The Beliefs of the Early Anabaptists -- Part 1

The Beliefs of the Early Anabaptists

Thomas Allen

    The following is a brief presentation of the beliefs of the early Anabaptists as presented in The Dutch Anabaptists: The Stone Lectures Delivered at the Princeton Theological Seminary, 1918-1919 by Henry Elias Dosker (published by The Judson Press, Philadelphia, 1921). Page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Dosker’s book referenced above.
    According to Doctor Harnack, the Anabaptists “‘were three hundred years ahead of their time’” (p. 1). “Doctor Vedder calls them ‘the radical Reformation’” (p. 2).
    Initially, two primary factions of Anabaptist existed: the radical and the conservatives. The radical faction lasted only about two decades before it burned itself out. However, their violent behavior left such a disdainful taste in Europe that Protestants and Catholics would persecute the Anabaptist for most of the sixteenth century and even beyond. Some of the beliefs of a few leaders of the radical Anabaptists are presented in the appendix.
    Furthermore, many beliefs of the conservative Anabaptists, such as their rejection of infant baptism and taking oaths, terrified both Catholics and Protestants alike. Thus, both persecuted even the conservative Anabaptist. Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, Zwingli, and other Protestant leaders condemned them as disciples of Satan (pp. 44-45). Seldom did the persecutors distinguish or even attempt to distinguish the various factions of the Anabaptist. They were all the same: heretical enemies of Church and State.
    Unlike the radical Anabaptists, the conservative Anabaptists had no political aspirations or millennial dreams and shunned carnal lusts (p. 94). For the most part, the conservative “withdrew from the world with almost ascetic austerity” (p. 94). However, many of them manage to acquire a good deal of wealth. Unlike the radical Anabaptists, who paid little or no attention to the Scriptures, the conservatives “depended absolutely on the Scriptures for their faith” (p. 94).
    In their practices, the Anabaptist had “[n]o regular priesthood, great simplicity of worship, no bearing of arms, no oath, but simple affirmation, separation between Church and State, and rebaptism of those who joined them from the old Church” (p. 16). They did not recognize infant baptism; they only accepted “adult baptism, based on the confessed faith of the candidate” (p. 17). Anabaptists “were well versed in the Scriptures, exceedingly strict in their lives, and rigorous in their church discipline” (p. 33).
    They believed themselves to be the chosen people; all others were gentiles. Only they were true Christians (p. 189).
    Anabaptists had no fixed ecclesiastical organization. Each congregation was autonomous (p. 201).
    Anabaptists believed in the absolute authority of the Holy Scriptures. They relied “on the Scriptures and on them alone” (p. 151). Each individual decided for himself what the Scriptures meant. However, they gave little weight to the doctrine of inspiration. Furthermore, “they spiritualize the Scriptures . . . [and] believe them explicitly” (pp. 152-153).  Nevertheless, they tended to read the Scriptures extremely literally. Still, the Scriptures “have an inner meaning, which may or may not be the same to different individuals” (p. 153). Following the Church of Rome, nearly all Anabaptists seem to accept the Apocrypha of the Old Testament as canonical (p. 153).
    Baptism was a distinguishing characteristic of the Anabaptist. The distinction was not in the form or method of baptism. The Anabaptists followed the common practices of the day of using affusion, i.e., pouring water over the head, or sprinkling (pp. 32, 180). (Baptism by immersion was not used until the mid-seventeenth century when their Baptist descendants adopted immersion, which was the form used by the early Christians, as the only appropriate method of baptism [pp. 176-177, 182]) Initially, rebaptism was optional (p. 32).
    Their distinction was their refusal to baptize infants and to accept the baptism of infants. To the Protestants and Catholics of the sixteenth century, such treatment of infants made them child-murders because “the age-long doctrine of the Church of Rome anent the absolute necessity of baptism to secure the salvation of the child” (p. 44). (Most Anabaptists did not even accept the baptism of children or teenagers.) Thus, the distinguishing characteristic “is the status of the child in the church of God. . . . It is the question of the immutability of the God of the covenant [Old Testament] and of the permanency of the covenant of grace [New Testament] and therefore of the true Scriptural significance of the sacrament of baptism” (pp. 183-184).
    Anabaptists believed in “adult baptism on confession of a personal faith in Christ” (p. 176). According to Anabaptist teaching, faith must precede baptism. As infants and young children lack the capacity to understand the gospel, the baptism of infants and young children was rejected. Moreover, “[i]nfant baptism is anti-Christian and of Satanic origin” (p. 185).
    The Anabaptists were not Trinitarians in the orthodox sense of the Trinity. They objected to the Trinitarian teachings of “consubstantiality” and “person” because of their lack of Scriptural support. However, they freely used the term “Trinity” by which they seem to mean God’s impenetrability or an expression of God’s being (pp 153-154).
    They may not have been Trinitarians in the sense of the Athanasian Creed. However, many Anabaptists believed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were so intertwined that they were inseparable — the “one is not without the other,” that is, the “one must be conjoined with the other, or the entire Deity is denied”  (p. 156). Others held that only one God existed, and in the New Testament, this God is called the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (p. 156).
    For most, “the Holy Spirit has no independent personal existence. He is merely the ‘inspiration,’ ‘the inward moving of the heart to things that are good’” (p. 155). Moreover, “God’s Spirit cannot thus separate itself from God” (p. 155). Besides, “God’s Spirit can [not] be conceived apart from himself . . . [or else the Spirit] would form a separate, self-existent, personal being” (p. 155). Also, the Father is a self-existing being, but the “Holy Spirit is no independent or personal being” (p. 155).
    In summary, the Anabaptists lacked a clear idea of the Trinity. Some approached the Catholic Trinity Doctrine whereas others resembled  Modalism (God, who is one person, exists in three modes or manifestation: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit). Yet, others approached Unitarianism or Socinianism (p. 157).
    Some Anabaptists believed that Jesus Christ had two natures: divine and human (p. 157). Others denied Christ divine honors (p. 159). Still, for others, Christ had only a divine nature.
