The Influence of Menno Simons and the Dutch Mennonites
A Series: Anabaptism and the Long Quest for Religious Liberty
Menno Simons
Only four years after Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue on the famed Santa Maria, the man that bears our denominational name was born. The son of a Dutch dairy farmer in the village of Witmarsum, just ten miles from the North Sea, Menno, was raised and educated. Though nurtured in a Catholic parish and having been schooled in Latin and some Greek, he was very unfamiliar with the Bible. After he became a priest in 1524, he retained this biblical ignorance. Menno laments in his Reply to Gellius Faber: “I had not touched them (the Scriptures) during my life, for I feared if I should read them, they would mislead me. Behold! such a stupid preacher was I, for nearly two years.”
But Menno grew doubtful concerning certain dogmas as he performed his priestly duties. He began to question the doctrine of transubstantiation, and he became suspicious of the rite of infant baptism. So, he sought help from the writings of the Reformers; he studied Luther, Bullinger, and Bucer. He also began serious study of the Scriptures in these matters. While the Reformers gave thorough explanations to the errors within the Catholic mass, Menno found their attempts to support pedobaptism revealed unbiblical biases.
Dutch Anabaptist Fanaticism in the 1530s
But we have to understand something that was growing to a feverish pitch in this era in the Netherlands, and within North German Anabaptism. Revolutionary and prophetic sensationalism was so pervasive among the re-baptizers that the name Anabaptist was in danger of being tarnished and ruined forever. We have mentioned this as early as Thomas Muntzer (1525) and his wildly dangerous and violent beliefs (see: https://christiangood.substack.com/p/an-inevitable-separation). Hans Hut shared some of these ideas but kept them under leash (https:christiangood.substack.com/the-spread-and-persecution-of-early). But another came to the fore that was to have a significant influence on the Anabaptist movement and on Menno in particular.
Melchoir Hoffman, a gifted man and yet a sadly misled fanatic, believed that he was called to usher in a New Jerusalem. Around 1530 he became an Anabaptist and founded a base in Emden where he sent out lay preachers into the Netherlands that would eventually influence the Dutch Anabaptists. Upon hearing the prophecies of a couple, Leonard and Ursula Jost, and the prophetess Barbara Rebstock, Hoffman began to believe that he was the Elijah to come and was called to usher in the New Jerusalem in Strassburg. In 1533, he went to Strassburg and was immediately arrested. He gladly yielded to his captors since he had been told that this was a necessary precondition to bringing in the new Zion. Instead of bringing in the New Zion, he died in prison ten years later.
The lay preachers Hoffman had sent to the Netherlands found willing listeners among the Dutch. The Dutch at this time were open to new ideas and wished for social and political change. Having grown weary of the oppressive mercenaries of Emperor Charles V and seeking a better future, they were impressed with many Anabaptist ideas. Unfortunately, the idea of a millennial utopia was infectious. Opportunists arose in this climate. Jan of Matthys and Jan of Leyden both thought of themselves (similar to Hoffman) as great inaugurators of this new millennial reality. While Hoffman was the Elijah and still in prison, Matthys was Enoch, and Leyden was King David; together they made up the two witnesses of Rev. 11. But the place of prophecy fulfillment changed from Strassburg to Matthys’ city of Muenster in North Germany.
They stirred the people to take the city in Feb 1534. They forced baptisms, introduced polygamy, banned all books but the Bible; they were bringing in the new eschaton. Unsurprisingly the city was sieged by Protestants and Catholics fighting side by side. The Muensterite rebellion was brought to a sad and violent end on June 24, 1535. The leaders of the rebellion were tortured to death, their bodies left to rot in cages hanging from the steeple in St. Lambert’s Church. These cages are still there today for all to see and remember.
This was the political/religious climate of Germany and the Netherlands in this time period. Ironically it was two Apostles that Jan of Matthys had sent to convert the people who baptized and commissioned Obbe and Dirk Philips in late 1533. At this time Jan had not shown the extremes he would demonstrate later at Muenster.
