Anabaptist Polemics against the Lack of Protestant Moral Reform: II. Hans Denck

Identifying Denck’s polemical style can often be obscured by the fact that he did not mention the names of his opponents in his writings. Also obscuring a view of Denck’s polemic is the general view that Denck, because of his high view of religious tolerance, was less-involved in proving others wrong than in seeking the freedom of conscience for all. Packull felt comfortable enough with this conception to label Denck an “Ecumenical Anabaptist.”[1] On the other hand, Fellman noted that, though Denck was indeed a strong proponent of religious liberty, Denck was not without “kräftige und heftige [strong and violent]” words in dispute with other religious positions.[2]

The strongest statement in Denck on the matter is in Concerning the Law of God, but his criticism is evident elsewhere, demonstrating how pervasive the critique was in formulating many of his doctrinal positions. For instance, like Hübmaier, Denck also fit his criticism of Protestant morality within the context of the polemic regarding free will. In The Order of God, Denck raised the question about the extent of predestination, charging, “Nevertheless, you can gorge and drink and practice every debauchery–who taught you that? You say, We must do it, we are foreordained. Oh, brethren, brethren, what injustice you do the Most High… Your own will drives you (John 8), but you wish to blame God.”[3]

Denck further pointed out the link between doctrine and practice, saying, “They say that they believe; as they believe, so they speak. They have never left the old life and not accepted the new…”[4] That link between doctrine and conduct, where conduct is in accordance to doctrine comes again in Denck’s Recantation. Denck wrote, “For there can be no truthful heart where neither speech nor deed is found.”[5] This is consistent with Denck’s conception of faith, which is both obedience to and confidence in God.[6] It would seem then that Denck’s critique could be summed up by saying that the Protestants may have demonstrated confidence in God’s promises but did not have obedience to him. Thus, the Protestants, by Denck’s definitions, would not truly have a complete faith.

Denck’s work, On the Law of God is his fullest treatment on the subject and seems to have been written specifically as a response to Protestant antinomianism.[7] Denck viewed his time as having been that than which no greater time of depravity reigned.[8] Denck outlined that some claimed to be able to follow God’s law, and they were in his assessment right on this point, but they were unwilling to do so lest they give airs that the Law in some way brought about their salvation.[9] Others, however, claimed to be unable to follow God’s law for they saw themselves as not having been empowered to do so. These, Denck claimed, cast the blame for their own sin on God.[10]

                Denck continued, saying to both parties, “Woe to him who looks elsewhere than to this goal;[11] for whoever supposes he belongs to Christ must walk the way Christ walked.”[12] This critique of the way that Protestants had treated God’s law was the impetus to the rest of the discussion in the booklet. In stating that reason, Denck pointed out that this abuse of the law was not merely a distortion among the people of the teaching of the Protestants as though the general populace had misunderstood Protestant teaching. Rather, even the pastors had erred and thus the error must have been a part of the entire Protestant system.[13]

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[1]Werner O. Packull. Mysticism and the Early South German-Austrian Anabaptist Movement, 1525-1531, Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History, no. 19 (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1977). His use of this classification for Denck seems to spring from his agreement with the assumption that Denck was a universalist (44), an assumption that is not without its detractors. cf. William Klassen, “Was Hans Denck a Universalist?” MQR 39, no. 2 (Apr. 1965): 152-154.

[2]Fellman, “Irenik und Polemik,” 110.

[3]In The Spiritual Legacy of Hans Denck: Interpretation and Translation of Key Texts [SL], ed. and trans. Clarence Bauman, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, no. 47 (Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill, 1991), 213. Also, demonstrating a polemical technique of speaking the opponents position that was also used by Hübmaier in Dialogue with Zwingli’s Baptism Book, Denck voiced similar concerns about placing God as the author in Whether God is the Cause of Evil, saying, “You say: Since God is in all creatures and performs all things in them, then it must follow that he also commits sin,” in SL, 81.

[4]The Order of God, SL, 213.

