Re: [asa] Anabaptist (alleged) error

George, I don't follow your logic here. We could just as well say that
Christians who refused to participate in the holocaust were denying
secondary causation. After all, according to Romans 13, God must have
ordained that Hitler gain power.
It seems to me that a significant amount of nuance is required when dealing
with God's providence and human affairs, including the concepts of God's
mandatory and permissive will. The nuances, I think, are different when
dealing with the non-human physical creation, which does not exercise "free
will" in the same way that humans do, and which therefore does not implicate
God's "permissive" will in exactly the same way.

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Sat, Nov 8, 2008 at 1:51 PM, Merv <mrb22667@kansas.net> wrote:

> George Murphy wrote:
>
>> A new subject line may get a bit more attention to a thread that has moved
>> a good deal from its original topic. But the "Anabaptist error" is not
>> unique to Anabaptists & is basically the same as that of any who reject the
>> idea that sacraments can be means of grace - i.e., denial of secondary
>> causation. In the Anabaptist case this has do do not just with sacraments
>> but with their ideas about government. Paul says very clearly in Romans 13
>> that the state is a minister of God through whom God maintains order in the
>> world. Rejection of this belief in one degree or another - including the
>> idea that Christians should not participate in civil government - is the
>> same error as the belief that the Holy Spirit must convert people directly,
>> without the mediation of word and sacraments, as well as the notion that God
>> had to create living things directly rather than by working through natural
>> processes.
>>
>>
> I concede that we probably all have inconsistencies in applying this
> according to our biased preferences of how much we should get involved in
> the various aspects of society. But simply acknowledging that God works
> through mediated action does not excuse, let alone endorse, our
> participation in it. God has made use of numerous very evil acts in
> history (as indeed He uses everything) in order to bring about His purpose.
> But that does not make those acts any less evil. Romans 13 is a double
> edged sword which (if only one edge is recognized) would have us helplessly
> recognizing that the third Reich just is what it is and should run its
> course without resistance since it was "ordained by God". I imagine more
> than one German Christian sought confirmation in that passage. And
> Americans then, had no business rebelling against the God-ordained Brits.
> But most conservatives aren't willing to apply Romans 13 that consistently
> or thoroughly.
>
>> Caveats: I am not saying that all Anabaptists, or anyone else, must hold
>> all of those views if they hold one. (Zwingli, e.g., was inconsistent in
>> that regard.) I also recognize that not all who consider themselves to be
>> in the Anabaptist tradition have exactly the same views about government.
>> Furthermore, Christians who do recognize a legitimate role for civil
>> government and for Christian participation in it need not hold precisely
>> Luther's "two kingdoms" (better "two realms" or even "two rules" -
>> /Zweireichenlehre/) theory which has sometimes been seriously abused. & in
>> particular, I am not saying that there can be no legitimate Christian
>> pacifism.
>> But with all those qualification, I think that Christians who reject any
>> of these 3 ideas (the state as a minister of God, Word & sacraments as
>> means, evolution as the means by which God creates living things) ought to
>> reflect seriously on just how they think God acts in the world & whether or
>> not their views on the matter are consistent.
>> The Anabaptists in the 16th century were right to object to the automatic
>> baptism of infants as a cultural practice as then practiced in western
>> Europe, and refusal to baptize babies might have been a legitimate protest
>> against abuses. But it's a very different matter to deny the _validity_ of
>> baptism that is administered to infants.
>> Shalom
>> George
>> http://home.neo.rr.com/scitheologyglm
>>
>>
>
> I'm not sure many (any?) Mennonites (can't speak for the Amish or Brethren)
> still do actively protest against the validity of infant baptism. Indeed we
> do child confirmations which would seem, to the less particular, to be about
> the same thing minus the water. As long as you don't, in turn, deny the
> validity of re-baptism for any who may request it (hence the historical
> name). We Mennonites of recent decades have since moved on to much more
> pressing controversies such as sprinkling? or immersion? :-) ...and some
> of us have even stopped worrying about that.
>
> I'm just speaking from the pew, of course, as it sounds like some of you
> here know more about formal Anabaptist history than some of us Anabaptists
> do.
>
> --Merv
>
>
>
>
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Received on Sat Nov 8 15:08:14 2008