A tragic part of this story is revealed in J.C. Wenger’s Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine. Obbe in the work Confessions, tells of these two “apostles” and how they came to the village of Leeuwarden, preaching how Jan Matthys had demonstrated signs and wonders and such power of the Spirit “that words failed them to describe it to us.” They moreover said that they should not doubt their authority and that from henceforth no blood of Christians would be spilt, but rather God would destroy the wicked. Obbe was suspicious but in his words: “we were all inexperienced, like children and had no thought that we would be deceived by our own brethren.” So Obbe was taken in enough to be re-baptized. This was December of 1533. The day after, he along with some others were commissioned to the office of the ministry.
Eight days later another apostle of Jan’s came to the village with a similar message and baptized Dirk. And then things unraveled. Obbe writes: “all prophecy and lofty assertion proved vain.” The three “prophets” and “apostles” were taken captive and put to death by authorities. Obbe later went to the execution site but found the corpses unrecognizable; they had been broken on the wheel.
This understandably disillusioned the young leaders. They hardly knew what to do. It is painful to read of the Obbe’s bewilderment.
What took place was the very contrary of what they had announced to us. All that they had said would come upon the world, upon the tyrants and godless came rather upon us, and first of all upon the messengers themselves. Alas, who is able to tell our great grief. . . How often were some of us in sadness unto death and knew not whither to turn or what to do. The whole world persecuted us to death for our faith with fire, water, sword, and all-bloody tyranny. The prophecies had deceived us; Scripture did not give us liberty to make common cause with the persecutors” (Glimpses . . . , 73, 74).
Initially, Obbe sought solace and direction in Scripture, and he with his brother Dirk became solid leaders that stood fiercely against the Muensterite types. But the ideas were deeply embedded and the problems persisted for many years. Though Obbe eventually ordained Menno to the ministry, and the Dutch Anabaptists were first called Obbenites, he abandoned Anabaptism around 1539-40. William Estep tells us that he grew to doubt his commission; this is understandable, having been ordained by deceivers, and he being a somewhat sensitive person. It is not known what exactly became of him; C. J. Dyck says “it is probable that he became a spiritualist who practiced an inward religion without openly joining any church.”
In 1535 Menno was deliberating but delaying his decision. He could see there was some truth in this new movement (it resonated with his doubts about transubstantiation and infant baptism), but he could see the movement held a zeal not according to knowledge and was desperate for solid leadership. And Menno, as well as the Philips brothers, Obbe and Dirk, were totally opposed to all violent rebellions.
Menno Becomes an Anabaptist
Menno finally broke with Rome on January 30, 1536. Immediately afterwards he spent a year in the study of Scripture and writing. This time undoubtedly allowed him to hone his beliefs for his remaining life’s work. After a year, he was met by a delegation of nonviolent Anabaptists who begged him to join their ranks and give leadership to the confused movement. Thus began Menno’s tenure as a leader of nonviolent and biblicist Anabaptists.
Though Menno became a most effective leader, for most of the remainder of his life he was a wanted man, a “heretic” with a price on his head. The emperor claimed he would pay a hundred gold guilders to any who would give information leading to his arrest. All were prohibited from providing any shelter or provisions. If caught doing so, their crime was punishable by death. And this occurred at least once. Menno once stayed at a very devout man’s house, Tjard Reynders. Afterwards Reynders was arrested, tortured and died at the stake, all for offering hospitality to Menno.
Menno married a woman, Gertrude, whom we know little about. But their life together was not easy. In his Reply to Gellius Faber he writes: “I with my poor weak wife and children have for eighteen years endured excessive anxiety, oppression, affliction, misery and persecution . . .” Yet he points to the ease of the paid and approved preachers:
“Yes when the preachers repose on easy beds and soft pillows, we generally have to hide ourselves in out-of-the way corners . . . we have to be on guard when a dog barks for fear that an arresting officer has arrived . . . In short, while they are gloriously rewarded for their services with large incomes and good times, our recompense and portion be but fire, sword, and death.”
