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Romans 131-6 Everyone must submit himself to
the governing authorities, for there is no
authority except that which God has established.
The authorities that exist have been established
by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the
authority is rebelling against what God has
instituted, and those who do so will bring
judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no
terror for those who do right, but for those who
do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of
the one who is in authority? Then do what is
right and he will commend you. For he is Gods
servant to do you good. But if you do wrong, be
afraid, for he does not bear the sword for
nothing. He is Gods servant, an agent of wrath
to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. Therefore,
it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not
only because of possible punishment but also
because of conscience. This is also why you pay
taxes, for the authorities are Gods servants,
who give their full time to governing. Give
everyone what you owe him if you owe taxes, pay
taxes if revenue, then revenue if respect, then
respect if honor, then honor.
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Matthew 533-37, 38-39, 43-45, 48 Again, you
have heard that it was said to the people long
ago Do not break your oath, but keep the oaths
you have made to the Lord. But I tell you, do
not swear at all either by heaven, for it is
Gods throne, or by the earth, for it is his
footstool or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of
the Great King. And do not swear by your head,
for you cannot make even one hair white or black.
Simply let your Yes be Yes, and your No,
No anything beyond this comes from the evil
one.
You have heard that it was said, Eye for eye,
tooth for tooth. But I tell you, do not resist
an evil person. If someone strikes you on the
right cheek, turn to him the other also. You
have heard that it was said, Love your neighbor
and hate your enemy. But I tell you Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be sons of your Father in heavenBe
perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is
perfect.
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• Anabaptism and Political Reality

The sword and oath in Swiss and
South German /
Austrian Anabaptism

• There was a multiplicity of opinions among the
  Swiss and South German / Austrian Anabaptists on
  the subject of the relationship of the individual
  believer to the state. Examples (Snyder, pp.
  258-9)
• Sebastian Franks description of Anabaptists in
  Strasbourg
• Trial testimony of Nikolaus Guldin (1529)
• Writings of one Hans Marquart, July, 1532
• Felix Mantz prison testimony, Zurich, 1525
• Joerg Maler, Augsburg, April 1550

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• Anabaptism saw the church as composed of persons
  who had freely chosen baptism as adults. The
  Anabaptist church would never be a territorial
  church.
• Internal factors Anabaptisms defining principle
  was adult baptism on confession of faith, meaning
  that they were calling for uncoerced,
  voluntarily-gathered believers churches
  (Snyder, p. 260). For Anabaptism to have a
  legitimate political space required that there be
  rulers who would tolerate such churches within
  their territories.
• Anabaptist reform placed itself on the margins of
  what was politically acceptable in the 16th
  century by upholding its core principles.
• The tension between Anabaptist principles and the
  larger society could have pushed the movement
  toward accommodation with civil society and
  government or toward separation. Snyder points
  out (p. 261) that the movement developed into
  separation.

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• External factors The Holy Roman Empire, ruled
  by Emperor Charles V from 1519-1558, was the
  largest political territory into which Anabaptism
  spread.
• Charles V was from the House of Hapsburg which
  ruled Austria and Spain. His brother, the
  Archduke Ferdinand, ruled eastern Austrian lands
  that had come to include Moravia and Bohemia.
• Spanish administration of the Hapsburgs also
  ruled the Netherlands, including modern
  Luxembourg and Belgium.
• Ottoman Turks had marched up the Danube River to
  the gates of Vienna. The Turkish threat diverted
  attention of the Hapsburgs and gave breathing
  space to Protestant reforms.
• Hapsburg attempts to stamp out evangelical
  heresy were cruel and thorough. Archduke
  Ferdinand was particularly effective in
  suppressing Anabaptism.

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• Anabaptism survived only in places under marginal
  imperial control, such as Moravia and the
  northern Netherlands.
• Anabaptists who persisted in their beliefs were
  forced to migrate to escape persecution.
  Moravia, Alsace, the Palatinate, Württemburg,
  Hesse, the northern Netherlands, and the Baltic
  coast became destinations for Anabaptist
  refugees.
• This pattern of migration in search of toleration
  continued for some Anabaptist groups into the
  20th century. Snyder lists examples (p. 265) of
  Anabaptists later being welcomed into certain
  territories but in the 16th century, space for
  tolerant treatment (e.g., Moravia) was rare and
  Anabaptism was forced to develop in an
  openly-hostile political environment. (Snyder,
  p. 265).
• To be an Anabaptist in the 16th century meant
  placing oneself on the margins of society. It
  seems unsurprising that Anabaptism would come to
  develop a separatist ethic.

