Preservings $20 Issue No. 26, 2006 - Home at Plett Foundation

Inter-church conversations
with the Calvinists were perhaps
the most intense, especially with
those who held to a strict doctrine
of predestination. On the
advice of the Reformed synod,
held at Dordrecht in 1574, some
Reformed ministers entered
Mennonite meeting houses to
refute the preachers and to try
to convince them of their wrong
teachings. Occasionally disputations
were organized to combat
Mennonite “heresy,” such as at
Emden in 1578 and at Leeuwarden
in 1596. One of the most
active Calvinists who wrote
against the Anabaptists was Guy
de Bres, who co-authored the
Belgic Confession in 1561, and
in it condemned the Anabaptists
for their baptismal theology, their
views with respect to the civil
authorities, justice and order,
economics, and Christology.
The Spiritualists and the
Collegiants were also a challenge
for the Mennonites in
that they tended to advocate a
non-denominational approach
to Christianity. They were
inclined to reject the importance
of external religious
institutions, sacraments, and
ceremonies as well as the relevance
of theological doctrine. They favoured
a religion based upon the direct, illuminating
and sanctifying inspiration of the Holy Spirit
in the soul of each believer. In addition, they
believed that one could have direct, unmediated
contact with God through the Spirit;
they held that the visible church and external
religion were unnecessary, and some relegated
Scripture to a secondary status. A number of
Mennonites joined this non-denominational
option, pleased to shed some of the old Anabaptist
teachings.
All of these experiences—the movement
toward acculturation and the interaction with
other religious traditions—brought about a crisis
of identity, and eventually a response from
the Mennonites was needed. And it did come.
Mennonites began writing martyr books, such
as the Martyrs Mirror, to remind themselves of
the faith that their forbears had died for. They
published songbooks and devotional materials
to foster personal and corporate worship. They
turned to Anabaptist writings, such as those by
Menno Simons and Dirk Philips, to augment
their understanding of the beliefs and practices
of their tradition. Finally, Mennonites began to
articulate in the form of confessions of faith,
what it was that they believed. Just as other
Protestant denominations were formulating
statements of belief, in a time of change, transition
and consolidation, Mennonites also began
to see the need to summarize the essentials of
the faith beyond the summary statement of the
Apostles’ Creed.
Title page of the Dordrecht Confession. (Irvin B. Horst, Mennonite Confession of Faith, p. 41)
Historians have sometimes concluded that
the emerging preoccupation with confessional
writing was something essentially new in the
Anabaptist tradition, the assumption being that
Mennonites were compromising their tradition
by borrowing a literary (confessional) genre
from mainstream Protestantism. There is some
truth to this, but it is also the case that the writing
of confessions was a natural and necessary response
by Mennonites, given the challenges that
they faced. By the end of the sixteenth century
and the beginning of the seventeenth century,
in an age of toleration and cultural flourishing,
Anabaptism was no longer an underground
movement, but an emerging denominational
entity seeking to survive in a religiously pluralistic
environment. Mennonite leaders were
compelled to think more systematically about
the faith. It was a response by a group coming
to terms with the challenges of the day, requiring
instruments of support necessary for survival
in a changing socio-economic, political and
religious context.
Yet there was also another, more specific,
reason why the writing of confessions seemed
like a good idea. By the beginning of the seventeenth
century, Mennonites were hopelessly
divided into a number of separate denominations,
and a number of leaders began to think
of ways of working at unity. Many anticipated
that confessions of faith could serve as instruments
of unity. It is in this context that Flemish
Mennonites contemplated writing a confessional
statement like the Dordrecht Confession.
A Statement of Unity
The story of conflict and reconciliation
among the Flemish Mennonites can only be
briefly summarized here; nevertheless, we need
to go at least as far back as the era of Menno
Simons to understand some of the root causes
of the conflict. We sometimes think of Menno
as a leader who brought unity to the Anabaptist
movement. Indeed, Menno and his colleagues,
Dirk Philips and Leenaert Bouwens, gave strong
and decisive direction to the Anabaptist movement
in the Low Countries after a very difficult
beginning period culminating in the debacle at
Münster. Yet, their view of the church as being
“without spot or wrinkle,” and their version of
strict church discipline also had some undesirable
outcomes that would eventually lead Mennonites
down a difficult path.
In Menno’s church, to maintain the purity of
the body of Christ, those who committed serious
moral offences were disciplined, or removed from
the fellowship of the church. A problem stemming
from the practice of discipline was reaching
consensus concerning the proper and appropriate
reasons for church expulsion. Not surprisingly,
Mennonites found it exceedingly difficult to agree
on the procedures necessary to confront the moral
failures that arose in their midst.
After the death of Menno Simons in 1561,
lack of agreement persisted, often aggravated
by cultural and theological misunderstandings.
A major controversy that emerged following
Menno’s death took place between Flemish and
Frisian Mennonites. The Flemish were newcom-
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