Yet the Anabaptist movement grew. Though many executions ensued, Menno managed to escape arrest. He even found time to write: Early on he wrote these treatises: Christian Baptism, 1539; Foundation of Christian Doctrine, 1540; and True Christian Faith, 1541. All in all, he wrote some twenty-five books and tracts. In addition, he wrote many letters, meditations, and hymns.
Menno’s Struggle Against Extremism
The Muenster rebellion, though quashed by the authorities in 1535, lived on for too long with some of its ideas. Menno joined the Anabaptists only six months after Muenster was defeated, and he faced for a decade and more its effect among those called the Batenburgers and one, David Joris. Joris believed in extra-biblical revelations, and he held to his own inspired writings. This along with the dreams and visions of the Batenburgers created a constant thorn in the flesh for Menno.
And this was only one side of two poles of the trouble Menno faced. On the other was a man by the name of Adam Pastor. Pastor held to what was effectively the old error of Arius’, that Christ was not pre-incarnate. Menno had ordained this man and now what were they to do with him? There were meetings held in 1547 to determine how to discipline the recreant, and though there was some hope for his restoration, Pastor was eventually banned (excommunicated). Menno was troubled by this, one reason being Pastor, as Menno, had been a Catholic priest before his conversion and he held faithfully to Anabaptist principles in other areas.
Thus Menno had to navigate between the horns of the extra-biblical spiritualists, like Joris, and the unorthodox rationalists, like Pastor. And for the most part, he succeeded in keeping Mennonite doctrine in order. But Menno himself was not free from all heterodoxy.
Woops
An embarrassing aspect in Menno’s Christology can be observed in his doctrine of the incarnation. Menno held to the anomalous idea that the humanity of Jesus was not taken directly from Mary but was created by the Holy Spirit apart from Mary. So Christ is a new kind of humanity—sometimes referred to as “celestial flesh.” Most Anabaptist historians will slightly downplay this aberration, claiming that Menno still believed in the full humanity of Christ (though it wasn’t an Adamic genetic humanity). It must be said, too, that this view was held by Dirk Philips as well and is explicated in his Enchiridion, an otherwise astonishingly excellent and thorough Anabaptist book of doctrine.
It is also thought that Menno and Dirk were influenced by Melchior Hoffman on this which may explain it. Timothy George tells us: “Hoffman transmitted this doctrine to the Netherlandish Anabaptists and hence to Menno Simons.” But Menno articulated it differently than Hoffman and he wrote that he had “doubted this teaching when it was first mentioned by the Hoffmanite brethren fearing that I might be in error about it” (qtd. from Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers, 281). But then he set aside time for fasting and praying, and though he came to his own conclusions, he did not teach this view publicly. We should also take into consideration that Menno was navigating around the problem of how Christ escaped the taint of original sin, and he repudiated the Catholic error that evaded the problem by their doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception. Finally, J. C. Wenger says concerning the idea: “While it is true the Obbenites and early Mennonites held to a strange view of Mary’s relation to Jesus before his birth, the Swiss Brethren did not share this notion and the Mennonites themselves soon dropped it” (Glimpses . . . , 139).
An Enduring Legacy
While we take exception to Menno’s view of the Incarnation, many aspects of his character and beliefs are worthy of admiration. His courage to join a movement that was falling apart and desperately needing assistance. His ability to see the truth that lay behind egregious problems and errors. His persistence and fearlessness to continue preaching and baptizing with the threat of death always looming over him. But in the interest of our series’ theme of liberty of conscience, I wish to underscore Menno’s doctrine of the church and how that plays into this theme.
