Anabaptists and the Authority of Scripture

[Ernie]

True, but they rejected any kind of "Word from the Lord" or dreams or visions of any kind that went beyond or contrary to the Scriptures, did they not?

Yes, that is what I understand as well.

The Catholics and Reformers accepted the Pope and Augustine and the early church fathers as authoritative above the Scriptures.

Yes, as well as the city councils.

The Anabaptists didn't reject infant baptism because of their allegiance to Jesus, other than in the sense that their allegiance to Jesus caused them to say "We will obey what we are taught from the Scriptures." They drew their understanding of suffering as a defenseless people from the pages of the Holy Word. It's hard for me to read their writings and think that they would not have affirmed the Scriptures as the only infallible rule by which to measure faith and practice.

They well might have applied that terminology to the New Testament or the commands of Christ and the Apostles. I don't think they would have applied that to the scriptures as a whole, because the Catholics and Reformers were arguing from the Old Testament and including it in their "rule" by which to live.

[Ernie]

The Catholics and Reformers accepted the Pope and Augustine and the early church fathers as authoritative above the Scriptures.

I might also make the point that those who have trouble wresting the scriptures to their own destruction, (because they are not making the main things the main things), have trouble wresting the writings of the early church fathers as well. The scriptures and early church writings get used by these folks to justify and defend all sorts of things that they currently believe and practice, rather than letting these writings be instructive and helpful changing and transforming them into being the people God wants them to be.

Which is why I wrote this earlier in this thread...

Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read. Many Sunday school discussions, devotionals, and sermons are a reconfirming of what is already believed and practiced, and a making of excuses for what is not.

And I think we have seen a lot of justification on MN over the years for all sorts of practices that are not in harmony with the teaching AND example of Christ and his Apostles. This is done by proof texting, appealing to church tradition and church authority, claiming personal intuition or revelation from God, etc. I think this is no different than what the Catholics and Reformers were doing in their debates with the Anabaptists.

[ken_sylvania]

The Anabaptists didn't reject infant baptism because of their allegiance to Jesus, other than in the sense that their allegiance to Jesus caused them to say "We will obey what we are taught from the Scriptures." They drew their understanding of suffering as a defenseless people from the pages of the Holy Word. It's hard for me to read their writings and think that they would not have affirmed the Scriptures as the only infallible rule by which to measure faith and practice.

They well might have applied that terminology to the New Testament or the commands of Christ and the Apostles. I don't think they would have applied that to the scriptures as a whole, because the Catholics and Reformers were arguing from the Old Testament and including it in their "rule" by which to live.

I think it works out fine if the terminology is truly applied to the scriptures as a whole. The Catholics and Reformers were not applying the concept to the scriptures as a whole - they tended to stop with the Old Testament instead of interpreting the Old Testament through the New Testament.

[ken_sylvania]

Plain Anabaptists in the 21st century have mostly resorted to elevating the magisterium and church tradition. Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read. Many Sunday school discussions, devotionals, and sermons are a reconfirming of what is already believed and practiced, and a making of excuses for what is not.

Thankfully there are numerous exceptions to this. There are always individuals and small fellowships within the movement who are trying to adjust their practices to what they read in the NT, but it seems they are a minority.

How often should an individual or a church be trying to adjust their practices to more purely imitate what they read in the NT?

I think I know what you mean about making excuses for what is taught in the NT but is not being practiced. I have also "been there/done that" in a small group constantly revisiting and revising practices to be more scriptural. I think the desire for change to be more precisely scriptural can become an addiction, a search for fulfilment that ought to be found in Christ.

[Silentreader]

The Catholics and Reformers accepted the Pope and Augustine and the early church fathers as authoritative above the Scriptures.

I might also make the point that those who have trouble wresting the scriptures to their own destruction, (because they are not making the main things the main things), have trouble wresting the writings of the early church fathers as well. The scriptures and early church writings get used by these folks to justify and defend all sorts of things that they currently believe and practice, rather than letting these writings be instructive and helpful changing and transforming them into being the people God wants them to be.

Which is why I wrote this earlier in this thread...

Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read. Many Sunday school discussions, devotionals, and sermons are a reconfirming of what is already believed and practiced, and a making of excuses for what is not.

And I think we have seen a lot of justification on MN over the years for all sorts of practices that are not in harmony with the teaching AND example of Christ and his Apostles. This is done by proof texting, appealing to church tradition and church authority, claiming personal intuition or revelation from God, etc. I think this is no different than what the Catholics and Reformers were doing in their debates with the Anabaptists.

...the plain things the main things....

[Neto]

Regarding what happened at age 36...

I knew that some word choices in the Bible I owned might not have been the best, but I did not know that manuscripts the translators were working off of, had some errors in them. This really rocked my faith when I learned this. Why would a God who inspired the scriptures, and preserved his word, and superintended the canonization of the Bible, - why could He not preserve a perfect text for Bible translators to translate from?
The reason that this was such a shock to me was because I was given the impression that every jot and every title was inspired (dictation view) and that what I held in my hands was translated from a manuscript that was not missing any jots or tittles.
I discovered that not only was the manuscript that my Bible was translated from... missing some jots and tittles (or had some added)... but there was no original manuscript or any copy of an original manuscript available to us to work off of. (I don't think most Anabaptists from 1525-1900 had any idea about these things either.)

