10 September 2005

This conversation with Milton Gaither began after I made an offhanded comment in an e-mail about Anabaptists’ relative silence on the issue of atonement. The conversation spun off in various directions, but poses some interesting questions for Anabaptist historical study.

Milton Gaither (MG): Not so! The anabaptists have a very interesting spin on atonement. For a good discussion of it see Roger Olson’s chapter on the Anabaptists in his Story of Christian Theology. In a nutshell, the Anabaptists accepted the Augustinian notion of original sin, but rejected the classic solution to that problem (infant baptism). For them, Christ’s death on the cross atoned for the sin of Adam, meaning that babies born before Christ’s death are born under the curse, but babies born after are born innocent. Thus people are only responsible for their own sins and so don’t have to be baptized until they reach the “age of accountability.”

From my perspective this is an interesting solution to a non-existent problem (since the East thinks Augustine’s notion of Original Sin is bogus). Another, and to my mind more positive, consequence of the Anabaptist view of atonement is that it restores freedom of the will and thus allows that salvation can be synergistic rather than monenergistic (as with Luther and Calvin).

Brian Hamilton (BH): Just finished the chapter from Olson—an interesting read! (I’m working on a lit. survey of approaches to Anabaptist historical categories from within and without the tradition, so also highly relevant.) I’m impressed to see such a favorable reading of Anabaptist origins, though his choices of exemplars are a bit sketchy: Hubmaier’s the one Anabaptist leader farthest from agreement on refusal of the sword and the non-magisterial context of the church—not very representative. Menno’s good, especially to represent the continuing legacy of Anabaptism, but appears late in the early movement.

Re. atonement, Olson certainly draws some good (implicit) atonement theology out of Anabaptist convictions surrounding Christology and baptism, but it’s difficult to systematize their thought on the topic. Most early Anabaptist theologizing grows out of polemics—Hubmaier and Menno least so, which I’m sure is the reason for Olson’s choices—so while a few theological distinctives about atonement may arise, we can’t fairly limit their understanding to those distinctives. It’s the lack of comprehensive theology in the early movement and the limited contemporary attempts to deal with atonement that makes me speak of “silence.” (The contemporary exception, of course, is Weaver’s The Nonviolent Atonement which has generated quite a bit of conversation among us.)

As an aside, this chapter feels like Olson to some degree wants to identify with this movement, and casts an evangelical tint on the whole affair. I can’t speak too intelligently on early Anabaptism’s relation to Augustine (or on Augustine, for that matter), but it would certainly make an interesting project.

You say that a synergistic atonement is to your mind more positive—how much does the East agree? There’s an interesting line of thought, brought by at least one contemporary Anabaptist thinker, that suggests a number of parallels between eastern divinization language and Anabaptist regeneration language. He shies away from the question of influence—where would these Swiss kids have made it east?—but is convinced at least of ecumenical possibilities.

MG: Yeah, you’re right I’m sure. Olson is making the Anabaptists sound more systematic than they were no doubt. By the way, he is a Baptist, so you are right to detect an affinity for the free church. He hates establishment churches. He’s a thoroughgoing anti-Constantinian.

Here’s my take on Anabaptists and St. Augustine: They are against Augustine when it comes to his endorsement of the Church using the coercive power of the state to squelch heresy (as Augustine himself did with the Donatists). But I think they actually embrace Augustine without realizing it when they accept his definition of Original Sin. Their solution, as I said last time, differs from that of the Reformers, but the problem is the same for them as it is for the Catholics and the Reformed.

Orthodoxy, in contrast, has a different conception of original sin to begin with. For us, Adam and Eve’s sin gave us not a genetic defect with noetic and volitional implications (bondage of the will, etc.) but DEATH. Death is what is passed down. The atonement for us then is more about the destruction of death. If you visit an Orthodox church you’ll notice at once how the resurrection gets all the emphasis. Western Christianity, both Catholic, Protestant, and Anabaptist, is all about the blood of Jesus. It’s all crucifixion. Orthodoxy of course believes Christ died, but it’s the resurrection that is our salvation, for it is SALVE, healing us of death itself.

Not buying Augustinian Original Sin, we also have always believed in free will. Hence synergy. Yes, Orthodoxy and Anabaptist soteriology share synergy. The difference is that Anabaptists (unfortunately in my view) are working through Luther and Calvin even though they try to reject them. Anabaptists inherited from the earlier reformers this odd notion that justification and sanctification are two separate events, so that one “gets saved” at a particular moment in time and THEN works that out in a life of sanctity. For Orthodoxy (and for Holy Scripture I would strongly hold) this distinction just doesn’t exist. But with that caveat I’d agree that there are strong parallels between Anabaptist notions of regeneration and Orthodox theosis.

And one more thing, in at least one case there is an actual historical connection! The Moravian Brethren were Orthodox way back. They were forced to conform to Roman patterns and eventually rebelled against this. Many of the Moravian reforms were actually returns to their Orthodox ways. Unfortunately (in my vew) their rejection of Rome took place in a Protestant context and thus became not a return to historic orthodoxy but a pastiche of old and new that led to yet another division within christendom.

BH: Not fair! Anabaptists are the one community in Western Christianity that have consistently criticized the overemphasis on the death of Jesus. Remember, these are the people that insisted that the life of Jesus—indeed, that life that leads to death—is the normative example of personhood and obedience. Discipleship, that central description of the Christian life for the Anabaptists, is described over and over again as “walking in the resurrection” in early Anabaptist writing and in contemporary rhetoric. Especially now, Anabaptists often face the claim that they’ve made the crucifixion irrelevant for the Christian life—I think J. Denny Weaver (who wrote that recent book on atonement) even denies that it was necessary. Instead, suffering is the inevitable consequence of faithful obedience, what the early Anabaptists called the “baptism of blood” that necessarily followed from the baptisms of spirit and water (in that order).

I’m intrigued by your distinction between Anabaptist (dualistic) and Orthodox (holistic) views of justification and sanctification. If your description is right, I side with the Orthodox—but I’m not convinced. To my knowledge, “justification” and “sanctification” are rarely used in early Anabaptist discourse. There’s a clear understanding of repentance, of course, that is made tangible in the concrete act of baptism, but the Anabaptists were trying to hard to distance themselves from Luther to call it a moment of justification. On the other hand, there is a sense of immediacy that seems to accompany much discussion of obedience’s relation to baptism, and maybe (heaven forbid) there are parallels here to this business of “getting saved.”

What gives you the idea that Anabaptists accepted Augustine’s definition of original sin? Like I said, I only know anything about Augustine second-hand, but the solid Anabaptist conviction of the innocence of infants seems not to jive too well. Original sin doesn’t “emerge” at some “age of accountability” (an anachronistic term) either, it’s just that now these people have the option, like Adam and Eve, of choosing for or against obedience. The fall looms in the background, and maybe these adults are more prone to disobey than to obey, but would the Orthodox disagree? Is that the same as original sin? What does The Fall look like in the East, for the powers and for individuals?

Interesting note about the historic intersect between Orthodoxy and Anabaptism! I seem to remember that John Hus had some influence on at least a few of the early Anabaptist leaders, so maybe that’s where some of these ideas came from.

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Tags: Anabaptist,Original Sin