This article is the second in a four-part series on the contributions Anabaptists have made to churches today. The first article gave an overview of Anabaptism, a movement that arose in the early sixteenth century when some of Zwingli's followers felt he had not gone far enough in reforming the church.
Although the movement was not homogeneous, most held some major beliefs in common: believer's baptism, use of the ban rather than the sword for church discipline, the Lord's Supper as simply a commemorative meal, separation from the world, and congregational choice and support of pastors.
Anabaptism spread through northern and western Europe and to the United States. But because of persecution by the other Reformers, its major impact has come not directly, but by its influence on and through other groups, particularly the English Baptists.—Editors.
What is the church? Who belongs to the church? What marks identify the true church? The early Anabaptists were asking questions like these even before they got into the matter of baptism. Their concept of believer's baptism arose as a consequence of their understanding of the church. (We will discuss believer's baptism in our next article in this series.)
This side of Anabaptism is often misapprehended. But we can understand the Anabaptists only when we understand their concept of the church. To do so, we must first briefly survey what the New Testament has to say on this subject. Then we must look at how the concept of the church developed in later times. This is particularly important because to some degree Anabaptism was a reaction against this development.
That God has a group of people here on earth that He calls His own is not only a New Testament idea. In Old Testament times God called Israel His own people. But not all in Israel were obedient to God. Time and again we find that He had to call special leaders and prophets to reform His people. Joshua, for example, calls the Israelites to decide whom they want to follow (Joshua 24:15). Here already we find the idea developing that only the faithful, the remnant, the congregation that is called out and obedient to the voice of the Lord, constitutes God's people.
The New Testament picks up this motif of the faithful, the remnant. Out of the Jewish nation Jesus called twelve disciples, who comprised the core of the New Testament church (Matt. 10). Then He sent out the 70, commissioning them to go before Him carrying the good news throughout Palestine (Luke 10:1). Before His ascension, 'He instructed His followers to fulfill their commission by teaching (preaching) what they had received from the Lord, by baptizing their converts into the fellowship of believers, and by following up with continuing instruction (Matt. 28:20).
The New Testament concept of the church grew from these roots. The New Testament uses the word church (ekklesia) in several closely related ways. First, it designates the actual assembly of believers (1 Cor. ll:18ff), those who listened to and obeyed the call for worship. Second, we find the New Testament calling the local congregations of towns and cities, for instance, those of Rome and Corinth (Rom. 16:1; 1 Cor. 1:2), churches. And third, church may designate all the believers worldwide (1 Cor. 12:28; Phil. 3:6). But always, only the faithful (who, of course, are still sinners)—those who are obedient to the call of God, those who are repentant, those who leave the ways of the world, those who are baptized on their confession of faith—constitute the church.
Limitations of space prohibit my even summarizing the development of the concept of the church up to the time of the Reformation. So I want to single out one particular concept that slowly entered the church; namely, that whole groups of people—whole nations—constitute the church.
The introduction of infant baptism watered down the New Testament idea of the church. Tertullian, the first ecclesiastical writer who implies that infants were being baptized, wrote in opposition to the practice toward the end of the second century. Origen (c. A.D. 185-254) was the first ecclesiastical writer who clearly taught infant baptism.
But another development in the history of Christendom had an even more detrimental effect upon the concept of the church. Constantine the Great and his successors used the powers of the state to exalt the Christian religion. In the early Middle Ages, through military coercion and other pressures, people were forced to accept Christianity. Whole nations and finally most of Europe belonged to the "church."
This was the situation at the time of the Reformation. From many quarters individuals called for reform: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and many others. Zwingli—in whose district the Anabaptists first appeared—particularly wished to reform the whole of society, with all its Christian institutions. He wanted to establish a kind of theocratic "Alpine Israel" that would include every member of society.
It was against this idea that the Anabaptists revolted. They were not the first to challenge the medieval concept that the church includes every member of society. Already toward the end of the twelfth century, the high Middle Ages, the Waldensians were calling for reform of the concept of the church, taking the apostolic church, founded on the prophets and apostles and with Jesus Christ as her cornerstone (Eph. 2:19-22), as the example.
Anabaptists stood under the firm conviction that the church had fallen away from truth and so had to be radically reformed. What did Anabaptists understand as constituting the fall of the church and the marks of the fallen church? All departure from apostolic teaching constitutes the fall. What they understood as the marks of this fall reveal also what they thought about the church. The major marks they believed identified the fallen church included these:
1. Church and state comprise a unity in the fallen church. Religion then becomes compulsory. According to Anabaptists, Christian churches are voluntary religious associations. Genuine Anabaptists were thus among the first to consistently uphold religious liberty, even as understood in the modern sense.
2. The fallen church engages in war. Church history books are full of accounts of Christians killing Christians, a thought unthinkable to most Anabaptists. They believed that Christians should be peacemakers and not engage in armed struggles of any kind. Many Anabaptists were therefore pacifists.
3. The fallen church celebrates the mass. Anabaptists opposed the idea that Christ was bodily present in the bread and the wine—and here they collided head-on with Martin Luther. They believed that Christ offered Himself once for all on the cross and that the Lord's Supper the church was enjoined to celebrate simply commemorates this event.
4. The baptism of infants comprises a fourth mark of the fallen church. The Anabaptists knew that the state church idea stands or falls with infant baptism. That's why they so vehemently opposed it.