Now, for the record.
I would never say the ancient Bible manuscripts available to us today are full of errors, nor that the Bibles we use today that are carefully translated are full of errors. They are not. (although there are a few errors here and there)
Because we have over 5000 portions of ancient manuscripts available to us, they can be compared with each other, and many errors can be eliminated as translation work is done.
And besides, all but a couple possible errors or additions in the manuscripts available to us today have no doctrinal implications whatsoever and the few possible errors or additions that might have doctrinal implications have no major doctrinal implications that change or shake the foundations of Christianity.

All of the above led me to conclude after some time that…
1. The scriptures are trustworthy and reliable documents.
2. The scriptures are what the scriptures say they are. No more. No less. (at least we should not be making them to be more or less)
3. The original autographs may or may not be without any errors, down to the jot and tittle. (We simply don’t know at this time until someone finds the original autographs) And perhaps that “jot and tittle” refers to the law of God as a universal moral standard, or the law given to Moses.
4. The original autographs do not need to be error free, in order for the scriptures to be inspired, trustworthy, reliable, profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness, and proclaimed by holy men of God who spoke as they were moved by the holy Spirit.
5. God’s message to us through the scriptures is inerrant, and that what He intended to communicate to us humans through the scriptures can be communicated inerrantly and can be understood and applied to our daily life as much as we are willing to embrace it.
6. What is unclear or hard to understand should not distract us from putting all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, into acting upon what is painfully easy to understand.

Because I went to a Bible institute right out of HS, I faced the possibility of "errors" in the Bible translation I grew up with (KJV) in that first year of college, at 19-20 years of age. The college course was one on Bible study methods. Different approaches were described, and then illustrated using the first letter of John. We were then assigned a research project on I John 5:7-8. The professor may have already told us in class that verse 7b-8a were later additions, that the text had been corrupted, either intentionally, to prove the doctrine of the trinity, or accidentally, through a copyist error. How could that happen? Well, the theory is that someone at some earlier time had written a note in the border of a Latin Vulgate text, and the copyist added it into the text, thinking it was a correction of the Latin translation. But much later, those added phrases were translated 'back' into a Greek text. I personally doubt that it was an accidental addition - I think it was a part of the Catholic approach to combating real heresies regarding the deity of Jesus, and questions about the identity of the Holy Spirit. (Combating heresy is no excuse for adding to the Scripture, or changing the sense or meaning of a passage, as is the case here.)

I "rebelled" against the suggestion that the Bible I had read all of my life had errors in it, and searched the school library until I found a commentary that included interpretive notes on those phrases. It was from the 1700's, and even that one gave commentary only after stating that these words were later additions to the text, and that they did violence to the contextual meaning of the passage. All of the other commentaries I consulted simply stated that those words did not belong in the text, and gave no commentary on them at all. Finally, after struggling with this for some time, I accepted it, and wrote my paper in full honesty. (I have always struggled grade-wise in school, but I received an 'A' on that paper, I think because I didn't just glibly or automatically accept what had been told us.) This, along with a different controversy I came face to face with around the same time (November of 1974) started me on the path of 'Biblicism'. And, I might add, laid the foundation for being a careful Bible translator, respecting the Scriptures enough to dig as deep as I could on every verse I translated. (Perhaps too extremely so in some cases, cases where all of the exegetical commentaries left interpretive questions unsolved - I tried to solve them myself by searching for other sources. But it gave me the confidence that I had done as good of a job of it as I am capable - to the fullest of my ability. When I tried to use 'shortcuts' like translating from an English text, I felt a great uncertainty about the result, because I had not examined the foundations of the 'source text'.)

So by the time I wrote out my full doctrinal statement for application with Wycliffe Bible Translators, I avoided making any statement regarding the "original autographs", instead just saying that since they didn't exist, I would only make a statement regarding the Scriptures that we actually have, that they are a fully reliable source for truth, God's will for us in regards to all matters of faith and practice. (This was not accepted by the application process, so I did later submit a revised doctrinal statement that added the recognition that since the text we have must have some historical basis, it is important to state that the originals were inspired by God. I had never doubted this, but just felt that it was a bit "ridiculous" or unnecessary to make strong statements about something which, as far as we know, no longer exists.)

So that experience at 19 or 20 didn't shake my faith in God or His Word, as it did for a friend of mine who was in that same class - he threw his Bible in the trash can, and said to me: "If part of it is not right, then none of it is." He did this while weeping. I'm not sure he ever recovered from that experience, because the last time I saw him (a year or 2 later, when he visited me at the Bible college where I eventually graduated) he was involved in a "Christian cult", one which did not recognize the deity of either the Father, or of the Son, only of the Holy Spirit.

[Ernie]

Plain Anabaptists in the 21st century have mostly resorted to elevating the magisterium and church tradition. Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read. Many Sunday school discussions, devotionals, and sermons are a reconfirming of what is already believed and practiced, and a making of excuses for what is not.

