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MENNO SIMONS' INCARNATIONAL CHRISTOLOGY
By Cky J. Carrigan (11/96)
Introduction
The theology of Menno Simons was thoroughly in the mainstream of biblical Anabaptist1 thinking with one exception. His doctrine on the mode of the incarnation of Christ made him vulnerable to the charge of heresy. Menno, son of Simon, was born in 1496 to a Dutch peasant family who consecrated their son to the service of the Roman Catholic Church. Reared in a Franciscan monastery, Menno took up his priestly orders at the age of twenty-eight and laid them down twelve years later in January 1536. Simons was re-ordained as an Obbenite bishop in 1537, and labored in Holland for seven years. While in the Netherlands Menno wrote Foundation of Christian Doctrine (1539), Christian Baptism (1539), and The True Christian Faith (1541).2
After Charles V placed a generous bounty on Menno's head, Menno moved his ministry and his family to Northwest Germany where he labored from 1543 until his death in 1561. Simons spent a few months in East Friesland, two years in Cologne, and fifteen years in Holstein and the Baltic Sea Coast. During his Germanic sojourn, Menno wrote Confession of the Triune God (1550), Reply to Gellius Faber (1554), and The Incarnation of Our Lord (1544).
Menno's wife and two of his three children died as a result of Anabaptist hardships. Twenty-five years after renouncing his Catholic orders, a crippled Menno was overtaken by the sickbed. He was buried in his own garden in the winter of 1561. The Mennonites are the direct descendants of Menno Simons and his branch of the Radical Reformation. They bear his name and follow his teachings.
Survey of Theology
Three factors shaped Simons' theology and precipitated his slow but sure migration from Roman Catholicism to the Obbenite camp. First, Menno was unsettled about the doctrine of transubstantiation and this crisis of belief pushed him headlong into the deliberate investigation of the New Testament. Second, Menno became concerned about the practice of pedobaptism after the execution of Sicke Freerks Snijder for consenting to adult rebaptism. A search of the Scriptures led Simons to reject the sacrifice of the mass and infant baptism. Menno's move away from Catholicism was sealed by the third factor. He was profoundly moved by the devotion and commitment of the millenarian martyrs who died savage deaths because they openly rejected transubstantiation and pedobaptism. Menno, who shared their views on these matters, could not escape the guilt of his own coward-like moderation, so he became an Anabaptist in 1536.3
Simons was thoroughly in the mainstream of biblical Anabaptist theology. Unlike many Anabaptists, Menno survived to write extensively on a variety of subjects. The following brief remarks represent some major components of his theology. Menno's soteriology emphasized salvation by grace alone. He wrote, "Far be it from us that we should comfort ourselves with anything but the grace of God through Christ Jesus."4 Menno also affirmed individual conversion experience, the new birth by faith and repentance, and a changed life: "For if you do not repent there is nothing in heaven or on earth that can help you. . . If now you desire to have your wicked nature cleared up, and desire to be free from eternal death and damnation. . . then you must be born again."5
On revelation, Menno maintained a very high view of the nature and authority of Scripture.6 He used the Bible almost exclusively to defend his doctrines. He called the Bible "God's infallible Word"7 and said that Scripture, "can neither be bent nor broken."8 Simons also believed that the New Testament took precedence over the Old,9 and he practiced a Christocentric interpretation of the Bible.10
Menno's ecclesiology was Anabaptist as well. He affirmed the doctrines of the believer's church, believer's baptism, the symbolic Lord's Supper, and church discipline. About the believer's church, he wrote, "They verily are not the true congregation of Christ who merely boast of His name. But they are the true congregation of Christ who are truly converted, who are born from above. . . [who] live unblamably in His holy commandments. . . from the moment of their call."11 Menno devoted an entire work to believer's baptism, and to church discipline, and he set forth his memorial views about the Lord's Supper in Foundation.12
Incarnational Theology
From the time of the early church a perennial debate has raged about the person of Christ. Is Christ fully human and fully divine? If so, what is the relationship between His two natures? And how did these two natures in one person come to be? Menno was generally orthodox on the first two questions. But, his reply to the last of the three questions made him vulnerable to the charge of heresy. Concerning how the two natures came to be, Menno and several other Anabaptists believed that Jesus did not derive any part of His humanity from Mary. This view is called the doctrine of the celestial flesh.
