Thread: Are pentecostals anabaptists? Board: Purgatory / Ship of Fools.
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Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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In addressing a local ecclesiastical spat, this question sprang to mind.
Pentecostals, and even more so charismatics, if they look at all to church history, often look fondly on the anabaptists. Roger Forster is a prime UK example of this. They may well believe they stand in that tradition, or even that they are its direct successors.
It seems to me, however, that many basically have Catholic DNA.
Didn't the Azusa street revival, usually seen as the birthplace of modern Pentecostalism, take place in a Holiness church? Which would have been Methodist in origin? And thus, dissident Anglican? Which in turn is dissident Catholic?
Many Brethren ended up becoming charismatic and establishing the House Church, later New Church movement. But the Brethren were basically dissident Anglicans too.
This pedigree has nothing to do with Anabaptists! In fact I'd make an uninformed guess that worldwide, most pentecostal and charismatic churches have their roots in Anglicanism and not anabaptism.
Is this true?
What might the implications be in terms of assumptions about church government, apostolic succession, and so on?
Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on
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As far as I know, it is true that, ancestrally, Pentecostalism comes out of Methodism, which in turn comes out of Anglicanism etc.
But I don't know how far you can take that in terms of making connections about church government etc. To take just one of your examples...
quote:
apostolic succession
Is that even an issue for Pentecostals? Do they sit around worrying about whether the head of, let's say, the General Superintendent of the Assemblies Of God can trace his jurisdictional lineage back to St. Peter? Can't say I've ever been aware of them caring about that sort of thing, Catholic DNA or otherwise.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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I used to know a North American historian of the Anabaptists who insisted that British baptists had very little to do with continental anabaptists.
I suspect the truth is that modern groups look back at whoever-they-want-to without having any real connection to those groups.
Posted by leo (# 1458) on
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Anabaptists tend to be politically radical - I don't think Pentecostals are much interested in politics.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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I knew a former FIEC guy turned restorationist turned Orthodox who considered the 'house-churches' and so on as essentially 'Anabaptist' - but not in a direct line of descent or succession asit were.
Essentially, they were the descendants of 19th century movements which came to echo elements of earlier 'Radical Reformation' groups. But then, those groups originally had Catholic roots too - even if mediated through a few years of Lutheranism or 'Magisterial' Calvinism.
So ultimately, all of us Protestants, Anglicans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists whatever else - all derive from pre-Reformation Catholicism at however many steps removed ...
Which is one of the reasons why the Orthodox tend to see both Catholics and Protestants as two sides of the same coin.
I was given some grief on these boards once for suggesting that most UK non-conformist churches have Anglicanism in their spiritual DNA.
But it is demonstrably the case in 'succession' terms.
All that said, I think there are few similarities between Pentecostals and neo-Pentecostals and 'classic' Anabaptism other than a credo-baptist polity.
However, I do think some of the more 'emergent' and post-evangelical groups are definitely developing a more 'Anabaptist' style ethos and tinge.
So I certainly expert to see some convergence, but at the more moderate end of the Pentecostal spectrum.
Diarmid MacCulloch says that the Pentecostals may yet surprise us, so I'd expect to see them developing in all kinds of directions - some in line with received traditional creedal Christianity and some far less so. We've seen this happening already in Africa and Latin America as well as China and the Far East.
Expect syncretism. Also expect cross-fertilisation with some of the older traditions.
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
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As you well know, we have Roger as mutual acquaintance, and he will refer as frequently to the Methodists as he does to the Anabaptists.
It's interesting that you use the term 'pedigree', as I often think in terms of the analogy of dog breeding.
As one who is certainly at least ankle-deep in the modern charismatic tradition, I would view it as one that is anything but pedigree. We are utter mongrels. We pick what is good from other traditions and leave out some of the superfluous stuff. So we'll look at the reformed theology of grace, see that it's a good thing and adopt it. But we're happy to leave aside aspects of Calvinism that leave a bitter taste in one's mouth.
We might look at Anglicanism and see a great tradition of art as a form of worship, but we're happy to leave aside unnecessary add-ons such as dressing up in fancy robes.
We'll adopt the discipline of prayer and communal life from various monastic traditions but we'll leave aside some of the over-the-top asceticism.
So there's a little bit of everything in us, and each will have their own emphases. Pedigrees we are not. We don't keep traditions for the sake of keeping them, beautiful though they may be. Because, to stretch the dog analogy a bit, pedigrees can have health problems.
So I'm happy to be an ugly mongrel. A mish-mash of denominations.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
It seems to me, however, that many basically have Catholic DNA.
Didn't the Azusa street revival, usually seen as the birthplace of modern Pentecostalism, take place in a Holiness church? Which would have been Methodist in origin? And thus, dissident Anglican? Which in turn is dissident Catholic?
Yeah, but if you are going to go all six degrees of separation, Anabaptists will 'usually' be dissident catholic by a similar number of steps.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
apostolic succession
Is that even an issue for Pentecostals?
The idea of "anointed leadership" and "passing on the anointing" very much is.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
Yeah, but if you are going to go all six degrees of separation, Anabaptists will 'usually' be dissident catholic by a similar number of steps.
Roger Forster, in a characteristic tour de force, makes a sterling attempt to trace the origins of the anabaptists to before the East-West split.
quote:
Originally posted by Sipech:
So I'm happy to be an ugly mongrel. A mish-mash of denominations.
I'm fairly happy to be a mongrel too, but evangelicals in particular frequently suffer from a complete lack of any sense of history.
I surely can't be the only person to have seen a FB photo of someone who has written "Acts 29, the story continues" on the last page of that book in their Bible? Evangelical theology can be a positive invitation to assume one is simply taking up where Luke and the apostles left off, with no intervening church history at all.
Here in France, post-war evangelical missionaries' failure to connect with the historic protestant church (older, for many of them, than their country of origin...) is a tragedy of which the effects are still keenly felt today.
A better understanding of one's roots is, I believe, a great way of relating to others in the present.
[ 27. April 2017, 18:17: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on
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You are right, Eutychus. Pentecostalism comes out of Methodism which comes out of the Church of England. Not only that, John Wesley was more or less a high churchman.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
quote:
apostolic succession
Is that even an issue for Pentecostals?
The idea of "anointed leadership" and "passing on the anointing" very much is.
But I don't think that's the result of some kind of latent view on apostolic succession that suddenly sprang back to life.
That's more of an example of parallel evolution ISTM. In general I don't think institutional memory of the kind your thesis would have to rely on persists in the way you are having to assume it does. People simply don't remember enough in detail that far back to make it work.
I think there are some sorts of ideas that readily spring up from certain readings of scripture - and those tend to get adopted over and over again, and often as a result of those parallel structures being somewhat analogous to something going on in the surroundings.
See an indigenous group I know of that was formed by someone converted by AOG missionaries. Where - many years later - they have a set of annointed leaders, a chief pastor (operating more or less as a pope of their movement), a celibate priesthood, and a system of 'homes' for female and male workers that are similar to convents/monastaries (along with occasional 'reformation' movements when monastic life is thought to have become too 'worldly'). In that case I'm sure the monasticism springs out from the Buddhist context in which they developed - rather than being some kind of long removed institutional memory of the Cistercians.
So, in your anointing example; apprenticeships in the kinds of working class communities liable to give birth to protestant movements - plus a reading of the story of Elijah and Elisha.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
I don't think that's the result of some kind of latent view on apostolic succession that suddenly sprang back to life.
I'm not sure.
Another example I was thinking of - related to the spat mentioned in the OP - was the quite sacramentalist view of believers' baptism in many pentecostal/charismatic circles, at least round these parts. The idea of baptismal regeneration is surprisingly often tied to believers' baptism ![[Eek!]](eek.gif)
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
Yeah, but if you are going to go all six degrees of separation, Anabaptists will 'usually' be dissident catholic by a similar number of steps.
Roger Forster, in a characteristic tour de force, makes a sterling attempt to trace the origins of the anabaptists to before the East-West split.
I'd have to say I'd put these kinds of claims on par with the naive Baptist claim that their movement went back to John the Baptist, or more seriously to Pentecostal claims that to find predecessors in the Montanists.
Not read Roger Forsters book - however I've read other books that have attempted to make similar claims - which go back at least 150 years or so. I'd argue that what the evidence shows is that similar movements broke out from time to time (the Waldensians being the most prominent pre-Reformation example) but that these groups didn't really influence each other - but simply represented a parallel approach to a powerful centralised church (you can find similar examples in Islam btw) and had very little in common apart from a drive to simplify the faith, a withdrawal from the Church and being treated as heretics by the official hierarchy.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Another example I was thinking of - related to the spat mentioned in the OP - was the quite sacramentalist view of believers' baptism in many pentecostal/charismatic circles, at least round these parts. The idea of baptismal regeneration is surprisingly often tied to believers' baptism
But then are you really making the claim that a memory of 'baptismal regeneration' was passed down across multiple movements and then re-surfaced many generations later?
I think that human beings tend to be 'sacramental' by nature [As a tangent; this is probably the reason why we were given actual physical rituals to replicate - in spite of the danger of idolatry], and that 'sacramental' thinking tends to resurface especially among people brought up in contexts which explicitly denied it. I can also totally see a charo leader of the 'I read my bible and make up my mind' persuasion read 1 Peter 3:21 (in the KJV - I notice the NIV introduces symbolic language) and decide that they believe in baptismal regeneration.
Something similar happened in the International Churches of Christ movement.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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I don't think Roger Forster's exposition is available as a book. I have it as a cassette (!) series, and I think you can get it on CD now.
Otherwise the go-to book on anabaptists is I suppose The Reformers and their Stepchildren.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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Mennonites (or at least some of them) sometimes like to claim that anabaptism was neither Catholic or Protestant and from the earliest days was as distinct from Luther was it was from Rome.
I suppose one might ask what the early anabaptist movement would have had to have been like if it really was something distinct from the Roman Catholic church and the developing notion of Protestantism. Was it a spontaneous expression of faith or did it carry over beliefs from Roman Catholicism? Were there mass conversions from the RCC and movement from other radical protestant groups?
One one level, it seems obvious that something of Catholicism was inherited, if nothing else the NT canon and various concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. But on another, I think it is possible to see these movements as being "informed" by rather that direct descendants of the existing Christian movements.
In some ways it is easier to see with Quakerism, because "anabaptist" was a phrase that was thrown around about various reformist and radical groups by the church establishment in England - when they may not have been "anabaptists" as were developing on the continent.
George Fox certainly had a lot of influence from various groups in the Midlands when we was growing up, but I don't think he had a lot of personal influence from the Anglicans. It was a messy time when there were lots of groups saying lots of different and radical things. Some of the stuff he said about Rome and Canterbury makes one think that he didn't personally know a whole lot about them. So I think there may be some truth in the idea that the Quaker were a "new" movement with little direct connection to what had gone before.
English Baptists, as far as the historian I used to know said, had a much closer relationship to the Anglican setup than the continental anabaptists - influenced by Bunyan and John Newton rather than Menno Simons.
But then Meno Simons himself was a RCC priest - so I dunno whether this argument really holds a lot of water.
Posted by Al Eluia (# 864) on
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Let's see. Anglicans started out as dissident Catholics, Methodists as dissident Anglicans, the Holiness churches as dissident Methodists. And I suppose Pentecostals are dissident Holiness...ists. That's so many degrees of separation to confirm my experience of Pentecostals as not at all Catholic. Some don't even believe in the Trinity (in the US that would be the United Pentecostal Church). Some wings of Pentecostalism hold to a very hierarchical ecclesiology, though, e.g., the Shepherding movement, which basically reinvented the three-tiered bishop/elder/deacon structure.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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AIUI, 'Pentecostalism' had two main roots. One was the idea of 'holiness' in some branches of Methodism, which tended to see a 'baptism of the Spirit' separate from and often later than initial conversion. The other root was a desire to revive 'the gifts' in particular speaking in tongues. These ideas came together in the notion that speaking in tongues could be a sign of the 'baptism of the Spirit/second blessing' experience.
This phenomenon could be found in mainstream churches as well as 'independents', as in the somewhat incoherent 'Irvingite' movement which started in the Church of Scotland, and more recently the strands led by Michael Harper, and by David Watson in York, both Anglicans.
In terms of organisation, many Pentecostalists are similar to Anabaptists in being independent churches, and in practising believer's baptism - but others vary. I think this is mostly the simple fact that those who go 'back to the Bible' generally find there very similar things, and are not necessarily interdependent but make those discoveries independently.
Interestingly the Brethren, the UK's home-grown 19thC Anabaptism, were heavily influenced by the strain of 'Irvingism' which led to the theology of the supposed 'Rapture and Tribulation', but largely rejected the other strain of Irving, the 'Gifts'.
If you're looking for neat links between groups in this area you are likely to be (a) disappointed, and (b) confused.
Posted by Al Eluia (# 864) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
AIUI, 'Pentecostalism' had two main roots. One was the idea of 'holiness' in some branches of Methodism, which tended to see a 'baptism of the Spirit' separate from and often later than initial conversion. The other root was a desire to revive 'the gifts' in particular speaking in tongues. These ideas came together in the notion that speaking in tongues could be a sign of the 'baptism of the Spirit/second blessing' experience.
Spot on. As to your second point especially, the segment of Pentecostalism I'm most familiar with put a lot of emphasis on restorationism. And I suppose a lot of Penties would simply say the Holy Spirit founded their movement.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
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Good post Steve, just to add that Irvingism turned into the highly ritualistic Catholic Apostolic Church in which charismatic gifts became very routinised.
[ 27. April 2017, 23:18: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Michael Harper, and by David Watson in York, both Anglicans.
Harper subsequently left for Orthodoxy.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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I know all of that, Steve. But the extent to which such churches turned their backs on their historical origins, and in not a few cases reappropriated anabaptist history as their own, had not struck me before.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Interesting thread.
On the baptismal regeneration thing, credo-baptist though I've been, I can't shake off the impression that ANY form of baptism in the early centuries of Christianity - both credo and paedo - was seen in regenerative terms.
I don't see a neat, cut-and-dried division between the two back then - from what I've read. I don't want to start a Dead Horse discussion on that, though.
It seems to me that both were in operation/ran parallel until the time that Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire - and I don't want to start yet another 'Christendom' debate ...
The fact is, even among the historic Churches, credo-baptism still persists in missionary settings or where people have not been baptised/christened as infants.
Did the early Church believe in baptismal regeneration?
It would seem so.
That doesn't mean they saw it in somewhat 'mechanical' terms - but yes, I think human beings are naturally 'sacramental' deep down.
I no longer resist that. I embrace it.
I can certainly see what Sipech and others are saying about the 'mongrel' versus the 'pedigree' thing and about apparent superfluity. But how much superfluity is superfluous? How do we know how much us superfluous and can be jettisoned and how much is useful to retain?
What criteria do we use? Who decides?
Also, how do we avoid a kind of reverse form of Pharisaisism or inverted pride? Aren't we the smart ones? We don't have poncey robes like those Anglicans?
And so on.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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I have observed that there is a tendency among my more pentecostal/charismatic brethren, unofficially at least, to associate baptism with regeneration (for instance through extempore prayers along the lines of "thank you Lord that (the baptisee) has become a new creation today").
The combination of this observation and the current local ecclesiastical spat - in which total non-recognition of paedobaptism is a factor - contributed to the genesis of this thread.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Sure, I get that ...
The point I'm making is that such a view wouldn't appear aberrant to someone from one of the more historic Churches and arguably, it could be said that those Penties were closer in that respect to the old Big C Churches than to Anabaptists or modern credo-baptist evangelicals.
