MennoNet.com

Neto wrote: ↑Sun Aug 02, 2026 8:14 am [I asked Google about the anabaptist view of a possible "relationship between the doctrine of original sin and the sin nature", and no where does it mention Romans 5:12-21 (specifically Paul's conclusion statement in verses 18 & 19), which I personally understand as the answer to this question. That is, children are not held responsible by God for the guilt of Adam (no one is, really), but not because no guilt was passed on, but because Christ's death and resurrection did away with it. The result then being that only the sin of rebellion - personal guilt - is in need of further action - repentance and a determination to live a holy life of obedience to God.]

The early Anabaptists were not all of one mind, but the mainstream leaders (especially the Swiss Brethren, Menno Simons, Pilgram Marpeck, and Balthasar Hubmaier) did not deny that Adam's fall affected all humanity. They differed from both Augustine and later Calvinism in how that effect was understood. In general they taught:

Humanity inherits a fallen, sinful nature from Adam.
Infants are not personally guilty or condemned simply because they descend from Adam.
People become accountable when they knowingly commit sin.
Christ's work is sufficient for those who die before reaching moral accountability, which is why they rejected infant baptism.

Here are representative primary sources.

Menno Simons (1496–1561)

Menno clearly affirmed that Adam's fall corrupted human nature.

"Through Adam's disobedience we have all become sinners, are conceived and born in sin, and are children of death."
— The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, "Reply to Gellius Faber."

At the same time he argued that infants are not condemned merely because they possess Adam's fallen nature:

"The kingdom of heaven belongs to them... Christ has taken away the curse from them."

His argument against infant baptism rests partly on the conviction that infants have no conscious faith or unbelief and have committed no actual sins.

Pilgram Marpeck (c. 1495–1556)

Marpeck likewise believed Adam's fall affected humanity but denied that infants bear personal guilt.

One of his clearest statements is:

"When the children grow in the knowledge of good and evil, only then do sin, death, and condemnation come into play."

This reflects his distinction between inherited corruption and personal accountability.

Balthasar Hubmaier (c. 1480–1528)

Hubmaier accepted the reality of Adam's fall but rejected the idea that infants should therefore be baptized.

He wrote that baptism belongs to those who have:

"heard the Word of God, believed it, and confessed their faith."

His argument assumes infants have not yet exercised faith or unbelief.

Hubmaier also taught that humanity was damaged by the Fall but did not embrace the strongest Augustinian or later Calvinistic doctrine of total inability. He emphasized that restored humanity responds to God's grace.

Hans Hut (d. 1527)

Hans Hut appears to have held an "age of accountability" view.

Later scholarship summarizes his position as believing that children are innocent until they reach moral responsibility, one reason he delayed baptism until mature understanding.

What they generally rejected

Most early Anabaptists rejected the idea that:

infants are born personally guilty before God;
baptism removes inherited guilt;
infant baptism is necessary to rescue children from condemnation.

Instead they held that Christ's atonement covers children who have not yet knowingly sinned.

Ernie wrote: ↑Sat Aug 01, 2026 9:23 pm What similarities and possible differences are there between the Orthodox and Traditional Anabaptist Understandings of Original Sin?

Coifi wrote: ↑Mon Aug 03, 2026 6:12 am 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?

Robert Friedmann wrote: The term "original sin" is not a biblical one, as the Anabaptist Ulrich Stadler points out in one of his beautiful epistles of 1536/7: The word Erbsuende (hereditary sin) has no foundation anywhere in Holy Scriptures, in fact has not been written in it at all. And to counter this gloomy and fatalistic doctrine Stadler characteristically refers a few lines later to 1 Peter 2:2, "that we ought to be pure as newborn babes who know neither good nor evil."

But even though Anabaptists were not ready to yield to this doctrine of original sin with its far-reaching implications, they encountered the issue time and again in debates and court trials where their opponents asked how anybody could ever deny the curse of the events of Genesis 3, which fell on all mankind. Inasmuch as the Anabaptists were really unfamiliar with the Augustinian tradition, their only knowledge of this doctrine derived, strangely enough, from the pseudo-epigraphical Fourth Book of Esdras...Michael Sattler quoted it as his trial in 1527, and Pieter Riedemann referred to it several times in his Rechenschaft of 1541...This may explain why the Anabaptists held to a rather "strange" theology of sin, otherwise unknown in Christian tradition...

Sebastian Franck wrote: Nearly all Anabaptists consider children to be of pure and innocent blood and they do not consider original sin as a sin which of itself condemns both children and adults. They also claim that it does not make anyone unclean except the one who accepts this sin, makes it his own, and is unwilling to part with it. For they claim that foreign sin does not condemn anybody, and in this they refer to back to the Eighteenth Chapter of Ezekiel.

Anabaptists accepted the Genesis 3 interpretation of man's temporal death. But this has not determined man's eternal destiny. "There is a difference," the Hutterite, Claus Felbinger, explained to the inquiring authorities when arrested in 1560, "between having sin and committing sin....Hence there is only one word of admonition, not to the natural man (who would not understand it) but to the regenerated, reborn man...."Fight the good fight of faith."