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

Feature Articles:
The Life And Times Of Menno Simons
Walter Klaassen, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan
For most of us, Menno Simons and many
other notables of our past are figures in a
vacuum. We know quite a lot about Menno
as a person, about the details of his life and
work, and particularly of the years after his
conversion. Much has been written about him,
his theology has been carefully examined, his
controversies with other theologians, Protestant
and Roman Catholic, illuminated, and his many
wanderings in the service of his Lord traced
again and again.
But Menno Simons did not
walk across and act upon a stage
that was empty. It was filled with
events and people and controversy.
This is not to suggest, of course,
that scholarship has quite disregarded
events of the time other
than those with which Menno was
concerned. This would be impossible
in the first place and is in fact
not so. But most of us have never
had the chance to go through all that
scholars have written, and know of
Menno only through short monographs
and descriptions in which
the wider context could not be dealt
with. What follows is an attempt to
supply a context by endeavouring to
describe in part the world as it was
in the days of Menno Simons. His
life and work will then be seen in
the context of a real world, a world
as real as the one in which we live
today. As the story progresses we
will become aware of a number of
parallels between the world and
times of Menno and our own world
and times, for there are many points
at which these two eras, although
separated by four centuries, are
surprisingly similar. First of all, it
is necessary to give a brief resumé
of the life of Menno Simons.
Menno SimonHe was born in
the year 1496 in Witmarsum in the Dutch province
of Friesland. It is possible that his parents
made their living at dairy farming for which this
part of the Netherlands is famous even today.
Most likely he received his theological education
in a neighbouring monastery. He studied
Latin, some Greek, and the great theologians
of the early church, and was thus prepared for
his ordination as a priest of the Roman Catholic
Church. In 1524 when he was twenty-eight
years old he was ordained as priest in Utrecht
and began his service in Pingjum, a town near
his home. He seems to have lived the life of a
small town priest of that day, doing what was
prescribed: baptizing children, officiating at the
Mass, burying the dead, hearing confession,
and little else.
About this time a teaching was abroad in the
Netherlands which denied the Catholic doctrine
that the bread and wine of the Eucharist became
the very flesh and blood of Christ under the
consecrating hands of the priest. During his
first year as priest Menno began to entertain
Painting of Menno Simons. The original hangs in the meetinghouse in Witmarsum,
Friesland, Menno’s home town. The painting is in the Burkhart style.
(Credit: Visser and Sprunger, Menno Simons, p. 80.)
doubts about this doctrine. After carrying this
doubt about with him for two years and under
the influence of Martin Luther and others, he
finally began to read the New Testament. He
soon noticed that what he read there, and what
the official teaching of the church was, did
not agree. It now became for him a question
of which authority he would follow, the traditional
teaching or Scripture? He chose the
Bible, and in addition began to read Luther’s
writings. Gradually his views matured into
independence as he gained confidence that he
was on the right path.
The next question to be clarified was that
concerning baptism, a question forced on him
after hearing of a man who had been executed
for submitting to rebaptism after he claimed
that his baptism as an infant was not valid.
Now he immediately consulted Scripture as
his authority and found that what he read there
about baptism differed not only from what
Rome taught but also from what was taught by
Martin Luther and the other reformers. But he
did not leave the Roman Catholic
Church as yet. Rather, he moved a
step up the ladder in that he went
to be priest in the larger church
in his home town.About the year
1532 Anabaptists began to appear
in his congregation. These were
the people who had been baptized
with what they believed was the
true baptism of repentance and
faith. They made him feel guilty
because they had had the courage
to be rebaptized and he did not.
Moreover, he did not want to give
up a pleasant life. In 1534 some
Anabaptists came from the city
of Münster in Westphalia with the
message that God was setting up
his kingdom there, and that a young
man named Jan van Leiden was the
new King David. This new divine
kingdom was to be the lead-in to the
return of Christ for judgement. So
the priest Menno began to preach
against them and to argue with
them, saying that to replace Jesus
with Jan van Leiden as the Davidic
king was blasphemy. He became so
adept at debating with them that he
was frequently called upon by the
church to deal with these people.
More importantly, it was also in
this year that he decided to accept
the baptism of faith secretly. But
still he stayed in his position as
priest. When in March, 1535, his
own brother and members of his congregation
were killed at the siege of the Old Cloister
where Anabaptists had fortified themselves;
he knew that the time for decision had come.
Thus, even while he continued to function as
priest in Witmarsum, he also began to be a
pastor to Anabaptists who would have nothing
to do with the sword-bearing Anabaptists who
had come from Münster. He cautioned them
not to become involved in violence.
In the winter of 1536, after he had been
persuaded to become a leader of Anabaptists,
Menno quietly left his home to become a wan-
- Preservings No. 26, 2006