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Chapter Three: The Call to be In But Not Of The World
Chapter Three demonstrates how the Anabaptist Christology and its corresponding anthropology call for a life in a counter-cultural communio sanctorum—which represents the spotless bride of Christ, and is characterized by an ethic that is largely based on their virtually literal reading of the Sermon on the Mount. Only those belong to this community who have truly repented, and produce visible fruit of the Spirit, and follow the call of Christ. It therefore exists separate, as a community in exile from all political and religious bodies that are contrary to the ‘true’ church.
A Counter-Cultural Community
The call to be in the world but not of the world is strongly linked with the Anabaptist movement’s ecclesiology, which separates the true church from the world. The centrality of this ecclesiology to Anabaptist faith and practice is undisputed. John H. Yoder1 viewed it as the defining characteristic of the Zürich Anabaptists, claiming that ‘the end point, which enabled the movement to become a force in history, was a view of the church.’2 C. Arnold Snyder states similarly: ‘The ecclesiological dimension was central to Anabaptist theology …’3 By implication, the call to be in but not of the world is, after the call to discipleship, the movement’s second primary call.
Among the 16th century reform movements that broke away from the Catholic Church, it was the Anabaptists who were most keenly aware of the dichotomy between church and world. Their two-world paradigm must be seen as an ecclesiological function, with the church representing the opposite of the world, and vice versa. In this paradigm, the importance of the world as a separate realm is raised, in comparison to the Catholic as well as the Protestant tradition. John H. Yoder points out with reference to the Zürich Anabaptists:
Negatively expressed, the product of the development from October 1523 to January 1525 was the Anabaptists’ rejection of the Corpus Christianum. (…) Led by their simple biblicism, abetted by the opposition of both civil and ecclesiastical authorities, they learned that the ‘world’ was just as significant a theological quantity in the sixteenth century as it had been in the first …4
They rejected the ecclesiological notion of the Corpus Christianum as a socio-religious body where the weeds co-existed with the tares. In their opinion, such an amalgam did not adequately reflect the fundamental distinction between the two realms of the church: the Corpus Christi as a body of reborn and committed believers on the one hand, and the world on the other. Their stark church-world dichotomy was further reinforced by the fact that, for them, the true church, the Corpus Christi, was a clearly distinguishable entity not only in the supernatural realm but also on the visible level. This inevitably put them at odds with both the religious and the political authorities of the day. The Anabaptists challenged the church-state alliance for its materialism, corruption, and participation in worldly power structures and wars. Instead, they advocated a return to the pre-Constantinian two-world paradigm, with the church as the Corpus Christi, the community of re-born, committed believers, who were guided by the ethos of the Sermon on the Mount.
This strongly dualistic world-view became characteristic, over time, for the entire Anabaptist movement—although originally it was practised to various degrees by the different Anabaptist branches. It was, for example, a very prominent original feature of the Swiss branch’s Schleitheim Confession, the author of which was the ex-monk Michael Sattler—while the Dutch and part of the South German movement was originally relatively more ‘open’, before it, too, increasingly adopted a separatist attitude.
Their ecclesiological notion loosely corresponds to two similar models prevalent at the time of the Reformation. Firstly, we find a similar ecclesiological concept in the monastic/brotherhood tradition, which viewed the Corpus Christi as a separate, holy entity. Secondly, as Ernst Saxer pointed out, Luther too made provision for a similar ecclesiological concept with his notion of the ecclesiola in ecclesia.5 In this model, the ecclesiola represents a voluntary body of committed, serious-minded believers, who may gather for private meetings within the wider context of the ecclesia, the Volkskirche.6 Importantly, both the Catholic and the Protestant form of the Corpus Christi remained within their mother churches. Not so with the Anabaptists, who viewed the body of the true believers as a community that is subject solely and entirely to the rule of Christ.