Mary's role in the formation of Jesus' flesh was not a settled issue among the Anabaptists. Some agreed with Menno and some did not.13 And there were some indications that the second generation Swiss Anabaptists as a group were undecided on this matter as well. The South German and Swiss Anabaptists produced a statement on this issue in 1555. The Strassburg Confession reads,
For just as the Scripture in many places lets it appear as if Christ brought His flesh from heaven. . . in similar fashion the Scripture also lets it appear as if Christ has received and assumed His flesh from Mary. . . . And from now on we desist from speaking outside of the clear Scripture, over how far or near, high or low Christ has become flesh. . . .14
Menno did not originate the doctrine of the celestial flesh. He learned his incarnational Christology from Melchior Hoffmann who probably learned it from Casper Schwenckfeld who claimed to have learned it from Scripture and the Fathers.15 One of Hoffmann's arguments for the celestial flesh and against the traditional view was related to the atonement. According to Hoffmann, a Christ who derived his humanity from Mary would have been an unfit sacrifice. He wrote,
We have now heard enough that the whole seed of Adam, be it of man, woman, or virgin, is cursed and delivered to eternal death. Now if the body of Jesus Christ was also such flesh and of this seed. . . it follows that the redemption has not yet happened. For the seed of Adam belongs to Satan and is the property of the devil. Satan cannot be paid in his own coin. . .16
Together with Hoffmann, Menno was clearly an advocate of the doctrine of the celestial flesh of Jesus.17 Simons believed that Jesus became a man in Mary, not of Mary. He wrote,
Our doctrine and belief is that this same Word, Wisdom, and First-born, as we have confessed, in due time descended from heaven, and that He became a true, mortal man subject to suffering and death by the power of the most High and His Holy Spirit, not of Mary but in Mary, above all human comprehension.18
We confess and say, and that in accordance with the Lord's Word, that the Scripture exempts none from sin but Him that is free indeed, namely, Christ Jesus. . . whereby it is plainly shown that He is not of Mary's flesh. . .19
Menno likened Jesus to a heavenly seed and heavenly fruit that was uncorrupted by sin. He wrote,
In the same manner the heavenly Seed, namely, the Word of God, was sown in Mary, and by her faith, being conceived in her by the Holy Ghost, became flesh, and was nurtured in her body; and thus it is called the fruit of her womb, that same as a natural fruit or offspring is called the fruit of its natural mother. For Christ Jesus, as to His origin, is no earthly man, that is a fruit of the flesh and blood of Adam. He is a heavenly fruit or man. For His beginning or origin is of the Father (John 16:28), like unto the first Adam, sin excepted.20
In Incarnation of Our Lord, Menno set forth his case for the celestial flesh of Jesus with two main arguments. First, he believed that Scripture proved the exclusive origin of a child from his father and applied that principle to Christ and His Heavenly Father. He wrote, "[H]uman procreation occurs by the marital intimacy of husband and wife. . . but from the male sperm. The new life has its origin not in the father, but comes from the father through the mother. . ."21 He added, "[A] child takes its origin in the father and not in the mother."22
His second argument was based on Jesus' self understanding. Simons relied on Scripture again to demonstrate that Jesus Himself affirmed His own celestial flesh. Quoting from John 6, Menno wrote, "I am that living bread that came down from heaven. . . and the bread that I give is my flesh."23
Menno may have misunderstood the mode of the incarnation and the implications of his views, but he explicitly and consistently affirmed the full deity and humanity of Christ. In Triune God, which was written to counteract the Arian influence of Roelof Martens among the Mennists, Simons wrote, "[W]e believe and confess that this same eternal. . . Word, Christ Jesus, which was in the beginning with God and which was God. . . born of the incomprehensible Father, before every creature. . . did in the fullness of time become. . . a mortal man in Mary."24 Elsewhere, speaking explicitly of the docetic charge leveled against him, Menno wrote, "he was truly human and not a mere phantasm."25
Menno Simons' overall theology was clearly in the mainstream of biblical Anabaptism, but his belief about the mode of the incarnation was out of step with biblical Anabaptism and the Chalcedonian Creed. Menno's basic Christology, however, which affirmed the full deity and fully humanity of Christ, was consistent with biblical Anabaptism and Chalcedon. Fortunately, Menno's teaching on the incarnation did not abide long with his followers. Seventy-one years after Menno's death the Dutch Mennonite Confession of Faith (1632) dropped the explicit affirmation of the celestial flesh but this component of Menno's Christology continues to embarrass modern Mennonites.26 The 1632 Confession read,
But how or in what manner this worthy body was prepared, or how the Word became flesh, and He himself man, we content ourselves with the declaration which that worthy evangelists have given.27
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1William Estep's definition of biblical Anabaptist is employed here. The biblical Anabaptist used the Bible, particularly the New Testament as their authority for doctrine, the inspirationalists relied upon the Holy Spirit which took precedence over the Bible, and the rationalists emphasized the place of reason for interpreting the Bible. William Estep, The Anabaptist Story (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), 15.
