The Intellectual Depth of Anabaptism

[steve-in-kville]

I get nearly daily Facebook memes from my more rural cousins about the superiority of rural life, raising kids on the farm, etc. That's what I'm talking about. I don't recall that any of the 12 apostles were farmers. Nor were any prominent early Christians that I can think of either.

Every few months my wife & I have to "thin the herd" when it comes to distant family on Facebook. I've got it down to a science. In fact, I think I'm due for a culling again.

[Ken]

I get nearly daily Facebook memes from my more rural cousins about the superiority of rural life, raising kids on the farm, etc. That's what I'm talking about. I don't recall that any of the 12 apostles were farmers. Nor were any prominent early Christians that I can think of either.

Every few months my wife & I have to "thin the herd" when it comes to distant family on Facebook. I've got it down to a science. In fact, I think I'm due for a culling again.

If I get more than one recipe or meme per day forwarded to Facebook they get "unfollowed" but not "unfriended" That seems to work. I kind of have to stay on facebook because some of the parent groups for my kid's school and university activities are facebook groups and I will miss stuff otherwise.

[Bootstrap]

That gave me the thought: In the 16th century I would have joined the Anabaptists at the University of Basil where Conrade Grebel and Felix Manz were "graduate students" of Huldrich Zwingli, exceeding their professor in digging down to the roots of the message and mission of Jesus and challenging the status quo bringing the words of Jesus to the masses in the common tongue instead of the ecclesiastcal language (Latin, not King Jamesian at the time) that hid pearls of great price.

Eberhard Arnold describes this here.

Hans Holbein and Hans Franck in particular were part of the Brotherhood of Heaven. This brotherhood accepted into membership especially craftsmen, printers, and scholars. At that time Erasmus of Rotterdam also lived in Basel and was in touch with this circle. Oecolampadius, the reformer of Basel, and Hans Denck had contact with the circle around Erasmus as early as 1515. To this circle also belonged a close friend of the young patrician Conrad Grebel: Heinrich Loriti from Ennenda in Glarus, who had connections with other people in Basel as well. Apart from him, those especially worthy of mention are Michael Bentinus (a friend of Hans Denck’s), Richard Crocus, Wolfgang Capito, and Johann Oecolampadius.35

This circle met in chapter brotherhoods concentrating on the New Testament, the study of Greek language and grammar, and such scholarly research as was important to them for a better understanding of the New Testament. In 1523 Hans Denck published a complete Greek edition of the grammar of Theodore Gaza of Thessalonica, which was printed by Valentin Curio. On the title page Denck wrote a verse in Greek, revealing his identity as the editor. From Basel, Erasmus wrote in 1516, “I am in a veritable seat of the Muses. There is no one here in Basel who does not know Latin and Greek, and most of them Hebrew too. One person is better versed in history, another in mathematics, the antiquities, or jurisprudence.” He was particularly impressed by the friendship and harmony among them.

Full disclosure - I have done no fact checking on these claims.

But of course, the whole point of this work was to discover who Jesus was, what he said and did, and the centrality of the Kingdom of God. Intelligence is a tool, one tool in the box of the Body of Christ. There are many gifts and many members.

What do you think? Is Anabaptism anti-intellectual or does it indeed have an intellectual depth that should be mined today?

I can't answer that in general. I can say that on MN, I think I have sometimes encountered odd exchanges. For instance, someone might make a claim about biblical Greek that is nonsense, I might clarify, perhaps quoting from a lexicon, and someone else might respond in a way that implies using an authoritative source or actually knowing Greek implies that I am not spiritual or that I am only showing off. That makes it hard to have a conversation about the question that was raised about the biblical Greek text.

In everyday life, walking as Christians does not need great intellectual depth. Some of the things we discuss here do, at least if we want to actually know what we are talking about. Better to discuss it with an openness to a little scholarship or avoid it altogether. For instance, we can certainly discuss the Bible in translation, but if someone wants to start questioning translations or insisting that one is right and another is wrong, then we need to be able to go to the deeper level.