This ecclesiological model is referred to by Richard Niebuhr as the ‘Christ against culture’ model,7 insofar as it ‘uncompromisingly affirms the sole authority of Christ over the Christian and resolutely rejects culture’s claims to loyalty.’8 In a case of conflict of interest, their loyalty to Christ took precedence over all worldly concerns in the shape of human culture—including organized political and religious structures, which were seen as the product of a proud a-godly and anti-godly mindset. Niebuhr traces this view of the church through history from the New Testament writings, especially the first Letter of John, through to the early church, via the ascetic/monastic line, to Leo Tolstoy’s interpretation of the concept of seeking to live under the Lordship of Christ alone. He specifically mentions the Mennonites as the purest example, and one of the few groupings left of the
many sects that arose in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, protesting against the worldly church, both Catholic and Protestant, and seeking to live under the Lordship of Christ alone ...9
As such, both the monastic / brotherhood tradition and the Anabaptist movement were anti-materialistic. There are many accounts where the monastic / brotherhood divine call included a turning from the world and its riches in order to become ‘perfect.’ Workman’s study, though dated, still applies in this regard when he lists Anthony and St. Francis among them: ‘Anthony heard the divine call: if thou wouldst be perfect, go sell all that thou hast and give to the poor (Matt. 19,21). (He was chancing to enter into a church as the Gospel for the day was being read).’10 St. Francis heard the same call.11
We find similar if less radical statements of turning from worldly materialism by Anabaptists at the time of their conversion.12 However, for the Anabaptists, ‘poverty’ did not have the same meritorious connotation as it did for the true ascetics—and in contrast to the true ascetics, the Anabaptists strongly affirmed marriage and family life.
Modern Anabaptist historiography stresses the similarity between the Anabaptist church-world dualism and the monastic tradition. This notion had already been put forward by George H. Williams, who claimed that
Anabaptist theology has got prereformation roots. (…) Its asceticism was a legacy of the monastic movement, where there existed a tradition of preaching against the world.13
In addition, Workman points out that, originally, monasticism did have a similar laicizing thrust, as was the case with the Anabaptists: ‘Monasticism in its origin was the protest of the lay spirit against any conception of religion which excluded the laity from the highest obligations or the supremest attainment.’14
In Egypt, for example, monks and bishops, who were accused of ‘vainglory,’15 were generally found on opposite sides.16 The early monks were in their large majority laymen, of whom some were ordained by force and against their will to satisfy the admiration of people.17 Workman illustrates this by using the famous statement: ‘If you desire to escape troubles don’t leave the desert, for in the desert nobody can ordain you a bishop.’18
The monastic/brotherhood movement was further characterized by their preaching of repentance. We find a similar emphasis in the early Anabaptist movement.
True Repentance
It was ‘true’ repentance that marked the transference of the individual’s citizenship from the kingdom of this world to the kingdom of heaven. True repentance was characterized by accompanying visible fruit. According to Helmut Isaak, Menno Simons describes true repentance as
… not the penance which is practiced in the Catholic Church, but the repentance of John the Baptist which produces genuine fruits of repentance and leads to new life.19
Sjouke Voolstra makes the link between Menno Simons’ understanding of true repentance and the Erasmian, humanist tradition.20 Fritz Blanke calls the Anabaptists’ distinctive understanding of repentance ‘the theological motive of the movement.’21
As we noted in the chapter on discipleship, such repentance comes about as a result of the encounter between human sinfulness and divine holiness, which biblically, and often, marks the beginning of a divine call.22 Once the Anabaptist believers had repented and found assurance of forgiveness, they embarked on a ‘new life’ that focussed on internal and external holiness and love.
Such a forsaking of the old life, and embarking on a new one, is closely linked with the Anabaptist understanding of the divine call. This is illustrated by Irvin B. Horst’s analysis of Menno’s understanding of his personal call as ‘forsak(ing) his former way of life:23
A look at these first expressions of a changed life offer, no doubt, the best cue to what happened when, in 1536, he laid down his priestly office, forsook his former way of life, and ‘willingly submitted to distress and poverty under the heavy cross of Christ,’ speaking of ‘my illumination, conversion and calling’(…)24
For Menno, the new life, to which repentance is the gateway, is implicitly rooted in the kingdom of God and its limited earthly representation, the community of believers. Horst comments:
The new man (…) cannot live in isolation. As a man in Christ he finds his identity and fulfilment in the body of Christ, that is the community. In this view the community is seen as an extension of the new man.25
In the following section we shall investigate some of the consequences of true repentance for life in the Anabaptist faith community.
Bride without Spot or Wrinkle
The New Testament image of the church as the bride ‘without spot or wrinkle’ (Eph.5,25-27) appears prominently in the Anabaptist writings. It is indicative of their interpretation of the church as the communio sanctorum. Their understanding of holiness was partly forensic—but just as much, if not more so, it referred to the concrete, practical, personal, and visible aspect of the sanctification process.