2Menno wrote twenty-five books and tracts in addition to several letters, hymns, etc.. For a complete listing of Menno's known writings see "Contents" in Menno Simons, The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, translated by Leonard Verduin and edited by John Christian Wenger with a biography by Harold S. Bender (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1956), ix-x. Henceforth referred as CWMS.
3For a first hand description of these three influences and Menno's own testimony of his conversion and call to ministry, see Reply of Gellius Faber, in CWMS, 668-676.
4Menno Simons, Confession of the Distressed Christian, in CWMS, 506.
5Menno Simons, The New Birth, in CWMS, 92.
6Menno's canon, however, included the Apocrypha. See his appeal to Susanna in Foundations, [F], in CWMS, 177.
7Menno Simons, The New Birth, in CWMS, 102.
8Menno Simons, True Christian Faith, in CWMS, 341.
9For example, see Blasphemy of John of Leiden, in CWMS, 33-50.
10Consider his motto in the preface of every one of his books and tracts which quoted 1 Corinthians 3:11 on the title page, "For other foundation can no man lay, than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ." For a theory which ascribes to Menno a Barthian-like Christocentric doctrine of revelation, see James E. Oosterbaan, "The Theology of Menno Simons," The Mennonite Quarterly Review 35 (July 1961): 187-196.
11Menno Simons, Not Cease Teaching and Writing, in CWMS, 300.
12Menno Simons, On Christian Baptism, in CWMS, 231-287; A Kind Admonition on Church Discipline, in CWMS, 407-418; Foundation of Christian Doctrine, in CWMS, 142-158.
13For evidence of agreement see Dirk Phillips, 36-37; and Bernhard Rothmann, 35. For evidence of disagreement see Balthasar Hubmaier, 25; and Pilgram Marpeck, 33. All in Walter Klaassen, ed., Anabaptism in Outline: Selected Primary Sources (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1981), 25-37.
14The Strassburg Confession of 1555, in Legacy, 55.
15For the connection between Simons, Hoffmann, and Schwenckfeld, see Timothy George, Theology of the Reformers (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1988), 281; and Cornelius Krahn, "Incarnation of Christ" in The Mennonite Encyclopedia, vol. 3 (Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing House, 1959), 19.
16Melchior Hoffmann, "Truthful Witness," in Klaassen, Outline, 27. Note also Hoffmann's Origen-like "Ransom to Satan" atonement Christology. It is not known whether Menno shared this component of Hoffmann's Christology.
17This doctrine may have been more than a passing peculiarity for Menno, it may have been essential to his overall theology. For a theory which suggests that Menno's incarnational Christology was central to the formation of his soteriology, doctrine of the sacraments, and ethics, see William Keeney "The Incarnation, A Central Theological Concept" in A Legacy of Faith, edited by Cornelius Dyck (Newton, Kansas: Faith and Life Press, 1962), 55-68.
18Menno Simons, Reply to Micron,in CWMS, 865.
19Ibid., 870.
20Menno Simons, Brief and Clear Confession, in CWMS, 437.
21Menno Simons, The Incarnation of Our Lord, in CWMS, 793.
22Ibid.
23Ibid., 796.
24Menno Simons, Triune God, in CWMS, 492.
25Menno Simons, Incarnation, in CWMS, 794. For additional evidence for Menno's view on the humanity of Jesus, see first block quote on p. 5, "Our doctrine. . ."
26About the Mennonite embarrassment, see John C. Wenger's introduction to Menno's Incarnation, in CWMS, 784.
27Dutch Mennonite Confession of Faith (1632), article IV, par. 3, quoted in John Christian Wenger, Glimpses of Mennonite History and Doctrine (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1949), 139.