Very few of the Anabaptists, whom we began to look at last month, were trained theologians.
This meant that there was a range of theological diversity among the Anabaptists. Some denied the Trinity, some affirmed that Christ’s humanity was eternal, ‘celestial flesh’, and some rejected the Bible as the inspired Word of God. Not surprisingly, the theological errors of such people marred the entire movement for mainstream Reformers like Luther and John Calvin. But the movement really needs to be judged on the best of its thinking.
The Schleitheim Confession
A good window into the best of evangelical Anabaptist thought can be found through the Schleitheim Confession, drawn up in February 1527 by Swiss and South German Anabaptists at Schleitheim, a small village near the border of Germany and Switzerland. Its primary author is usually regarded as Michael Sattler (1490–1527).
There are seven main affirmations, which deal with those areas in which the Anabaptists saw themselves differing from the Magisterial Reformers in terms of practice. As Meic Pears has noted, the Schleitheim Confession told its readers: ‘not so much what to believe, as what to do; the beliefs were implicit in the practice’.
Church life
First, with regard to baptism, it was confessed: ‘Baptism shall be given to all those who have been taught repentance and the amendment of life and [who] believe truly that their sins are taken away through Christ’. Here, the Schleitheim Confession emphasised that baptism is only to be administered to those who have repented and believed in Christ. This is the position that we have already noted last month that gave rise to the name of Anabaptist
Second, there was an emphasis upon church discipline, or what the confession terms ‘the ban’. Those who fall into ‘error and sin’ shall ‘be warned twice privately and the third time be publicly admonished before the entire congregation, according to the command of Christ’ in Matthew 18.15-18. The ban replaced the sword, which was used by Roman Catholic and Protestant alike in restraining error.
Contentious issue
Third, when it came to the Lord’s Supper – a deeply contentious issue between Luther and Zwingli – it was agreed that ‘all those who desire to break the one bread in remembrance of the broken body of Christ and all those who wish to drink of one drink in remembrance of the shed blood of Christ … must beforehand be united in the one body of Christ, that is the congregation of God, whose head is Christ, and that by baptism’. Here, the Supper is regarded as a feast of remembrance and is restricted to baptised believers.
The fourth affirmation had to do with separation from the world. Christians are to have nothing to do with ‘all popish and repopish [that is, Protestant] works and idolatry, gatherings, church attendance’, as well as having nothing to do with ‘the diabolical weapons of violence – such as sword, armour, and the like … by virtue of the word of Christ: “you shall not resist evil”.’ Here, the Anabaptists distinguished themselves from both the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestants. They also affirmed their commitment to pacifism, and their refusal to use the sword to protect the Church. Conrad Grebel had similarly maintained: ‘True Christian believers… neither… use worldly sword or war, since all killing has ceased with them’.
Pastoral leadership
The fifth affirmation concerned the nature of true pastoral leadership, which actually did not differ much from Protestant thinking about the pastor. Sixth, church discipline was to be enacted by ‘only the ban’ and never with physical force. Support for this affirmation is found in Jesus’ response to the woman caught in adultery in John 8. Moreover, no true Christian should serve as a magistrate: it ‘does not befit a Christian to be a magistrate: the rule of the government is according to the flesh, that of the Christians according to the Spirit. … The worldly are armed with steel and iron, but Christians are armed with the armour of God, with truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, and with the Word of God’.
Finally, appeal was made to Jesus’ words in Matthew 5.34-35 that Christians should never take oaths, even though these are a requirement of civil society.
The main motif of these affirmations is separation, separation not only from the world of Roman Catholicism, but also separation from that of the Protestants who were seeking to reform the church. They were in reality seeking to go back to New Testament beginnings, leapfrog as it were over 1,500 years of church history, and reinstitute the true church. This was the heart of the Anabaptist programme.
It is noteworthy that when Sattler was martyred, later in 1527, the Reformer Martin Bucer (1491–1551) wrote that he had no doubts that Sattler was ‘a dear friend of God, although he was a leader of the Anabaptists’ and that he had died as ‘a martyr for Christ’.