In contrast with the Catholic concept of the corpus Christi, which only referred to the monastic/brotherhood elite, the Anabaptists applied it as a lay concept to every church member. This meant that every true member of the church had to have experienced true repentance, spiritual re-birth, and an embarkment on a life of inner and outer sanctification. In the words of C. Arnold Snyder,
‘the biblical model of ‘Christian Community’ was the community of yielded, regenerated, faithful, baptized, committed and obedient believers – a ‘community of saints.’26
As such, the spiritual condition of the Christian community played a pivotal role in the thinking of Anabaptist leaders, and particularly of Menno. In his writings, but also in his work on the brotherhood, Menno was intensely preoccupied with the community as the bride of Christ. He envisioned the community as a chaste virgin to be presented to the one husband Christ (2 Corinthians 11,2).27
The ban was an important corollary to the communio sanctorum. According to Snyder, it was one of at least four ‘universally Anabaptist’ ‘marks’ of the ‘visible community’28—the other three being baptism, the Lord’s Supper, and mutual aid.
It served to safe-guard the church’s holiness, and presupposes the church’s power to bind and to loose, based on Matt.18,18. The pivotal role of the ban, and by implication of the integrity of the church’s holiness, is illustrated by the vigor with which it was defended during inter-denominational disputes. According to Snyder,
…. in later discussions between Reformers and Anabaptists, the question of the ban often was a more difficult point of negotiation than was adult baptism. Anabaptists sometimes were willing to grant that baptism could be left ‘free’ (that is, they would be willing not to require adult baptism), but they found it harder to countenance a church without discipline.29
Important from a pastoral perspective is the issue that, in such a discipline-oriented community, faith can easily be reduced to a predominantly moral and behavioral codex, which does not adequately provide for such core human problems as guilt and shame experienced by those who have ‘slipped up.’ Snyder suggests that the ban might address these issues by providing for ‘confession and absolution’:
In many ways the ban in Anabaptism took the place of the Roman Catholic rite of confession and absolution, providing a context for the ‘loosing’ of the penalty for sin by the church.30
This mechanism does not, however, adequately cater for the problem of everyday sin which is not covered by the ban, but is more likely to have been on the mind of ordinary Anabaptists. This lack of a defined vehicle for confession and absolution, combined with a great emphasis on internal and external holiness, provides a fertile breeding ground for a perceived need to cover up one’s sins out of a sense of shame.31
However, the Anabaptist view of the Christian community was not only that of a community of saints, but, according to C. Arnold Snyder, also a community of worship, love, and mutual aid.32 Irvin B. Horst similarly comments on the Dutch Anabaptists:
The idea of the Christian community as a fellowship of covenanted Christians is common to all groups of Dutch Anabaptists. When Menno left the official church in 1536 the government in Friesland reported that he had gone over to ‘the covenant of the Anabaptists.’ While the name refers specifically to baptism, it also indicates the closeknit character of the Anabaptist brotherhood.33
This close bond had two important consequences for members. In the first instance, it provided them with a church-internal safety net where the members took care of each other spiritually, emotionally and economically.
We will now turn our attention to the implication of the church as the communio sanctorum for its position in the socio-religious environment.
Free Church
On the one hand, the turning away from the world by those who were called to a holy life meant the rejection of materialism and the religio-political culture and power structures. On the other hand, it resulted in a re-orientation of the believer towards the ekklesia which, similarly to the monastery in the monastic movement, emerged as a para-national and para-geographical entity. Such a re-orientation towards a particular community is commonly observed in groups with an outsider status—either through voluntary withdrawal, or because society excludes them. In such cases, the community, which forms a cultural and often geographical ‘ex-clave’, serves as the new social reference-point. Paul Tabori, in his study of such exile-sites within the Jewish community, observes as one example of this phenomenon:
In some countries—as in Russia and Poland and a certain extent, Romania—Jews were so rigorously excluded from cultural life, from educational possibilities, that their intellectual and emotional loyalties were to the ghetto, to the tightly-knit community and not to the geographical and natural framework of their centuries-old homelands.34
For many such alienated communities, the ideas of nation as well as geographical boundaries lost their importance. This was also true for the Anabaptists. In the words of G.H. Williams:
In contrast to the Protestants, the exponents of the Radical Reformation believed on principle in the separation of their own churches from the national or territorial state ...35
Workman further points out that the early monks had assumed a similar position vis- a-vis church and state:
To the monks, at any rate in their earlier enthusiasm, nationalism made no appeal. They were anxious to leave State and Church behind them, to flee beyond their bounds, not to develop their powers.36
The monastics made an even more radical break with the world than the Anabaptists, who on the whole were usually content to remain part of society as far as their consciences and society itself allowed. The monks, on the other hand, voluntarily and concretely exiled themselves—initially by fleeing into the desert, and later by erecting monastery walls around their distinctive ekklesia while the Irish-Scottish missionary movement used voluntary exile to loosen their earthly roots, often giving it a penitential undertone.
