Featured Anabaptists and the Atonement

What might have been the General Baptist's views on the atonement?

 

Just curious HP, what denomination are you a member of?

 

I like suspense. It adds to mystique.:smilewinkgrin:

How about if I say "God's?" :thumbs:

 

So you don't attend a church?

 

How where and when I attend any church is between myself, my wife and family and the Lord. It has varied over my Christian life and does so from time to time. This forum is not the best venue to discuss my personal choices.

At times I will tell you it is in prison.

 

I didn't think so.

 

HP: I am somewhat familiar with Mennonites, growing up among them and attending several services with different groups. I know one thing, they sure make great neighbors and friends you could always count on!:thumbs:

 

I suppose what is strange to me is that I have never heard of the Mennonites referred to as being closely associated with general Baptists.

Funny story I have about the Mennonites and my father's charity towards them, that happened one night at a Mennonite church. They were having a revival meeting but my father always liked to speak to the men attending prior to the service, so his usual he was standing in the vestibule of the church conversing with some of his friends when a new evangelist walked in. Of course the new evangelist did not know who was and who was not a member of the church, and my dad, wearing a beard and no tie, fit right in as one of them. Now in the Mennonite church it is a customary practice at least for some to greet each other with a holy kiss. My dad, being an outgoing friendly fellow standing there smiling, the evangelist reached over to give my father holy kiss. Immediately the men standing around dad said "Oh no no, he is not a brother!" To which my dad replied smiling, " Oh yes I am!"

I had a great example of a Christian father who exemplified Christian charity with others in every group he went in and out of. He always tried to treat even those he disagreed with kindness and respect and love. When others could not call him a brother, he still would go out of his way to call and treat them as a brother with Christian charity and kindness.

Such charity among disagreement is certainly a rare bird in so many circles.........

 

Taken note that you are quoting exactly what I said they beleived. They did accept the penal substitionary position and forensic justification BUT IN ADDITION they believed in progressive righteousness whereby the child of God was being made righteous in regard to his person or imparted righteousness by the power of the indwelling Spirit of God.

 

I did read it all the way through and the writer stipulated very carefully that they embraced some tenets of the Christus Victor position (the very tenets that I believe are very consistent with the penal position) but not to the extent they denied the penal substitutionary atonement.

 

Both of you need to read the article again and more carefully.

First, he admitted that it is very difficult to get a unified position from the Anabaptists because of their various fractions.


A greater difficulty for describing early Anabaptist characteristics, however, is the undeniable diversity among them. Because groups with radical differences in other ways could be lumped together under an Anabaptist umbrella,


Second, he admitted they rejected justification by the works of the law but believed "good works" followed true conversion experience:

Anabaptists rejected justification by the law as a means of salvation as did the other Reformers, but they insisted that those who are saved will follow the law of Christ written in their hearts and do the “works of faith.”


Third, he admitted they held to the penal substitutionary theory for the most part.

The Anselmian “satisfaction” or substitutionary model of the atonement, emphatically articulated by the Magisterial Reformers, was not wrong in the Anabaptist’s view for they agreed with most of it.

Fourth, they only concluded that the REFORMERS penal satisfaction theory was correct but simply didn't go far enough:

In their direct references to the atonement, they affirm biblical themes and use the general language of substitution. But to them, that model was inadequate or insufficient. It concentrated chiefly on Christ’s death and had been reduced to a passive or forensic doctrine which concerned only a change in humanity’s legal status before God.....To the Anabaptists, however, atonement meant much, much more. According to Pilgram Marpeck it was far more than a legal transaction in the heavenly court


Fifth, when he entered in the Victorus Christor position he stipulated only that they held to some of its tenets without disregarding the penal atonement position.


They did not explicitly discuss these models, so the question remains as to how their view of the atonement fits any or all of them. It seems clear that different Anabaptist writers used the language of all three models. Finger writes that “Anabaptist understandings of atonement overflow any and all of the three traditional theories, and suggest a variety of angles from which to consider atonement.....The Dutch Anabaptists, however, more often use the language of substitution.......Their belief that Christ’s work was imputed to infants, to previous sins of believers, and to the continued sinfulness of their corrupt human flesh was based on substitutionary concepts of payment and acquittal........Anabaptists had a sharp sense of conflict with the world, the flesh, the devil, and the religious-political structures of their time. Peter Ridemann, who often sounds Augustinian, also spoke about sin as chains by which people are bound by the devil. He wrote that Christ had “come to destroy the work of the devil”; had “destroyed the power of death, hell and the devil”; and had “overcome the devil and death and had risen again”

Conclusion: You are pressing this way too far. They certainly did not hold to a strictly moral influence theory but only held those aspects that penal substitutionists also hold - that Christ came to destroy the works of Satan and deliver his people from sin.