    On the incarnation, most Anabaptist believed “that Christ had not taken his human body from Mary” (p. 82). They rejected the notion that Christ was incarnated of the Virgin Mary because of her sinful flesh (p. 160). Christ, the Word, did not take “his flesh and blood from the Virgin Mary; but has become flesh and blood in Mary’s womb, that is, he has been changed into it” (p. 160).
    God “‘has sent his own eternal word of power into this world, in the flesh, which has become flesh and a body, in form like any other man, without sin, and that he has been a bodily, visible word of God. . . . He has not taken flesh unto himself, but has become flesh and a body’” (pp. 160-161). Thus, Christ did not take his flesh and blood from Mary. He, as the Word, was made flesh and blood in Mary. Therefore, Christ did not possess two natures (p. 162).
    Whereas the Mennonite Anabaptists and most other Anabaptists accepted the notion of a preexisting Christ and, by that, an incarnation similar to that taught by the Church of Rome, some rejected it. For those who rejected the incarnation, Jesus was a natural but a sinless man. However, “‘God’s word, God’s will, God’s spirit, [and] God’s nature’” (p. 163) indwelt Christ along with an imminent conversation with God, which made him more than Adam’s flesh. Christ was the Son of God, “in so far as he was like God, in all the operations of heart and soul and mind, and thus felt himself to be the Son of God” (p. 164).
    However, most Anabaptists accepted the divinity of Christ. As for his humanity, most believed that the “‘Word within the body of Mary was changed into flesh, without taking over anything from the nature of Mary’” (p. 165). Christ had abandoned “his first, eternal, divine substance or essence . . . [and] was changed into another, i.e., a human substance and thus became man, able to suffer and to die, and has lost his first essence’” (p. 166). Thus, Christ had no human father or mother or relations. Nevertheless, many embraced the Catholic concept of the incarnation (p. 170).
    Anabaptists believed “that sin entered this world through Adam’s disobedience” (p. 171). However, Christ removed everything that Adam’s sin introduced, including death, into the world. As for children, the obedience of Christ, not baptism, liberates children from the liability of eternal damnation. Thus, “‘they deny absolutely that original sin, in young children, tends to eternal death’” (p. 172). For most Anabaptists, the atonement of Christ wiped out original sin.
    Anabaptists believed that all have sinned, but most believed that all “are called to salvation, because Christ died for all. This universal call presupposes the power to answer it. The cause of one’s damnation never lies with God” (p. 174).  Although God forces no man, he desires all to turn from self to him. They contend that all “salvation is from grace, but that grace is common to all” (p. 175). Like the Church of Rome, “they saw in justification a medicinal rather than a forensic act of God” (p. 175).
    Anabaptists “believed in salvation through Christ, but they glorified the Christian life” (p. 152). This stress was the result of “the legalistic character of their theology” (p. 152). Many so overemphasized the Christian life in the present that little regards were given to heaven or hell (p. 175).
    Anabaptists opposed “the mass, with its altars, images, garments, and, all its
heathenish ceremonies” (p. 151). Most followed the teachings of other Protestants on the Lord’s Supper. However, a few modified it (p. 185). Their churches lacked musical instruments (p. 214).
    A major cause of strife among the Anabaptists was the “ban”, i.e., excommunication. One congregation would ban one of its members or even another congregation over matters ranging from important doctrinal issues to such trivial matters as how one walked. Although the Anabaptists were “governed by the principle of individualism” (p. 190), the ban became popular and was a major cause of controversy among the  Anabaptists and the primary cause of schisms.
    Anabaptists were “a body of believers who had deliberately turned their backs on the world and now were a people separate unto the Lord” (p. 189). Any member who failed to live up to the ascetic standards of the congregation was banned, excommunicated. Whereas some congregations were fairly tolerant, others were extremely strict and would ban a member for any deviation.
    An example of the rigorousness of the ban was a marriage between a church member and a nonchurch member. For some, only marriages between members of the Anabaptist church were recognized (in this regard, they were similar to the Church of Rome). Anyone who married someone outside the church was banned and could never be reconciled or readmitted to the church (p. 190).
    Besides an inappropriate marriage, a person could be banned because his house, furniture, clothing, or ornamentation was above the standards of the congregation. (Although the Anabaptists did not condemn wealth, they did condemn ostentatiousness [p. 199].) Likewise, one could be banned for social contact with nonchurch members or a banned person or for attending the funeral of a nonchurch member (p. 194).
    Members of the church were not to have anything to do with a banned person, even if the person banned was a parent, child, spouse, or sibling. The ban prohibited all intercourse with the banned person, including buying, selling, eating, drinking, or conversing (p. 193).
    Although eschatology was important to many Anabaptists in the early years, the fanaticism that it caused resulted in the Mennonite descendants of the Anabaptists virtually to ignore eschatology, the future, heaven, and hell (p. 196).
    Women were not allowed to speak in their meetings and were not allowed to vote in the election of elders and deacons (p. 17). However, women occupied an honored place in their church life (p. 214).
    Some beliefs peculiar to a small minority of Anabaptist were polygamy (because “the Bible saints had practised it” [p. 82]) and the refusal to wear clothes (because “they were the naked truth, the image of God, and therefore were ashamed of nothing” [pp. 88-89].
    As shown above, the Anabaptists lack uniformity in their beliefs. They were highly variable on many important doctrines of Christianity, which should be expected from its decentralized structure and individualism with each congregation and even each individual free to decipher the truth from the Holy Scriptures.
    Because of the fanatics, the name “Anabaptist” had become synonymous with “violence, outrage, rebellion, sensuality, and every kind of outrage” (p. 92). Because of the stigma attached to “Anabaptist,” most Anabaptists rebranded themselves under different names. They became the Baptists and Mennonites. Many faded into the nonconformist movement in the Church of England (p. 46). Also, included among their descendants are the Quakers, English Independents, and Congregationalists (pp. 292-293).