Thankfully there are numerous exceptions to this. There are always individuals and small fellowships within the movement who are trying to adjust their practices to what they read in the NT, but it seems they are a minority.

How often should an individual or a church be trying to adjust their practices to more purely imitate what they read in the NT?

I think I know what you mean about making excuses for what is taught in the NT but is not being practiced. I have also "been there/done that" in a small group constantly revisiting and revising practices to be more scriptural. I think the desire for change to be more precisely scriptural can become an addiction, a search for fulfilment that ought to be found in Christ.

I heartily concur with this!

[Ernie]

I "rebelled" against the suggestion that the Bible I had read all of my life had errors in it... that experience at 19 or 20 didn't shake my faith in God or His Word...

So that experience at 19 or 20 didn't shake my faith in God or His Word, as it did for a friend of mine who was in that same class - he threw his Bible in the trash can, and said to me: "If part of it is not right, then none of it is." He did this while weeping. I'm not sure he ever recovered from that experience.

This has happened over and over and over the last couple centuries.

Pastors and teachers of a certain variety, like to teach that the Bible is without error, and carefully preserved and copied, down to the very letter, and can teach quite persuasively about this. But they stop there and don't tell their listeners, "But the copy you hold in your hands has errors in it." To say this would contradict the point they were trying to make in their sermon so they omit this. Either they are not aware of the errors in the copy they are holding in their hands, or they simply don't mention it to their listeners.
Then folks like you and I and your friend stumble across this later in life and it can be quite problematic, depending on our individual make ups and the foundations upon which we are building.
I think it is possible to talk about the amount of effort that those who copied the scriptures put into their work, while acknowledging that some small errors got passed along. And... that this doesn't make the Bible less trustworthy or reliable. In fact, it tells us something about God, that he uses humans to accomplish his purposes in the earth. If he used imperfect humans in the past to preserve his written Word, he can also use me today in His work, even if I am not perfect, but am diligently doing the best that I can, just like those copy writers centuries ago.

[Bootstrap]

Which is why I wrote this earlier in this thread...

Very few churches are sitting down with the Bible, reading the New Testament together, and making adjustments in their practices and lifestyles based on what they read. Many Sunday school discussions, devotionals, and sermons are a reconfirming of what is already believed and practiced, and a making of excuses for what is not.

And I think we have seen a lot of justification on MN over the years for all sorts of practices that are not in harmony with the teaching AND example of Christ and his Apostles. This is done by proof texting, appealing to church tradition and church authority, claiming personal intuition or revelation from God, etc. I think this is no different than what the Catholics and Reformers were doing in their debates with the Anabaptists.

...the plain things the main things....

Here's a problem with this whole debate: it takes the focus off of Scripture and Jesus and turns it to certain theological statements in complicated language. It takes the focus off of discipleship and turns it into debate.

I think a church should be absorbed in and devoted to Scripture, reading it in context, growing in it together, day by day. Scripture often is very different from our second and third hand summaries of Scripture. Scripture is a unified story that leads to Jesus. It is inspired, God-breathed, trustworthy.

Debates about the right theological language to describe the Word of God are not as edifying as the Word of God.

[Bootstrap]

Pastors and teachers of a certain variety, like to teach that the Bible is without error, and carefully preserved and copied, down to the very letter, and can teach quite persuasively about this. But they stop there and don't tell their listeners, "But the copy you hold in your hands has errors in it." To say this would contradict the point they were trying to make in their sermon so they omit this. Either they are not aware of the errors in the copy they are holding in their hands, or they simply don't mention it to their listeners.

Or they claim that God has preserved his Word in the King James Bible, as many KJV-onlyists argue. Here is an extreme form of that:

https://av1611.com/kjbp/articles/long-preserved.html

In the last few decades, there has been a growing cry against the onslaught of modern Bibles which are trying to supplant the time-honored word of God to the English-speaking world - the King James Bible. Many godly men are valiantly trying to hold back the rising tide of apostasy and unbelief which depend, in part, on diluting the authority of the words of God. It is no wonder that so many are waking up to this threat and defending what they see as an attack on their written authority.

This site also claims that the earliest Greek manuscripts we have are tainted, and people who rely on them are Satanic:

https://av1611.com/kjbp/faq/devil.html

The process has never changed. Every new version that has been launched has been, without exception, a product of Satan's Alexandrian philosophy which rejects the premise of a perfect Bible. Furthermore, they have been copied, on the most part, from the corrupt Alexandrian manuscript (although a few have been translated from pure Antiochian manuscripts after they were tainted by the Alexandrian philosophy).

But you can understand how this happens. If people are really disturbed by the fact that early Greek manuscripts differ, they want a single source of truth. And the people on this particular website insist it is the 1611 KJV. Not the earlier Tyndale or Geneva translations. Not the later KJV editions (which also differ from each other).

This same attitude is widespread in Islam, FWIW. They do not want to acknowledge that the Quran also has a textual history with many variants.

The 1611 KJV is plenty good to lead to Jesus if you happen to be able to read that kind of English well. Just like many other translations. Or the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. These debates, however, tend not to lead to Jesus.