Writing with a sharp quill, Simons often composed pointed words toward his polemical opponents. He wrote against the radicals at Münster, Catholics, Protestants–both of Lutheran and Zwinglian varieties–and even against some of those self-identified with the Anabaptist movement. In many of his works against those opponents, Simons turned toward the lack of moral reform as a high point of criticism.
Against the Lutherans, Simons wrote words that are quite similar to those of Hübmaier above. In The True Christian Faith, he wrote:
God be praised, we caught on that all our works avail nothing, but that the blood and death of Christ alone must cancel and pay for our sins. They strike up a Psalm, Der Strick ist entzwei und wir sind frei, etc. (Snapped is the Cord, now we are free, praise the Lord) while beer and wine verily run from their drunken mouths and noses. Anyone who can but recite this on his thumb, no matter how carnally he lives, is a good evangelical man and a precious brother.[1]
He continued on to write that those who would admonish against sin would be condemned as believing that salvation is by good works. The similarity with Hübmaier’s words is significant. Menno noted the first point of the reformation was that “works avail nothing” while Hübmaier wrote that “we can do nothing good of ourselves.” Both pointed toward the doctrine of total depravity as a positive result of the Protestant reformation.[2]
Also, whereas Hübmaier set the other point as “We believe. Faith saves us,” i.e. sola fide, Simons identified forensic justification by the atonement as the second point. Though the foci are separate, both writers are essentially hitting at the same point, for the justifying work of the atonement is the object of the faith that alone saves.[3] So, both writers came to the same conclusion–though there was a true belief that man can do nothing to save himself and that man can be saved by faith in what Christ had done, the Protestant reformation did not bring those doctrines to the result of answering the question of what men are to do in response to what Christ has done. Though Protestant doctrine may have been sound on those two points, Protestant moral practice was against the command of Christ.
Though Protestants charged that the Anabaptist position on this point was a turn to the Pelagian heresy that one is saved by works, Simons affirmed his agreement with the Protestants on those first two points. In his Reply to False Accusations, Simons assented, “…we cannot be saved by means of anything in heaven or on earth other than by the merits, intercession, death, and blood of Christ…”[4] He continued by saying that:
All may find a place in their sect who will but keep their ceremonies, and acknowledge them to be the true preachers and messengers, no matter how they live… [There is] no drunkard, no avaricious or pompous person, etc… so great and ungodly but he must be called a Christian. If he but say, I am sorry, then all is ascribed to his weakness and imperfection, and he is admitted to the Lord’s Supper, for, say they, he is saved by Grace and not by merits.[5]
What Simons then desired was not to overturn those Protestant doctrines per se.[6] His objection was that the Protestants used the doctrines as an excuse to live against the manner of life to which Christians were supposedly called, thus cheapening the grace that had been proclaimed from the pulpit by the preachers. Simons’ conclusion was that by their lifestyles, despite their admirable doctrine, the Protestants exhibited that they were not those who would inherit the kingdom.
In Simons’ mind, the privation of good works that were to result from the gospel essentially nullified any proclamation of faith. In the Brief Defense to All Theologians, Simons wrote, “…men everywhere live and carry on as though never a prophet nor an apostle, nor a Christ nor a Word of God had been on earth! And still you folks call yourselves the holy Christian church and sound teachers…”[7] All that the church had become, in Simons’ estimation, was the mere practice of ceremonies that made the works of the new life unnecessary.[8]
To Simons, treating the gospel as unnecessary was no neutral position toward the gospel. Simons more derisively set the Protestant preachers as being actively opposed to the gospel. Simons’ A Pathetic Supplication to All Magistrates clarified that the preachers “…by their doctrine, sacraments, and conduct oppose the Word of the Lord…”[9] Simons went on to say that, if the Anabaptists were heretics for teaching conformity to the image of Christ,[10] then Christ, the prophets and the apostles would likewise be heretics and that all of Scripture, “which teaches naught but moral improvement, and everywhere points us to Christ, must have been naught but deceit and falsehood!”[11] For Simons, to heed not the call to the new life was not merely to ignore Scripture but to be in rebellion against it.
Lest Simons be viewed as merely playing party politics, taking sides along denominational lines, it is important to recognize that he had also turned his pen against those who identified themselves as Anabaptists and yet failed in moral reform. This is not only a polemic against the Münsterites, from whom Simons constantly desired the Anabaptists to be distinguished, but also against tho who might have been identified more with the Anabaptist mainstream.[12]
O brethren, how far some of us, alas, are still distant from the evangelical life which is of God! Notwithstanding that they stay out of the churches and are outwardly baptized with water, yet they are earthly and carnally minded in all things, thinking perhaps that Christianity consists in external baptism and staying away from the churches.[13]
Being identified by external sign with Simons’ own group was not enough to escape Simons’ admonition against the carnal life.
