https://peacetheology.net/wp-content/up ... tism22.pdf
It discussed the events leading up to the first adult baptism in Zurich in Jan. 1525, as well as the following months in which the nascent Anabaptist movement expanded quickly across Switzerland. It lays out evidence for more connections and similarities between Balthasar Hubmaier in Waldshut and the original Zurich Anabaptists - as well as between the Anabaptists and the peasants' revolts happening at the same time - than modern Anabaptists like to admit. Furthermore, the eventual Swiss Anabaptist insistence on strict nonresistance and separation from the world, as maintained by the Schleitheim Confession, was not the original consensus position, but was just an undercurrent with the movement; nonresistance was only clearly and consistently articulated by Felix Manz from the beginning, and that view, plus the strict separatism, appears to be largely the contribution of Michael Sattler to the movement through the influential Confession. The first Swiss Anabaptists in 1525 and 1526, including the original ones baptized in Zurich and the churches that they began in nearby towns and cities, appear to have held to a concept of a "believers' church of the majority", welcomed local political support where it was possible, and did not reject the use of the sword, except that they rejected using it in or by the church to coerce people to believe. They also appear to have had open communion (anyone who believed himself to have had the new birth could participate) and even allowed some who had not yet been baptized (but who professed genuine faith) as adults to participate.
In other words, for at least the first two years of Anabaptism in Switzerland, they tended to be more like Hubmaier than like Sattler. Even Conrad Grebel seems to fit this mold.
It also gives some interesting information about what might have been some of the catalyst for the Schleitheim Confession - namely, preaching and charismatic activity by some Anabaptist women in St. Gallen that unfortunately strayed and went in a bizarre direction.
Some pertinent quotes follow - but one ought to read the whole thing to understand it clearly.
There is a wide range of interpretation of the historical data on the
evolving relationship between Huldrych Zwingli and the increasingly
visible "radical" elements. It is generally agreed that it is incorrect to say,
on the one hand, that there was no "radical party" at all in Zurich (H. S.
Bender), or, at the other extreme, to posit the existence of an
independently radical party apart from Zwingli already in the spring of
1522 (R. Walton). The historical record documents the gradual
emergence of a radical party within early Zwinglianism, initially
indistinguishable from, and working in concert with, Zwingli, both
theoretically and tactically. By October 1523 the harmony was largely
gone, replaced by public and private discord within the Zwinglian camp,
pitting an impatient, populist and more literally biblicist faction against
Zwingli's more theologically nuanced, conservative, elitist and
centralized reform.
It is, however, a mistake to extrapolate a coherent radical
ecclesiological consensus—or even a coherent critique regarding the
"sparing of the weak"—from the tensions that had arisen in Zurich and
that swirled around Zwingli's overpowering personality. The written
record for the pre-Anabaptist radical group in Zurich is sparse, which
means that conclusions about early radical thought and practice must
include a careful analysis of what those radicals actually did, not simply
what an occasional surviving letter might say. As is evident from that
wider record, the Zurich radicals, including Conrad Grebel, were
ecclesiologically flexible, rather than ideologically rigid in 1524 and 1525
when they looked beyond Zurich and attempted to lead baptizing
reforms in various cities and villages throughout the region. No textual
argument for a purely religious, "apolitical" motivation among the Swiss
radicals as early as 1525 can be convincing, in the absence of an analysis
of actual historical events.
The separation of political from religious motivations cannot be
applied retrospectively to the sixteenth-century context without
thoroughly falsifying the historical situation of the time. Religious
disobedience was sedition in the eyes of sixteenth-century political
authorities; the Anabaptists knew this well and were in search of
solutions. Without a doubt there were layers of agreement and
disagreement in the radical circle that have not survived in the written
record, but the fact that "warring" could be roundly condemned in an
exploratory letter to Thomas Müntzer and then passed over in silence
one month later in the case of Waldshut leads to the conclusion, as
Bergsten says, that "in the circle from which the later Zurich Anabaptists
were to come, there was apparently at this time no coherent attitude
regarding the use of the 'sword/"36
Moreover, there was as yet no
consensus regarding the ecclesiological boundaries appropriate to
congregations of baptized adult believers.
The cumulative evidence is persuasive in the case of Zollikon
Anabaptism: holding a doctrine of "apolitical nonresistance" was not a
requirement for baptism in the first Anabaptist community of Zollikon,
and neither was a commitment to forswear oaths. What is visible in the
numerous Zollikon testimonies is an incipient doctrine favoring a
voluntary, unstructured community of goods. The testimony of Arbogast
Finsterbach is interesting for what it reveals about Grebel's basic
teaching at this time. When Finsterbach asked Grebel what he needed to
do to be baptized, Grebel had answered: "one must first of all stop
adultery, card playing, drinking too much, and charging interest."
Grebel's baptismal ecclesiology had strong moralistic implications,
perhaps pointing to an interest in church discipline, but he was not yet
drawing clear ecclesiological lines, let alone separatist conclusions.
Even more interesting is the testimony concerning Heini Aberli, the
man who uttered threats outside the council and was entrusted with
recruiting Zurich soldiers for Waldshut. Aberli celebrated the Lord's
Supper with George Blaurock and others before receiving baptism.
During his baptism two days later, Blaurock simply asked Aberli if he
believed that Christ had died for the sins of humankind, and that what
was written of Jesus Christ was true, and when Aberli affirmed that he
did, Blaurock then baptized him in the name of the Trinity.
Aberli was not asked to repudiate violent resistance with his baptism, and he was
quite comfortable celebrating the Lord's Supper with Anabaptists even
before his baptism. In Zollikon we see a baptizing ecclesiology in the
making, not an ecclesiology already formed in a separatist mold.
The lack of an explicit connection between baptism and a teaching of
nonresistance at Zollikon does not mean that the Zollikon Anabaptists
were contemplating or plotting armed resistance, but it does mean that
they did not recognize their baptism to indicate a defacto repudiation of
the use of any and all lethal force by Christians, including Christians in
government. Baptism in Zollikon did not bind the baptized to
nonresistance, or a structured community of goods, or the ban, or oath
refusal or any number of other later developments that took Swiss
Anabaptism in a separatist direction.
The Schleitheim Articles of 1527 mark a turning point in Swiss
Anabaptism not only in their separatism and ethical Christocentrism, but
also in the establishment of an ecclesial polity that marginalized
spiritualist manifestations. The preface to the articles noted that "A very
great offence has been introduced by some false brothers among us,
whereby several have turned away from the faith, thinking to practice
and observe the freedom of the Spirit and of Christ."
In light of events in St. Gallen in 1526, these words appear to have been directed against
manifestations of the kind Kessler described. Among other things, the
Schleitheim Articles now prescribed how leadership among the Swiss
congregations was to be structured: the "shepherd" of the church,
chosen by the congregation, must be a morally upright person (1
Timothy 3:7); the shepherd will preside in the congregation in reading,
exhortation, teaching, warning, admonishing; in prayer and the Lord's
Supper. There was no thought of electing a woman to such a position;
neither is there any mention of prophecy or a place given to pneumatic
expression.