Their desire to sever worldly ties sometimes assumed clearly unhealthy undertones. The following quote by Jerome, born 346 AD at Stridon in Dalmatia, represents an example of a starkly anti-social understanding of natural human relationships. He claimed that ‘the love of God and the fear of hell will easily break such bonds,’ for the ‘battering-ram of natural affection will recoil powerless from the wall of the Gospel.’37
On the positive side, as Workman points out,38 their turning from the world invested the monastic movement with a strong cosmopolitan quality. This was true for the early individual monks, and remained one of their collective marks even as they began to organize themselves in para-statal, structured communities—and as, under Benedict, the monastic movement began to espouse stabilitas loci. They were beholden first to their monasteries, which formed ‘a state within a state.’ In this way, they retained what Workman calls their ‘ecclesiastical internationalism, whose head center, under the subtle guidance of the papacy, was Rome.’39
A Call to Exile
The cosmopolitan trait of the monastic tradition was similarly present in the Anabaptist tradition. It underpinned their unsettled life. On the one hand, it facilitated their repeated forced relocations into exile on account of their beliefs. On the other hand, it underpinned the roaming lifestyle of their itinerant missionaries. Their low regard for national, geographical and material ties is further reminiscent of the pilgrim status of God’s people both in the Old and New Testament. In fact, the Anabaptists appropriated for themselves Yahweh’s call to Abraham to trust in God and ‘go’—as J. Lawrence Burkholder notes:
They saw themselves in the line of Abraham, who ‘went out not knowing whither he went.’ They accepted as normative the ‘insecurity’ of faith with Jesus who had no place to lay His head and with the disciples who were called upon to ‘take no thought for the morrow. 40
The 20th century mainstream Protestant Dietrich Bonhoeffer ‘re-discovered’ this notion of ‘alienation’ that is traditionally coupled with the biblical concept of the divine call. His biographer, Eberhard Bethge, observed: ‘Alienation is connected in the Bible with the concept of ‘being called’. God calls to exile and to new shores.’41 Such alienation is costly, though, for those who answer the call:
The price of exile is high. The new status cannot be taken for granted for it entails going through suffering.42
At the core of this pain lies the fact that the call singles out the recipients and alienates them from the others, leading them into ‘aloneness:’
Through the call of Jesus men become individuals (...) But men are frightened of solitude, and they try to protect themselves from it by merging themselves in the society of their fellow-men and in their material environment.43
Unfortunately, not many investigations have been conducted into the emotional toll that exile experiences took on those of the Anabaptist/Mennonite tradition and similar movements. Mostly, they are portrayed as heroes, as is the case in much of Anabaptist/ Mennonite historiography. Burkholder, for example, comments on the itinerant Anabaptist missionaries:
One significant implication of the Great Commission is the conception of the Christian calling or ‘vocation’ according to which all cultural aims are subordinated to the missionary task. All concerns of life such as family, occupation, guild, education, political responsibility, all the elements of civilization to which men give themselves, are either subordinated or eliminated. (…) The natural demands of home and occupation were frequently regarded as ‘worldly concerns’. (…) Many references in Anabaptist literature speak of long periods of separation between husband and wife and, of course, severe persecution added to the anxiety of family responsibility.44
He typically concludes:
Seldom in history has the issue of security been so heroically faced.45
From a pastoral perspective, such an evaluation of Anabaptist exile experiences as a heroic act is too one-dimensional, and does not do justice to its potentially deeply painful aspects. Part of the purpose of this book is to take a more realistic look at this phenomenon in our case study.
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1Yoder John H., ‘The Prophetic Dissent of the Anabaptists,’ in The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision, pp.93-104.
2Ibid., p.96.
3Anabaptist History and Theology, p.90.
4‘The Prophetic Dissent of the Anabaptists,’ pp.96f.
5‘Die Christologie des Menno Simons im Vergleich zur Lehre der Reformatoren, insbesondere Calvins,’ in Mennonitica Helvetica, Bulletin 20, 1997, Bern, pp.11-23.