But the whole picture is a mixed one. Wesley believed in baptismal regeneration as well as 'The new birth' in a more 'evangelical' sense at one and the same time.
I'm not suggesting that the Penties have retained a residual element of that in their spiritual DNA in an inherited way from Wesley - I'm simply suggesting, as with Sipech's pedigree / mongrel analogy (with some caveats) that once we start to stir the pond - as has happened over the centuries - things get murky before they settle down again.
Whether they are the clearer for it remains to be seen.
FWIW, I'd far rather a rough and tumble mongrel to a preened and pampered poodle.
But a lot of the 'pedigree' outfits are a lot messier than they might appear from the outside.
By the very nature of how things are going in our more globalised society it is inevitable that there is going to be mixing and matching and selection going on - as per Sipech's pick-and-mix approach.
I think that's quite healthy.
However, it can lead to some muddying of the waters and to things going skewiff. But that's a danger all ways round.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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Does it matter? Is the question to do with the extent to which x group is really familiar with the beliefs of y group they say that they are spiritual descendants from?
I'm puzzled by why a charismatic group would want to claim that they're somehow related to anabaptists - but it might just be that a leader has read a few things about them and has said that the ideas resonate. Not sure I see any problem with that.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sure, I get that ...
The point I'm making is that such a view wouldn't appear aberrant to someone from one of the more historic Churches
It does when from the point of view of a paedo-baptist church one of their (former) own is being "rebaptised" - a common occurrence here in France.
My own church is credo-baptist in practice but no longer requires believers' baptism as a condition of membership. We would baptise someone baptised as an infant at their request if they felt it made sense at that point in their spiritual journey, and I'd invoke the sort of principles we see in play with Jesus being baptised by John the Baptist. I'm a pragmatist, not a sacramentalist.
I've previously presented such an event as a confirmation of an infant baptism to a doubtful Catholic family member (successfully). I understand such a "confirmation" baptism is even possible in the Catholic church.
I don't think much of this would go down well with most Pentecostals/Charismatics.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I've previously presented such an event as a confirmation of an infant baptism to a doubtful Catholic family member (successfully). I understand such a "confirmation" baptism is even possible in the Catholic church.
I've witnessed it in Anglican settings too - prefaced with the words "this is not a baptism, we're just fully immersing this person in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit"..
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I'm puzzled by why a charismatic group would want to claim that they're somehow related to anabaptists
I don't want to get too much into local specifics here, but in the case that led to the OP it was not a claim but more of an accusation.
The pastor of a historic protestant church tarred a pentecostal church with the anabaptist brush following an implicit claim by the latter to the Huguenot ecclesiastical heritage.
My musings were that while the pentecostals were definitely not Huguenots by any stretch of the imagination, they weren't really anabaptists either.
Evangelicals here tend to be "protestant" when it suits them and "evangelical" when it doesn't.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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Oh I see.
The use of "anabaptist" as a term of abuse has a long pedigree. I'd certainly wear it with pride if it was hurled at me.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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You might be less proud if it was in response to attempted "ecclesiastical appropriation" on your part.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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Not sure what that means or why it is a problem. I appropriate anything I feel like appropriating ![[Smile]](smile.gif)
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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It's a problem if a twentieth-century denomination arrives in a country and lays claim to a centuries-old, persecution-rich heritage of indigenous Christians, even more so if it projects itself as having a monopoly on that heritage to the exclusion of more legitimate claimants.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
It's a problem if a twentieth-century denomination arrives in a country and lays claim to a centuries-old, persecution-rich heritage of indigenous Christians, even more so if it projects itself as having a monopoly on that heritage to the exclusion of more legitimate claimants.
Meh, I don't know if even that's really a problem. I don't know what the rules are in France regarding imported forms of religion (maybe there is something about registration with the state or something) but it's hardly difficult to find people making unsustainable claims about their group and downplaying others.
Are they trying to muscle into forms of funding that are only available to Huguenots? Trying to force more long-established denominations out from umbrella groups so they can take over?
If not, I struggle to see the problem. Best to just ignore them.
Posted by beatmenace (# 16955) on
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I fished out the Mennonite Brethren's 12 principles of Anabaptism , and i think that Modern Pentecostalism might struggle with some of these
http://www.usmb.org/menus/the-12-principles-of-anabaptism.html
However i can see the so called 'emergent' church groups meshing with the servanthood , non violence, classlessness and rejection of the authority of the state aspects of Anabaptism far better than Pentecostals (a lot of whom liked Trump) - particularly at the extremes (Anabaptist simplicity of life verses the the Prosperity wing.....not part of the same animal at all).
[ 28. April 2017, 11:57: Message edited by: beatmenace ]
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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mr cheesy: I think you have some sort of connection with the Grace Baptists, don't you?
Supposing your local raving Arminian pentecostal church unilaterally put on an exhibition about historic "Protestant martyrs" with the insinuation that they were the only church in the neighbourhood to be standing in that glorious tradition to the exclusion of everyone else.
Can you really not conceive of the local Grace Baptist congregation being a bit upset, and understandably so?
[ 28. April 2017, 12:01: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by beatmenace:
(Anabaptist simplicity of life verses the the Prosperity wing.....not part of the same animal at all).
Mennonites have done some weird things though. See the colonies in South America, collaboration with the Nazis in Germany, etc and so on.
Of course they're hardly unique in that, but it seems that having a historic peace church history is no particular protection against the lure of the hyper-conservative politician.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
mr cheesy: I think you have some sort of connection with the Grace Baptists, don't you?
Supposing your local raving Arminian pentecostal church unilaterally put on an exhibition about historic "Protestant martyrs" with the insinuation that they were the only church in the neighbourhood to be standing in that glorious tradition to the exclusion of everyone else.
Can you really not conceive of the local Grace Baptist congregation being a bit upset, and understandably so?
I don't think they would, actually. I think they'd most likely consider such professions as being lies which are only to be expected from churches which are obviously puppets of Satan.
Of course it varies, but some of the most conservative baptist groups and denominations already have a very low impression of other Christian groups and are already more-or-less exclusively communicating with like-minded groups.
btw, I know of Grace Baptists from the past, I wouldn't say that I have any particular personal connection with them at the moment.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
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I doubt if many Pentecostals would have heard of the Anabaptists ... Mind you, I think that many Christians today have little knowledge of their spiritual ancestry.
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
I doubt if many Pentecostals would have heard of the Anabaptists ... Mind you, I think that many Christians today have little knowledge of their spiritual ancestry.
Yeah, and this is precisely why I have doubts of the kind of 'trail of blood' style theories laid out above of theological transmission across multiple centuries, generations and schisms.
What is more likely is either parallel evolution - or a particular minister/theologian stumbling on some literature from the past without the surrounding context (John Zizioulas suddenly became popular among a number of new church movements a few years back).
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Ok, I understand what's happening now. The Penties are baptising converts from French Reformed backgrounds.
Why didn't you say so before?
Mystery solved ...
Because all the local French Reformed chap is saying is that they are 're-baptisers' -which the perjorative term 'Anabaptist' meant in the first instance. 'Look, Monsieur Calvin, these religious enthusiasts are baptising people who have already been baptised ... Zut alors!'
My guess would be that the Reformed pastor isn't making any theological or historical connection between the Pentecostals and the 16th century Anabaptists other than to highlight a parallel between their credo-baptist polities ...
That would be given added piquancy and offence if the Penties were using language reminiscent of baptismal regeneration - as it appears they have been doing.
'Hang on, we got there first ...'
Back in the day I remember how the restorationists would pick up on whatever heritage there might be of revivalist or enthusiastic religion in places where they were pioneering or planting new churches.
There'd even be 'prophecies' to that effect. 'For just as my servant [insert name of revivalist] worked to see revival here in his day, so my Spirit shall be poured out in place and many shall come to know ... Yadda yadda yadda ...'
I'd be a wealthy man if I had a fiver for every putative prophecy of that kind I'd heard.
I can't speak for the 'classic' Penties but the restorationist 'new churches' and folk like the Vineyard tended to have a smattering of knowledge of church history - or at least the apparently spectacular bits.
With some of them it even extended to 'spiritual warfare' type beliefs and practices connected with apparent 'curses' or spiritual blockages supposedly connected with historic events - be it Bede's story of the massacre of Celtic monks at the Battle of Chester or even - in one instance I heard - battles from the Wars of The Roses. I heard a Vineyard guy from St Albans declare that there was spiritual darkness over the town as a result of their being two Wars of The Roses battles there in the 15th century.
Somehow, by prayer and fasting, these 'strongholds' had been broken and God was now pouring out his Spirit.
What a load of baloney.
It simply illustrates that enthusiastic groups of this kind are highly eclectic and take whatever they want from history, from a selective reading of the scriptures and from a smorgasbord of favourite practices from hither and yon and bung them all together in some kind of incoherent mush.
Posted by Dark Knight (# 9415) on
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I'm Pentecostal. The OP seems to be about the roots of the phenomenon, rather than current practice. I was christened in the Anglican Church, but my Mum joined the Penties not long after my Dad's death, and it was expected that I would be baptised "properly" when I came of age. I did that when I was 13, from memory. So - in terms of actual practice, I was re-baptised, and in that sense an anabaptist.
I've actually written quite a few things about Pentecostalism, and I think trying to trace its roots are far from simple. Certainly the Holiness movement is one of the largest contingencies that lead to its origin, but Azusa Street is not the only origin anyway - there are Pentecostal denominations that also trace their origins to the Welsh Revival, John Alexander Dowie's Zion City, and Edward Irving and the Catholic Apostolic Church. Also, the influence of African American spirituality, particularly the remnants of vodun practices from East Africa, is very significant. One of the best introductions (still) on this whole thing is Walter Hollenweger's 1997 text, which you can find out more about here. He is helpful in tracing a number of "roots" of the movement, including Holiness, Catholicism, and what he calls the "Black Oral" root.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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Not many Mennonites or Baptists in your list, are there, Dark Knight?
Yes, my musings were about the roots of Pentecostalism and about how they might affect self-perception in unexpected ways.
Some people seem to think it's all just rediscovering bits of the bible for the first time or a joyous hotchpotch of bits and bobs from all over. Of course there's no way of telling, but I persist in the notion that denominations are better off coming to terms with their history and affirming it than they are pretending to be something else altogether - which, contra Gamaliel, is the real issue here locally (see here).
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Of course there's no way of telling, but I persist in the notion that denominations are better off coming to terms with their history and affirming it
There's an easy way of see if this is true, start asking people, find out how much of the history of their movement they know.
In general I find that people - unless they take a particular interest in it - tend to lack knowledge about everything that went previously, especially when there have been breaks in tradition either due to schisms (and people in past generations not talking about such things) or ancestors who were only nominally attached to a particular tradition.
Posted by Dark Knight (# 9415) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Not many Mennonites or Baptists in your list, are there, Dark Knight?
Yes, my musings were about the roots of Pentecostalism and about how they might affect self-perception in unexpected ways.
Some people seem to think it's all just rediscovering bits of the bible for the first time or a joyous hotchpotch of bits and bobs from all over. Of course there's no way of telling, but I persist in the notion that denominations are better off coming to terms with their history and affirming it than they are pretending to be something else altogether - which, contra Gamaliel, is the real issue here locally (see here).
I would say one of the frustrating things I find in this regard is that many of my Pentecostal sisters and brothers are not only anti-intellectual, but not particularly interested in the history of Christianity, and their own position in that history. That is not everyone (despite Baptist Trainfan's rather sweeping statement), but it does mean that at times any hint of scholarly critique or historical reflection is viewed with suspicion. I think it is related to the view that this "Latter Rain" is the final outpouring of God upon the Earth, and that all of the previous iterations didn't manage to get it done, and are therefore suspect. It does mean that people are a lot more vulnerable to ideas and paradigms (such as naive literalism, which irritates me to distraction) than they need to be, because they are unaware of the history of thought and reflection that has come before - ignorant, that is to say, of tradition.
Personally, I think Pentecostals are sacramentally located in the Zwinglian tradition, wherein the (two) sacraments are symbolic, not bearers of the real presence of Christ (re the Eucharist) or regeneration (a la baptism). So, there are connections to the Anabaptist roots, but probably through shared common traditions, rather than a direct relationship between the Anabaptists and Pentecostalism.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by chris stiles:
There's an easy way of see if this is true, start asking people, find out how much of the history of their movement they know.
I disagree.
I agree with Dark Knight that newer denominations are mostly ignorant of their history, and agree largely with the reasons he gives.
However, just because you are ignorant of your history doesn't mean that bits of it can't filter down an organisational culture over the generations.
And if when all's said and done Pentecostals are pretty much functionally, if not historically, anabaptists, it does indeed make any simultaneous bid by them to exercise a monopoloy on the legacy of historic, local protestantism ring a bit hollow.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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The point I was trying to make wasn't dissimilar to that, Eutychus - nor to the points Dark Knight was making - but I did express them clumsily and was probably a piano in the neck.
Sorry.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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I think it is a tad extreme to say that an organisation which practices baptism of people who are already baptised are anabaptists.
Obviously they are in the strict technical meaning of the word, but also fairly obviously anabaptist as a thing has grown into a fairly well established collection of beliefs that it would be very hard to show that a pentecostal church had.
No disrespect intended to Pentecostals or Mennonites/Anabaptists, but it is fairly clear that they're only superficially the same thing.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Sure, which is what makes me think that the Reformed pastor was making a superficial comparison. The Pentecostals were being just as superficial by laying claim to inheriting the Huguenot mantle.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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Yes, anabaptists was definitely a jibe, complete with references to Münster. But the provocation was extreme...
Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
However, just because you are ignorant of your history doesn't mean that bits of it can't filter down an organisational culture over the generations.
Sure - up to a point - but your general point upthread seemed to be more about *emergence* of practices after decades/centuries (which is where the DNA analogy comes in). Movements that have become internationalist (like pentecostalism) have weird transmission paths anyway - because they are influenced by all sorts of movements/teachers.
On the specific point of re-baptism, I used to feel very uneasy about it when I 'believed' in adult-baptism only but understood it as a an inevitable consequence of such a belief, and am generally opposed to it now. I probably went through a cage phase where I'd have thrown out similar comparisons under provocation.
Posted by Dark Knight (# 9415) on
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quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
I think it is a tad extreme to say that an organisation which practices baptism of people who are already baptised are anabaptists.
Obviously they are in the strict technical meaning of the word, but also fairly obviously anabaptist as a thing has grown into a fairly well established collection of beliefs that it would be very hard to show that a pentecostal church had.
No disrespect intended to Pentecostals or Mennonites/Anabaptists, but it is fairly clear that they're only superficially the same thing.
None taken. I agree with this.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
Yes, anabaptists was definitely a jibe, complete with references to Münster. But the provocation was extreme...
Well I guess that's fair if they managed to blunder in and press someone's buttons.
I suppose in the modern age, I think there are few Evangelicals who haven't somehow been influenced by other forms of Evangelical and even further afield.
I've no knowledge of the situation in France, but I wonder the extent to which the Reformed churches really have a claim to being descendants of the Huguenots. Are there long-established Protestant churches which can show linear relationships with them? Are they claiming that their beliefs are the same?
There is a French Protestant church in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral which has been there for centuries, I think originally set up by Huguenots, so maybe there is that kind of long-established pedigree in France.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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I might be wrong, but I thought the Reformed Church of France claims direct descent from the Reformed Church that emerged in Calvin's day - the 1550s.