[5]SL, 253.

[6]Ibid.

[7]Baumann, SL, 118.

[8]SL, 123,125.

[9]Ibid.

[10]Ibid.

[11]Apparently the goal is subjecting one’s self to admonition.

[12]Concerning the Law of God, SL, 127.

[13]Ibid., 129.

Anabaptist Polemics against the Lack of Protestant Moral Reform: III. Menno Simons

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.

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[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.

Anabaptist Polemics against the Lack of Protestant Moral Reform: I. Balthasar Hübmaier

               Some research from a few months back. When I wrote this, I was not then aware of William Klaasen's article, "The Nature of the Anabaptist Protest."[*] There may therefore be some overlap between the material covered there and here. There is also overlap between this and my Hallowe'en post, the material of which inspired this larger work. For ease, this work will be split up into three segments based on each writer examined.

Many polemical issues are deserving of research. For example, rather than only giving a description of the Anabaptist views of baptism, it would be a worthy area of research to specifically outline Anabaptist critiques of the pedobaptist position. Other areas might include arguments against the state-church model and differing hermeneutics between Protestants and Anabaptists. The area of research that will be begun in this work will be the Anabaptist critique of the Protestants insofar as the Protestant reforms largely did not yield the fruit of the new life.

                 Discipleship and regenerate living has long been considered at or at least near the center of Anabaptist identity. Bender, in his perennially reproduced statement of the Anabaptist vision listed discipleship, ecclesiology and the love ethic, specifically in regard to non-resistance, as three key identifying factors of Anabaptism.[1] What often goes unrecognized is that Bender later refined his view to say that the love ethic was not unique to Anabaptism, although the non-resistance attribute was foreign to other appropriations of the love ethic, and that Anabaptist ecclesiology was actually a derivative concept from the Anabaptist position on discipleship.[2] This placed discipleship as the “most characteristic, most central, most essential and regulative concept in Anabaptist thought, which largely determines all else.”[3]

                 Though such a reduction of discipleship as the sine qua non of Anabaptist identity has not gone fully unchallenged,[4] the continued popularity of Bender’s model evinces that discipleship and the call for a regenerate lifestyle are at least near the center of prominence in Anabaptist identity. For this reason, the current research will look into several expressions among Anabaptist authors in their polemics against the Protestants on the issue of discipleship. The obverse of such a theology of discipleship and moral reform as an important mark of early Anabaptist identity would be the critique of those that did not show such moral reform or a discipleship ethic in their theology. Following is a look into polemics of Balthasar Hübmaier, Hans Denck and Menno Simons against the Protestants and the lack of moral reform that those Anabaptists saw among the state-church reformers.

Balthasar Hübmaier

The earlier writings of Hübmaier generally dealt with the issue of baptism, but as he gained slightly more freedom in his later years in Nikolsburg he was able to broaden the scope of his critique of the Protestants to include the issue of moral reform. The general tenor of Hübmaier’s complaint was that the Protestants may have taken a few good steps in recovering the gospel, they did not complete them with good works. Regardless of what one may have proclaimed, Hübmaier did not give much heed to that proclamation without the evidence of works.

Hübmaier called the Christians who would not amend their doctrine with the new life, “Mouth-Christians,” who gladly boast of Christ’s work on the cross.[5] He earlier said that things would not go well in the church “Even if we should all shout, write, and hear the gospel until we are hoarse and tired.”[6] He further goes on to say that the result of such thinking is that “We[7] still claim to be Christians, truly evangelical, and boast of our great faith, and have never touched the works of the gospel and of faith with our little finger.[8] Further, he wrote, “Whoever lets his faith stand naked and does not clothe it in good works adulterates Christian liberty into carnal license.”[9] The force of Hübmaier’s words is clear, that to take the Protestant doctrine of sola fide, which Hübmaier would call “mere faith,”[10] without the amendment of life would be an empty gospel and was apparently in Hübmaier’s mind the cause of great sin in his world.