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen

Part 2: Appendix

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A Letter: Some Paradoxes

A Letter: Some Paradoxes

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from a letter written in 1988 to Mrs. Betty Eastman, Southern National Party.]

    The following are a few of the many paradoxes of twentieth-century America:
    1.    The welfare state is based on the premise that people are too incompetent to take care of themselves. However, once such incompetent persons become government bureaucrats, they miraculously acquire the ability to take care of everyone.
    2.    Many of those who claim that morality cannot be legislated and, therefore, oppose such laws in general, are at the forefront of trying to legislate morality in the workplace with sexual harassment laws. Many of these same people are also in the forefront of trying to legislate compassion and love — except for unborn babies. Legislating morality may not make a person more moral, but it does reduce public overt acts of immorality. Legislating love tends to increase resentment and disdain by the recipient and giver rather than increase compassion and love.
    3.    Most Americans who are in the public eye condemn Nazism (National Socialism). Then an overwhelming majority of these same people began advocating and supporting most of the policies of the Nazis, such as:
        a.    heavy governmental regulation of business and industry;
        b.    governmental control and manipulation of the money supply and economy;
        c.    taking children from their parents and putting them into governmentally controlled institutions (Nazis called theirs youth centers; Americans call theirs daycare centers, pre-kindergarten, Head Start, etc.);
        d.    public education and the destruction of academic freedom;
        e.    abortion and euthanasia;
        f.    nationalized medical care;
        g.    discrimination against a person because of their race or ethnicity (Nazis demanded discrimination against Jews; Americans demand discrimination against Whites, especially White Southern males);
        h.    genocide (The Nazi program was quick and apparent; the American program of integration is slow and stealthy);
        i.    reducing the States to administrative districts of the federal government;
        j.    the institution of secret police that operates outside the law without penalty (The Nazis had the Gestapo; Americans have the Internal Revenue Service, the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, various agencies of Homeland Security, and several other federal agencies); and
        k.    using the central government to control every aspect of life.
    The Nazis’ worse critics are nearly always in the forefront of advocating and supporting a leviathan state that any Nazi leader would have envied. At least the Nazis adhered to the German constitution much more closely than the Americans have adhered to theirs.

Copyright © 1988, 2019 by Thomas C. Allen.

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Immigrants or Colonists

Immigrants or Colonists

Thomas Allen

    It is often said that the United States are a country of immigrants. However, that is not exactly true. The early European arrivals did not come as immigrants. They came as colonists. They came to build a country with no intention to assimilate with the indigenous population. To the contrary, they came to supplant them.
    Only after the early nineteenth century did Europeans come as immigrants. By then, much of the country had been established. These Europeans came to add their labor and intellect to what was already built.
    Unfortunately, except for the Puritan-Yankee and their descendants, philosophically and biologically, the progressive, liberal democrat, the radicals of the failed Revolution of 1848 also came. Soon, they aligned themselves with the Puritan-Yankee to suppress Southern independence in Lincoln’s War. Radicalism and Marxism were their only contribution to the United States.
    Likewise, the Chinese and, later, the Japanese came as immigrants. However, their immigration became greatly restricted.
    In 1924, Congress enacted an immigration law to preserve the ethnic makeup of the United States. In 1965, Congress changed the immigration law to favor heavily anyone who was not European, i.e., of the White race, Aryan, Homo albus. As a result, non-Whites flooded the country.
    Most of the people who moved to the United States before1965 came as true immigrants. They sought to fit in. Consequently, they learned English and tried to assimilate.
    However, after 1965, most people who moved to the United States came as colonists. They came to make a new country. Many of them failed to learn English, and even fewer attempted to assimilate. Like the earlier colonists, these latter-day colonists came not to assimilate, but to supplant.[1]
    Nevertheless, these latter-day colonists differed greatly from the earlier colonists. Unlike the earlier colonists, who came to build a country, these colonists came to drain wealth from a well-established country. Thus, they were more like parasites.  As the parasite grows, the host shrivels and eventually dies. Will these new parasitic colonists survive their host and supplant it?
    Also, a major and highly important difference existed between the people who came to live in the United States before 1965 and after 1965. Before 1965, they were Europeans, except for East Asians whose immigration became highly restricted and Africans, whom the slave traders, of whom many were Yankees and none were Southerners, brought here. True Europeans are the same biological race, species: They are Aryans, Whites, Homo albus. Also, although they consisted of many nations or nationalities,[2] whose languages and customs differed, they were all from the same major culture of Western Civilization. For the most part, they were Christians, although their brand of Christianity differed. Consequently, they were more alike than different and, therefore, assimilation was much easier.
    After 1965, most of the people who came to settle in the United States were not Aryans. For the most part, they were Turanians, Homo luridus, from Asia and Turanians and mestizos from Latin America and Melanochroi, Homo brunus, from India, Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa. Being of a different biological race than the vast majority of the pre-1965 population, they could not truly and fully assimilate without destroying themselves biologically. Moreover, most were from alien cultures, which made assimilation more difficult. Also, except those from Latin America, few were Christian, if one could call Marxist Liberation Catholics Christians. Consequently, for them to assimilate truly and fully, they would have had to abandon much of their culture and convert to Christianity.
    However, since they came in such large numbers, they did not have to assimilate. They established colonies where they could live with people of their nationality, who shared their race, culture, religion, and language. Thus, they came as colonists and established colonists within the United States.
    Moreover, the Illuminists, who controlled the US government and, by that, the State governments, aided them in their alien colonization within the United States. With the welfare state, the Illuminists forced the Aryan taxpayers to support their own death by giving these alien colonists free or heavily subsidized schooling, medical care, housing, groceries, etc. (Illuminists are also known as the Establishment, Insiders, Globalists, and the Powers That Be.)
    What is the ultimate objective of flooding the United States with non-Whites with their alien cultures and religions? It is the Satanic goal to bring down and destroy the United States, and by that, to annihilate Western Civilization, to corrupt Christianity beyond repair, and to genocide the White race. (The same thing is occurring in Europe.) Even if this is not the goal, this is the result.

