I’ve been researching early Anabaptism for several months now and the book Early Anabaptist Spirituality by Daniel Liechty is mentioned often enough to have taunted me for some time now. It’s sat in my check-out cart, un-purchased, for months though because I had a feeling that I was going to be disappointed. First, the term Anabaptist spirituality, while sounding exciting to me, often is not. Anabaptists tend to flee from much talk of spirituality. And when there is talk of it from the early days, it’s almost always the bizarre and sometimes dangerous apocalyptic ‘end of the world’ type of stuff. Most of the titles from the works seemed very dry to me as well. “Concerning Freedom of the Will”, “On the Mystery of Baptism”, “Three Kinds of Grace”, “Three Kinds of Baptism” etc. These just seemed to me to be concerned with dry and probably “local” theological concerns rather than spiritual practices.

I finally gave in and bought it for a few reasons, among them the writings from Hans Denck and the six hymns from the Ausbund. I must say, I was thoroughly surprised at how much I liked, even loved, this collection of writings! Apart from maybe one or two, I did not feel they were dry, theological treatises or polemics at all. They were aimed to be simple, practical and yes, spiritual. Walter Klassen says in Anabaptism in Outline, “[The Anabaptists] were most concerned, not with the intellectual questions, but with humble obedience to Jesus to whom the Scriptures testify” and I found that to be true in this collection. My reviews generally summarize the content a bit. Seeing as this is a collection of fairly varied writings, I’ve decided to choose a few of my favorites and briefly discuss them.

The book starts out with preface by Hans J. Hillerbrand and introduction by the author which both do a good job of setting the setting and general framework in which the writings were written. This introduction helps to make this book an excellent selection for someone interested in learning about 16th century Anabaptists for the first time.

Instruction on Beginning a New Christian Life — Hans Schlaffer

What I liked most about this selection was the short section on the gospel of creatures. The gospel of creatures was an interesting concept passed around the early Anabaptists. As far as we can tell, it started with Thomas Münster who passed it to Hans Hut which is where Schlaffer inherited it. The basic idea is analogous to what I generally hear called the book of nature. The strongest Biblical evidence is usually drawn from the first chapter of Romans where Paul says that God has made himself known to all the world. The gospel of creatures is a stream from that which focuses on the suffering and sacrifice of nature and relates that to the cross of Christ. Nothing comes to fruition without suffering, including ourselves.

It was perhaps a bit too negative for my tastes at times, though that’s very likely that this comes from my life being incredibly comfortable, safe and cushy, and his being filled with persecution and hardship. Overall though I really enjoyed it and I’ve thought about it a lot since.

Concerning True Love — Hans Denck

I love Hans Denck. He had truly remarkable insight and seemed to get straight to the heart of the teachings and life of Christ. Both writings of his were great. This was the first of the entire book that I read. It’s short, yet was very powerful for me. Just look at how it starts:

Love is a spiritual power. The lover desires to be united with the beloved. Where love is fulfilled, the lover does not objectify the beloved. The lover forgets himself, as if he were no more, and without shame he yearns for his beloved. The lover cannot be content until he has proven his love for the beloved in the most dangerous situations. The lover would gladly and willingly face death for the benefit of the beloved. Indeed, the lover might be so foolish as to die to please his beloved, even knowing that no other benefit could come from the act. And the less his beloved acknowledges his love, the more passion the lover feels. He will not cease in his love but strive the more to prove his love, even if it will never be acknowledged… …If it were possible, love would even deny itself for the sake of love. Love would allow itself to cease and become as nothing so that love’s object could be what love is. We might even say that love hates itself, for love selflessly desires only the good of others. If love were unwilling to deny itself for the sake of the beloved, it would not be true loving but a form of selfishness in love’s own eyes. Love knows and recognizes that total giving for the sake of the beloved is good. That is why love cannot deny itself. Love must finally love itself, not selfishly, but as loving what is good.

He goes on to explain that the spark of love is found in many people, but seems extinguished in many more. This spark of love that is found in people, however, does not come from themselves, but is from the source of perfect love. “God, himself but the Maker of all things, is love.” Humanity simply cannot comprehend this love, so he decided to make it perfectly visible for us. God “would become as nothing for the sake of those in need” if it were possible, and indeed he did so in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

From here Denck explains how Jesus brings us from slaves to children. He lived everything which he taught and commanded, thus perfectly showing us God’s will and, if we follow him, bringing us from ignorant slaves to understanding children. Everything we do, Denck maintains, must be done from the love which finds its source in God.

True Yieldedness and the Christian Community of Goods — Peter Walport

I was excited for this one because the idea of Anabaptist ‘yieldedness’ fascinates me. I was initially disappointed when I could not understand the direction or even purpose of the text. It’s broke up into 148 small sections, mostly consisting of a quote from the Bible and a very small comment on it. At first it seemed to me like a more or less random collection of Bible verses. As I kept reading though, the patterns Walport was trying to bring together began to emerge. The destructiveness of greed, the importance of true community, the selflessness required for one walking in love.

He often peers into the scriptures with deep insight. For example, in chapter 31 he takes Jesus’ comment that those who love their family more than him are not worthy of him. to devalue material possessions. “If a person is not worthy of him who loves parents and friends [more than him]… how much more unworthy is the one who loves his possessions more than Christ!” In chapter 35 he finds the essence of community in Jesus’ feeding of the masses. “That the disciples, who had very little… were very willing to share with others is a lesson to us that when we forsake house, country and friends to follow the word of God into the wilderness, that even today we should hold all of our temporal goods in common and lay them out for common use out of love for our neighbors.”

This is not a text to sit and read through in one sitting. Treat it more like Proverbs. Read a few each day and savor them before moving on to the next few.

Concerning the New Birth and the New Creature — Dirk Philips

Though the titles of Dirk Philips’ works intrigued me, I must admit that I was not particularly anxious to read his works. I’d heard that he could be rather judgmental, harsh and legalistic. And indeed, you do see a bit of each of those in these works. But oh my goodness I loved both of them. The second one is largely devoted to giving examples of how Christ was prefigured in the Old Testament. It’s something I look for to going back over slowly and checking all the references out. The first one though had my heart racing by the end (though I’ll admit I would skip a paragraph or two here and there that would divulge into polemic attacks). I had no real interest in buying Dirk Philips’ complete works before, but after reading these two writings, I’m seriously thinking about it.

In the first writing, Philips starts with explaining how we were all made in the image of God (and therefore the image and likeness of Christ), but how we have lost that image through our sin and transgressions. God desires that we all bear his image though, that’s why he originally created us in his image, and so he made a promise to do just that. Jesus is the answer to that promise, and through him we can become renewed. “Therefore, each person who has reached the age of understanding and knows the difference between good and evil must be transformed into a new, godly being through the enlightenment, work and transfiguration of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, each must be reborn into communion and likeness of Jesus Christ, transformed into his image, from glory to glory, and thereby be renewed according to the image of God and created in God’s likeness, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.”

After setting this foundation, he writes page after page of what this transformation should look like (I’ll give you a hint, it looks like Jesus) and how we can bring about this transformation (another hint, it’s the work of the Spirit as we obey and conform to the teachings and actions of Jesus). As soon as I finished it, much like Hans Denck’s Concerning True Love, I wanted to read it again.