Anabaptist Heretics

[aReformedPatriot]

Forgive the title of the thread, when I read it in this book it made me laugh. But I do have a question stemming from it.

"Errors concerning the divine maternity. The Docetae, Anabaptists, and other heretics held that Christ was true God, but not a true man; hence, in their opinion, Mary could not be said to have begotten Him. " - Father Juniper Carol in his book titled Fundamentals of Mariology.

You dont consider Christ to be both fully man, and fully God? Perhaps you can shed some light onto this statment with some background info as well.

Thanks,
Bro. Mark

 

[seebs]

I don't think all anabaptists agree on questions like this. FWIW, I think the Quaker position is not to have an official position on this or nearly any other issue, because words don't really tell you anything.

There was a conversation on a related topic once. There's this old children's song:

"There was a farmer had a dog
and bingo was his name-o."

Now, was "bingo" the farmer or the dog? After three hundred years and a number of outright wars with actual people being killed over the argument, a council determined that bingo is fully farmer and fully dog. Catholics teach that the letters are still there when you clap; Lutherans say the letters are spiritually there when you clap. Baptists say no one should sing the song until they understand it.

But it's all us talking about stuff we don't really understand, so I don't see it as mattering much.

 

[ZiSunka]

Forgive the title of the thread, when I read it in this book it made me laugh. But I do have a question stemming from it.

"Errors concerning the divine maternity. The Docetae, Anabaptists, and other heretics held that Christ was true God, but not a true man; hence, in their opinion, Mary could not be said to have begotten Him. " - Father Juniper Carol in his book titled Fundamentals of Mariology.

You dont consider Christ to be both fully man, and fully God? Perhaps you can shed some light onto this statment with some background info as well.

Thanks,
Bro. Mark

Yes, I've heard of that before. But no, it is incorrect, anabaptists are heretics in the sense that they refuse to acknowledge the so called magesterium of the catholic church, but their statements of fauth always contain totally and exclusively orthodox theology. Father Juniper is very wrong. It's not unusual for catholics to misunderstand anabaptists because anabaptist and catholic understanding of salvation is so different, and because anabaptism was founded by ex-catholics. It can kinda make folks made when you leave their religion and say that it contains errors. Just hang around here a while and you'll see me make a statement that questions catholicism and you'll see the catholics come down on me really hard, because I was raised catholic then left because I believed the faith to have so many errors.

 

[Gold Dragon]

I don't think all anabaptists agree on questions like this. FWIW, I think the Quaker position is not to have an official position on this or nearly any other issue, because words don't really tell you anything.

There was a conversation on a related topic once. There's this old children's song:

"There was a farmer had a dog
and bingo was his name-o."

Now, was "bingo" the farmer or the dog? After three hundred years and a number of outright wars with actual people being killed over the argument, a council determined that bingo is fully farmer and fully dog. Catholics teach that the letters are still there when you clap; Lutherans say the letters are spiritually there when you clap. Baptists say no one should sing the song until they understand it.

But it's all us talking about stuff we don't really understand, so I don't see it as mattering much.

I love the analogy.

 

[aReformedPatriot]

I don't think all anabaptists agree on questions like this. FWIW, I think the Quaker position is not to have an official position on this or nearly any other issue, because words don't really tell you anything.

There was a conversation on a related topic once. There's this old children's song:

"There was a farmer had a dog
and bingo was his name-o."

Now, was "bingo" the farmer or the dog? After three hundred years and a number of outright wars with actual people being killed over the argument, a council determined that bingo is fully farmer and fully dog. Catholics teach that the letters are still there when you clap; Lutherans say the letters are spiritually there when you clap. Baptists say no one should sing the song until they understand it.

But it's all us talking about stuff we don't really understand, so I don't see it as mattering much.

once I understand it, then I'll determine its significance

 

[seebs]

The point is, we don't really know. We have sets of words from people who probably knew better than we do, 'cuz they were there, or they were closer to the people who were there... But we don't know. All the words we use for this stuff? Words. Noises. Stuff we wrote down to put a big big God in a tiny tiny box.

We have a set of words about like the Bingo song. Then we have hundreds years of arguments and interpretation... But that's all us tacking stuff on. Originally, all we had was the song. And the song, I think, was the point.

I'd guess under ten percent of Christians could correctly explain the trinity without committing a formal heresy. Most of us just can't explain it. A few have reinvented old heresies. A very few maybe have the words right... But honestly, I don't think a person alive really knows the whole truth of what those words mean.

Honestly, I don't care whether some Anabaptists are heretics. We're all heretics to someone by now.

 

[aReformedPatriot]

so when its all said and done, we cannot know what the anabaptists believe concerning the humanity of Christ?

Otherwise i think were heading off on a tangent that is pretty broad.

 

[seebs]

so when its all said and done, we cannot know what the anabaptists believe concerning the humanity of Christ?