My impression is that they were Presbyterian in organisation but operated more independently under force of circumstances and pressure of persecution. They were recognised but restricted after the Edict of Nantes in 1598 only to be formally repressed during the 1680s when the Edict was revoked.
That was why Huguenots began to arrive in London as refugees.
Some of the Huguenot groups developed decidedly 'enthusiastic' views and practices - outbreaks of 'tongues' and 'prophecy' in the Cevannes for instance - and Wesley seems to have taken some of those accounts seriously. From what I can gather, some of these developed under pressure of persecution - and there are accounts of some of the more extreme Huguenots rushing headlong into battle in the believe that had divine protection against musket balls ...
By and large, though, they don't seem to have been that different to Reformed churches elsewhere in Europe - although they'll have borne the marks of particularly intense repression.
So one could understand why they might react badly to some Johnny-Come Lately Pentecostals who claim to be taking on the mantle ...
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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The French Protestant crypt in Canterbury, like shadowy vestiges of French Huguenot presence in London's East End date back to the arrival of Huguenot refugees from the 1680s to the 1720s when persecution was at its height.
See: http://www.historytoday.com/robin-gwynn/englands-first-refugees
It seems that Protestants could still be executed in France as late as the 1760s. So their position was always precarious.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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I'm sorry, I was muddling up the terms again. As previously proven I know little about Reformed and Presbyterian churches - I meant to say that I'd be surprised if there were any Protestant churches in France (Reformed, reformed, Evangelical or otherwise) who haven't been influenced by other groups to some extent.
But again, I don't know exactly which churches are being discussed or how long they've been in existence.
I do know that there has been church-planting be conservative Reformed Evangelical Baptist types in parts of France in recent decades.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I might be wrong, but I thought the Reformed Church of France claims direct descent from the Reformed Church that emerged in Calvin's day - the 1550s.
That's right; Huguenot and French Reformed are (or were) the same thing.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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By Eutychus;
quote:
I don't want to get too much into local specifics here, but in the case that led to the OP it was not a claim but more of an accusation.
The pastor of a historic protestant church tarred a pentecostal church with the anabaptist brush following an implicit claim by the latter to the Huguenot ecclesiastical heritage.
My musings were that while the pentecostals were definitely not Huguenots by any stretch of the imagination, they weren't really anabaptists either.
Evangelicals here tend to be "protestant" when it suits them and "evangelical" when it doesn't.
And later....
quote:
Yes, anabaptists was definitely a jibe, complete with references to Münster. But the provocation was extreme...
Aah! Now this is a bit clearer. And I can't help feeling both groups were a bit confused about the history.
Presumably these Pentecostalists are 'credo-baptists' rather than 'paedo-baptists' and again presumably in a country like France with a Catholic past a lot of their baptisms will be 'rebaptisms' as implied by the term 'Anabaptist'.
Dealing first with the 'Munster' jibe, as we've discussed in many previous threads the Munster Anabaptists were something of an anomaly even at the time, and best regarded as one of many erratic experiments that eventually failed in the confused situation after the Reformation – modern Anabaptists definitely reject that kind of thing.
But also there's the irony that when the 'mainstream' Catholics and Protestants back then criticised Munster, they were criticising the aspect in which the Munsterites actually agreed with them. That is, like the Catholics, Protestants (Lutheran and Calvinistic alike) and indeed the Orthodox, the Munsterites believed in a form of Christian state and a kingdom of God in earthly form, upheld by state military and police power – unlike the majority Anabaptists and of course unlike Jesus, Peter, Paul.... The modern pastor Eutychus describes has also clearly failed to notice that!!!!
I'm not sure what is the modern position on Church and State of the French Protestants descended from the Huguenots, but the original Huguenots presumably followed Calvin and, like the Scots Presbyterians and the English Civil War Puritans, were aiming to replace Catholics as the state church. As such they were at least partly therefore being persecuted as a military threat to the state, a threat of violent revolt. Again, like the Munsterites but unlike mainstream Anabaptists....
The Pentecostalists involved almost certainly disagree with any kind of state church; though I'm less sure whether they might want some measure of wider 'Christian country' concept, also whether they would be pacifists.
On the wider point I can see why an 'evangelical' group working in France would claim to be related to the early Protestants there. Not by direct descent from Reformation-era or 17thC Huguenots, but simply as representing what the early Protestants stood for in terms of preaching gospel and new birth. I find myself wondering whether, despite the direct 'lineage', the modern French Protestant is also fully Bible-believing evangelical, or whether they are somewhat liberal in theology and somewhat less evangelistically active. In which case the Pentecostalists might actually be closer to the original Huguenots despite their lack of direct descent...?
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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Whilst I agree with some of what you've written there, Steve (although I wouldn't quite have put it as you have..) I think you're also in danger of muddling terms. Reformed is not necessarily Evangelical. Anabaptist is not necessarily Protestant. Protestant is not necessarily Evangelical or Reformed.
I don't know the French context, and it sounds like you don't either, so I'd be a bit careful when waving around your tarry brush.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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I don't know the French situation and hope Eutychus may enlighten us further.
In original terms, 'Reformed' effectively IS 'Evangelical', though not all Evangelicals are the Calvinists implied by modern usage. Bodies like the Evangelical alliance include many 'Reformed' groups. Equally a church calling itself 'Reformed' may by now have moved quite a way from the original Calvinism which is the rootspring of 'Reformed' ideas.
I'm not 'tarring' anyone here. On Munster I made the point that ironically the thing Munster is criticised about is actually the point they have in common with the critics, and on which majority Anabaptism disagrees with Munster and with the others. And I wondered how close the modern French Protestantism is to its roots; direct 'lineage' doesn't necessarily mean identity.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I don't know the French situation and hope Eutychus may enlighten us further.
In original terms, 'Reformed' effectively IS 'Evangelical', though not all Evangelicals are the Calvinists implied by modern usage. Bodies like the Evangelical alliance include many 'Reformed' groups. Equally a church calling itself 'Reformed' may by now have moved quite a way from the original Calvinism which is the rootspring of 'Reformed' ideas.
Steve, I suspect you and I are coming from a similar place, but to avoid looking like the idiot that I did on another thread I'd avoid talking about what Reformed is unless you actually know.
I'm told Evangelical isn't the same as Reformed.
quote:
I'm not 'tarring' anyone here. On Munster I made the point that ironically the thing Munster is criticised about is actually the point they have in common with the critics, and on which majority Anabaptism disagrees with Munster and with the others. And I wondered how close the modern French Protestantism is to its roots; direct 'lineage' doesn't necessarily mean identity.
Well you've made at least two statements that others who know more about it than either of us say is wrong. So I'd say you are actually tarring things by suggesting French Protestants are evangelicals. That may not even make sense in your own terms and definitions.
Posted by Jengie jon (# 273) on
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You need to define both "Reformed" and "Evangelical" to make that sentence either 'true' or 'false' and it can be either according to how you do.
Reformed is not monolithic and never was monolithic. If it has an originating date then it is the signing of the Consensus Tigurinus
Jengie
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
I'm not sure what is the modern position on Church and State of the French Protestants descended from the Huguenots, but the original Huguenots presumably followed Calvin and, like the Scots Presbyterians and the English Civil War Puritans, were aiming to replace Catholics as the state church.
This was undeniably the case, as the Ambroise Conspiracy in 1560 embarassingly demonstrates.
However, I think they gave up on that idea at the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 at the latest. Those protestants who remained in France formed the "Desert church" (in French).
I'm not a historian*, but I would make an informed guess that their idea of separation of Church and State developed then, and came to full fruition in the original expression of laïcité state-church relations, in which historic protestants played a major role.
It is blindingly clear in France today that the Protestants have a theological basis for separation of church and state which the Catholics simply don't have. Fundamentally, French Catholics see the secular French state as a temporary aberration and a Catholic-run state as the archetype.
(Marine Le Pen is playing into this archetype in a big way, incidentally; charismatics and pentecostals are also being wooed by her "Christian nation" subtext even though she dissed massacred protestants as having "interests contrary to the nation" a week or so ago).
quote:
On the wider point I can see why an 'evangelical' group working in France would claim to be related to the early Protestants there. Not by direct descent from Reformation-era or 17thC Huguenots, but simply as representing what the early Protestants stood for in terms of preaching gospel and new birth.
This is undoubtedly true, but it is at the very least crass to pretend there was nobody being persecuted for centuries for preaching the doctrine of the Reformation there before them.
(For historic French protestants, it could usefully be seen as a local emotional equivalent of the Turkish denial of the Arminian genocide).
Furthermore, even if the arrogance is discounted, it is simply not true to assert an identity as Huguenot, which relates as much to a historic lineage as to a doctrinal position. It's verging on revisionism.
quote:
I find myself wondering whether, despite the direct 'lineage', the modern French Protestant is also fully Bible-believing evangelical, or whether they are somewhat liberal in theology and somewhat less evangelistically active. In which case the Pentecostalists might actually be closer to the original Huguenots despite their lack of direct descent...?
There is a lot of loaded vocabulary in that paragraph.
Without creating too much of a tangent, all I can say is that I consider myself an evangelical in terms of having a "high view of Scripture" and pretty much adhering to the Bebbington quadrilateral, but these days I find these values to be represented equally well, if not better, in historic protestant churches in France as in those calling themselves evangelical.
==
*I recall The French Huguenots - anatomy of courage being a very readable book on this subject.
[ 29. April 2017, 17:42: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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You are making a lot of assumptions, Steve Langton. Modern evangelicals arguably owe more to Zwingli than Calvin.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Jengie jon:
You need to define both "Reformed" and "Evangelical" to make that sentence either 'true' or 'false' and it can be either according to how you do.
Reformed is not monolithic and never was monolithic. If it has an originating date then it is the signing of the Consensus Tigurinus
Jengie
That terms like 'Reformed' are not monolithic is one of the problems - or points - of this thread. At an early stage I think all 'Protestants' were in a broad sense 'Reformed' and also described themselves - particularly the Lutherans - as 'Evangelical' again in a fairly broad sense. Later 'Reformed' seems to have acquired a narrower sense by being attached particularly to churches and theologies related back to the Calvinist ideas.
In the current case I'm using 'Reformed' simply to mean that the Huguenots were in the Calvinist/Presbyterian tradition - which is also in loose terms part of the 'Evangelical' tradition.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
In original terms, 'Reformed' effectively IS 'Evangelical' . . . ..
No. In original terms, "Evangelical" meant simply "Protestant" or if anything more more specific than that, "Lutheran," while "Reformed" meant "Protestant but not Lutheran." "Evangelical" is still used in that way by North American Lutherans, and my understanding is that it is still used that way in continental Europe, though others would know better than I on that.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
You are making a lot of assumptions, Steve Langton. Modern evangelicals arguably owe more to Zwingli than Calvin.
I'm actually not making a lot of assumptions at all. 'Modern Evangelicals' is pretty wide category owing many different things to different traditions with lots of cross-fertilisations, with those doing it not always aware of the origins and transmission channels. And churches which were once emphatically 'Reformed' may now have beliefs Calvin wouldn't be happy with - a lot of former English Presbyterian churches are nowadays officially part of the Unitarian movement....
Modern Pentecostalism and its individual associations and churches have quite a few roots from all over the wider 'evangelical/Protestant/Reformed/Anabaptist' field, and also sometimes not 'roots' as direct links but independent 're-invention of the wheel'. The links are interesting academically - but to me the ultimate question would always be "Are they biblical?" as well as what channels they came through. I'm afraid to me the key Pentecostalist idea of seeing tongues as proof of the 'baptism of the Spirit' in biblically questionable (though too much of a tangent for this thread!).
Pentecostalists have in many cases developed ideas of church organisation or of church-and-state issues which are similar to Anabaptists; mostly these are independent developments based on both groups going 'back to the Bible', rather than one 'owing' the other. By and large Anabaptists and Pentecostalists recognise each other as fellow Christians and 'broadly evangelical'.
In terms of this thread the Pentecostals would appear to be 'technically Anabaptist' in terms of baptismal practice - but almost certainly not 'Munster-like', as charged by the French pastor, in terms of setting up a worldly militaristic 'Kingdom of God on earth'. Ironically the early Huguenots were much more 'Munster-like' than mainstream Anabaptists; though as Eutychus points out, it seems they have changed in ways I'll explore elsewhere....
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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Thanks, Nick Tamen.
Though if we regard the Lutheran movement as 'The Reformation' then Lutherans were 'Reformed' whether or not they used the label. At some point a distinction was made; but it doesn't seem to me all that important. In practice I generally use 'Reformed' to mean the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand - but I might also use it as a general adjective for "All the Reformation Churches".
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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by Eutychus;
quote:
This is undoubtedly true, but it is at the very least crass to pretend there was nobody being persecuted for centuries for preaching the doctrine of the Reformation there before them.
(For historic French protestants, it could usefully be seen as a local emotional equivalent of the Turkish denial of the Arminian genocide).
Furthermore, even if the arrogance is discounted, it is simply not true to assert an identity as Huguenot, which relates as much to a historic lineage as to a doctrinal position. It's verging on revisionism.
Yes that would be crass. If the Pentecostalists did that, they would be wrong. But referring to the Pentecostalists as 'Munster-like' would also be a bit crass on the other side, given that history of Huguenot attempts to become the French established church.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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You are using the term 'biblical' too narrowly.
All Churches / churches claim to be biblical.
What you mean by biblical is essentially that to be biblical is to agree with you.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
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quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Though if we regard the Lutheran movement as 'The Reformation' then Lutherans were 'Reformed' whether or not they used the label.
But that's the point—Lutherans have never used that label to refer to themselves, nor did other Reformation-era groups use it to refer to Lutherans. The label was used by Lutherans and others to refer to Reformation churches, primarily but not completely growing out of the Reformation in Switzerland, who were more thoroughgoing in their reforms than the Lutherans were (but not radical like the Anabaptists).
"Reformed" was always understood as being distinct from Lutheran. To call Lutherans "Reformed" is akin to calling them "Non-Lutherans."
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
In practice I generally use 'Reformed' to mean the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand - but I might also use it as a general adjective for "All the Reformation Churches".
And if you used it as a general adjective for all Reformation Churches, then you would be using it incorrectly.
[ 29. April 2017, 21:09: Message edited by: Nick Tamen ]
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Of course Calvin wouldn't have approved of Presbyterians becoming Unitarian, Steve Langton.
I rather doubt he'd have been that pleased about Pentecostals trying to claim they'd inherited a Reformed mantle either ...
Nor of apparently 'Reformed' Christians adopting a more Zwinglian approach to the eucharist or a credo-baptist position either come to that ...
You seem to consider that a particularly Western European and North American Anglo-phone form of evangelicalism is not only THE default biblical position but that it also applies to parts of mainland Europe where other forms of Protestantism were the norm ...
Yes, of course contemporary forms of evangelicalism derive from Reformation and post-Reformation developments but so do other forms of Protestantism that aren't evangelical in the way you are using the term.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
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Again, thanks Nick; I'll try to be a bit more careful in my usage in future.
Gamaliel, I think in this case I'm saying the same basic thing as you, just not in the same words. And part of what I'm saying is that over the years all the various strains of Protestant/Reformed/Evangelical/Anabaptist have gone in many different directions and met and rearranged ideas to the point that there aren't many straightforward links any more.
My primary point about the Unitarians was simply an extreme case of the point that 'lineage' doesn't mean 'identity', and that sometimes a body with a very different development may be closer in belief and practice to a Reformation era body than are the modern descendants of that body.