The fruit of good intellectual work can often be enjoyed by those who cannot produce such work themselves. Jeremy Treat's work on the Kingdom of God or Carmen Imes' work on bearing the image of God are both simple and straightforward and compelling even if you have no idea how much scholarship underlies them. Many of the Bible Project videos are like that. But I think we can be grateful to scholars who do close reading in the Hebrew and Greek through the lens of Jesus and the Kingdom of God, by the Holy Spirit, to build up the Body of Christ.

Another example: I'm blown away by the level of scholarship translation consultants have, but their primary work is often to help others produce Bibles that can be read by anyone, or listened to by people who cannot read and write. Hard to do a good Bible translation without some intellectual depth, with or without formal education. But you don't need great intellectual depth to use a Bible.

Kind of like food. You can enjoy a good pizza even if you don't know how to make one.

[Bootstrap]

I get nearly daily Facebook memes from my more rural cousins about the superiority of rural life, raising kids on the farm, etc. That's what I'm talking about. I don't recall that any of the 12 apostles were farmers. Nor were any prominent early Christians that I can think of either.

The Facebook memes of early Anabaptists were nothing like that.

[steve-in-kville]

I get nearly daily Facebook memes from my more rural cousins about the superiority of rural life, raising kids on the farm, etc. That's what I'm talking about. I don't recall that any of the 12 apostles were farmers. Nor were any prominent early Christians that I can think of either.

The Facebook memes of early Anabaptists were nothing like that.

Agreed. We were more reserved back then.

[Wayne in Maine]

What do you think? Is Anabaptism anti-intellectual or does it indeed have an intellectual depth that should be mined today?

I was not raised Mennonite or any other type of Anabaptist so my view is more of a limited experience as an Anabaptist.

I can see where some groups within Anabaptism shy away from intellectual ways of approaching faith and practise. Scripture texts like in 1 Cor 3 that reads -

And the idea, that I read was prevalent in early Anabaptism held that every believer is able to interpret the Scriptures ‘afresh' which meant independent from other teachers and there seemed to be a disdain of education and scholarship and things like the church councils and creeds. Sometimes the Reformers were looked upon by Anabaptists as not being taught by God but rather by other Christians and the books they wrote.

But although there appears to me to be an intent to follow the simple teaching of the NT and especially those of Jesus, doing so has resulted in many church splits over interpretations and/or the practises required by these scriptures. Both Jesus and Paul warned about this disunity.

Personally I don't think pursuing a more intellectual depth would result in becoming more like Jesus. Imo, Anabaptism is most lacking in how to approach being in the world and yet not of the world. Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. When Anabaptists isolate themselves from worldly people, they are not following the way of the Master. Unless this changes, I see Anabaptism remaining a small segment of Christianity with little impact on the world.

Imo, there are some highly intellectual people here on this forum but it is quite surprising to me how involved the conversations are regarding worldly affairs and solutions shared that do not involve Jesus as Lord and Saviour being the answer. The intellectual depth of worldly things is quite profound and puzzling when Anabaptist roots kept quite removed from such interests.

Anyway, that is a few thoughts that likely sound quite negative toward Anabaptism. I live in a community that has many brands of Mennonites and those having the most impact on the local area are the more 'liberal' kind. They are very much into doing good deeds in the community yet are not growing in converts outside their ethnicity. Many of these are also highly educated and quite prosperous and some here would say also quite worldly.

The 'depth' I believe that is missing is not intellectual but spiritual. The transforming of our minds to a belief in the supernatural power of God to make saints out of the worst of sinners and being followers of Jesus as He went about doing this.

I think you are interpreting Mennonitism as "Anabaptism". They are not the same. The Ancestors of the Mennonites were Anabaptists, some Mennonites retain and propagate a faith based on the beliefs and practices of the Anabaptists, but I think most Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites (and Brethren) have blended enough Protestantism, especially the Fundamentalist and Evangelical brand, into their ethnic religion that they really would not have joined the Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, Michael Sattler and the other first generation Anabaptists in their radical restortion of the mission and message of Jesus.

[Josh]

There is a tendency to conflate lifestyle with faith and they are not the same thing at all.

Said the Protestant Reformers to the Radical Anabaptists.

The original radical Anabaptists from four or five centuries ago ago were not all dairy farmers living in the country and shunning cities. Nor, for that matter were the early Christians from two millennia ago.