Hübmaier drew that point clearly in On Fraternal Admonition. He wrote, “We all want to be Christians and good Protestants by taking wives and eating meat, no longer sacrificing, no more fasting, no more praying, yet apart from this one sees nothing but tippling, gluttony, blasphemy, usury, lying, deceit, etc...”[11] The Protestants, according to Hübmaier’s critique, did not seem to differentiate the commands coming from Rome insofar as some were extra-biblical additions and others were biblical moral commands. In throwing out the errata of the church in its rites and rituals, the Protestants apparently also tended to throw out the Christian lifestyle for it was only viewed as yet another work added onto faith by the Roman church in order to merit salvation.[12]

Summarily, Hübmaier had made the criticism of the lack of a reformed life among the Protestants as set against their doctrine. He wrote:

"People had learned no more than two points, without any amelioration of life. The one point, that they could say: “We believe. Faith saves us.” Second: “We can do nothing good of ourselves.” Now both of these are true. But under the mantle of these half truths all kinds of iniquity, unfaithfulness, and injustice have completely taken over."[13]

Hübmaier was undoubtedly approving of those Protestant doctrines–sola fide and total depravity[14]–but they were not a complete picture of the Christian life. Only by a reformed life would on truly learn the gospel.

Hübmaier’s broader polemic on free will also included elements critical of Protestant morality. He wrote that the strong predestination doctrines of the Protestants led toward apathy of lifestyle and that any moral failings would be attributed as inevitable, for they were putatively the work of God. He wrote that such a doctrine was to “blame him [God] for unrighteousness.”[15] He further goes on to say that to continue is sin so that God’s providence of salvation, as opposed to man providing for his own salvation by works, is a blasphemy, and that to say God wills sin either does not know God or does not know sin.[16]

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[*]op. cit. MQR 45, no. 4 (Oct. 1971): 291-311. Some of the material from that article is also covered in Klaassen's Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant (Waterloo, Ontario: Conrad, 1973). My reading of that work partially, although not entirely, inspired my search into this topic.

[1]“The Anabaptist Vision,” MQR 18, no. 2 (Apr. 1944): 67-88., which is itself is a reprint of a printing of a lecture and has since been reproduced in other literature including a standalone binding from Herald Press.

[2]“The Anabaptist Theology of Discipleship,” MQR 24, no. 1 (Jan. 1950): 26-27.

[3]Ibid., 27.

[4]Leonard Gross, “Recasting the Anabaptist Vision: The Longer View,” MQR 60, no. 3 (Jul. 1986): 352-363.; Werner O. Packull, “Some Reflections on the State of Anabaptist History: The Demise of a Normative Vision,” Studies in Religion 8 (1979): 313-323.

[5]Apologia, in Balthasar Hubmaier: Theologian of Anabaptism [BH], ed. and trans. Wayne H. Pipkin and John Howard Yoder, Classics of the Radical Reformation, no. 5 (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald, 1989), 526.

[6]On Fraternal Admonition, BH, 375. This context is specifically in regards to the vanity of such boasting of the gospel without the use of fraternal admonition and the ban, the means of discipline and thus moral reform in the church.

[7]“We” mostly likely refers to Hübmaier’s own Germanic peoples, the group seemingly at the forefront of his social conscious as evidenced by the introduction to his A Christian Catechism, BH, 343-344.

[8]Apologia, BH, 527.

[9] Ibid., 528.

[10]Ibid., 527.

[11]BH, 375-376.

[12]Walter Klaassen echoed this critique while commenting on a slightly broader representation of Anabaptist writers, saying “But many were not so subtle; they assumed from Luther’s words that works also included moral behaviour.” Anabaptism: Neither Catholic nor Protestant, 31.

[13]On Fraternal Admonition, BH, 375. cf. Free Will I, BH, 447-448.

[14]That Hübmaier would agree with total depravity, see Free Will I, BH, 438.

[15]Apologia, BH, 534.

[16]Free Will II, BH, 468, 469.