Posted by Dark Knight (# 9415) on
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Yeah, a lot more care in use of terms would be super.
Classical Pentecostals believed that speaking in tongues was the initial evidence of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, but that idea is hardly universal in the movement today.
I always become skeptical when someone starts talking about whether something is "biblical". What they usually mean, as you clearly do here, is "does this fit with my interpretation of the Bible?"
Finally, unless you've done some kind of survey I don't know about, the rather sweeping statement that anabaptists and Pentecostals regard each other as Evangelicals is unjustified. Here in Australia, Pentecostals and Evangelicals have been regarded as very different groups. I well remember a sign from a church in the eastern hill suburbs of my city (Perth), stating the denomination was "Evangelical (Non-Charismatic)". The Evangelicals in the early twentieth century in Australia were very hostile toward Pentecostalism, regarding it as evidence of demon possession (at worst), or at least delusion.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Dark Knight:
Classical Pentecostals believed that speaking in tongues was the initial evidence of being baptised in the Holy Spirit, but that idea is hardly universal in the movement today.
The Assemblies of God, which is far and away the largest mainstream evangelical denomination in France, has tongues as initial evidence of the baptism in the Spirit in its confession of faith*; this belief is shared by the Light and Life gypsy mission, an offshoot of the AoG and quite possibly just as big. Light and Life would be pretty close to believing, functionally, in baptismal regeneration, too.
==
*The UK AoG statement of faith now says the essential, biblical evidence.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
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Well, QED Eutychus - the AoG ARE classical Pentecostals. They are the paradigmatic classical Pentecostal denomination.
But I've detected a shift. For all that 'tongues' are cited as 'initial evidence' or 'essential biblical evidence' in their statements of faith, to all practical intents and purposes they tend to sit rather loosely by that 'on the ground' these days - rather as Elim always did.
Give it a generation or two and it'll be a 'nice to have' rather than a 'must have' ...
Meanwhile, @Steve Langton. Well yes, to an extent - but both Luther and Calvin believed in baptismal regeneration and both had a more 'realised' eucharistic theology than most evangelicals and Pentecostals do today.
You can't be selective and say, 'The Pentecostals believe you must be born-again, so did the Reformers ...'
No, it's not as simple as that. Yes, the Reformers believed in justification by faith. But they weren't Billy Graham.
We have to be careful not to redact our own favoured groups or approaches back into earlier centuries.
We have no way of knowing how Calvin would have responded to later developments in Reformed theology. Would he have welcomed Barth or Torrance? Would he have appreciated Dort? Would he have approved of Reformed Baptists?
You seem to take your own brand of Anglophone mild Anabaptism/evangelicalism and make it normative for all time.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Dark Knight;
quote:
statement that Anabaptists and Pentecostals regard each other as Evangelicals is unjustified. Here in Australia, Pentecostals and Evangelicals have been regarded as very different groups.
First, my comment was that generally Anabaptists and Pentecostalists regard each other as "fellow Christians" and "broadly evangelical" (note the small 'e'). I'm not too interested in the bit of this thread which is getting all fussy about terminology which isn't necessarily absolutely universal anyway, as per your own "Here in Australia..."
Also by DK;
quote:
I always become skeptical when someone starts talking about whether something is "biblical". What they usually mean, as you clearly do here, is "does this fit with my interpretation of the Bible?"
This one probably needs another thread. I think it's fairly obvious that whoever uses the word, "Biblical" tends to mean "fit(ting) with my interpretation of the Bible SO FAR". But for me it's also about a basic attitude of putting the Bible first; if I'm getting the Bible wrong I want you to show me, by properly framed argument and exposition, so I can improve my interpretation and understanding.
But I'm also putting 'biblical' against two trends/strands/traditions which seem to me to be decidedly and objectively unbiblical.
One is the 'liberal' strand where you get, for example, people taking a passage quoted of Jesus in the NT and saying, because it doesn't suit their idea of what Christianity should be, "Would our Jesus have said that?" Such an 'our Jesus' is clearly not biblical but someone making up the faith to suit themselves - and I struggle to see that kind of approach as even honest.
The other is the kind of church that tries to claim their church as an institution has some kind of privileged status in relation to biblical interpretation on the basis of ideas like 'apostolic succession'. Which of course can be extremely self-serving for those who have risen to authority in the institution and can then in effect put their interpretations 'beyond criticism'.
I tend to bear in mind there the words of Jesus to the religious authorities of the day when he talked about their "...anull(ing) God's Word through your tradition...." No, it must always be possible to do as Jesus did and challenge such authorities by and against the Scripture.
As far as I can see there are actually only two bodies that can credibly make such a claim to special interpretative competence, the Orthodox and the Roman Catholics - and both have effectively shown themselves in real terms incompetent by their acceptance of the Roman Imperial State Church and the bad things like Crusades and Inquisitions which flowed therefrom. Realistically that leaves the Bible as the authority.
A third trend I would regard as objectionable is when people make airy comments like "There are 'other interpretations' you know" and seem to think they've somehow just by saying that proved me wrong.
Yes, as a fluent reader for around sixty years, I very much know that there are 'other interpretations' - and the problem is that lots of them are mutually contradictory and they can't all be right. And in many cases it is quite important to establish which is right, and that's what I aim at.
I don't put my views forward as infallible Papal style declarations; they are my opinion with as much as possible back-up evidence or at least pointers to where evidence may be. If I'm wrong I seriously want to know. "You are wrong because...." with evidence, is helpful. A rather sneering condescending "There are other interpretations' with neither detail nor evidence is monumentally unhelpful. It also doesn't appear all that intelligent, frankly.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Here we go again.
![[Snore]](graemlins/snore.gif)
Sorry Steve, I know I can labour points too, but I've heard this stuff about why particular groups have 'disqualified themselves' in Pope Steve's eyes rather a lot of times ...
To return to a point I made earlier, you are making claims to universality that you just don't have.
Sure, evangelicals, Pentecostals and Anabaptists tend to regard one another as 'true Christians' ... but that isn't universally the case. I've come across full-on hyper-Calvinists from the USA who aren't convinced that Pentecostals are 'truly saved'. Sure, that's rare, but it is a position some hold.
Equally, as I've been told on another thread, quite rightly - I don't know anything about the church scene in Australia.
So here, on this thread, I'm inclined to defer to Dark Knight's first-hand experience of that.
I can see what you are getting at and, believe me, I do have a fair bit of sympathy with the broad points you are making.
All I'm saying is that none of us can make the kind of claims to universality about our own personal opinions in the way you appear to be doing here.
Just sayin' ...
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
May I also say, Steve, that there are some "liberal" Christians who try take the Bible very seriously but struggle to make sense of it in a vastly different world and taking into account scientific, critical and historic developments.
Not true of all, of course - there are some who are vastly dismissive of Scripture which they don't like or doesn't fit into their rationalistic mindset - but don't group them all together and simply write them off.
Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
But for me it's also about a basic attitude of putting the Bible first; if I'm getting the Bible wrong I want you to show me, by properly framed argument and exposition, so I can improve my interpretation and understanding.
Great. Does that mean that two months on, I can expect an answer to my question here?
Meanwhile, back on topic...
Posted by Dark Knight (# 9415) on
:
I won't address Steve's post here outside of a hell thread. Other than to say that complaining about fussiness over terminology in a thread which is discussing whether one form of Christianity is actually a form of another one seems pretty obtuse.
Yes, Eutychus, I accept that the largest Pentecostal denomination in France does espouse the Classical Pentecostal position, that is that speaking in tongues is the initial evidence of baptism in the Holy Spirit. It still isn't universal to all Pentecostals, nor has that been the case from the start. One of my students is currently writing their dissertation on what is distinctive about Pentecostalism, and as might be expected there is not just one thing, nor is Pentecistalism one thing, but a group of phenomena loosely united by some historical contingencies.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
Gamaliel;
Yes here we go again - but you followed by Dark Knight did raise the issue of what I meant by 'biblical' and from your references to 'Pope Langton' it seems you still haven't grasped the basic point that I don't remotely consider myself anything like 'infallible' - on the contrary, that would completely contradict my interpretative ethos!!! Which in turn rather makes the point that you appear NOT to be engaging with the arguments but just well basically sneering at ideas you aren't even trying to understand.
As regards the rest I did I think say that my point was 'generally' rather than claiming universality - did you really want me to spell out all the exceptions I know of just to head off your determination to suggest I was claiming universality? Surely my use of the word 'generally' was pretty explicit in denying a claim that I was describing something 'universal'??
BT - As you should know by now I'm not of the 'dumb wooden literalist' school myself, and I'm more than happy to engage constructively with "those among "liberal" Christians who try to take the Bible very seriously". Just not with those who try to solve their problems in the superficial way I described and who clearly are not taking the bible seriously. And who by implication are on the face of it being a lot more 'Papal' than I would dare be.
DK
Yes I see what you mean by " complaining about fussiness over terminology in a thread which is discussing whether one form of Christianity is actually a form of another one".
Thing is I'm dealing in the broad picture in which Anabaptists on the whole have certain basic characteristics, Pentecostalists on the whole have certain basic characteristics, and likewise the 'Reformed' in the 'basically Calvinist' sense. And in the course of history there have been all sorts of crossovers and mixing but also independent developments as well, so that Pentecostalists and Anabaptists often-but-not-always share some features - but are not 'identical'. And as I said there's the irony that the 'Munster' accusation is generally thrown at Anabaptists by precisely the groups whose own desire for a form of 'Christian country' means that compared to mainstream Anabaptists they have themselves more in common with the Munsterites in the matter they're complaining of!
In this context having an argument about whether the term 'Reformed' can be applied to all 'Reformation' groups or only to one section seems a bit too pernicketty even to a comparative pedant like myself.... And some of the other points made seemed to be getting similarly pernicketty and perhaps missing the bigger picture I was trying to discuss.
Eutychus;
I do expect to answer your point - though obviously not in this thread. I just took a considerable break from the Ship because I was fed up with the bigotry and simple nastiness, and your answer was one of the things shelved pro tem. Surprised you can't work out the answer to my point yourself, mind....
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
The point I was making - and perhaps labouring - was that whilst you might not consider your 'take' to be infallible, you post as if you think it is - and you also tend to 'universalise' your particular tradition / understanding as if it is the only possible or permissible one that anyone could derive from the scriptures.
Hence my jibe about Pope Steve.
I am trying - and failing - to get you to see that.
As for the Munster thing. I won't even respond to that as I've heard it all before. It ought to be a Dead Horse.
Nobody's saying the 16th century Catholics and Protestants who clamped down on the Anabaptists in Munster were paragons of virtue themselves. But Munster was like Waco. The Anabaptists there were completely nuts.
Does that make all the other Anabaptists nuts? No, of course not.
I would imagine the Reformed pastor in Eutychus's example didn't accuse the Pentecostals of being Munsterish in any literal sense - he was probably simply using it as a colloquial / proverbial shorthand way of referring to religious enthusiasm going wrong.
He'll have been hacked off because the Penties were laying claim to his Reformed heritage despite having bugger all to do with that heritage in any way, shape or form. As far as he was concerned they weren't simply stealing his sheep, but they were re-baptising them and sticking their own brand mark on the fleece.
Whether he is right to think that way isn't the issue. The issue is that he was pissed off and if we were in his shoes and shared his theology we might respond in a similar way. I know I would.
It's called empathy. You may have heard of it.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Any how, I did respond to the Munster thing, even though I said I wouldn't.
Apologies for that.
But Munster in and of itself isn't the point. The point is the perceived offence the pastor took.
As to whether Pentecostals are Anabaptists ...
Well, only by analogy.
That said, I do take the point you are making, Steve about cross-currents and cross-fertilisation between broadly reformed (small r) churches and movements. I don't have an issue with that at all.
But that doesn't mean that any of these groups can justly lay claim to anyone else's heritage or 'mantle'.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Thing is I'm dealing in the broad picture in which Anabaptists on the whole have certain basic characteristics, Pentecostalists on the whole have certain basic characteristics, and likewise the 'Reformed' in the 'basically Calvinist' sense. And in the course of history there have been all sorts of crossovers and mixing but also independent developments as well, so that Pentecostalists and Anabaptists often-but-not-always share some features - but are not 'identical'.
<snip>
In this context having an argument about whether the term 'Reformed' can be applied to all 'Reformation' groups or only to one section seems a bit too pernicketty even to a comparative pedant like myself.... And some of the other points made seemed to be getting similarly pernicketty and perhaps missing the bigger picture I was trying to discuss.
The problem is that you seem to be drawing arbitrary lines and using definitions that none of these groups would use about themselves.
You've also said this:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
But I'm also putting 'biblical' against two trends/strands/traditions which seem to me to be decidedly and objectively unbiblical.
One is the 'liberal' strand where you get, for example, people taking a passage quoted of Jesus in the NT and saying, because it doesn't suit their idea of what Christianity should be, "Would our Jesus have said that?" Such an 'our Jesus' is clearly not biblical but someone making up the faith to suit themselves - and I struggle to see that kind of approach as even honest.
The other is the kind of church that tries to claim their church as an institution has some kind of privileged status in relation to biblical interpretation on the basis of ideas like 'apostolic succession'. Which of course can be extremely self-serving for those who have risen to authority in the institution and can then in effect put their interpretations 'beyond criticism'.
Taken together you appear to be arguing that there is Truth within a theological understanding you've described as biblical and you've located that understanding as existing within something you think is too "pernicketty" to define, but apparently includes Calvinists, Pentecostalists and Anabaptists inside some kind of amorphous lump that you want to call - for a lack of a better term "evangelical", which includes Cavlinist, Reformed, Pentecostalists and other.
One problem is that some of these groups believe things which are mutually exclusive. Pentecostalists who say that the sign of salvation is the practice of tongues are by necessity separated from their Calvinist brethren who say that the gifts have stopped and who regard them with suspicion. Reformed groups may well have suspicions about Anabaptists, which is nothing to do with the understanding of the church-state.
So far from drawing a useful definition here, you've just introduced something arbitary and confusing.
Second, you keep going off on this beef about "bible believing". But what does that mean, exactly? All of these groups are "bible believing" but have come up with ideas that are contradictory. They can't all be right, can they? So what basis are you going to use to separate them?
And what does "bible believing" really mean anyway? Are you going to try to argue that the Orthodox or Roman Catholics don't believe in the bible? Or that George Fox wasn't deep into the bible?
I submit that the way that you want to define the Christian faith into those who broadly agree with you is so woodenly based the issue of whether they agree or disagree with the church-state that you've essentially created spiritual bedfellows of groups that in reality have little in common.
And your blundering into threads with this ridiculous pseudo-intellectual attitude does yourself no favours. You are persuading nobody of anything.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Indeed, and as Orthodox posters here who live in the USA have pointed out to Steve Langton more than once, Orthodox people within the 'Diaspora' and, one imagines, even some in majority Orthodox countries aren't dead-set on Church-State conjunction either.
Of course, some of them are, but I've been ribbed online - not here - by Russian Orthodox folk in the State who think that the CofE is a department within the UK government and who are dead-set against the union of Church and State as any US Protestant I've encountered ...
I 'get' what Steve Langton is driving at and in my younger, more fervently evangelical days I'd have been on a similar page to him.
But it's a rather arbitrary personal-preference kind of 'take' on things.
The only thing the groups Steve Langton seems to approve of are those who somehow remain outside of the nefarious Church-State connection he's erected in his own mind as the yard-stick for what is or isn't kosher.