I'm not talking about lifestyle in terms of things like dress, wearing coverings, not drinking, etc. I'm talking about more basic stuff like choice of professions, urban vs rural lifestyles, and so forth. I get nearly daily Facebook memes from my more rural cousins about the superiority of rural life, raising kids on the farm, etc. That's what I'm talking about. I don't recall that any of the 12 apostles were farmers. Nor were any prominent early Christians that I can think of either.

The fact they post Facebook memes means they have indeed abandoned plain Anabaptism; instead, they’ve embraced the weird kind of rural-pride Americana lifestyle and culture, which seems to revolve around loyalty to large corporate brands like John Deere or Ford (which, ironically, come from the urban big cities) and pairs with a choice of occupations entirely dependent on scaled-up urban overcrowding, such as working in construction (commuting to the big cities) or living off of agricultural subsidies.

[Neto]

I think you are interpreting Mennonitism as "Anabaptism". They are not the same. The Ancestors of the Mennonites were Anabaptists, some Mennonites retain and propagate a faith based on the beliefs and practices of the Anabaptists, but I think most Mennonites, Amish and Hutterites (and Brethren) have blended enough Protestantism, especially the Fundamentalist and Evangelical brand, into their ethnic religion that they really would not have joined the Conrad Grebel, George Blaurock, Michael Sattler and the other first generation Anabaptists in their radical restoration of the mission and message of Jesus.

I think that the same holds true for what I'll refer to as "neo-anabaptism" - a reinterpretation of history to fit concepts that are really not consistent with positions held by the early 'anabaptists' - called the 'baptism-minded' in the Dutch setting. (Since the terms 'Mennists' and then 'Mennonites' arose in that settings, sometimes I have said 'real Mennonites', but I wouldn't want to quibble over names, especially when what THEY were doing was attempting to be Biblical followers of Jesus the Christ.) Perhaps none of us are entirely innocent of this tendency to stir up a revitalization movement that emulates those people, rather than emulating the One they were attempting to emulate. I'm not saying that I think they did it badly, but it is the introduction of new 'causes' into their vision, injecting these things into the 'original movement' without subjecting them to the same scrutiny they utilized that can cause us to loose our way. This is where this 'intellectual Biblicism' in needed, in my opinion.
One example from my own 'revitalization' from 'Evangelical Mennonitism'. As influenced by the Hippie Peace movement, and the women's liberation cause, we looked back through the old writings and 'highlighted' anything that could be used to suggest that women had leadership roles in that early period. And we did the same thing to cast them as 'charismatics', tongues speakers. The real issue is not centrally whether either of these were actually the case in any of those early settings, but rather how these questions stack up against Scripture. Our questions need to be settled on the basis of the Scripture, not on even a true interpretation of what any of the early anabaptists in the Swiss setting wrote, or what Menno or Deitrich said or thought. I don't throw them out - I use their example of how they desired to follow Christ. They didn't do it all perfectly, and following them instead of the One they followed is a bit like hanging a picture of yourself up in front of your mirror and looking at that while shaving.

[mike]

The fact they post Facebook memes means they have indeed abandoned plain Anabaptism; instead, they’ve embraced the weird kind of rural-pride Americana lifestyle and culture, which seems to revolve around loyalty to large corporate brands like John Deere or Ford (which, ironically, come from the urban big cities) and pairs with a choice of occupations entirely dependent on scaled-up urban overcrowding, such as working in construction (commuting to the big cities) or living off of agricultural subsidies.

Shorter Josh: Anabaptists (TM) only post plain text on the Internet and cultivate small organic gardens with hand tools

[steve-in-kville]

The fact they post Facebook memes means they have indeed abandoned plain Anabaptism; instead, they’ve embraced the weird kind of rural-pride Americana lifestyle and culture, which seems to revolve around loyalty to large corporate brands like John Deere or Ford (which, ironically, come from the urban big cities) and pairs with a choice of occupations entirely dependent on scaled-up urban overcrowding, such as working in construction (commuting to the big cities) or living off of agricultural subsidies.

Shorter Josh: Anabaptists (TM) only post plain text on the Internet and cultivate small organic gardens with hand tools

They also sell Plexus.