Friedmann, Robert. The Theology of Anabaptism: An Interpretation. Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1973.
Friedmann’s Theology of Anabaptism is a guide toward what he admits is a seeming oxymoron–Anabaptist Theology. The heart of the interpretation he presents is that Anabaptist theology is an implicit theology, unlike the explicit theology of the Protestant Reformers (21). Whereas the Lutheran Reformation was primarily doctrinal, the Anabaptists centered their efforts on what Friedmann terms existential Christianity (30 ff.).
That Anabaptist Christianity was existential was not intended to compare the movement to existentialism but rather to highlight the Anabaptist emphasis on how one acts as a Christian in a practical way. For this reason the Anabaptists were more concerned with right living than with right doctrine (31). As such, any theology would be implicit rather than explicit. However, Friedmann understood Anabaptism to be within the limits of creedal orthodoxy even if they understood the authority for their orthodoxy as having derived from Scripture rather than the early councils.
The other main point of Friedmann’s interpretation is that of setting the Anabaptists within the context of the Reformation. Friedmann saw Anabaptism as a third way (in agreement with George Huntston Williams) to approaching the questions of the day (18). The distinction of the Protestant and Anabaptist ways as reforms against the Catholic Church was between the doctrinal and existential forms of Christianities that each way sought to restore. Friedmann set this interpretation against that of Roland H. Bainton, whose portrayal of Anabaptism as a “left wing” of the Reformation Friedmann frames as the Anabaptists being an extension of the Reformation.
This does not fully capture the nuance of Bainton’s expression of the Reformation was not that there were two ways–Catholic and Protestant, of which Anabaptism was part. Bainton saw each localized attempt at reformation, whether that of Wittenberg, Zurich, Geneva or Canterbury, as unrelated in their geneses. His view was that they were sister movements rather than lineal descendents of a parent movement. Anabaptism, then, whether monogenetic or polygenetic, would not simply be the radical half of the Reformation but rather one way among many ways, each generally localized.[1]
The bulk of the book gives survey to the implicit theology systematically in the traditional categories. Two exceptions are notable. The first is the Anabaptist doctrine of Scripture. Generally an opening chapter to theology, Friedmann gave no full treatment of the Anabaptist use or understanding of the Scripture even though he acknowledged the role of the Bible in the formation of Anabaptist thought. Perhaps Friedmann passed this by due to the relative paucity of resources of this little-investigated area of Anabaptism. Also, the traditional order is reversed when ecclesiology is switched from last with ecclesiology taking the final position. That section, ecclesiology, is given the most space in the book, perhaps reflecting the emphasis of Littell of ecclesiology as the controlling character of the movement.
The systematic section had opened not with prolegomena but rather with the doctrine of the two kingdoms, which he titled the “heart” of Anabaptist theology. This must be compared to existential Christianity. It is not as though existential Christianity as the center of Anabaptist thought competes with the doctrine of the two kingdoms as the heart of Anabaptist theology. Rather, they exist on two levels–the theology, centered on the two kingdoms, behind the primary understanding of faith, which is as existential.
It becomes obvious at several points that Friedmann wrote with an Anabaptist audience in mind. He accepted a near equivocation of Anabaptist faith and practice with that of the apostolic era. For instance, Friedmann wrote that the ban was a third sacrament in the apostolic era and the Anabaptists thus imitated that model in their elevation of the practice of church discipline (144). This might work fine for a Mennonite or a Hutterite audience (Friedmann himself being a Hutterite) but those outside of the Anabaptist community may be thereby provoked to take some of Friedmann’s more idealistic claims with reservation.
For now, Friedmann’s work remains an excellent introduction to the topic. However, as the book nears the 40-year mark, a new project with the same goal but incorporating the wealth of research that has since been done would be of great help to future students of Anabaptism. Alongside Snyder’s Anabaptist History and Theology, Friedmann’s effort will go a long way toward directing the future of study in the movement. Though updates could be made, the power of the book lays in its interpretation of the broader ideas of Anabaptist theology as essentially an existential type of Christianity with an implicit theology that existed not as a radicalization of the Reformation but rather as a different type of Reformation altogether. In this way, The Theology of Anabaptism can continue to serve the discussion of students of the movement attempting to identify an essence, or even if there is an essence, of Anabaptism and trying to understand its place within the Reformation period and beyond.
[1]Bainton spoke of Anabaptism as a “third type” but not as a third after Catholicism and Protestantism but rather after Luther and Zwingli and before a fourth and fifth type found in Calvin and the Spiritualists. The Reformation of the Sixteenth Century enlarged ed. (Boston: Beacon Hill, 1985), 95.
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