Endnotes
1. Mexicans have admitted that they come as colonists. They seek to overwhelm the States of the Southwest in such numbers that they will drive out the native Whites, Blacks, and other undesirables and joined the Southwest with Mexico. Thus, they seek to colonize and supplant the native population instead of assimilating.

2. A nation or nationality is a people of the same biological race (species) who have a common origin, culture, language, and history and who have common traditions and customs. A nation may or, more common, may not have its own country. Denmark is an example of a nation having its own country. Most nations have no country of their own. An example of a nation divided among several countries is the Alsatian, who resides in France, Switzerland, and Germany. Today, most countries consist of several nations. For example, Germany consists of the Bayuvar (Austro-Bavarian), Alsatian, Franconian (Upper German), German  (Middle German), Brandenburgian, and Plattdeutsch.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on Liberty in a Democracy

Mencken on Liberty in a Democracy

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes liberty in a democracy, pages 157-162. Below is an overview of his discussion on liberty in a democracy; my comments are in brackets.
    Whenever the liberties of the people “are invaded and made a mock of in a gross and contemptuous manner,” as occurred “in the United States during the reign of Wilson,” some observers always marvel that people bear such “outrage with so little murmuring.” About such observation, Mencken remarks, “Such observers only display their unfamiliarity with the elements of democratic science. The truth is that the common man’s love of liberty, like his love of sense, justice and truth, is almost wholly imaginary.” [The response of most people to 9-11 supports Mencken. Their quick surrender of liberty to the ruling elite shows their lack of love of liberty.] Unfortunately, for the lovers of liberty, the common man, of whom the masses comprise, is not “happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. He longs for the warm, reassuring smell of the herd, and is willing to take the herdsman with it.” Thus, “[l]iberty is not a thing for such as he. He cannot enjoy it rationally himself, and he can think of it in others only as something to be taken away from them.”
    When liberty is a reality, it is the “exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority of men, like knowledge, courage and honour. A special sort of man is needed to understand it, nay, to stand it — and he is inevitably an outlaw in democratic societies.” Mencken continues, “The average man doesn’t want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.” [Hence, the response of the average person to 9-11: throw away liberty for safety — and end up with neither. The common man, the inferior man, the democratic man, fails to realize that without liberty, real safety cannot exist.]
    Mencken cites Nietzsche as saying that liberty “was something that, to the general, was too cold to be borne.” However, Nietzsche “believed that there was an unnatural, drug-store sort of yearning for it in all men, and so he changed Schopenhauer’s will-to-live into a will-to-power, i.e., a will-to-free-function.” [Friedrich Nietzsche {1844 –1900} was a German philosopher, cultural critic, poet, and philologist. Arthur Schopenhauer {1788 –1860} was a German philosopher.] Mencken believes that Nietzsche “went too far, and in the wrong direction: he should have made it, on the lower levels, a will-to-peace.” Mencken remarks, “What the common man longs for in this world, before and above all his other longings, is the simplest and most ignominious sort of peace the peace of a trusty in a well-managed penitentiary. He is willing to sacrifice everything else to it. He puts it above his dignity and he puts it above his pride. Above all, he puts it above his liberty.” [As statists promise such peace, statists always have an advantage over lovers of liberty, libertists, in a democracy.]
    The common man loves peace and safety far more than he loves liberty. This may “explains his veneration for policemen, in all the forms they take — his belief that there is a mysterious sanctity in law, however absurd it may be in fact.” Mencken adds, “A policeman is a charlatan who offers, in return for obedience, to protect him [the common man] (a) from his superiors, (b) from his equals, and (c) from himself. This last service, under democracy, is commonly the most esteemed of them all.” [In reality, the ultimate job of the police is to protect the ruling elite, the real powers behind the political leaders, from the masses, i.e., the common man.] “In the United States, at least theoretically, it is the only thing that keeps ice-wagon drivers, Y.M.C.A. secretaries, insurance collectors and other such human camels from smoking opium, ruining themselves in the night clubs, and going to Palm Beach with Follies girls.” [To Mencken, the primary job of the police is to prevent personal vice.]
    Although the common man is deceived about liberty, “he starts from a sound premise: to wit, that liberty is something too hot for his hands — or, as Nietzsche put it, too cold for his spine. Worse, he sees in it something that is a weapon against him in the hands of his enemy.”
    Mencken adds, “The history of democracy is a history of efforts to force successive minorities to be untrue to their nature. Democracy, in fact, stands in greater peril of the free spirit than any sort of despotism ever heard of.” He continues, “The despot, at least, is always safe in one respect: his own belief in himself cannot be shaken. But democracies may be demoralized and run amok, and so they are in vast dread of heresy, as a Sunday-school superintendent is in dread of scarlet women, light wines and beer, and the unreadable works of Charles Darwin.” Then he remarks, “It would be unimaginable for a democracy to submit serenely to such gross dissents as Frederick the Great not only permitted, but even encouraged.” He notes, “Once the mob is on the loose, there is no holding it. So the subversive minority must be reduced to impotence; the heretic must be put down.”
    If a primary purpose “of all civilized government is to preserve and augment the liberty of the individual, then surely democracy accomplishes it less efficiently than any other form.” [The dictatorship of the proletariat does a much worse job. But, then, Mencken considers the dictatorship of the proletariat to be a form of democracy.] If the individual is worth thinking about, then “the superior individual is worth more thought than his inferiors.” Yet, “the superior individual  . . . is the chief victim of the democratic process. It not only tries to regulate his acts; it also tries to delimit his thoughts. . . . The aim of democracy is to break all such free spirits to the common harness. It tries to iron them out, to pump them dry of self-respect, to make docile John Does of them.” [Nearly all laws coming out of Congress and the statehouses seem to have as their primary objective the breaking of all free spirits to a common harness.]
    Democracy measures its success by the extent that it brings down superior men and makes them common. “The measure of civilization is the extent to which they resist and survive. Thus the only sort of liberty that is real under democracy is the liberty of the have-nots to destroy the liberty of the haves.” [Thus, the inferior man is a strong supporter of the welfare state because it brings down the superior man and destroys the liberties of the haves.] Mencken adds, “This liberty is supposed, in some occult way, to enhance human dignity.” In one aspect, perhaps, it does: “The have-not gains something valuable when he acquires the delusion that he is the equal of his betters. It may not be true but even a delusion, if it augments the dignity of man, is something.” Under this apparent reality, “the peasant no longer pulls his forelock when he meets the baron, he is free to sue and be sued, he may denounce Huxley as a quack.” [Thomas Huxley {1825–1895} was an English biologist and a prominent proponent of evolution, in which Mencken ardently believed.] Unfortunately, as the inferior is raised, the superior is lowered. Mencken notes, “If democracy really loves the dignity of man, then it kills the thing it loves.” It reduces all to a common level.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Commentary on John 3:36