6Ibid., p.22.
7NIEBUHR Richard H., Christ and Culture, Harper Colophon (ed.), 1975, first publ. by Harper and Row, New York, 1951, see in particular pp.45-76.
8Christ and Culture, p.45.
9NIEBUHR Richard H., Christ and Culture, Harper Colophon (ed.), 1975, p.56.
10WORKMAN Herbert B., The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, Beacon Press, Epworth Press, London, p.93.
11 Ibid.
12Cf. for example Menno Simon’s Hymn of Discipleship, where he stated: ‘(W)hen I turned me to the Lord, (I) gave the world a farewell look’ (CWMS, p.1063).
13The Radical Reformation, p.834.
14The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p.13.
15Ibid., p.19.
16Ibid., p.15.
17Ibid., p.18.
18Ibid., p.20.
19‘Menno’s Vision of the Anticipation of the Kingdom of God in his Early Writings,’ p.65f.
20VOOLSTRA Sjouke, ‘True Penitence: The Core of Menno Simon’s Theology,’ MQR 62, 1988, p.390.
21Brothers in Christ, p.35f.
22Cf. inter alia, Ex. 3, 1ff: Moses and the Burning Bush; Jer. 1ff: the Call of Jeremiah; Acts 9ff: the Call of Saul/Paul. The New Dictionary of Theology: ‘In traditional Christian usage, vocation refers to a divine call to undertake a particular activity or embrace a a particular “stage of life” on behalf of God or the community.’ (The New Dictionary of Theology, Joseph A. Komonchak, Mary Collins, Dermot A. Lane (eds.), The New Dictionary of Theology, Gill and Macmillan, Gill and Macmillan Ltd, Goldenbridge Dublin 8, 1987, p.1087).
23HORST Irvin B., ‘Menno Simons : The New Man in Community,’ Essay 16., in , Profiles of Radical Reformers, Biographical Sketches from Thomas Muntzer to Paracelsus, Goertz Hans-Jurgen, Klaassen Walter, (eds.) engl. Edition, Herald Press, Kitchener, Ontario, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1982.
24Ibid.
25Ibid. p. 205; The term ‘new man’ was frequently used by Menno.
26Anabaptist History and Theology, p.90.
27‘The New Man in Community,’ pp.211f.
28Anabaptist History and Theology, p.91.
29Anabaptist History and Theology, p.177.
30Anabaptist History and Theology, p.92.
31Cf. the characteristics of a shame-oriented society according to David Augsburger’s deifinition in (AUGSBURGER David W., Pastoral Counseling Across Cultures, The Westminster Press, Philadelphia, Pa., 1976, pp.111-143).
32Cf. Anabaptist History and Theology, p.91.
33‘The New Man in Community,’ p. 211.
34TABORI Paul, The Anatomy of Exile, A Semantic and Historical Study, Harrap, London, 1972 , p.152.
35The Radical Reformation, pp.XXlVf.
36The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p.168.
37Jerome, Ep. (14) 3, quoted in The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p.119.
38The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p.168.
39Ibid.
40‘Vision of Discipleship’ p.139; We find a similar concept of journeying towards the heavenly home in the monastic literature. Workman cites the fact that in the ‘nomadic Celtic culture’ the ‘typical hero in song of monk Brendan of Clonfert, (+577), describes him as one ‘who crossed the ocean “through a thick fog” that he might find an earthly paradise “beyond which shone an eternal clearness.”’ (The Evolution of the Monastic Ideal, p.196); Cf. also: ‘And finally, (Bonhoeffer’s) theological thinking in the two years preceding 1933 had already begun to incorporate the exilic element in Christian faith, the alienation of discipleship. He began, therefore, not with Paul’s Letter to the Romans, as Protestant renewals usually do, but rather with the Sermon on the Mount, which negates any fixation with a homeland.’ (BETHGE Eberhard, (ed.), with Essay by John W. De Gruchy, Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, The Seabury Press, New York, 1975, p.105).
41Bonhoeffer: Exile and Martyr, p.114.
42Ibid., p.115.
43BONHOEFFER Dietrich, The Cost of Discipleship, complete ed, eng.translation SCM Press Ltd. 1959, 10th impression 1978, Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd, Bungay, Suffolk, p.824.
44‘Vision of Discipleship,’ p.138f.
45Ibid., p.139.
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