Well, I don't think they all agree.

Otherwise i think were heading off on a tangent that is pretty broad.

Yeah. I was sort of wandering into the tangent. I suspect some anabaptists are heretics. I don't care. Lots of people think I'm a heretic; I think lots of other people are heretics. What of it? If doctrinal precision were the mechanism of salvation, we wouldn't have ... 16 "congregational" forums here; God would ensure that we were precise in our doctrine. Apparently, the precision of our answers isn't as important as our interest in the questions.

 

[brotherjim]

. . . Apparently, the precision of our answers isn't as important as our interest in the questions.

Actually, it's all about the motive behind the question.

 

[FreeinChrist]

There were some Anabaptists who believed that Christ did not receive His humanity from Mary, but that He was 'placed' (for lack of a better word) into Mary as already Incarnate. However, they affirmed the virgin birth and the diety of Christ, that He was 100% God and 100% man.

 

[Crazy Liz]

A lot of Anabaptists refuse to call Mary "Mother of God." We have had several threads in this forum discussing this. From a Roman Catholic perspective, refusing to call Mary "Mother of God" means denying Christ's divinity or Christ's humanity, or makes them a Nestorian, separating the two natures of Christ in some way. I, personally, as an Anabaptist, have no problem with the title "Mother of God," understanding that it means Mary gave birth to Jesus, who was, from conception, fully human and fully divine.

I don't know where Fr. Carol got the idea that Anabaptists hold that Christ was not truly human. I have never heard this before. I think he is mistaken. As far as I know the only place he could have gotten that idea is from the refusal of some Anabaptists to call Mary the mother of God.

Here is a pretty good article on the Christology of Menno Simons, the most prolific and thorough early Anabaptist theologian. It supports with more detail what Freeinchrist posted. As you can see, Simons taught the full humanity and divinity of Christ. His view of how this came to be, though, was somewhat unorthodox, and not necessarily followed by all Anabaptists, but still believed by some here. He believed that Mary gestated Jesus, but gave nothing to his human flesh; rather Jesus' human flesh was a special creation of God in her womb.

As far as I know, there is no evidence to sustain Fr. Carol's assertion that Anabaptists do not believe in the humanity of Christ. The only way this claim can be supported is to define "human" such that it excludes a creation of human flesh separately from the creation of Adam. I think Anselm's Cur Deus Homo does in fact assume that the definition of humanity excludes a separate human creation. However, if Menno were forced to accept either that Christ received his humanity from Mary or that Christ was not fully human, he probably would choose the former, although he actually believed this to be a false dichotomy.

 

[brotherjim]

Whoever,

Well, I am an Anabaptist, and I believe . . ., therefore--.

The phrase, "fully man; fully God," as anyone who ever had a divine revelation of the utter sinfulness of man, even born-again man, would know--such a rev. a required precursor to receiving the fullness of the Fruit of Christ's Meekness, btw--is a mutually exclusive one; an impossibility.

Besides, if Jesus was tempted in all points as is man, and since God cannot be tempted--.

(Just because man cannot conceptualize how Jesus could've temp. set aside His divinity for 33+ years, doesn't mean it wasn't so, neither does such call for hypotheses--why does man find it so very difficult to say, "I/We don't know"?)

But just another Ana. heretic, jim


[Edit+: And I cannot fall asleep until I add: the notion that Jesus was 100% God while here on the earth, is a lovely idea to be embraced by those who refuse to allow Grace to perfect them. Such insist that Jesus had advantages over any of us, and therefore we cannot ever come close to being like Him. And yet Paul commands, "Imitate me, as I imitate Christ." And yeah, yeah, we've all likely heard the sermons declaring that in God's command for the Christian to walk perfect before Him, the word perfect does not really mean perfect. Well, I studied the Greek word, and it means perfect.]

 

[Jeffrey A]

I don't know where Fr. Carol got the idea that Anabaptists hold that Christ was not truly human. I have never heard this before. I think he is mistaken.

It comes from the teaching of Melchior Hoffmann (c. 1500-1543), an Anabaptist radical who helped give the movement a bad name. He is described in A. G. Dickens' book , "Reformation and Society in Sixteenth-Century Europe" (copyright 1966 Thames and Hudson, London), as "[e]choing an ancient Gnostic teaching, though in all likelihood unconsciously,... that Jesus did not actually take flesh from his Mother, that his nature was single and wholly divine, without a link to the sinful Adam" (pg. 131).

Hoffman is properly cast into the same pit with Bernhard Rothmann, Bernhard Knipperdolling, and John of Leyden, leaders of the failed Münster rebellion (1534-35), since he was the teacher of Jan Matthys, who joined them with his perhaps thousands of followers from Holland before the seige.

Münster is a favorite saga to cite by those who wish to belittle all of Anabaptism, but it is admitted by even many (honest) critics that she was the gross exception, and not at all the example.

Jeffrey A