Orthodox and Anabaptist Understandings Regarding Original Sin

[ohio jones]

As an aside, I'd be interested in reading about how the Anabaptist understanding of sin deviated from the spiritual predecessors of historic Anabaptism. In other words, did believer's baptism follow a change in understanding of the teaching of original sin?

This blog post from Dwight Gingrich might be helpful:
Which Came First–Original Sin or Infant Baptism?

[Coifi]

Interesting question. I think at least part of the urge toward believer's baptism came from ecclesiology not theology but I can't say if that was definitive. If my memory serves Sattler wrote/taught a significant amount about a pure church, that is a church composed only of regenerated believers. He used the analogy of an entire bolt of cloth being rendered useless by a single bad thread.

Interesting. Who is Sattler? Can you provide some context to this? It sounds very much like the common evangelical understanding of the Church or a Calvinist understanding of the Church.

From Robert Friedmann's The Theology of Anabaptism:

Thank you for providing these quotes. I'll read more closely and probably use these (and other provided quotes) as source material to directly address Ernie's initial question.

This blog post from Dwight Gingrich might be helpful:
Which Came First–Original Sin or Infant Baptism?

This addresses my question, thanks! Of course, now I have more, but I'll have to save that for another thread.

Of course, I think the doctrine of the Church will inherently be wrapped into my eventual answer. Baptism as the initiation into the Body of Christ and thus, into the saving work of Christ, necessitates an understanding of what it is we are being saved from. It's almost as if all points of theology are related and affect one another...

[barnhart]

Interesting question. I think at least part of the urge toward believer's baptism came from ecclesiology not theology but I can't say if that was definitive. If my memory serves Sattler wrote/taught a significant amount about a pure church, that is a church composed only of regenerated believers. He used the analogy of an entire bolt of cloth being rendered useless by a single bad thread.

Interesting. Who is Sattler? Can you provide some context to this? It sounds very much like the common evangelical understanding of the Church or a Calvinist understanding of the Church.

The context was the meeting which produced the Schleitheim Confession in 1527. Michael Sattler was warning against allowing compromise with the state on the issue of baptism. As a former weaver he used the analogy of compromising the strength of the cloth by a single bad thread to illustrate the danger of compromise with the state of the issue of baptism.