Also, like many contemporary evangelicals he's convinced himself that Luther and Calvin were on the same page as he is. They weren't. At least, not in quite the way he seems to imagine.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
The problem is that you seem to be drawing arbitrary lines and using definitions that none of these groups would use about themselves.
From my perspective the problem is that the 'arbitrary lines' are already there, created by others, and I'm trying to pick my way among them.
It is, for instance, an 'arbitrary line' that in the wake of what everybody calls 'The Reformation' there is just one group, the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand, who are allowed to use the designation 'Reformed' My position would be that logically they are all 'Reformed' but that historically churches that actually include 'Reformed' in their title are (generally) of the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand. And as I've pointed out, just because they started there doesn't mean they are still in that position - the modern descendants may be far removed from the original in beliefs.
The Anabaptists are of course a classic example of peopple who originally did not 'use about themselves' the designation 'Anabaptist'. That's quite a modern phenomenon arising from a perceived need to distinguish the collective Mennonites/Amish/Hutterites/etc from the significantly different UK/US 'Baptist' tradition which shares 'credo-baptism' but can be ambivalent on the church/state issues - particularly in the US 'Southern Baptists' and some Baptists in Northern Ireland.
Although like 'Methodist' originally a name put by enemies/opponents, 'Anabaptism' has now been adopted to 'label' the distinctive European tradition.
Substance, which is what concerns me, is not in the titles used but in the actual practical beliefs. That Pentecostalists have a particular belief/practice centred on 'Baptism in the Spirit/glossolalia' for instance. Anabaptists have as well as credo-baptism a particular view of Church and State issues.
Munster had credo-baptism, but also believed in setting up a 'kingdom of this world' for Jesus by military power, and so actually had more in common with Orthodox/RCC and mainstream Protestant than with mainstream Anabaptism. And as I've said, ironically the other groups criticise Munster at precisely the point where Munster agreed with them....
In terms of the immediate thread I'm saying that (broadly) the Pentecostalists, though presumably credo-baptists and very likely sharing other features derived independently from Scripture, are not directly of the Anabaptist tradition.
I don't know the exact state of the French Protestants. They were AIUI originally of the Calvinist/Presbyterian tradition, and originally aimed at replacing the RCC as the state church. They now it seems have a 'separation of church and state' policy but not quite the same as Anabaptism. In the early days they were clearly in the broadly Protestant bible-believing tradition - I'm wondering whether the modern version is quite so much so.
IF (and note the IF!) the modern French Protestants are significantly 'liberal' in theology (and I will depend on Eutychus for that info), then despite institutional continuity they won't be in substance the same as their 16th/17th Century forebears and a separate 'bible-believing' group would in fact represent the Protestant tradition better than the lineal descendants of the Huguenots.
The Pentecostalists in question may have been simply wrong in portraying themselves as akin to the original Huguenots in comparison to the modern church descended from those Huguenots. Or they may have been a bit tactless but nevertheless correct in representing themselves as closer to the Huguenots than are modern liberal descendants of the Huguenots. I pose that as a question; Eutychus will know the answer better than me.
The Protestant pastor at least seems to have a somewhat sketchy view of both Anabaptists in general and of what Munster was about.
Your later comments really need a separate thread about the meaning of 'bible-believing'. At the moment too busy to actually start such a thread but would certainly contribute...
OH, BTW - tried entering 'Biblical but Bollocks' in my search engine and can't find a book of that exact title - clearer info please on that one; or is that just some kind of joke....
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Gamaliel;
quote:
The point I was making - and perhaps labouring - was that whilst you might not consider your 'take' to be infallible, you post as if you think it is - and you also tend to 'universalise' your particular tradition / understanding as if it is the only possible or permissible one that anyone could derive from the scriptures.
I just post what I believe and some explanation of why. I don't waste a lot of the Ship's space by posting all the possible qualifications and different views I know of as well. People are welcome to disagree and explain why in their turn. I welcome that. This is how debate/discussion is carried on. Get into the debate by providing well formulated alternatives/evidence/rationale/etc.
But no more about the actual meaning of 'bible-believing' on this thread, I suggest. I'd rather discuss that separately.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
From my perspective the problem is that the 'arbitrary lines' are already there, created by others, and I'm trying to pick my way among them.
It is, for instance, an 'arbitrary line' that in the wake of what everybody calls 'The Reformation' there is just one group, the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand, who are allowed to use the designation 'Reformed' My position would be that logically they are all 'Reformed' but that historically churches that actually include 'Reformed' in their title are (generally) of the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand. And as I've pointed out, just because they started there doesn't mean they are still in that position - the modern descendants may be far removed from the original in beliefs.
The Anabaptists are of course a classic example of peopple who originally did not 'use about themselves' the designation 'Anabaptist'. That's quite a modern phenomenon arising from a perceived need to distinguish the collective Mennonites/Amish/Hutterites/etc from the significantly different UK/US 'Baptist' tradition which shares 'credo-baptism' but can be ambivalent on the church/state issues - particularly in the US 'Southern Baptists' and some Baptists in Northern Ireland.
Although like 'Methodist' originally a name put by enemies/opponents, 'Anabaptism' has now been adopted to 'label' the distinctive European tradition.
I generally agree with that, although it doesn't logically follow that these groups regard each other as brethren or see each other as broadly parts of evangelicalism.
quote:
Substance, which is what concerns me, is not in the titles used but in the actual practical beliefs. That Pentecostalists have a particular belief/practice centred on 'Baptism in the Spirit/glossolalia' for instance. Anabaptists have as well as credo-baptism a particular view of Church and State issues.
Munster had credo-baptism, but also believed in setting up a 'kingdom of this world' for Jesus by military power, and so actually had more in common with Orthodox/RCC and mainstream Protestant than with mainstream Anabaptism. And as I've said, ironically the other groups criticise Munster at precisely the point where Munster agreed with them....
The point here is that you seem to be suggesting that the line which (for example) divides Anabaptists from the Orthodox is the church-state. I'm saying it is much more than that, and you're only saying that it is because you are fixated on the church-state theology.
quote:
In terms of the immediate thread I'm saying that (broadly) the Pentecostalists, though presumably credo-baptists and very likely sharing other features derived independently from Scripture, are not directly of the Anabaptist tradition.
I agree with this, although in the next paras below you seem to be arguing that it doesn't matter..
quote:
I don't know the exact state of the French Protestants. They were AIUI originally of the Calvinist/Presbyterian tradition, and originally aimed at replacing the RCC as the state church. They now it seems have a 'separation of church and state' policy but not quite the same as Anabaptism. In the early days they were clearly in the broadly Protestant bible-believing tradition - I'm wondering whether the modern version is quite so much so.
So according to your definition, if they were "bible-believing", they'd not believe in the church-state. Is that correct?
quote:
IF (and note the IF!) the modern French Protestants are significantly 'liberal' in theology (and I will depend on Eutychus for that info), then despite institutional continuity they won't be in substance the same as their 16th/17th Century forebears and a separate 'bible-believing' group would in fact represent the Protestant tradition better than the lineal descendants of the Huguenots.
This is the part that seems to be contradictory. You've said above that they've probably not got a historical link to the anabaptists. But here you've said that it is possible that they have a theology which is somehow closer to the Huguenots than those which actually have a historical link to the Huguenots.
So couldn't they also not have a historical link to the anabaptists but have a theology which is closer to them than the existing Mennonites in France?
Once again, your "bible-believing" definition is getting in the way here. Surely one can either show a linear historical link to a previous group or show a theological link back to the theology of a former group. What one can't do is impose an arbitary standard of "bible-believing" and then insist that because a modern group does or doesn't meet it then they are or aren't proper descendants of a former group. Because that's just nonsense.
quote:
The Pentecostalists in question may have been simply wrong in portraying themselves as akin to the original Huguenots in comparison to the modern church descended from those Huguenots. Or they may have been a bit tactless but nevertheless correct in representing themselves as closer to the Huguenots than are modern liberal descendants of the Huguenots. I pose that as a question; Eutychus will know the answer better than me.
The Protestant pastor at least seems to have a somewhat sketchy view of both Anabaptists in general and of what Munster was about.
Your later comments really need a separate thread about the meaning of 'bible-believing'. At the moment too busy to actually start such a thread but would certainly contribute...
Not sure I can be bothered to do that, because it would just you be stating your poorly constructed and half-baked theology as fact and then getting all hot-and-bothered when anyone dares to suggest that they might know something more than you do. Been there, done it. Not interested.
quote:
OH, BTW - tried entering 'Biblical but Bollocks' in my search engine and can't find a book of that exact title - clearer info please on that one; or is that just some kind of joke....
Not really a joke, just supposed to annoy people like you. Because the categories of "biblical" and "bollocks" so often seem to intersect.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Steve Langton, with the greatest respect, you are redacting your contemporary evangelical / Anabaptist 'take' on things back into the 16th century.
The differences between what we might call the 'classic' or 'Magisterial' Reformers and the radicals of the Radical Reformation was broader than the separation of church and state and the particular mode of baptism.
Luther and Calvin had a rather different Eucharistic theology to one another, for instance, let alone differences with the Anabaptists on that particular issue - among others.
Of course, pre-Enlightenment, none of them - Magisterial Reformers or Radical Reformers - were 'liberal' in the 19th/20th century sense.
So it's a bit bizarre claiming that non-liberal forms of Protestantism are somehow closer to the Reformers than liberal forms of Protestantism are - because a liberal option wasn't open to people in the 16th century. The liberal tradition had not developed by that stage - although one can see that the seeds of it were being sown to some extent - the Enlightenment is sometimes called the Bastard Child of the Reformation ...
Again, it's this half-baked, highly selective approach ...
You see something you like - Luther and Calvin weren't theologically liberal - and so immediately ally yourself with them - irrespective of how far their views may have differed from your own in other respects.
You see the Pentecostals as fellow travellers because of their views on the new-birth - being 'born again' - and their emphasis on Holy Spirit baptism/glossolalia as a secondary issue. Fine. I would agree on that ... however, it's by no means certain that Luther and Calvin would have done.
I repeat: Luther and Calvin believed in justification by grace through faith. But they weren't Billy Graham. They weren't evangelicals in the 19th and 20th century sense. They were Protestants in the 16th century sense.
They believed in baptismal regeneration.
They had a 'higher' and more 'realised' view of the Eucharist than most contemporary evangelicals.
They also had a more developed ecclesiology.
Forget Munster. The Reformed pastor in Eutychus's example was probably simply using that as short-hand for a particular form of religious enthusiasm that ran astray.
It's probably got bugger all to do with his beliefs about the separation of church and state and so on.
I'm sorry, but your posts appear to me at least to lack any real depth of understanding of the historical context and a kind of pick-and-mix approach to deciding what is 'biblical' and what isn't - ie. whatever it is you happen to agree with is 'biblical' - that which you don't agree with is 'unbiblical'.
The role of umpire and final authority doesn't rest with any group or even with the scriptural text - it lies with your personal interpretation of the text.
Whether we are Protestant, Catholic or Orthodox, the Christian faith has never been a matter of 'me and my Bible'. These things have always been thrashed out and apprehended in community ... whether in a Big C type way with the Big C historical Churches or a small c type way with the churches that emerged from the post-Reformation period.
There ain't any other way of doing theology.
No man is an island.
Posted by Nick Tamen (# 15164) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
It is, for instance, an 'arbitrary line' that in the wake of what everybody calls 'The Reformation' there is just one group, the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand, who are allowed to use the designation 'Reformed' My position would be that logically they are all 'Reformed' but that historically churches that actually include 'Reformed' in their title are (generally) of the Calvinist/Presbyterian strand.
It's not a matter of being "allowed" to use the designation "Reformed," Steve. It's a matter of paying attention what words actually mean and how words are actually used so as to further the purpose of using words—communication.
The point is that despite what may seem logical, as a matter of history and actual usage "Reformed" has consistently been used to refer to a specific branch or tradition growing out of the Reformation, not to all Reformation churches.
You are certainly allowed to use "Reformed" in whatever way that seems logical to you. But if you do so, don't expect others to assume or be aware of your personal definition.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
originally by Steve Langton
quote:
OH, BTW - tried entering 'Biblical but Bollocks' in my search engine and can't find a book of that exact title - clearer info please on that one; or is that just some kind of joke....
Not really a joke, just supposed to annoy people like you. Because the categories of "biblical" and "bollocks" so often seem to intersect.
So basically as I suspected, a joke; pity in a way, such a book from you could be quite entertaining - though not necessarily actually right, of course....
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
Nick Tamen, I wasn't actually arguing with your point - just making the other point about how arbitrarily that particular line is drawn.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
It seems to me that you are the one drawing the lines quite arbitrarily, Steve.
Nick's and other people's lines seem to drawn rather less arbitrarily than yours.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
By Gamaliel;
quote:
Steve Langton, with the greatest respect, you are redacting your contemporary evangelical / Anabaptist 'take' on things back into the 16th century.
No - but I might be considering that even with the bulk of such products as the Institutes, the Reformation was very much a 'work in progress' and in all the various derived bodies development has continued. And what you try to dismiss as my 'pick and mix' approach might rather be quite a sophisticated development.... Even at the time of the Reformation the idea of 'sola Scriptura' was taken further and more consistently by the Anabaptists than by either Luther or Calvin.
Not 'reading back' my take, then, but refining the earlier works and, in refining, taking the best and discarding what were obviously still errors - including at times errors by Menno and other Anabaptists. I think the phrase is 'standing on the shoulders of giants', innit??
Some developments, like both liberalism since the enlightenment and hyper-literalism from about the 1920s were misguided of course....
I think, BTW, that you are working with a narrow (to the point of caricature) version of what 'Sola Scriptura' means which would not have been agreed with by Luther, Calvin, Tyndale or Menno. I think they all understood that you can't just isolate Scripture from the world in which it exists, the languages it was written in/translated in/etc. So do I....
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Nor the tradition into which and from which the scriptures were written and from which they emerged ...
You forgot to mention that.
Whilst I might agree with you that theological liberalism was misguided, in terms of the direction it went at the extreme ends - leading to Spong and Cupitt - you've not given any indication as to why you think it may be found wanting - other than to state that you don't agree with it.
Equally, you clearly see yourself as the pinnacle - so far - of theological development that began with the Reformers. In other words, you know better than they did, you are more biblical than they were ...
Nice to have such self-assurance ...
Your viewpoint isn't more sophisticated than my admittedly caricatured portrayal of certain forms of evangelical Protestantism. Far from it.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Not 'reading back' my take, then, but refining the earlier works and, in refining, taking the best and discarding what were obviously still errors - including at times errors by Menno and other Anabaptists. I think the phrase is 'standing on the shoulders of giants', innit??
No, it is called lacking the self awareness to realise you are doing exactly the thing you accuse others of doing.
You've erected a theology which you admit is different to the early Anabaptists. So in the senses that you introduced earlier you are neither standing in the lineage of historic anabaptists nor are a modern believer in their theology.
Indeed, you actually believe in your own theology which is neither one thing or another. And then you use that as a standard to measure against whether someone is a "bible-believer" - not whether they're part of a church with a particular lineage, not if their theology is the same, but if they measure up against your standards and happen to be within your stupid definitions of "acceptable" and "unacceptable" Christian churches.
And then you wonder why nobody is even slightly interested in engaging with you on the level that you want. Nobody can persuade you of anything because you're using a measure that nobody else is using - because it only exists inside your head.
There is a term for this, it begins with b (and isn't biblical).
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by Gamaliel;
quote:
Equally, you clearly see yourself as the pinnacle - so far - of theological development that began with the Reformers. In other words, you know better than they did, you are more biblical than they were ... Nice to have such self-assurance ...
