Behold, beloved reader, I admonish and advise you, if you seek God with all your heart, and do not wish to be deceived; depend not upon men and their doctrine, no matter however old, holy and excellent they may be esteemed; for the divines, both ancient and modern are opposed to each other; but put your trust, alone in Christ and his word, in the sure instruction and practice of his holy apostles, and you will through the grace of God, be perfectly safe from all false doctrines and the power of the devil; and may walk with a free and pious mind before God.
As a Mennonite, I think Menno Simons had some very important—nay, necessary things to say. And while I appreciate the way Menno focuses faith around the words and ways of Yeshua, including the praxis of the apostles and disciples of the early church, I am deeply concerned with his reliance upon Sola Scriptura evident in the phrase above. Whom among us will say, looking at history, that he spoke truly? That after people turned away from outside instruction and sought wisdom, understanding, doctrine, and faith simply and solely through reading the scriptures, that this caused false doctrines to fall away and that it led to better and clearer understanding? Dear reader, whether you are a follower of Yeshua or otherwise, can you honestly say that the mass of Protestants in the world today have found more common ground and drawn closer together in common truth on account of their free
reading of biblical texts than otherwise? Has not Menno’s sincere belief in the illumination provided by scriptural reading birthed a myriad of conflicting interpretations, gave rise to multitudes of contrasting beliefs, splintered those who would follow Yeshua into a plethora of factions, spawned hordes of mystery sects and end-time cults, and cast a great many into what seems to be impenetrable darkness?
One of Menno’s favorite words to describe scripture is plain.
The plain meaning. The plain reading. The plain understanding. What is stated plainly. We Anabaptists like to use the word plain,
but what we mean is a turning away/separation from worldly things like materialism, fashion, luxury, hedonism, or dependence on tyrannical and oppressive systems that take away our self-governance or endanger the outworking of our faith by making it subservient to other interests and powers. For Menno, however, plain
was how one approached or understood scripture. Truth was available to all if only we would turn away from the hardness of our hearts, listen, and accept what scripture says. One could take one of Anabaptism’s fundamental criticisms as an opposing example:
Remember also how the early writers contended about infant baptism. Had it been apostolic, and found in the gospel, why should they have thus wrangled?
If such were a true criteria, it would invalidate a great many things Menno himself took to be self-evident. As an example, for some time, the number of Christians who believed in Arianism may actually have been greater than those who believed in Trinitarianism. It took an ecclesiastical debate, whose conclusion was backed up by the excommunication and banishment of any Christian who believed differently through the power of the Emperor, in order to make Trinitarianism the orthodox and valid scriptural interpretation for the church. Trinitarianism is no more contained in scripture or defined by the apostles than infant baptism. Yet Menno would hardly abandon the first.
What Menno overlooked (and what many other Modernists continue to overlook) is the part that one’s own perception, culture, time, experience, language, world-views, etc, play in the formation of meaning. We are, in a very real sense, prisoners of culture and history. Plain
the scriptures may have been to a Palestinian Jew in the First Century. Plain
they are no longer—either to a Radical Dutch Reformer or to us. It is a fanciful delusion, I think, to say that YHWH will bypass our own cultural, historical, and mental structures of thinking and understanding in order to reveal divine truth to us. If that were the case—if YHWH did reveal truth to us which came from outside our own perceptive lens, how could we possibly know it unless we changed and warped it to make it subservient to that lens? The way to true understanding does not come by denying the existence and influence of one’s perceptive lens, but by allowing new ways of thinking and understanding (at least to us) to change our lens. If we want to understand what texts written by Jews in Palestine in the First Century meant, we need to think like a First Century Palestinian Jew. And that will, by no means, involve turning away from outside instruction to simply and naively read the text and see it as we see it.
This is, indeed, a disparagement of Sola Scriptura. Apart from the traditions and doctrines of humanity, no divine meaning or understanding can exist. It may sound pious to say you have rejected worthless human traditions in order to follow, unadulterated, only that which is revealed in the biblical texts, but all you have really done is replaced one human tradition or doctrine with another and pretended to eliminate it from consideration. While I respect Menno on account of many significant insights and the fruits of a faith that was real, I must at the same time gainsay the naively impressionistic method he advocated. It does not befit the one who calls themself a child of YHWH or follower of Yeshua to take scripture so lightly as to think it requires nothing from us other than an honest and open heart in order to yield up its treasures.
Lazlo H. Says:
Menno was rejecting the build-up of theological/dogmatic cruft between the practice of the early church and the medieval state church, but I don’t see any evidence that he is rejecting “interpretation” per se. I don’t see any reason to think Menno was unaware of his own cultural perspective and its influence on his reading of scripture; it seems to me that he is just arguing that his interpretation is superior because it relies less on extrabiblical philosophy. I’m not sure how someone could teach that their readers should effectively ignore the author, but that’s what Menno would have to be saying if he were truly rejecting the idea of all teaching outside of the scriptures themselves.
In the baptism tract you link, Menno clearly relies on the work of historians and theologians to make the case that infant baptism was not the practice of the early church, but was in fact instituted later. He is extremely wary of practices that are not described in the Bible directly in general, but you’ll notice that his main problem with Luther and Bucer on infant baptism is that they’re attempting to “please men,” which I take to mean the state-church.
Regarding the trinity; Menno actually did accept the doctrine of trinity on a strictly biblical basis. See http://www.mennosimons.net/trinity.html — you’ll notice that he more or less refuses to use the word “trinity” while accepting the doctrine. One can accept the interpretation of the church councils without subscribing to the idea of a magisterium on the same level as scripture.
Anyway, I agree with the general idea that people should not assume they can understand scripture without the assistance of a historical community of theologians and interpreters. I teach a class at my church that argues that point exhaustively, but I also believe that “plain” reading — within such a community — is not only possible, but vital. We do have to acknowledge our cultural biases (and/or idols), but I believe that the Bible is the perfect tool to challenge us on those, if we allow it to be.
slaveofone Says:
Okay, I’m really confused… Either I’m not getting what you’re saying or you didn’t get what I was saying… Or maybe you’re adding to what I was saying by talking about different subjects than I was actually raising… I think that, completely unintentionally, we have both spoken past each other…
Lazlo H. Says:
I guess so! But since you went first, it’s really me talking past you inadvertently. Sorry about that.
My point in a nutshell: you’re being too hard on Menno. He’s reacting to the concept of the magisterium, which takes the Bible out of the hands of the local community and puts interpretation solely in the hands of church hierarchy. At a time when the church was– to say the least– abusing the scriptures quite badly (not to mention the poor and anyone who would subvert the power of the nation-state), I think it’s forgivable if Menno perhaps goes overboard.
However, I’m not entirely sure that he does go overboard; when I read Menno’s writings, I see that he argues almost everything from the Bible and doesn’t refer directly to other interpreters. But I also see that he seems to be willing to accept interpretations that have been handed down to him– he just argues those points biblically instead of appealing to the authority of other interpreters.