5. Anabaptists believed also that the rise of the hierarchy constitutes a mark of the fallen church. They especially attacked the ecclesiastics' lust for power and wealth. They wanted to return to the old democracy of simple believers who come together to worship God inwardly, instead of being engaged in long liturgies, outward ceremonies, and formal processions.
Anabaptists believed that all earnest Christians should leave this fallen church. They viewed the fall as so deep that a little reform here and there would not help. Because of this they could not join hands with the other Reformers, whom they saw as trying only to reform certain abuses and errors.
Marks of the true church
The Anabaptists wished to return to the apostolic church. They considered the true church to be identifiable also. Some of the marks that they believed identified it follow in summary form:
1. The true church will always follow the example and teaching of Scripture, especially the New Testament.
2. The true church will certainly practice believers' baptism.
3. The true church will understand the Lord's Supper in a simple way, as a meal of remembrance. The Lord's Sup per was very important to the Anabaptists because it confronted people with the Christ who died for them and through whose death they received the forgiveness of sins. They saw the true church's approach to the Lord's Supper as standing in contrast to the countless highly philosophical and speculative disputations others engaged in at the time of the Reformation, disputations on the nature of Christ's presence in the elements and how grace benefits believers.
4. The true church will understand clearly that it consists of truly converted, regenerated members, who voluntarily join the association of believers. Since God intended the church to be a community of saints, believers should be exhorted to holy living. If a member was unwilling to be reconciled with his brother or sister, or persistently lived in sin, he would be placed under the spiritual ban. In other words, other members would refrain from social con tact with such a person, and he would lose all privileges of the church or brotherhood. Ultimately this person would be excluded from their fellowship.
5. Another sign of the true church is its understanding of community. Anabaptists held that the material goods that God had given should be shared freely with other believers, especially those who did not have anything because they were persecuted. Only some groups of Anabaptists, like the Hutterites, went so far as to practice a kind of "communism," not only sharing everything with each other but also having a common production in established "Briiderhofe," as they called them. But every Anabaptist was taught that "every good and perfect gift is from above" (James 1:17, NIV) and should therefore be shared with the needy. Anabaptists' understanding of the New Testament prompted them to have lay leaders, chosen by the congregations. Sometimes these lay leaders were supported by freewill collections.
6. For the Anabaptists, the true church is marked also by its correct relation to the civil authority. They believed that magistrates were ordained to chasten evil, and so they must do it. But Christians should not hold that office, because magistrates must engage in practices that Christians cannot. For example, magistrates should restrain evil and destroy the enemies of society. But Christians should love their enemies and pray for their persecutors. The Anabaptists' noninvolvement in politics and their aloofness from social life in general created many difficulties.
7. Finally, we shall mention one more mark of the true church. This mark comprises the great commission to go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to all creatures. This was central to the Anabaptists' understanding of the church. They believed that all Christians have received this commission, so they considered everyone teachers and preachers. Everyone must witness. No provincial, national, or ecclesiastical boundaries should stop a person from fulfilling this command of the risen Lord. With the Anabaptists, as with other reform movements before them, we find a true reawakening of the missionary spirit of the early church. They were prepared, as many Christians in the first three centuries had been, to die for their faith, to lay down their lives as martyrs.
From the point of view of church history we can perhaps better understand why the Anabaptists, along with Martin Luther and other Reformers, had to react against the Roman Catholic Church. That church had fallen and was in great need of reform. But having looked at their understanding of the true church, we are able to see why Anabaptists were not satisfied with the work of the great Reformers. These men were not willing to give up certain aspects of the medieval church concept. They spent all their energy opposing and reforming some of the abuses instead of letting the Holy Spirit create something new, a church regenerated on New Testament apostolic grounds.
Though the Anabaptists suffered terrible persecution, their blood was not shed in vain. As pointed out in the first article, they have survived to our time. But more important, the Anabaptists have inspired a number of other Christian groups, who found scriptural support for many of the convictions of these reformers of the Reformers.
We Adventists would agree with much that the Anabaptists believed. Though we might express it differently, we would basically accept their concept of the church—a concept that I will summarize with the words of the modern Anabaptist F. H. Littell: "1. The church must be a voluntary association, taking its spirit and discipline from those who intentionally belong to its fellowship. 2. The church must follow the guidelines of the New Testament as to confession of faith and organizational pattern." *
F. H. Littell, The Anabaptist View of the Church: A Study in the Origins of Sectarian Protestantism, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1958), p. 46. I have depended on this book for much of my description of the Anabaptist view of the church. Also helpful for this article were: J. L. Burgholder, "The Anabaptist Vision of Disciplineship," G. F. Hershberger, ed., The Recovery of the Anabaptist Vision (Scottdale, Pa., 1962), pp. 135-137; J. D. Graber, Anabaptism Expressed in Mission and Social Service (Scottdale, Pa., n.d.), pp. 152-166; and Robert Kreider, The Anabaptists and the State (Scottdale, Pa., n.d.), pp. 180-193. Also of great interest is Menno Simons' "Reply to Gelius Faber," especially Chap. VI, "The Church," in The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, translated from the Dutch by L. Verduin and edited by J. C. Wenger, with a bibliography by H. S. Bender (Scottdale, Pa., n.d.), pp. 734-759.