Commentary on John 3:36

Thomas Allen

    Illustrating the theological bias of translators is John 3:36. The King James version translates John 3:36 as follows:

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

In the American Standard Version, it is translated:

He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

    Most translations follow the American Standard Version and translate ho apeithōn as “disobey” or words to that effect. A minority translates it as “disbelieve” or words to that effect. These translations include:
    – the New Jerusalem Bible (refuses to believe),
    – the Anointed Standard Translation (without persuasion),
    – the St. Joseph New Catholic Edition (unbelieving),
    – the Phillips New Testament in Modern English (refuses to believe),
    – the Bible in Basic English (has not faith),
    – the New King James Version (does not believe),
    – Williams translation of the New Testament (refuses to trust),
    – the New Testament revision of the Challane-Rheims Version (is unbelieving),
    – 21st Century King James Version (believeth not),
    – BRG Bible (believeth not),
    – Common English Bible (doesn’t believe),
    – Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (believeth not),
    – Holman Christian Standard Bible (refuses to believe),
    – Modern English Version (does not believe),
    – New International Reader's Version (does not believe),
    – New Life Version (does not put his trust),
    – New Matthew Bible (does not believe),
    – New Testament for Everyone (doesn’t believe),
    – Worldwide English (New Testament) (does not believe),
    – Wycliffe Bible (is unbelieveful to),
    – Young's Literal Translation (is not believing), and
    – God’s New Covenant (refuses to put his faith)
    Both the American Standard Version and the World English Bible have a footnote stating that “disobeys” can be translated “disbelieves.”
    Robert Wilkin states that the literal translation of ho apeithōn is “he who does not obey.” He writes, “Failure to believe in Jesus was disobeying the Father who sent him.” Thus, “he who does not believe” paraphrases the intent of the word. Supporting Wilkin is a footnote in the Revised Standard Bible, which defines “disobedience” as “unbelief.” According to Wilkin, “To gain eternal life one must obey God’s command to believe in His Son.”
    In his note on John 3:36, John Wesley remarks that disobeying Jesus is a consequence of not believing in him. Apparently, a person proves his faith via his works.
    Floyd Filson states that John 3:36 is as basics as John 3:16. That is, anyone who believes in the Son as sent of God to give life to those dead in sin receives eternal life. Then, he adds that he who refuses to believe the gospel message will not believe and obey Christ and, consequently, will not have eternal life. Thus, according to Filson salivation is by faith and proven by works, i.e., faith plus works.
    “Disobey” gives a different impression than “disbelieve.” “Disbelieve” suggests that everlasting life in the Kingdom of God, which is established when Jesus returns, depends on faith and faith alone. “Disobey” suggests that everlasting life depends on faith plus works; that is, everlasting life depends not only on faith, but it also depends on works. Such works include:
    – baptism, although there is much disagreement about the proper form of baptism (immersion, pouring, or sprinkling) and the salvific effect of infant baptism;
    – absolute obedience to the teachings of Christ, i.e., doing everything that Jesus says to do; thus, how much work is enough for salvation and how many transgressions are enough to cause a loss of salvation;
    – never sinning once one is saved (which may explain why Constantine waited until he was on his deathbed before he was baptized into the Catholic Church), especially committing a sin named in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10;
    – austerity, mortification, self-whipping, not bathing, and other similar practices that were considered virtuous and pious in times past;
    – failure adequately to recruit, i.e., proselytize;
    – perseverance to death;
    – failure to keep faith in Jesus and the Kingdom of God until death;
    – membership in the correct church, sect, or denomination (as several sects claim that one cannot be saved unless he is a member of that sect, one must be a member of all of them to guarantee salvation);
    – etc.
    As for faith, what does one have to believe in, on, or about the Son to have everlasting life? Is it believing that Jesus is;
– the giver and guarantor of eternal life (if true, does this mean that the soul is not innately immortal; if the soul is innately immoral, then believing in Jesus does not give eternal life as one already has that; however, if the soul is not immortal and the unsaved are tormented in hell forever, then in whom or what does one believe to be condemned to hell):
– God incarnated (if true, almost no one, except perhaps some gnostics, were saved before the fourth century AD);
– God according to the Trinity Doctrine, i.e., Jesus is eternal God, is equal to God the Father, and is very God and very man (if true, almost no one, was saved before the middle of the fourth century AD because almost no Christians believed Trinity Doctrine of three coequal, coeternal Gods or Persons being one God or Person, which was not formulated until 381);
– a man, human, who was uniquely begotten by God the Father in the womb of the Virgin Mary and only his Father is God (if true, only a few “Christians” have been saved since 400 AD);
– the Messiah, Christ, and the only begotten Son of God;
– sent by God the Father and that only the Father is God;
– sent by God to take away man’s sins and to give life to those dead in sin with his sacrificial death and resurrection;
– going to return to earth and establish his kingdom and that he meant what he said and did when he was here;
– etc.?
    Obviously, those who believe in salvation by faith and faith alone prefer translating ho apeithōn  as “disbelieve.” On the other hand, those who believe that salvation depends not only on faith but also on some kind or level of works prefer it translated as “disobey.”
    If for no other reason than parallelism, “disbelieve” is a better translation than “disobey.” In the second part of the sentence, “disbelieve” parallels with “believe” in the first part. “Disobey” does not.