If only...!
Again, no, just making the point about historical development - that such development does occur and that we're supposed to do it.
A lot of this in the last few centuries has been 'restorative' development after the considerable departures from the Bible by the Orthodox and in particular the RCC. The efforts of the Reformers tended to be stifled by their continued involvement in 'state churches'; as seen for instance in Elizabeth 'freezing' development for political reasons in her national 'Church of England', and later as seen in the recent documentary on the AV/KJV Bible which showed King James insisting on translations of words like 'church' and 'bishop' to suit the kind of church he wanted.
The Anabaptists were among those groups which took the restoration further than the politically stifled state churches. But their development was also somewhat stifled as they became somewhat withdrawn in their efforts to survive persecution. Nowadays they're very much back in the game both of 'restoration' interpretation and of further development as per the Pilgrim Fathers' pastor's belief that God still has more light and truth in his Word for us to discover.
You should not, BTW, think of me as just 'me and my Bible' - it's me and lots of other theologians whose words i read and (inevitably as they don't all agree!) assess to the best of my ability, and I don't by a long way just confine myself to the ones I already agree with. And it's also me and lots of people with whom over the years I've discussed things face to face. I very much believe in biblical interpretation being done by 'the Church' - just that like Tyndale I see it as a collective effort by God's people as a 'congregation' (though wider than just the local congregation I'm most involved with) rather than being the job of a 'top-down' institutional church like the RCC or CofE.
The big point is I want to get it right! That is a major motivation to Aspies like myself and one of the reasons we make such good 'absent-minded professors'; it's not massive 'self-assurance', it's just "This is how it looks to me - if you think I'm wrong please show me...." We in a strange way don't care about the 'me' thing; 'getting it right' - and worrying at it till we do - is what matters.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
And then you use that as a standard to measure against whether someone is a "bible-believer"
NO.
To me a person who accepts the Bible as the ultimate authority is a 'Bible-believer' - and if two such 'Bible-believers' disagree we discuss it and try to work out not so much 'who is right' but 'what does the Bible actually say'.
Those who are not 'Bible believers' are the kinds of people I referred to in an earlier post - those who add the authority of an institutional Church to the authority of the Bible by claiming that the institution has some special interpretative competence and authority, and those who clearly don't believe the Bible as ultimate but essentially make up the faith to suit themselves - the "would 'our Jesus' have said that?" kind of people who are essentially telling the Bible what they think it should have said.
I should point out that modern Anabaptists don't just hang on to all their traditions. Indeed Mennonite mission in the UK - which I have some involvement with - consciously recognised that not all their traditions might be useful, and instead of planting Mennonite Churches as yet another competing 'denomination', set up a 'Centre' - currently based in Birmingham - to share Mennonite/Anabaptist ideas with anyone who's interested, in parallel with a UK home-grown 'Anabaptist Network' which has people in most UK churches - our local group includes RCs and Anglicans as well as people from the already somewhat Anabaptist-like groupings.
'Anabaptist' is not about doing things because they are Anabaptist - it is about faithfulness to Scripture even if we find that means junking some of the traditions.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
No, your position is self-contradictory.
You want to broaden the burden beyond the local congregation and make it more 'connexional' but other than your particular take on what is or isn't 'biblical' you have no yardstick to offer as to how we are to measure the effectiveness of that.
You want to make sure we 'get it right' - fine. But what assurance do you have that you and your connexion of like-minded churches are more likely to get things right than any other grouping - be it the kind of top-down, institutional Big C Churches you deplore or some kind of loose confederation of independent evangelical churches?
You are pursuing a chimera.
You still haven't demonstrated that what constitutes 'being biblical' goes beyond 'What Steve Langton and his mates believe to be biblical.'
This isn't anything to do with being an 'aspie' or an 'absent-minded professor.' It's to do with logic and with internal contradictions within your argument.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
To me a person who accepts the Bible as the ultimate authority is a 'Bible-believer' - and if two such 'Bible-believers' disagree we discuss it and try to work out not so much 'who is right' but 'what does the Bible actually say'.
Those who are not 'Bible believers' are the kinds of people I referred to in an earlier post - those who add the authority of an institutional Church to the authority of the Bible by claiming that the institution has some special interpretative competence and authority, and those who clearly don't believe the Bible as ultimate but essentially make up the faith to suit themselves - the "would 'our Jesus' have said that?" kind of people who are essentially telling the Bible what they think it should have said.
You are quite delusional. There are many groups who are not "for" the institutional church and which claim to be based on the bible and yet get to completely different and contradictory positions.
To take two random examples: Strict and Particular Baptists and Amish. They're almost totally different and would not recognise each other as Christian.
To say that you can measure who you are close to theologically by their attitude to church-state is quite wrong. You are utterly delusional.
quote:
I should point out that modern Anabaptists don't just hang on to all their traditions. Indeed Mennonite mission in the UK - which I have some involvement with - consciously recognised that not all their traditions might be useful, and instead of planting Mennonite Churches as yet another competing 'denomination', set up a 'Centre' - currently based in Birmingham - to share Mennonite/Anabaptist ideas with anyone who's interested, in parallel with a UK home-grown 'Anabaptist Network' which has people in most UK churches - our local group includes RCs and Anglicans as well as people from the already somewhat Anabaptist-like groupings.
Nobody cares about the Mennonite groups in the UK who can barely get enough people together to have an enjoyable dinner party and who have never ever ever had and strong historical links with the continental Mennonites or the various groups which spawned from them in North America. Your whole notion is bogus: you've created a religion you want to believe in and then you're using it as a measure against which you're measuring everyone else.
You know zip all about the North American Mennonites - who have considerable variation in the theology about issues you think are cut-and-dried - and nothing about the existing Mennonites in Europe. In fact, I don't think you know anything worth knowing about the anabaptists, period - because you never bother to actually do any study beyond opening a book and establishing from the first page that you either (a) already know more than the author or (b) it is obviously complete garbage.
quote:
'Anabaptist' is not about doing things because they are Anabaptist - it is about faithfulness to Scripture even if we find that means junking some of the traditions.
That's utter garbage. The Anabaptist and Mennonite tradition is a particular way to understand scripture. Within which there is a lot of variation in ideas.
To make the claim that this is the only possible way to truly understand scripture just shows how stupid you are.
And to claim that you're somehow a professor. No.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
This isn't anything to do with being an 'aspie' or an 'absent-minded professor.' It's to do with logic and with internal contradictions within your argument.
The hilarious part of this is that the Mennonites have been tearing themselves apart on various Dead Horse issues that Steve Langton thinks are obvious.
Funny that, even his own professed tradition can't instantly agree the ideas he claims are as obvious as the nose on the face.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
"This is how it looks to me - if you think I'm wrong please show me...."
People are showing you.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
To say that you can measure who you are close to theologically by their attitude to church-state is quite wrong. You are utterly delusional.
I said no such thing - end of argument.
Reality is that on most issues I do 'mere Christianity' - the common ground of most Christians till comparatively recently. And I consider that 'mere Christianity' far more important than the church and state issue. Nevertheless the church and state issue has massive practical importance especially in a world many of whose problems are another state religion, Islam.
And for example I am a lot closer theologically to traditional Anglicans - with whom I disagree about Church and State - than to Jehovah's Witnesses with whom I would largely agree about church/state matters. And I frequently work with Anglicans and others.
What I did say was that in the case of Orthodox and RCC, who make a claim to special competence and authority in biblical interpretation, their very emphatic involvement in the state church from the time of Constantine onwards very much militates against that claim to special authority - if they could get that one wrong to the tune of so many needless deaths over centuries in Crusades, Inquisitions and holy wars, and so many cases of Christians being led to believe they were right to kill in the name of Jesus, their claim to special authority is not merely worthless, it has totally negative worth.
Yet they still, of course, get most of the 'mere Christianity' right, and so I am still able to regard most Orthodox and RC as fellow Christians and derive benefit from many of their thinkers - though more perhaps from RCs than Orthodox....
My approach is to say
1) what does the Bible say? The Bible as a whole and 'according to the literal sense' as Tyndale and the Reformers applied it. NOT in a 'dumb wooden literal' style because quite simply that's not how language in general works anyway.
2)It's then a case of "This is how I see it so far; this is why in biblical terms; if you think I'm wrong show me how and why...." And that is exactly what you're not doing....
Like many modern evangelicals I sit light to denominational distinctions precisely because the 'mere Christianity' is more important that the denominational distinctives that often don't have a biblical origin anyway. Why do you apparently see that as a problem?
As for "And to claim that you're somehow a professor. No."
Again, I said no such thing. I merely referred, as you should have realised, to the common description of AS as 'absent-minded-professor syndrome'. If you're so stupid as to try to portray that as me 'claiming to be somehow a professor'....
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Yeah. Mere Christianity.
Near Christianity more like.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Like many modern evangelicals I sit light to denominational distinctions precisely because the 'mere Christianity' is more important that the denominational distinctives that often don't have a biblical origin anyway. Why do you apparently see that as a problem?
Many Mennonites say that they're not bloody Protestants, never mind Evangelicals. How hard is that to understand?
Why should anyone care about your stupid self-created measure of what is or isn't an Evangelical - given it includes people who say that they're not evangelicals?
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
Nobody cares about the Mennonite groups in the UK who can barely get enough people together to have an enjoyable dinner party and who have never ever ever had and (?'any'? SL) strong historical links with the continental Mennonites or the various groups which spawned from them in North America.
It is rather in the nature of the case that if Mennonite mission has been conducted as I described there are not all that many Mennonites as such in the UK - though those in the few actual officially Mennonite churches could have a very large dinner party.
The said Mennonite missions have been run from the US and Canada by North American Mennonites and I know several of them personally, including Mike and Cheryl Nimz who run the Birmingham centre. One of the results of the Mennonite style of mission has been the UK Anabaptist Network which has considerable links with the Mennonites elsewhere and also with related groups like the Hutterites. And certainly my local group is pretty well read in both modern and older Mennonite theology and spirituality.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
by mr cheesy;
quote:
Many Mennonites say that they're not bloody Protestants, never mind Evangelicals. How hard is that to understand?
Anabaptists do indeed represent a different way to both Catholics and to the Lutheran/Reformed/Anglican and similar Protestants. And indeed in the past were persecuted by many Protestants. And would also wish to be distinguished from much in the US that calls itself 'Evangelical'. I'm well aware of this. How hard is it for you to understand that some interesting new things are happening nowadays? And are about a lot more people than just Steve Langton.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
Yeah. Mere Christianity.
Near Christianity more like.
You'll have to take that one up with C S Lewis....
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Reality is that on most issues I do 'mere Christianity' - the common ground of most Christians till comparatively recently.
This assertion (the second part) simply isn't true.
The common ground of most Christians was, and remains, the acceptance of the ancient creeds and the collegiate interpretation of the Bible past and present. This is a pretty much uncontentious statement: the majority of Christians are members of the ancient Orthodox and Catholic churches, and their reformed off-shoots.
It is the non-episcopal protestant churches which are furthest from the common ground of Christianity.
Whether the common ground of Christianity is the correct place to stand is a different argument.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Lewis borrowed the term from Baxter, of course, who was nothing if not eirenic.
Fair enough.
Meanwhile, I'm sure there's plenty of new and interesting stuff going on in contemporary Mennonite thought. I'd be interested in hearing it.
What I'm less interested in hearing are the same arguments you've trotted out a million times on your hobby-horses.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Anabaptists do indeed represent a different way to both Catholics and to the Lutheran/Reformed/Anglican and similar Protestants. And indeed in the past were persecuted by many Protestants. And would also wish to be distinguished from much in the US that calls itself 'Evangelical'. I'm well aware of this. How hard is it for you to understand that some interesting new things are happening nowadays? And are about a lot more people than just Steve Langton.
As it happens, I know quite a few Mennonites and quite a few other Anabaptists, and I can state without contradiction that your ideas are quite different to theirs - to the extent that you are a total outlier with respect to contemporary anabaptist thought. You don't even represent accurately the thing you are representing, never mind any other the other things you guff about.
Yes, I am fully aware that a small number of North American Mennonites have been involved in the Anabaptist network in the UK and the Mennonite Centre. Neither of these mean that you, as a member of the UK Anabaptist Network who happens to know them and happens has the slightest clue about the breadth of opinion within North American Mennonites, never mind the Church of the Brethren, the (various kinds of) Amish, Hutterites etc that exist in North America but don't get involved in sending workers via the Mennonite Central Committee.
That is all stating the obvious, Steve.
You're full of shite and not only have you derailed a thread because it happened to have "anabaptist" in the title, you've managed to spill a whole load of nonsense on this thread in the usual way that you mistake for constructive argument.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Meanwhile, I'm sure there's plenty of new and interesting stuff going on in contemporary Mennonite thought. I'd be interested in hearing it.
There seems (as far as I can tell from this distance) to be some interesting developments regarding LGBT people in various of the Mennonite denominations.
Of course there are various conservative denominations amongst the broad Mennonite tradition too, but there seems to be some real struggling to get to grips with issues of sexuality in some of the groups.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Sorry, I didn't mean to post that without finishing -
There have been quite a lot of controversy about "what it means to be Mennonite" and the legacy of John Howard Yoder (not in a good way) - and I think genuinely some serious talk amongst some about how to relate to the secular powers.
Some seem to have become anarchists from the anabaptist/mennonite fold - and seem to have issues with all forms of authority including the police - not just because of bad things that police do but because they're agents of the state and are therefore ungodly.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Anyway, this is a long way from Pentecostals in France. It seems highly unlikely that they're (even if they're claiming to be anabaptists, which I'm still not clear that they are) really taking cues from the Mennonite or Anabaptist tradition in North America or even France.
But then if they're claiming to be inheritors of the Reformed tradition, I wonder to what extent that they're really getting to grips with classical Reformed theology and practice in France and/or more recent theological innovations in the Reformed movement as a whole.
I suspect neither. I'd guess that they're mostly going to be taking cues from other Pentecostalists rather than either of these other traditions, so claims to be inheritors of the Huguenot tradition or the Anabaptist tradition are mostly moot.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
Simply to avoid further 'derailment' by the determination of others to personally attack me, I'm out of this thread.
Just two points;
1) I am NOT a Mennonite and do not claim in any formal way to 'represent' them. That should save a lot of wasted time in any future attacks on me. I do regard myself as being within the broad Anabaptist movement as sharing key ideas like separation from the state and pacifism. I do seem to be broadly in line with thinkers like Menno Simons and Michael Sattler the prime author of the Anabaptist 'Schleitheim Confession'. I'm perhaps somewhat less in line with some later developments - but in some cases it seems the Mennonites themselves are going back to the older thinking too.
Doc Tor - Who says I don't accept the 'ancient creeds'? But they of course were intended to express biblical truth. And until recently that biblical truth was the 'common ground' despite the aberrations of Orthodox, RCC and such as the Anglicans. (In a thread some months back it was asked how many of the Anglicans' 39 Articles people believed - I seem to recall I probably believed more than most of the Anglicans contributing...). I wouldn't have great difficulty with the Westminster Confession and its offshoots either.
As I'm frequently pointing out to people worried by denominational variety, Christians largely agree on a huge amount of common belief - at least until the recent liberal inroads. The differences are relatively on the fringes, though of course an added unbiblical difference that causes people to go on Crusades or run Inquisitions and burn people at the stake is very important and needs dealing with!