Conclusions
What must be avoided in any interpretation among several Anabaptist writers is the temptation to avoid overly universalizing their combined opinions to attempt to present, as would be in this case, the Anabaptist polemic against the lack of Protestant moral reform. Though the Anabaptist movement is often highly particularized, it would still not be a fruitless task to notice some common characteristics among these three writers.
1) Though doctrine and practice are in the thought of these Anabaptists abstractly separable concepts, the two must always go together. Denck stated it, “As they believe, so they speak.” Simons consistently tied conduct with doctrine. The force of this is as to say that, even if the doctrine of the Protestants was as an abstractly separable concept in agreement with Anabaptist beliefs, the lack of moral reform was enough to nullify the whole teaching of the Protestants or perhaps even showed that there was an inherent flaw in the Protestant doctrines that expressed itself in their conduct.[14]
2) Similarly, though Anabaptists may have at many points agreed with the doctrine of the Protestants, the necessity of moral reform was of such importance that a separate identity as the true church would be needed against the Protestants as yet another false church.
3) In consideration of the Anabaptists’ general acceptance of the Erasmian position on free will against the Lutheran doctrine of predestination, Hübmaier and Denck both clearly expressed that they saw the Protestant connection between lifestyle and God’s ordination to be in error. Neither could accept the position that any sin in an individual’s life could be explained away as though such sin were the will of God. Hübmaier especially pointed toward God as having revealed His will to be that of obedience to His commands.
Certainly there are other fields within Anabaptist polemics that can be fruitfully researched. Even within this topic, the writings of other Anabaptist leaders deserve examination so that more conclusions could be drawn and perhaps a more universal core of Anabaptist polemics against Protestant morality could be formed. Perhaps investigation could also be given to the validity of Anabaptist claims and Protestant responses to them. Among these writers, though, it is seen that the lack of moral reform among the Protestants as these writers saw it was a significant breaking point between the two parties and that the conception of Christianity without the evidence of a regenerate life was intolerable to them.
[1]In The Complete Writings of Menno Simons [MS], ed. John Christian Wenger, trans. Leonard Verduin (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1956), 334.
[2]Although Denck does not a have a passage with such a strong parallel to these, it does seem that he also heard the Protestant doctrine of depravity favorably. He wrote, “…all flesh is so perverse that, as much as possible, it always debases even the very best that God imparts to it.” Concerning the Law of God, SL, 123.
[3]As was stated above, Denck’s conception of faith is bifurcated such that he might at this point say that the Protestants taught correctly on faith qua confidence but erred in faith qua obedience.
[4]MS, 569.
[5]Ibid.
[6]It is possible that Simons may have vacillated between the positions of accepting Protestant doctrine while rejecting their conduct and of rejecting their conduct and the doctrine that fostered it. While the above evidence seems to indicate the former position, the latter is a more probable understanding of his comment in Brief and Clear Confession, when he declares that the Protestants were at fault “both in doctrine and life.” MS, 445.
[7]MS 537. The paragraph from which the admonition comes is repeated elsewhere in Simons writings, at least in the Reply to False Accusations (Ibid., 557).
[8]Ibid.
[9]MS, 526.
[10]That the Christian life was to be lived as manifesting the characteristics of Christ or revealing the image of Christ after which the imago dei follows is an occasional expression for the regenerate life lived according to the commands of Christ. cf. A Kind Admonition on Church Discipline, MS, 409; The New Birth, MS, 93.
[11]Reply to False Accusations, MS, 527-528.
[12]e.g. Simons’ first publication was against one of the Münsterite leaders: The Blasphemy of John of Leiden, MS, 31-50. Also, Simons replied against the accusation that his sect was to be identified with the Münsterites in Reply to False Accusations, MS, 547-549.
[13]A Kind Admonition on Church Discipline, MS, 410. The editor’s note on these lines reminds us that “‘The churches’ refer to the state churches of the period, whether Roman Catholic, Lutheran, or ‘Zwinglian’ (Reformed),” for Anabaptists would often stay away from them.
[14]It has been noted that there was among other Anabaptist the conclusion that the Protestants were indeed correct in their doctrine but had only misapplied Christian practice: Timothy Wayne Dalzell, “The Anabaptist Purity of Life Ethic,” Ph.D diss., Denton, Texas, North Texas State University, 1985.
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