament that the gospel of John was to be far preferred to the other gospels because it had the true essence of the gospel while Matthew, Mark, and Luke didn't. Similarly, Paul is to be preferred over James, which he called an 'epistle of straw'. The result is the easy-believism that can, on the one hand, claim faith in Christ, while on the other hand, persist in sin. The attitude is that whether I continue in sin or not is not really important since all my sins were forgiven. It is that attitude that prompted Martin Luther to say, "Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly." It is that attitude that Anabaptist teaching is completely against.
Luther was a contradiction wrapped in an enigma...on the one hand, he asserted Sola Scriptura, on the other hand, he basically assigned levels of inspiration or importance to various Scriptures depending on how he felt about them. Zwingli and Calvin, and of course the Anabaptists, didn't do this.
That is just the point. We don't all agree. The typical Anabaptist view of salvation is quite different than the typical Protestant view. This forum is more often going to present the typical Anabaptist view. My question is, Are you here to learn about Anabaptist views of things such as salvation, or are you here to convert people to the Protestant view?
Not that different, IMO. Mostly a matter of emphasis, misunderstandings, and rejecting a couple possible permutations of the other. Old Order theology is not evangelical, but Beachy theology - since the "evangelical transformation" of the mid-1900's - is; Anabaptists reject Calvinism and antinominianism, but so do some evangelicals, as that's not synonomous with evangelical.
I was speaking with a Lutheran friend of mine just a couple of months ago. He believes that God arbitrarily predestines people to heaven or hell. If you go to heaven, it is through nothing that you have done (i.e. a person's obedience doesn't play any role at all). If you go to hell, it is, and I quote, "your own d*mn fault" (even though God arbitrarily predestined you to hell). I pressed my friend on these issues and he admitted that they don't make sense to the human mind, but it is received by faith. Is that fairly consistent with what you believe? Or do you see fundamental differences in his view of salvation as compared to your view of salvation?

In your church, would you invite people from the TV Show "The Bachelor" to be special guest speakers? (The Bachelor is a show where a man starts out dating 20 or so different women and then slowly eliminates women to try to find the woman he wants to marry.) Would you hire a magician and a water tank torture chamber escape artist to be the featured part of the Sunday Easter service? Would you invite a Miss USA participant to be the featured speaker of a service, wearing very tight clothes on stage and then have her pose for pictures in a tight dress in the lobby after the service? These are things that are happening in popular Evangelical churches right now to try to make the gospel attractive to non-Christians.

I see these things as important, fundamental differences, not just matters of emphasis. Nevertheless, I recognize that there are Protestant and Evangelicals who truly demonstrate an obedient love/faith relationship with Jesus Christ (as well as Catholics, Orthodox, etc.). Similarly, I recognize that there are those within the Conservative Anabaptist faith who probably do not demonstrate an obedient love/faith relationship with Jesus Christ. My point is in no way to say that all Protestants or Evangelicals are off base. But I am looking at larger trends and concerns in general. From my experience in the Evangelical Church, I am quite concerned about the direction it is heading, and I think it stems from a theology that doesn't take obedience to the words of Jesus seriously. Rather, since we can't 'earn' our salvation, we don't need to worry about obedience, because if you are worried about obedience you are legalistic. But the New Testament seems to teach that obedience is a vital part of faith.
I mentioned a Lutheran friend myself, and may have muddied the waters here, so I will briefly respond to this. I cannot speak for all anabaptists, or all Mennonites, but I will say in general that we do not consider Lutherans to be Evangelicals, nor the Reformed Church of America, or any other main denomination that baptizes infants. (They are Protestants, but not Evangelicals.) But I think the term 'Evangelical' may have changed in meaning in recent years or even decades, & I could have been 'left behind'. These media-related events you mentioned, was that in one of the mega-churches (that do somewhat defy classification)?
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Josh
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Re: Why Obey ?

Post by Josh »

Do you consider the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to be evangelical?

What about the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod?
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