As I identify it from various churches' confessions, the differences outside 'Mere Christianity' concern how the church should be governed, how it relates to the state, credo-baptism vs paedo-baptism, and some ideas about Communion/Mass.
Collegiate interpretation - yes, basically. But note that post-Constantine a lot of bets are off, so to speak, because the Constantinian state Church has been massively redefined compared to the original. A majority based on a 'Christian' state with compulsory belief enforced by Inquisition is a very different thing to a najority of a church independent of the state which people only join if they think the beliefs are so important as to be worth the risk of persecution.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
I'm not saying you don't accept the ancient creeds or collegiate interpretation of doctrine. I'm saying that's not what you said was the common ground of Christianity.
If you want to row back on that, that would be welcome.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
The state Church was persecuted in Soviet Russia and its satellites just as much as the non-state churches.
Again, you paint with a very broad brush.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
1) I am NOT a Mennonite and do not claim in any formal way to 'represent' them. That should save a lot of wasted time in any future attacks on me. I do regard myself as being within the broad Anabaptist movement as sharing key ideas like separation from the state and pacifism. I do seem to be broadly in line with thinkers like Menno Simons and Michael Sattler the prime author of the Anabaptist 'Schleitheim Confession'. I'm perhaps somewhat less in line with some later developments - but in some cases it seems the Mennonites themselves are going back to the older thinking too.
<snip>
As I'm frequently pointing out to people worried by denominational variety, Christians largely agree on a huge amount of common belief - at least until the recent liberal inroads. The differences are relatively on the fringes, though of course an added unbiblical difference that causes people to go on Crusades or run Inquisitions and burn people at the stake is very important and needs dealing with!
As I identify it from various churches' confessions, the differences outside 'Mere Christianity' concern how the church should be governed, how it relates to the state, credo-baptism vs paedo-baptism, and some ideas about Communion/Mass.
And there's the rub, Steve. Your theology isn't Mennonite, it isn't anything other than something you've created for yourself. It has no basis in any existing tradition, it isn't informed by any identifiable branch of Christianity and basically amounts to you declaring certain things are correct and expecting others to engage/debate with you on that level.
You are utterly wrong in every respect of the above. Wrong to say that there are no significant differences between churches, wrong to say that the difference between the "biblical" and the "unbiblical" is clear and obvious, wrong to say that Mere Christianity as a thing exists anywhere outside of your head.
The sum of your theology is that the "church-state is bad", and you can't compute anything outside of it. You pick and choose between varied churches and theologies based on that criteria and then are surprised when others suggest that things might be a tad more complicated than you're suggesting.
Nobody cares. Get a blog, then we can all ignore it.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
I'm not saying you don't accept the ancient creeds or collegiate interpretation of doctrine. I'm saying that's not what you said was the common ground of Christianity.
If you want to row back on that, that would be welcome.
It's pretty disingenuous for those who practice the baptism of persons who are already baptised to say that they believe in the "One baptism for the forgiveness of sins".
The only available options are (a) that they don't believe in the creed (b) that they've reinterpreted the text to mean that their baptism is the real one (as opposed to that fake other one) or (c) that there is some other "baptism of the Holy Spirit" which is the Real Thing.
But, as seems pretty obvious, there is little point in saying that one Believes in the Historic Creeds if in practice one believes in (b) or (c) in such a way as to exclude the majority of people who regularly recite the creeds.
Because that's like saying "I'm a member of the human race - look I have a belly button... but wait, mine was given to me by the fairies and only it is the authentic type of belly button and the one that you all have is a fake.."
[ 03. May 2017, 06:50: Message edited by: mr cheesy ]
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
I think you have put your finger on two real points here - at least for Baptists and Anabaptists (and others such as Pentecostalists who follow their baptismal practice.
For many of them would take a position which at least approximates to your point (b). They wouldn't say that infant baptism is "fake" but that it is "misguided" in that, they would say, infants are not the "proper" subjects for baptism - and, if this goes across large parts of church tradition, then so be it! You will appreciate that this causes difficulty in some ecumenical situations, however cleverly some Baptist theologians have tried to reconcile the two positions.
They would say that their belief is particularly cogent in "State Church" situations where it is the norm for folk who usually play no part in church life to have their children baptised. Possibly their case is less strong in places such as today's Britain where many or most people who choose to have their child baptised are indeed active Christians.
The other point where Baptists (and, I suspect, many evangelicals in general) struggle is with the phrase "for the forgiveness of sins" as this appears to imply that baptism is in itself regenerative. We would say that it is an outward sign of an inner spiritual transaction which gas already taken place - though increasingly it is also being regarded a a means of grace which confers some kind of (undefined) "blessing".
Dead Horses here we come?
[ 03. May 2017, 07:51: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
I don't think evangelicals in general or Baptist evangelicals in particular are creedal. The only way they can say that they agree with the Historic Creeds is by reinterpreting them.
But then, to be fair, I disagree with the Doc above, I don't think the mark of Christianity is solely by assenting to the creeds. I'm not sure this has been true for a very long time.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
Historically, Baptists (and Independents) were strongly anti-credal - even today the Baptist Union of Great Britain has no more than a "Statement of Principle", and I had a gentleman in my last church who was opposed on principle to including Creeds in services.
However many Baptist churches today have swung to the opposite extreme and adhere to detailed "Statements of Faith".
Many years ago I was at a Churches Together Forum where the "keynote speaker" was George Carey, then ++Cantuar. In his address he suggested that, as trying to group Christians together around a common Eucharist had proved impossible, we should group around a united baptism instead. Cue apoplexy among Baptists and Salvationists, among others, and the burning of much midnight oil to produce a statement that would show the Archbishop the eimpossibility of his suggestion!
[ 03. May 2017, 08:46: Message edited by: Baptist Trainfan ]
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Baptist Trainfan:
However many Baptist churches today have swung to the opposite extreme and adhere to detailed "Statements of Faith".
True - they're clearly creedal in the sense of needing to believe an agreed bunch of prepositions, they're non-creedal in terms of the historic creeds.
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
Correct. And I wonder if one of the reasons they could be non-credal was that, in fact, they knew they shared the same set of beliefs and so never needed to affirm them.
Posted by Doc Tor (# 9748) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
But then, to be fair, I disagree with the Doc above, I don't think the mark of Christianity is solely by assenting to the creeds. I'm not sure this has been true for a very long time.
Not perhaps in western protestant churches.
But Anglican churches, Catholic churches and Orthodox churches, certainly. Assenting to the creeds is still a critical part of the apostolic faith.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Doc Tor:
Not perhaps in western protestant churches.
But Anglican churches, Catholic churches and Orthodox churches, certainly. Assenting to the creeds is still a critical part of the apostolic faith.
Well yes, obvs. I think the interesting question is how far back non-creedal Christianity goes. In the sense of "I'm rejecting the historic creeds and am inserting my own" it goes back as far as the reformation. But I think there is some evidence that it goes back a lot further too.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Well, sure, the Arians didn't accept the Nicene Creed ...
There were people before the historic creeds were formulated who wouldn't have agreed/signed up for them. And let's be honest, Nicea was a close-run thing ...
That doesn't mean that we have to see all fringe, break-away or non-credal groupings throughout history as some kind of proto-Protestants or proto-Anabaptists ...
That was the mistake E H Broadbent made in 'The Pilgrim Church'. Anything that lay outside the purlieu of Rome or one of the Eastern Patriarchates - I'm not sure he dealt with the 'Oriental Orthodox' - was seen as somehow legitimate for that very reason.
They had broken away from Rome or Orthodoxy - therefore they must have been ok - however eccentric or 'out-there' their beliefs actually were ...
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Well, sure, the Arians didn't accept the Nicene Creed ...
There were people before the historic creeds were formulated who wouldn't have agreed/signed up for them. And let's be honest, Nicea was a close-run thing ...
That doesn't mean that we have to see all fringe, break-away or non-credal groupings throughout history as some kind of proto-Protestants or proto-Anabaptists ...
No, true. I suppose I'm still of the opinion that there was always a strand of Christianity that stood outside of the idea of bolting things down into creeds and yet didn't slip into extreme heretical positions. Of course, I can understand that this might seem like a contradiction in terms.
Whilst it is obviously true that if one goes back a thousand years there was only "the church" (moreorless) but I still think there was more diversity with respect to things like acceptance of the creed than some allow.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Of course, and the rank and file wouldn't have had much idea of theology or creeds but simply gone on what they heard in sermons (the Mass itself being in Latin in the West) or saw in Mystery Plays or depicted on tympanum and so forth ...
There are some tantalising hints of people privately not even believing in God at all - from some 14th century letters and accounts that historians have found ...
I don't imagine for one minute that everyone who recites the Creed in an RC, Orthodox or Anglican setting necessarily does so with complete and utter conviction.
The Creeds are there as a framework or guideline.
I'm not quite at Frankie Schaeffer's 'Christian Atheism' stage but I can see what he's getting at - 'I love my wife some days, other days I fight with her - but she's still my wife'.
Everything is messier than it looks.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Everything is messier than it looks.
Yes but that's quite a problem if the measure of Christianity is acceptance of the historic creeds.
The irony of course being that those who reject the historic creeds often seem to hold much tighter to whatever rules they've created to replace them.
tbh, I think there is something noble about writing down what you believe and sticking to it. My problem (with Steve above) is not about that urge but with the next step (ie then using one's personal creed as a universal measure of rightness to assess everyone else).
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
tbh, I think there is something noble about writing down what you believe and sticking to it. My problem (with Steve above) is not about that urge but with the next step (ie then using one's personal creed as a universal measure of rightness to assess everyone else).
But then that seems to be a feature of the topic raised in the OP; one church wants to assert its "rightness" by referencing historical martyrs (heroes, elders - I'm not sure exactly) that have some resonance in the French Protestant context. Another take exception to being excluded from this self-designation and call the first church a name - which has a historical context in another tradition which may (or probably does not) have anything to do with it at all.
Steve Langdon has a shopping list of "biblical" features he uses to assess whether any of these groups meet his standards. Doc Tor uses the Historic Creeds. The Baptists/Independents use their own statements of faith.
All of these things are drawing lines in different places, which are often going to be contradictory.
Are pentecostals anabaptists and/or true descendants of the Huguenots? Depends who you ask and what standards they're using.
Does it really matter?
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
To me, no. To those who regard a traceable line of descent in order to give a group legitimacy, it matters a lot.
Trouble is, that line is rarely clear, after a generation or two. For instance, one could say that the Pentecostals were sired by the Holiness Movement which was sired by Methodism. That's largely true of the 1900-1920 period - although even then it may ignore the African-American input and definitely fails to recognise the influence of groups as diverse as the Brethren, the Catholic Apostolics and the Anglicans (in Britain), never mind any Scandinavian input, however unconscious, from people like T.B. Barratt.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sure, and I think that's a very good point, Baptist Trainfan.
I think what's so toxic about the instance Eutychus cites is that the Pentecostals are apparently saying to the Reformed, 'You've lost the plot ... we are a lot closer to the Huguenots than you-oo-uu ...'
Na na na na nah ... ooh la la la la ...
Which in turn gets an understandable reaction - and possible over-reaction from the Reformed ...
'What? You cannot claim such a thing ... if anything you are closer to those Anabaptist nutters over in Munster all those years ago ...'
Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on
:
Quite. ![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
My own church is credo-baptist in practice but no longer requires believers' baptism as a condition of membership. We would baptise someone baptised as an infant at their request if they felt it made sense at that point in their spiritual journey, and I'd invoke the sort of principles we see in play with Jesus being baptised by John the Baptist. I'm a pragmatist, not a sacramentalist.
I've previously presented such an event as a confirmation of an infant baptism to a doubtful Catholic family member (successfully). I understand such a "confirmation" baptism is even possible in the Catholic church.
I don't think much of this would go down well with most Pentecostals/Charismatics.
The non-acceptance of paedobaptism is the historical norm (since you're talking about history) for certain groups of Christians. I don't see any point in other groups of Christians being offended by that, any more than they should be offended by not being allowed to share in communion at a RC church, for example. It is what it is.
The French problem, ISTM, is that individuals are presenting themselves for believer's baptism at newer churches because for some reason they don't wish to attend the traditional churches into which they were baptised as babies (or not without some special ceremony that rather looks like a believer's baptism!) Why not? This is surely the primary issue which needs to be addressed by those in the traditional churches.
Otherwise, ecumenical togetherness often happens as newer church movements become well-established and begin to experience the phenomena of upward mobility, accommodation to the wider religious and theological environment, and stagnation or decline. If the new French Protestant churches haven't seriously started to move in this direction yet I imagine it's only a matter of time.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
The French problem, ISTM, is that individuals are presenting themselves for believer's baptism at newer churches because for some reason they don't wish to attend the traditional churches into which they were baptised as babies (or not without some special ceremony that rather looks like a believer's baptism!) Why not? This is surely the primary issue which needs to be addressed by those in the traditional churches.
What a strange thing to say. People move between denominations and religions all the time, why is this a particular problem?
When I was a child some decades ago now, the baptist church where I was brought up as a child refused membership to those who had not been baptised as adults (I think these stipulations have since been relaxed). And I know other churches who refuse membership to anyone who hasn't been baptised by themselves.
This isn't a uniquely French issue.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
It's not a problem for the individuals who do it, obviously! They're exercising their right to choose.
But there seems to be problem here with newer churches taking people in (sheep stealing?) and then rubbishing the theology of the churches these people have come from.
The rubbishing may be distasteful, but if the theology was exactly the same as elsewhere would these churches be as attractive as they appear to be, relatively speaking? What would they have to offer that's distinctive?
I know this sort of thing happens outside France, but perhaps it's particularly noticeable in French Protestantism since the the evangelicals have now overtaken the traditional Protestants in numerical terms, AFAIUI. This still isn't true in the UK.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by SvitlanaV2:
But there seems to be problem here with newer churches taking people in (sheep stealing?) and then rubbishing the theology of the churches these people have come from.
I'm sorry, you realise Pentecostal (Baptist and Mennonite) churches are not "new", do you?
I don't think one can accuse a church of trying to "steal" believers when they're simply acting out their professed beliefs.
quote:
The rubbishing may be distasteful, but if the theology was exactly the same as elsewhere would these churches be as attractive as they appear to be, relatively speaking? What would they have to offer that's distinctive?
You really don't know the difference between a Pentecostal and a Presbyterian church?
quote:
I know this sort of thing happens outside France, but perhaps it's particularly noticeable in French Protestantism since the the evangelicals have now overtaken the traditional Protestants in numerical terms, AFAIUI. This still isn't true in the UK.
I've no idea if that's true, but as I said earlier, I have personal experience of this happening in my lifetime in several different settings - so the chances of it not happening throughout the UK is pretty slim in my opinion.
Posted by SvitlanaV2 (# 16967) on
:
I admit that I wasn't talking about the distinctions between Pentecostals, Presbyterians, Baptists and Mennonites.
I was making reference to the new evangelical churches in France, which Eutychus sets against the more historical, traditional Protestant traditions there.
With regard to Christians moving to whichever churches they want, I'm in perfect agreement with that. But I can well understand that ill feeling may arise if one Christian movement seems to grow at the expense of another, especially if that goes along with very dismissive language about the other group's theology.
In the British case, I'm aware that evangelicals move about a lot among themselves. Whether there's still a lot of movement from other traditions to evangelicalism is an interesting questions. British non-evangelicalism is dominated overall by ageing congregations, and I suspect that Christians become less likely to switch after a certain age.
OTOH, the Ship has a lot of participants who've moved beyond various 'typical' evangelical positions as they've grown older. It would be interesting to know if any research exists that shows how commonplace this is.
