The Beliefs of the Early Anabaptists -- Part 2

The Beliefs of the Early Anabaptists -- Part 2

Appendix. The Radical Anabaptists

by Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a brief presentation of some radical Anabaptist leaders as presented in The Dutch Anabaptists: The Stone Lectures Delivered at the Princeton Theological Seminary, 1918-1919 by Henry Elias Dosker. Page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to the Dosker’s book referenced above.]

    Many historians identify Thomas Münzer or Müntzer  (1489 – 1525) as a founding father of the Anabaptists, although the conservative wing existed in Switzerland before his arrival. Münzer and his followers “prided themselves on an inner light, rejected infant baptism, and preached a millennial kingdom of Christ, in which believers would rule the world, lead an idyllic life, and enjoy social equality and communistic wealth” (p. 29). Münzer believed that “people had the right to rebel against a government which refused to obey the gospel of Christ and to rule accordingly” (p. 82).
    Melchior Hoffman (c. 1495 – c. 1543) preached the imminent arrival of the millennium, which he expected to begin 1553 at Strasbourg, the New Jerusalem (p. 52). Several years before he died, he recanted this notion (p. 53). According to the judges who condemned him to death, Hoffman (1) denied both the divinity and humanity of Christ, (2) denied the presence of God, and the doctrine of election by which he impugned the plan of salvation and taught an absolutely free will, (3) attacked the comfort of the consciousness of the forgiveness of sin, and (4) assigned infant baptism to the devil and disrupted the communion of saints (p. 52).
    His followers, who were called Hoffmanites, were accused of impure living. To which, they replied that they were not sinning and could not sin because their old Adam was dead (p. 52). With his death, the Hoffmanites died out (p. 53).
    David Joris (c. 1501 – August 1556), whom the Reformed Protestants considered the greatest heretic (p. 53), elevated himself above Moses, the prophets, the apostles, and even Christ, whose revelations became void for salvation with the arrival of Joris. He (Joris)was the true Messiah (p. 54). “Christ did not rise in the flesh, but is now reincarnated in” (p. 54) him (Joris). Thus, he (Joris) could “absolutely pardon sin, and . . . [could] also damn forever; and, at the last day, he will judge the world” (p. 54). Furthermore, he (Joris) “will again raise the House of Israel and the true children of Levi, with the true tabernacle of God; not by the way of the cross and of death, like the other Christ, but with mercy, love, and grace” (p. 54). Contrary to the fundamental practice of other Anabaptists, he allowed infant baptism because he had “no faith in any external application of the sacrament” (p. 60). His two primary ideas were these: “First, the Scriptures, their commands and ceremonies, must not be taken literally, but must be translated into the terms of one’s environment. . . . And secondly, the believer is a changed man, drastically changed; he lives not only in a different sphere of thought, but in a really new world, he stands individually before the great question of life and salvation. No church, no theology, no dogma can help him. God lives in and with believers, in a sense they are deified” (p. 56). His theology was so radical and unscriptural that even the Anabaptists excommunicated him (p. 56).
    Adam Pastor (d. 1560s), whose original name was Roelof Martens, professed an anti-Trinitarian doctrine, for which the Anabaptists excommunicated him (p. 59). He rejected “the Trinity, the preexistence of Christ, and the personality of the Holy Ghost” (p. 60) Mostly ignoring or downgrading the epistles of Paul, he focused on Christ, his life and teachings, which became the content of his religion. “He was totally averse to the Münster spirit” (p. 60). (The Münster spirit was violence of the Anabaptists that nearly destroyed Münster.) Like other Anabaptists, he rejected infant baptism, “but was against the overvaluation of adult baptism on faith” (p. 60). His followers were called “Pastorites.”
     Sebastian Franck (1499 – c. 1543) was an extreme liberal, a radical of the radical Anabaptist. Along with opposing the Münster party, he “rejected the Church as an institution. with her dogmas and sacraments, and taught an undogmatic, anti-ecclesiastical type of Christianity entirely depending on individual convictions. . . . He considers the inward testimony of the Spirit far superior to the Word of God, and utterly denies the doctrine of the Trinity, whilst he derides preaching and preachers and the sacraments” (p. 61). Moreover, the “Church of God is found everywhere; not only among Christians, but also among Jews, heathen, and Turks. Everyone who fears God is our brother, even though he never heard of baptism” (p. 60). According to Franck, The Church abandoned and overturned the entire apostolic traditions; therefore, “the Church will remain a hopeless makeshift till the end of time” (p. 61). Moreover, “no man has the right to gather the dispersed body of Christ, unless God specifically commissioned him to do so” (p. 62). His followers were called “Franconists.”
    What Bolshevism was to the twentieth century, radical Anabaptism was to the sixteenth century (p. 64). Bolsheviks were atheistic communists; radical Anabaptists were “Christian” communists.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen

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