References
Filson, Floyd V. The Gospel According to John. Editor Balmer H. Kelly. The Layman’s Bible Commentary. Volume 19. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1970.

Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. Reprint, London, England: The Epworth Press, 1948.

Wilkin, Robert N. “John.” The Grace New Testament Commentary. Editor Robert N. Wilkin. Vol.  1. Denton, Texas: Grace Evangelical Society, 2010.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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A Letter: The War Has Not Finished

A Letter: The War Has Not Finished

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The following is a letter written in 1989 responding to an article by Mr. Murray about an article that he wrote for Civil War Times Illustrated.]

        Mr. Murray’s article “The War We Never Finished” is interesting. However, I do disagree with some of his statements and his advocacy of genocide. There are also many omissions and errors in his article.
        He asserts that “the fundamental reason behind secession and the establishment of the Confederacy was the desire to keep the South a white man’s country through the perpetuation of Negro slavery.” If true, slavery was much better protected within the Union than without in spite of the Republican platform.
        With the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, and, more important, the Dread Scott decision in 1857, Southerners had won their right to settle in the territories with their slaves. Outside the Union, Southerners would not have this right. The importation of slaves into the United States was illegal. If, as often claimed, slavery needed to expand into the territories to survive, then secession would have destroyed slavery without a war.
        If the Southern States remained in the Union, the United States government would have apprehended runaway slaves and returned them to their owners. The most efficient and effective fugitive slave laws in the history of the United States were enforced on the eve of secession. If the Southern States were an independent country, slaveholders would lack this guarantee. That the United States would enter into a treaty with the Confederacy to return runaway slaves was doubtful.
        Ulrich Phillips describes the fire-eaters, the advocates of Southern independence, as guided by “the conviction, false or true, that an overpowering North was going to use federal authority sooner or later to impose Northern will for the promotion of Northern advantage and the indulgence of Northern impulse, mulcting the South financially and destroying the Southern industrial and social order quite regardless of local consequences.” Hence, the avant-garde of secession were guided as much, if not more, by economic and political reasons as social reasons. This assertion is from a person who averred that the force keeping slavery alive in the South was a desire to protect white civilization and culture.
        The main threat of the Republican Party to slavery was its opposition to slavery in the territories, which was contrary to the Supreme Court's ruling. Anyway, Southerners gave up this right when they seceded. That platform (the platform of the Republican Party) acknowledged the right of each State to control its own domestic institutions.
        The Republican Party’s position had little to do with an abhorrence of slavery and nothing to do with egalitarianism. It had everything to do with the North’s version of white supremacy. Northerners, as well as many Southerners, who moved to the territories, were opposed to slavery in the territories because slavery meant blacks, and they did not want blacks around.
        I have some disagreement with Mr. Murray’s assertion that slavery was the South’s solution to the race problem and the protection of white civilization. He fails even to mention the North’s solution. The North’s solution was to segregate and ostracize blacks to the very lowest rung of society. Although blacks were ostensibly free, they were not much better off than the slaves of the South. Many were materially worse off. Mr. Sidney Fisher, a Philadelphia lawyer and Maryland planter, described the plight of the black man in the North as follows:

But though the negro in the North is not a slave, he is made an outcast and a pariah. . . . He may not lay a finger on one of those three wonderful boxes, the ballot box, the jury box and the cartridge box, . . . by which freemen defend their rights. . . . The spirit of caste drives the negro out of the churches, theatres, hotels, rail-cars, steamboats, or assigns to him, in them, a place apart. It drives him into the cellars, dens and alleys of towns, into hovels in the country; and it does all this without laws. . . .

        The solution to the race problem and the preservation of white civilization often endorsed by many Northerners and by even more Southerners before the advent of the abolitionist was repatriation. Lincoln also supported this solution. If the Confederate’s principal motivation “was the desire to keep the South a white man’s country,” then repatriation would have certainly achieved that goal much more permanently and effectively than slavery.
        General Lee probably summed up the primary reason for secession when he stated, “All the South ever desired was that the Union would continue to be administered as it was originally constituted, in purity and truth.”
        President Davis offered to the Confederate Congress this explanation:

By degrees, as the Northern States gained preponderance in the National Congress, self-interest taught their people to yield ready assent to any plausible advocacy of their right as majority to govern the minority. Without control, they learn to listen with impatience to the suggestion of any constitutional impediment to the exercise of their will, and so utterly have the principles of the Constitution been corrupted in the Northern mind that, in the inaugral address delivered by President Lincoln in March last, he asserts a maxim which he plainly deems to be undeniable, that the theory of the Constitution requires, in all cases, that the majority shall govern. And in another memorable instance the same Chief Magistrate did not hesitate to liken the relations between States and the United States to those which exist between the county and the State in which it is situated, and by which it was created. This is the lamentable and fundamental error in which rests the policy that has culminated in his declaration of war against these Confederate States.