[ 04. May 2017, 14:45: Message edited by: SvitlanaV2 ]
Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
Anabaptists do indeed represent a different way to both Catholics and to the Lutheran/Reformed/Anglican and similar Protestants. And indeed in the past were persecuted by many Protestants. And would also wish to be distinguished from much in the US that calls itself 'Evangelical'. I'm well aware of this. How hard is it for you to understand that some interesting new things are happening nowadays? And are about a lot more people than just Steve Langton.
As it happens, I know quite a few Mennonites and quite a few other Anabaptists, and I can state without contradiction that your ideas are quite different to theirs - to the extent that you are a total outlier with respect to contemporary anabaptist thought. ....
This Mennonite disagrees with you, from my experience within the movement and study of its history.
He is far from an outlier.
I would add I started reading this thread for its intellectual stimulation on a subject obviously interesting to me and quickly found the devolution into personal name calling annoying.
******
To the OP
Pentecostals are not Anabaptists primarily because Anabaptists do not see the role of the Holy Spirit in the same way. The primary emphasis with Anabaptists, from Conrad Grebel on, has been on attempting to put into practice what they read in the Bible. Much as most Christian movements do (although I would argue historically the Mennonites put more emphasis on personal reading and interpretation rather then teaching). However, rarely do we see this attempt to "be biblical" played out in Anabaptist circles in terms of the role of the Holy Spirit in the same way that the Pentecostal movement has developed.
It is the role of the Holy Spirit that makes Pentecostalism different.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Have you killed this thread?
Pedantically, I would say that it is the 'perceived role' of the Holy Spirit that is different, not the actual role of the Holy Spirit if I can put it that way ...
I'm always wary of using terms like 'role' and 'function' in relation to God the Holy Spirit because ... well, He is God the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the blessed Holy Trinity, one in essence and Undivided.
I'd also suggest that there are other differences between Anabaptists and Pentecostals beyond the particular emphasis the latter put on pneumatology and on spiritual gifts - particularly glossolalia.
Anabaptism covers a range of views and expressions and from what little I know of it, does seem - in its contemporary forms - to have a broader approach than the more 'focused' approach found in Pentecostalism - although some Penties are certainly broader these days both ecumenically and in terms of social action/engagement ...
However, for all the name calling that's gone on here, I would also suggest that both Anabaptists and Pentecostals can get somewhat reductionist at times - fixated with what they see as key and core issues - be it church/state separation or the use of spiritual gifts - that then become a lens through which they view almost everything and anything ...
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
This Mennonite disagrees with you, from my experience within the movement and study of its history.
He is far from an outlier.
You think that a majority of Mennonites/Anabaptists would take the view that (a) they are - or are close to - Evangelicals
(b) they are close to Pentecostals and Calvinist Baptists because they're somehow "biblical"
(c) they're separated from the Roman Catholics and Anglicans because of unbiblical church-state muddling?
I'm sure some believe that, but nothing I've ever heard of suggests that the combination of those things are normal. Indeed, I've heard regularly of the good relations between one Hutterite group I know well and the Roman Catholic church, know of many other Mennonite groups who have good relations with Anglicans, know Anglicans who associate with Mennonites and engage in Anabaptist discussions who see no contradiction with their position and have heard regularly from Mennonites that they're not-Evangelical-and-not-even-Protestant.
The anabaptist tradition is broad, with many different liberal and conservative branches. I don't see what Steve is projecting as anything other than a very particular branch that he happens to have fallen in love with and which is not reflective of the rest of the tradition.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
To me, Steve Langton comes across as a pretty bog-standard UK evangelical from a Brethren or evangelical Baptist background who has read a couple of books on Anabaptism and convinced himself he's an expert on the subject.
His is a kind of bolt-on Anabaptism that may or may not bear some relation to the wider Anabaptist tradition.
Sure, there'll be some overlaps - a credo-baptist position, suspicion of church-state collaboration and structures, pacifism ... but beyond that, not a great deal of depth and understanding.
Sorry, but that's how I see it.
People could say the same or similar about my grasp of other Christian traditions that I've read about or had some dealings with.
Only, I don't purport to be an expert in any of them.
Posted by Sipech (# 16870) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
I don't think Roger Forster's exposition is available as a book. I have it as a cassette (!) series, and I think you can get it on CD now.
Otherwise the go-to book on anabaptists is I suppose The Reformers and their Stepchildren.
When I was talking to him yesterday, Roger said that he was currently working on an article on the history of anabaptists in relation to the 500th anniversary of the reformation.
So watch this space...
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
I'd be interested in that, Sipech - although it's many, many, many years since I heard Roger preach.
Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by mr cheesy:
quote:
Originally posted by Og: Thread Killer:
This Mennonite disagrees with you, from my experience within the movement and study of its history.
He is far from an outlier.
You think that a majority of Mennonites/Anabaptists would take the view that (a) they are - or are close to - Evangelicals
(b) they are close to Pentecostals and Calvinist Baptists because they're somehow "biblical"
(c) they're separated from the Roman Catholics and Anglicans because of unbiblical church-state muddling?
....
You used outlier at first and now said majority. I'm confident of a plurality would agree with those statements. Those statements are not an outlier by any means. Those first two statements would be normative in some of the largest Mennonite groups in Canada while among Mennonite historians, the third is accepted as fact.
I'm not sure about the largest groups in the diaspora, such as the Congo and Indonesia and Brazil but given what I've heard from people attending the World Mennonite Conference, it wouldn't suprise me if so.
Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on
:
On the note of the word evangelical, I would quote Menno Simons most famous words, that are sung about in Mennonite circles still:
quote:
True evangelical faith is of such a nature it cannot lie dormant, but spreads itself out in all kinds of righteousness and fruits of love;
it dies to flesh and blood ;
it destroys all lusts and forbidden desires ;
it seeks, serves and fears God in its inmost soul ;
it clothes the naked ;
it feeds the hungry ;
it comforts the sorrowful ;
it shelters the destitute ;
it aids and consoles the sad ;
it does good to those who do it harm ;
b it serves those that harm it ;
it prays for those who persecute it ;
it teaches, admonishes and judges us with the Word of the Lord ;
it seeks those who are lost ;
it binds up what is wounded ;
it heals the sick ;
it saves what is strong (sound) ;
it becomes all things to all people .
The persecution, suffering and anguish that come to it for the sake of the Lord’s truth have become a glorious joy and comfort to it.
Mennonites see themselves as a different sort of evangelical.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sure, Mennonites pre-date evangelicalism in its contemporary form which is largely a product of the 18th and 19th centuries and a predominantly Anglophone base.
A lot of evangelicals would be unaware of other reformed or radical reformation movements across continental Europe and over into North America, nor of Mennonite mission in Africa and South America and elsewhere.
Posted by Steve Langton (# 17601) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
To me, Steve Langton comes across as a pretty bog-standard UK evangelical from a Brethren or evangelical Baptist background who has read a couple of books on Anabaptism and convinced himself he's an expert on the subject.
His is a kind of bolt-on Anabaptism that may or may not bear some relation to the wider Anabaptist tradition.
Sure, there'll be some overlaps - a credo-baptist position, suspicion of church-state collaboration and structures, pacifism ... but beyond that, not a great deal of depth and understanding.
Sorry, but that's how I see it.
People could say the same or similar about my grasp of other Christian traditions that I've read about or had some dealings with.
Only, I don't purport to be an expert in any of them.
I almost agree with this - except that I've read a lot more than a couple of books on Anabaptism, both Reformation era and more modern. As regards expertise I wouldn't regard myself as an expert on the historic Mennonite/Amish/Hutterite practices - but I would think it fair comment that compared to most UK Christians I look like an 'expert' because an awful lot of UK Christians know next to nothing.
The Brethren were effectively a 19th Century homegrown UK version of Anabaptism, and this was recognised by the Brethren based Paternoster Press publishing quite a bit of Anabaptist material including "The Reformers and Their Stepchildren", and more recently the 'After Christendom' series.
As I've recounted I did pretty nearly re-invent the Anabaptist wheel on church/state issues and pacifism for myself back in the late 1960s in response to the religious aspect of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Then and for many years afterwards information on Anabaptists was not easy to come by and it was in some ways a case of knowing that there were others who had seen the same basic things in the Bible that I had found. In more recent years I've been able to go into more depth and have been greatly enriched by Anabaptist ideas.
I've never been happy with the more 'exclusive' manifestations of Anabaptism whether the Amish in the US or the Exclusive Brethren in the UK. I gather that many modern Mennonites are also unhappy with that part of their past that was almost outside the world rather than 'in but not of'.
My overall Christian upbringing has meant that I sit light to all denominational titles - you'll note my profile says "Anabaptist-ish" - and preferring to think in terms of C S Lewis' "Mere Christianity"/the 'common ground'. The basic Anabaptist 'tradition' is to be 'biblical', which fits fairly well with the 'Mere Christianity' notion.
by mr cheesy;
quote:
You think that a majority of Mennonites/Anabaptists would take the view that
(a) they are - or are close to - Evangelicals
(b) they are close to Pentecostals and Calvinist Baptists because they're somehow "biblical"
(c) they're separated from the Roman Catholics and Anglicans because of unbiblical church-state muddling?
I'd have thought (c) was something that would be agreed by a massive majority of Anabaptists - and with the addition to RC and Anglican of Orthodox, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and quite a few other Protestants. Of course most of these others have over the years moved quite a bit closer to the Anabaptist position - though as Eutychus pointed out many RCs still hope that ideas like 'laicite' are a temporary abarration....
On (a) I think Anabaptists regard themselves as part of the 'evangelical' (small 'e') movement - but distinct from capital-E Evangelicalism in its narrower use related to Lutherans, and also would distance themselves from the 'Religious Right' or 'Neo-Constantinian' aspect of much US evangelicalism while recognising much in common as well.
On (b) I understand Mennonites tend towards Arminianism rather than Calvinism - and recognise that as a moderate Calvinist I'm a bit unusual among Anabaptists. Anabaptists generally do not hold the distinctive Pentecostalist views on the 'Baptism of the Spirit" and the exercise of 'tongues' and similar spiritual gifts. Otherwise there is a fair bit in common in terms of credo-baptism and church organisation but by independent derivation from the Bible rather than Pentecostalists consciously following Anabaptists. And both Pentecostals and Anabaptists do vary within the traditions on some of these things.
As I and others have said above, Pentecostalists are NOT Anabaptists, except in the narrow sense of being usually credo-baptists - that was a confusion on the part of an annoyed French Reformed pastor. Having said that I know more than a few UK Pentecostalists who are aware of the Anabaptist tradition and regard the two traditions as having a lot in common.
Also by mr cheesy;
quote:
Indeed, I've heard regularly of the good relations between one Hutterite group I know well and the Roman Catholic church, know of many other Mennonite groups who have good relations with Anglicans, know Anglicans who associate with Mennonites and engage in Anabaptist discussions who see no contradiction with their position
Can't speak on the Hutterite/RC relations - but in the circumstances of the way Mennonites have not founded Mennonite Churches but made ideas available to all and sundry, I've already pointed out that we've seen Anglicans and RCs attending our Manchester Anabaptist Study Group - along with a Mennonite couple who were regulars for a couple of years and other occasional Mennonite visitors.
Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on
:
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
Sure, Mennonites pre-date evangelicalism in its contemporary form which is largely a product of the 18th and 19th centuries and a predominantly Anglophone base.
A lot of evangelicals would be unaware of other reformed or radical reformation movements across continental Europe and over into North America, nor of Mennonite mission in Africa and South America and elsewhere.
Oh I'm not saying Mennonites/Anabaptists are claiming any sort of "we began this tradition of evangelicalism" thing. The mindset about being the catholic of anything isn't important (although there is quite a bit of what WWJD & what did the early church do)
But, they do see themselves as Evangelicals. I find it very difficult to recall a large group beyond the plethora of quietists groups, the Old Order, Old Order Amish (there are modern groups that have developed out of the Amish), Hutterites, Old Colony, that doesn't consider itself Evangelical.
Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on
:
Sure, I wasn't suggesting you were claiming the Anabaptists to be the 'UR-group' as it were or the 'Q-Text' and so on ...
Rather, I was simply making the observation that the Anabaptists were around before the kind of evangelicalism most people associate with Evangelicalism had developed.
I'm saying that the Anabaptists and indeed Baptists more generally, are pre-evangelical in that sense.
What tends to be regarded as Evangelicalism in its Bebbington Quadrilateral sense is largely a product of the 18th century - from around the 1730s onwards. Of course, it drew on earlier antecedents and influences, such as Lutheran pietism, Puritanism in England and Scotland and, in Wesley's case, forms of 'Non-Juror' and High Church Anglican piety (without the bells and smells that later became associated with that end of the Anglican spectrum) ...
What people tend to associate with Evangelicalism these days either derives from the more Calvinistic and Puritan strand on the one hand or the Wesleyan holiness strand on the other.
The Anabaptists predate that and arguably developed in a different kind of way. Of course, there were cross-currents and influences and some groups were more separatist and communal than others - but although I would class Anabaptists as Evangelical in the continental European sense, I'm not sure all of them could be classified as 'evangelical / Evangelical' in the Bebbington Quadrilateral and more 'Anglophone' evangelical sense ie. the way evangelicalism developed in North America and in the UK and its Colonies after the Great Awakenings of the mid-19th century and after the US gained its independence.
As far as I am aware, the Anabaptists weren't particularly influenced by the Holiness movement and the various eschatological speculations and 'adventist' influences that shaped UK and US evangelicalism in the 19th century.
Much popular conservative evangelicalism here in the UK was influenced by 19th century 'Muscular Christianity' and missionary movements and mission societies.
I get the impression that Anabaptist missionary activity took place in a different kind of way and largely unknown or overlooked by evangelicalism within Anglicanism and the various Presbyterian and more 'mainstream' Baptist groups.
Posted by mr cheesy (# 3330) on
:
Well I guess it depends who you read. I'm not trying to pretend that I'm any kind of expert, but it is easy to find examples of Mennonites who are talking about the relationship between Mennonites and Evangelicals, the overlaps and differences.
For example this essay in Mennonite World Review.
quote:
Exploring the post-World War II journeys of American Mennonites and evangelicals — sometimes intersecting, sometimes diverging — offers some much-needed context for the contemporary moment.
<snip>
For a time, these trajectories converged. Neo-Anabaptist Mennonites continued to see religious faith as a life of discipleship, while neo-evangelical fundamentalists — shaped by a starkly Reformed theology — continued to affirm the inerrancy of Scripture as a guide for Christian conduct.
<snip>
Yet on the whole, Anabaptists and evangelicals chose different paths in the late twentieth century. Progressives won the day within the major Mennonite denominations, concluding a decades-long theological move from nonresistance to justice and smoothing out the historic differences between Mennonites and the secular social-justice left.
Also this interesting essay from a Mennonite Brethren perspective:
quote:
The starting point for any exploration of the interaction between evangelical Protestants and Mennonites in North America is the observation that there is no other Christian tradition with which Mennonites in North America have had more affinity and interaction, and which has exercised more influence on Mennonites than evangelical Protestantism. At the same time, neither has there been a religious tradition from which some Mennonites in North America have tried harder to differentiate themselves than evangelical Protestantism.
Posted by Og: Thread Killer (# 3200) on
:
Ah yes....the Mennonite identity paradigm. Big in certain intellectual circles but not shared by the masses of people. (given there's only 2 million of us, not that many masses)
I stand by my analysis based on my experience from within.
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