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• Michael Sattler
• Adopted a literal reading of the New Testament
• Viewed the cosmos as divided into two separate
  kingdoms, one ruled by Christ and the other by
  Satan. Individual believers and their churches
  were to separate from the worldly kingdom.
• The example of the life of Jesus and the commands
  given by Jesus to his followers as recorded in
  the New Testament were normative for conduct of
  the individual believer and the church.
• Literal application of Jesus teachings in the
  Sermon on the Mount led to the rejection of
  participation in war and the rejection of
  swearing of oaths as outlined in the Schleitheim
  Articles.
• The Christocentric literal interpretation of the
  New Testament led for Sattler to a thoroughoing
  separatism in relations of the individual
  believer to the state.

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• Hans Denck
• Denck did not share the same literalist
  interpretive framework as did Sattler.
• Denck was less dogmatic than Sattler on the oath
  he believed that calling God to witness for past
  events was of a different nature than invoking
  the name of God to solemnify a promise. The
  former was permissible.
• Denck had little interest in an ordinance
  prohibiting oaths per se he was concerned with
  the spirit of the text, which he believed had to
  do more with telling the truth than whether one
  used oaths or not.
• Dencks spiritualized perspective (on the
  spirit-letter continuum) led him to nonviolence
  as the norm for Christians, although he came to
  it by a path different from Sattler and was less
  dogmatic.

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• Pilgram Marpeck
• Marpeck argued (like the Swiss Brethren) for two
  kingdoms
• Called for Christians to affirm their citizenship
  in the heavenly kingdom to the exclusion of all
  other loyalties.
• Marpeck, however, did not reject government
  service as evil in itself (as Sattler did)
  Marpeck saw conflict between Christian confession
  and government service when government service
  required acts that ran contrary to the spirit of
  Christ.
• Marpeck illustrated this principle himself he
  was not a theologian or a preacher by training,
  but he was instead a civil engineer and served in
  this capacity in both Strasbourg (from which he
  was exiled in 1532) and Augsburg (where his
  position as an Anabaptist elder was
  toleratedwith occasional reprimands on the
  recordbecause of the usefulness of his vocation
  to the city).

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• Marpeck came to a position of foregoing violence
  and coercion not because of a literal reading of
  the New Testament but because of the rule of
  Christ in the heart of the believer that lays out
  a new manner of overcoming evil in this life.
• Marpeck appears to not have had a consistent rule
  concerning the swearing of oaths, other than the
  rule of love (Snyder, p. 272).

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• Balthasar Hubmaier
• Rejected the strict ethic of Schleitheim of
  doing what Jesus did
• Argued that followers of Christ are still stuck
  in this world and that they will not be free from
  it as long as they live.
• If Christians are incapable in this world of
  imitating the life of Jesus, the appeal to Jesus
  example becomes relativized.
• Separation from this world is not only
  ill-advised, it is impossible.
• Jesus example cannot be binding on all persons
  in all situations everyone should continue in
  their proper offices, performing duties
  consistent with those offices.
• Harmonized Jesus teachings not to resist with
  the ordering of the sword of government by noting
  the personal focus of the first and the social
  focus of the second.

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• Hans Hut
• Apocalyptic calendar
• Expectation that divine judgment would fall on
  the ungodly.
• Provisional pacifism Hut read history and
  biblical texts through a dispensationalist lens,
  believing that certain principles applied to the
  particular era of history in which the believer
  lived.
• The individual Christians swords may be sheathed
  for now, but at the proper time, the swords would
  be unsheathed to take part in judgment.
• The historical results of this kind of thinking
  are clear enough in Anabaptist history, as much
  of this kind of thinking was behind the
  catastrophic events of Münster (although the
  story of Münster belongs to the North German /
  Dutch Anabaptist stream, not the South German
  movement to which Hans Hut belonged).

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• Hutter and Riedemann
• Hans Huts missionary activity gave rise to the
  communitarian Anabaptist movement in Moravia,
  later to be led by Jacob Hutter and Peter
  Riedemann.
• Although Hut had criticized pacifist Anabaptists
  who were legislating nonresistance and
  prohibitions concerning the sword and the oath,
  the communitarian Anabaptists of Moravia moved in
  that direction due to the failure of Huts End
  Time calculations and the necessity of
  maintaining a disciplined community life in the
  middle of a threatening political environment.
• The communitarian movement became strongly
  separatist and thoroughly nonresistant in the
  manner of Schleitheim
• The two-kingdoms polarity remains as a hallmark
  of Hutterite communities. As noted on p. 279,
  Riedemanns understanding of the church was
  militantly separatist.