        Thus, Confederates feared that Lincoln and the Republican Party were going to subvert the republican government of the United States into a democratic government and destroy the United States as a federation by corrupting them into a consolidated empire. These fears were not ill-founded because both of these evils came to pass when the South was conquered.
        While quoting an abolitionist’s vow to enforce the emancipation proclamation, Mr. Murray fails to comment on its illegality and hypocrisy. The President had no legal authority to issue such a proclamation. He proclaimed freedom to slaves in areas under the control of the Confederates while offering no freedom to slaves in the areas under the control of the Union.
        Mr. Murray also fails to inform the reader that these holy abolitionists were the founders of modern-day terrorism. Their paragon of sainthood, John Brown, is the father of modern-day terrorism.
        As for the Unionists, they exceeded all in duplicity and hypocrisy if they were fighting to preserve the Union. As soon as they fired the first shot — or historically more correct, made the firing of the first shot necessary — they destroyed the Union. As an editorial in The Daily Picayune so aptly put it:

The favorite form of expression in which these resolves are clothed is that, it is the first and highest duty “to maintain the Union.” But a Union upheld by a war, which is made necessary by the revolting of many large and powerful States from an unfriendly and oppressive Government[,] is condemned at once by the act. When armies and fleets are employed to keep a confederation of States together, it is a mockery to send them forth as messengers of union. It is for the subjugation of the minority section to the will of the majority, and every element which makes it a circle of consenting States in a harmonious Union disappears under the crushing process. To talk of war, therefore, as the means of perpetuating a Union is a mockery. It might perpetuate a Government, but that Government will cease to be a federative one, and will contain within itself essential traits of a military despotism — the retention, by superior force, of an unwilling people in political bondage, to a Government which they had unanimously risen to throw off. The Government so established, if such a monstrous thing could ever be established, would have no principles remaining in common with those which make the theory of the constitution of the present Government, a departure from which has brought on the present convulsion. A war to “maintain the Union” is simply, therefore, a war to extinguish the Union, and to maintain a Government such as was never contemplated by any of the States which compose it, and which would not be tolerated by any State now, if there were a question of creating or restoring a Government.

        H. L. Mencken, who may be accused of being an iconoclast, but who can hardly be accused of being a fire-eating unreconstructed rebel, put it more succinctly when commenting on the battle of Gettysburg and the Gettysburg Address:

Think of the argument in it [the Gettysburg Address]. Put it into the cold words of everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination —'that government of the people, by the people, for the people,' should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to image anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i.e., of the people of the States: The Confederates went into battle free; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and veto of the rest of the country — and for nearly twenty years that veto was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely more liberty, in the political sense, than so many convicts in the penitentiary.

        Mr. Mencken answers Mr. Murray’s question about what rights were Southerners denied. They were denied the right of political self-determination. They were denied the ultimate States’ right — the right to secede peacefully. The right of political self-determination and the right to secede were the primary rights and reasons for which the Upper South fought. The States of the Upper South did not secede until President Lincoln made the suppression and denial of these rights perfectly clear by calling for troops with which to invade the States of the Lower South.
        The peoples of the States of the Upper South agreed with Alexander Stephens’ statement:

Under our system of government, as I view it, there is no rightful power in the General Government to coerce a State, in case any one of them should throw herself upon her reserved rights, and resume the full exercise of her Sovereign Powers. Force may perpetuate a Union. That depends upon the contingencies of war. But such a Union would not be the Union of the Constitution. It would be nothing short of a Consolidated Despotism.