On his deathbed, Menno supposedly said that “nothing on earth was as precious to him as the church.” It is inarguable that the most salient distinctive feature of Anabaptism, when compared to Protestants and Catholics, is its doctrine of the church. This is especially so when one examines the historical times within which Anabaptism emerged.
Hear Menno on the church and the related themes of baptism, and liberty of conscience. And note the overtones of rebuke towards the coterminous church and state union that was so entrenched everywhere in his day.
“The true messengers of the gospel who are with Christ in spirit love and life teach that which is entrusted to them by Christ, namely repentance and the peaceable Gospel of grace which He Himself has received of the Father and taught the world. All who hear, believe, accept, and rightly fulfill the same are the church of Christ, the true believing Christian church, the body and bride of Christ, the ark of the Lord, etc.” (qtd in H.S. Bender, M S, Life and Writings, tr. from John Horsch, Writings II: 345b).
On Baptism:
“We are not regenerated because we have been baptized, . . . but we are baptized because we have been regenerated by faith and the Word of God (I Peter 1:23). Regeneration is not the result of baptism, but baptism the result of regeneration. The Scriptures know of only one remedy, which is Christ with his merits, death and blood. Hence, he who seeks the remission of sins through baptism rejects the blood of the Lord and makes water his idol. Therefore, let everyone have a care, lest he ascribe the honor and glory due to Christ, to the outward ceremonies and visible elements” (ibid., I:32a).
Finally on liberty of conscience, Menno writes:
Tell me, kind reader, where have you, in all the days of your life read in the apostolic Scriptures, or heard, that Christ or the Apostles called upon the power of the magistracy against those who would not hear their doctrine or obey their words? Yea, reader, I know to a certainty that wherever the government is to perform the ban with the sword, there is not the true knowledge of Spirit, word, and church of Christ” (ibid., II:71).
For Menno, faith cannot be coerced:
“Faith is a gift of God, therefore it cannot be forced upon any one by worldly authorities or by the sword; alone, through the pure doctrine of the holy Word and with humble ardent prayer it must be obtained of the Holy Ghost as a gift of grace. Moreover it is not the will of the Master of the house that the tares should be rooted up as long as the day of reaping is not at hand, as the Scriptural parable teaches and shows with great clearness”
“Now if our persecutors are Christians, as they think, and accept the word of God, why do they not heed and follow the word and commandment of Christ? Why do they root up the tares before the time? Why do they not fear, lest they root up the good wheat, and not the tares” (ibid., I:199).
Concluding Remarks
Today, many are leaving the Anabaptist tradition, finding pastures greener but with histories that have historically had nothing for religious freedom, and once were proponents and practitioners of religious persecution. In this climate, I applaud the courage of Menno to write and live out the essential concept of liberty and free church. A host of Christian thinkers, political philosophers, and statesmen would follow, but not for at least a century later. John Milton in his Aereopagetica, Roger Williams in his Bloody Tenet of Persecution, John Locke in an Essay on Religious Toleration, the French Enlightenment atheistic philosophers, Voltaire and Rosseau (how religious liberty dovetails with the rise of political secularity is an issue that needs attention; I hope to delve into this more in the future), Thomas Jefferson, and America’s Founding Fathers all would come to believe and write of the importance of liberty of conscience. Many of these men, though not worthy of much emulation (from any Christian perspective), propounded ideas that we treasure today in the West. But these beliefs were first harbingered by those who were called Anabaptists; and it should be emphasized that they did so out of loyalty to Christ and willingness to suffer and die for Him, not from only a commitment to what would later become the enlightenment rights of life, liberty, and property.
Possible Future Posts:
A look at Calvin’s Geneva and his execution of Michael Servetus along with the events of the English Reformation, and the rise of religious toleration in England.
Possibly a study of Puritan New England (i.e. Massachusetts Bay Colony and John Winthrop contrasted with the interesting ideas of Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island).
Donatism and Anabaptism: the issue of church purity and the problem of divisions.