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The Sword and the Oath in Melchiorite Anabaptism

• Melchior Hoffman
• Hoffman was converted to Anabaptism in 1529 in
  Strasbourg where there were four options for
  Anabaptist relations to the larger society
• Separatism (Swiss Brethren)
• Moderate separatism (Marpeck)
• Spiritualist option (Denck)
• Apocalyptic option (Hut)

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• Hoffman was attracted to the latter two
  (spiritualism, after Denck, and apocalypticism,
  after Hut). He especially viewed history and
  scripture through apocalyptic lenses.
• Disagreed with the premise of Schleitheim that
  placed governing outside the perfection of
  Christ and believed that rulers would play a
  role in his End Time scheme.
• The office of ruler was divinely ordained (and
  thus open to Christians), but governments and
  rulers had to choose to work on the side of light
  or the side of darkness.
• Hoffman believed in his End Times scenario that
  godly leaders would help lead the process of
  punishing the ungodly and preparing the way for
  the return of Christ.

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• Hoffmans political ethic allowed both pacifist
  and crusading interpretations. Hoffman
  emphasized divine initiative and denied that the
  elect would take the sword themselves, but he
  nevertheless allowed that Christians could be
  given the sword as rulers.
• Hoffman came to the position that oaths should
  not be sworn, although not through the same
  literalist process as Schleitheim. (See sidebar
  4, p. 287)

• Bernard Rothmann (reformer of Münster)
• Dispensationalist outlook (p. 289)
• Believed that in this third and final age that
  Old Testament injunctions concerning Gods
  judgment and vengeance on the ungodly were to be
  applied literally. See sidebar (6) on p. 291.
• Rothmann believed that faithful Christians
  themselves were to take up the sword in
  preparation for the return of Christ instead of
  waiting for God to initiate cleansing (possibly
  through the agency of godly rulers, as allowed
  by Hoffman).

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• Menno Simons
• Rejected the dispensationalist approach to
  biblical interpretation
• Read the scriptures from a Christocentric
  perspective, which led to a relativizing of the
  Old Testament in light of the New.
• In imitation of the example of Jesus, Christians
  are to fight their enemies with only the same
  weapons as Jesus employedwhich does not
  include violence.
• Menno Simons, however, did not echo Schleitheim
  concerning rulers being ipso facto outside the
  perfection of Christ and allowed the possibility
  of Christian rules (against Schleitheim and
  Riedemann)
• Menno Simons apparently became convinced only
  gradually that oath-taking should be forbidden to
  Christians. He pleaded that rulers accept yes
  or no in place of oaths for Christians out of
  deference to the Christians being obedient to
  the commands of Jesus.

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• David Joris
• Explained the collapse of Münster that they tried
  to achieve a physical restitution without having
  achieved a spiritual restitution.
• Joris teachings contained a vengeful theme (see
  sidebars 14 and 15, p. 298). His teachings
  appeared to hint at the swords being wielded by
  the righteous to chastise the ungodly.
• Joris, however, moved more toward spiritualism
  from 1539 onward. He became convinced of his own
  prophetic authority as the third David, and
  insisted that all events of real significance
  would happen spiritually and in the hearts of
  believers, not in the political or social realm.
  Events in the latter realm became unimportant as
  long as they did not affect the inner person.
• Joris taught that judges and commanders were
  free to do what they willed as long as they did
  not hinder Christians or the Gospel.

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• David Joris and Menno Simons at cross purposes
• Menno Simons and David Joris, both baptized by
  Obbe Philips, agreed on certain Anabaptist
  fundamentals.
• They differed, however, in their interpretations
  and their sources of inspiration.
• Menno Simons saw Christ as the standard for all
  things everything must be measured by the
  example of Jesus.
• Joris believed that Menno Simons was bound to
  legalism and judging by external appearances he
  claimed that obedience to the inner, spiritual
  Christ was the true obedience and that he had the
  prophetic gift to express the thoughts of God.
• Menno Simons, by contrast, rejected any notion of
  his being a prophetor any notion that David
  Joris was a prophet or the third David, as
  Joris had claimed.

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• Conclusions
• There was diversity of views among the early
  Anabaptists concerning the proper response to
  civil society and government. The views of
  Schleitheim were normative for the Swiss
  Brethren, for the most part, but were not
  necessarily shared by other Anabaptist groups.
  Given the spontaneous nature of the movement,
  this sort of diversity was understandable.
• The ongoing Anabaptist traditions of the Swiss
  Brethren, Mennonites, and Hutterites did
  eventually reach a pacifist and separatist
  consensus.
• All three traditions adopted a Christocentric
  hermeneutic focused on the life and words of
  Jesus and saw in these concrete guidance for
  life. All three traditions came to the
  conclusion that the sword of government and civic
  oaths were forbidden to Christians.
• This consensus came about by the end of the 16th
  century, but only after a long period of chaos,
  confusion, and even bloodshed.