        In 1863, a French writer appropriately and descriptively wrote, “Russia and the United States proclaim the liberty of the serf and the emancipation of the slave, but in return both seek to reduce the slavery all who defend liberty and independence.”
        As a result of the War, the Constitution was nullified — or at least its underlying principles were if not its words although the Fourteenth Amendment went a long way toward nullifying its words. The Union was changed from a federation of States to a consolidated empire of provinces.
        The actions of the Unionists just prove Abbot C. Martin’s observation: “A Nazi is simply a Yankee carried to the logical conclusion.”
        Mr. Murray fails to point out that the Black Codes were modeled after New England labor codes. If blacks comprised as large a percentage of the population in the North as they did in the South, undoubtedly most Northern States would have had black codes. Except perhaps for Indiana and Illinois, which made it illegal for Negroes to enter them.
        Mr. Murray notes that the Confederates discovered that “slavery was not necessary to safeguard white supremacy.” He then proceeds to describe discrimination in the South.
        He fails to say, although he hints at it, that the Confederates learned to treat blacks as they were treated in the North — institutionalization of segregation. The difference between the North and the South is that in the North blacks were such a small minority that there was little need to legalize segregation whereas in the South because of the large numbers of blacks, it was — hence the “Jim Crow” laws.
        Perhaps the South’s imitation of the North is why it took the North eighty years to become greedy enough and hypocritical enough to condemn the South for doing exactly what the North was doing. Besides, with mass migration of blacks northward, something had to be done to protect white supremacy in the North by keeping the Negro in his place, i.e., keeping him in the South. So along came minimum wage laws and other labor laws restricting the employment of labor to price the black man out of the Northern labor market. Along came a host of “civil rights” laws, which were intended to be enforced primarily in the South and for the most part have been. Appease the black man in the South, and he will stay there, away for the white Yankee.
        These civil rights laws were written to apply only where there was segregation by statute, hence the South, and not where there was segregation by custom, hence the North. However, the South was not allowed to imitate the North this time. The South was not allowed to replace statute with custom. If the South continued to discriminate against blacks, there would be little incentive for them to remain in their place. Thus, blacks were to be forced on white Southerners as equals while segregated, except for a token here and there, from white Northerners. The only problem the North has had with this strategy is the occasional renegade judge who forgets or ignores the purpose of these laws.
        This time the egalitarians found their allies in the Northern white supremacists and greedy Southern politicians and businessmen.
        Mr. Murray seems to accept and endorse the position of the egalitarians without any critical analysis. The solution offered by the egalitarians during the War and the First Reconstruction is the same solution that they offer now during the Second Reconstruction. Their solution, the solution the Mr. Murray seems to endorse, is genocide through integration. Genocide is hardly a viable solution.
        I am aware of no place or time when two or more races were allowed, or in our case forced, to integrate that the races involved did not proceed to breed themselves out of existence. I hardly believe that breeding the black man out of existence, which is nothing less than genocide, is a solution to any “white supremacy” problem, real or perceived. Is the destruction of the black man through the genocide of integration in the name of equal rights as the egalitarians want to do any better than his destruction through the genocide of mass execution in the name of white supremacy as the egalitarians claim that the Klan wants to do? In the long run, the future that the black man faces under the egalitarians is worse than any offered by any white supremacist. The egalitarians offer him extinction through genocidal integration. At least under the white supremacist he survives, for without the black man the white supremacist would become extinct for want of anyone to be superior to.
        The only really viable solution is the one offered by Lincoln, which is geographical separation. It is the only solution that destroys racial supremacy without genocide.
        That great North Carolinian, Chub Seawell, summarized the whole egalitarian movement of the Second Reconstruction when he said, “The Ku Klux Klan comes marching down the street with a big banner saying ‘white power,’ and the media has a sort of running fit and yells ‘racism.’ Then the NAACP comes marching down the street with a big banner saying ‘black power,’ and the media calls it ‘human rights.’”
        Those who condemn the Confederate flag as being a symbol of slavery, racism, white supremacy, etc. should with more vigor and vehement condemn the Unites States flag. The United States flag flew over slavery, segregation, and white supremacy in the North before the Confederate flag did, while the Confederate flag did, and after the Confederate flag cease to in the South.
        Blacks have shown no hesitation, concern, or sensitivity about imposing, nay forcing, their company on people who do not want to associate with them. They should not be surprised at the lack of sensitivity about their feelings towards the Confederate flag. Some of those who love that flag see black hostility towards it as just another attempt to impose the black man’s will on them to deprive them of one of their few remaining liberties in the black man’s attempt to establish black supremacy. If blacks find the Confederate flag offensive, then they should avoid associating with those who display and revere the flag. But, I guess, after spending a lifetime trying to outlaw freedom of association by forcing their company on others, such an obvious solution cannot be accepted. The Confederate flag must bow to their prejudices.
        We unreconstructed Southerners keep the War alive for a number of reasons. Among the most important are as Alexander Stephens wrote, “Time changes and men often change with them, but principles never!” and as T. S. Eliot wrote, “We fought for lost causes because we knew that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successor's victory . . . we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that it will triumph.”

Copyright © 1989, 2016 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Mencken on Lame Ducks

Mencken on Lame Ducks

Thomas Allen

    In 1926, H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) wrote Notes on Democracy in which he expressed his views on democracy and related issues. He was a journalist, satirist, and critic and a libertarian and one of the leaders of the Old Right. In his book, he describes the lame ducks, pages 148-154. Below is an overview of his discussion on the lame ducks; my comments are in brackets.
    Mencken considers one of the “unpleasant by-products of democracy . . . [to be the] professional politicians who, in the eternal struggle for office and its rewards, have suffered crushing defeats, and are full of rage and bitterness.”
    Under democracy, all politics resolve “into a series of dynastic questions: the objective is always the job, not the principle.” Usually, the defeated candidate “takes his failure very badly, for it leaves him stripped bare. In most cases his fellow professionals take pity on him and put him into some more or less gaudy appointive office, to preserve his livelihood and save his face.” [Hillary Clinton illustrates excellently the abjection of the defeated candidate. Unfortunately for her, but fortunately for the country, no one has pitied her enough to appoint her to some office. However, no appointive position will alleviate her pain.]
    However, for some defeat is so painful that an appointed position will not assuage the pain. “This majestic victim not infrequently seeks surcease by a sort of running amok. That is to say, he turns what remains of his influence with the mob into a weapon against the nation as a whole, and becomes a chronic maker of trouble.” He discusses six examples: Clay, Calhoun, Burr, Blaine, Theodore Roosevelt, and Bryan. [Hillary Clinton is a recent example.]
    Mencken remarks that countries under “despotism escape such lamentable exhibitions of human frailty” of the unsuccessful aspirants for office under democracy. “Unsuccessful aspirants for the crown are either butchered out of hand or exiled to Paris, where tertiary lues quickly disposes of them.” Continuing, he writes, “The Crown Prince, of course, has his secret thoughts, and no doubt they are sometimes homicidal, but he is forced by etiquette to keep them to himself, and so the people are not annoyed and injured by them. He cannot go about praying publicly that the King, his father, come down with endocarditis, nor can he denounce the old gentleman as an idiot and advocate his confinement in a maison de santi.” [Nevertheless, dictators of communist countries have ordered the extermination of millions of their countrymen.] Although everyone “knows what his hopes and yearnings are, but no one has to listen to them.” However, “[u]nder democracy, they are bellowed from every stump.”

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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