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It was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the LORD, and when the song was raised . . . the house, the house of the LORD, was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud; for the glory of the LORD filled the house of God.

(2 Chr 5:13–14)

Could a Mennonite be an atheist and still be a Mennonite? On the face of it, the question deals with boundaries and culture, orthodoxy and tradition. Oddly enough, it is also related to the line of thought being explored here. It is a question that arises when one functional alternative to my proposal is pushed to its logical end. My thesis is that Anabaptist communities need to express more clearly how the church mediates the presence and work of God. Extending the analysis begun in the last chapter will show that there is actually some precedent for this in Anabaptist thought. Nevertheless, some readers might wonder about other options. This chapter explores two alternatives, one related to the puzzling possibility of Mennonite atheism. After evaluating these, I turn in a more positive direction. Acknowledging that certain developments and applications of ecclesial mediation do not fit the larger body of Anabaptist theology, the second part of the chapter charts the conceptual outlines of an appropriate form of this concept.

Anabaptism and the Church’s Mediating Role

The unwillingness of Anabaptists to see baptism as a practice that mediates God’s work in their midst is of a piece with the ambiguity that surrounds their views of the function of the church in the Christian life more generally. The Anabaptist view is best described as “ambiguous” because, despite what is said about the church and about baptism, there actually are points at which Anabaptist belief and practice are amenable to a notion of ecclesial mediation. This is true even though the concept is usually not employed directly. The more common stance of Anabaptist ecclesiology is such that the presence of the church and its work are clearly distinguished from God’s in favor of a more individualized, divine personalism.

Discipline, Discipleship, and Ecclesial Ambiguity

In a further analysis of Anabaptist confessions it is evident that the process of church discipline, or formalized structures of discipleship, is often described differently than baptism. Church discipline can be seen as an instance of ecclesial mediation. This is not new. The sixteenth-century Schleitheim agreement shows its origins. It states: “[E]verything which has not been united with our God in Christ is nothing but an abomination which we should shun.”49 The abominations these Anabaptists intended to avoid included “winehouses”; the “works and idolatry, gatherings, church attendance” of Protestants and Catholics; as well as the use of “diabolical weapons of violence.” The goal of this “shunning” is for true Christians to be prepared for “the service of God and the Spirit.” The initial result would be the perceptibility of the true body of believers. Not only is this body apparent, but it plays an important role in calling members to ongoing obedience to Jesus. This is most evident through the description of the ban: “The ban shall be employed with all those who have given themselves over to the Lord, to walk after [Him] in His commandments; those who have been baptized into the one body of Christ, and let themselves be called brothers or sisters, and still somehow slip and fall into error and sin, being inadvertently overtaken.” According to Schleitheim, the ban was to be carried out “according to the ordering of the Spirit of God before the breaking of bread,” in order that the unity of the Spirit in charity would be preserved.

About a century after the Schleitheim agreement was produced, a second prominent statement known as the Dordrecht Confession made similar claims about the availability of the true church to human perception:

We believe in, and confess a visible church of God, namely, those who, as has been said before, truly repent and believe, and are rightly baptized; who are one with God in heaven, and rightly incorporated into the communion of the saints here on earth. These we confess to be the chosen generation, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, who are declared to be the bride and wife of Christ, yea, children and heirs of everlasting life, a tent, tabernacle, and habitation of God in the Spirit . . .50

Here we notice that the ambiguity of the relationship of actions such as true repentance, right baptism, unity with God, and communion with the saints—the same sort of ambiguity that was observed in contemporary Anabaptist documents in the last chapter—is present in this much older confession. Nevertheless, the Dordrecht Confession calls this body “the habitation of God in the Spirit.” Among several identifying markers of Christ’s church are “the fruitful observance, practice, and maintenance of the true ordinances of Christ.” Like Schleitheim, Dordrecht claims the necessity of the ban to maintain the true practice of the ordinances:

Concerning the withdrawing from, or shunning the separated, we believe and confess, that if anyone, either through his wicked life or perverted doctrine, has so far fallen that he is separated from God, and, consequently, also separated and punished by the church, the same must, according to the doctrine of Christ and His apostles, be shunned . . . and no company be had with him that they may not become contaminated by intercourse with him, nor made partakers of his sins; but that the sinner may be made ashamed, pricked in his heart, and convicted in his conscience, unto his reformation.

The purpose of the ban seen in this last clause is consonant with the Spirit’s work. The confession further clarifies that the goal of this harsh practice is not that the individual be condemned but that he repent and reform. This should not be carried out, the same document tells us, as if these persons are enemies but precisely because they are siblings, in hope that they might know and turn from their sins, “so that they may become reconciled to God, and consequently be received again into the church.”

Without whitewashing the hazard of perfectionism and the inherent potential for abuse, we must acknowledge that the ban functions as an example of a point at which these historic Anabaptist confessions describe the interweaving of the actions of the church and the actions of God.51 God works through the discipline of the church; likewise, as the “habitation of God in Spirit,” the Christian community is the place where God is present. Obviously, the concept of ecclesial mediation is not entirely foreign to the Anabaptist tradition. This is quite remarkable since many of these early Anabaptists would have been keenly aware of the violent and stifling potential of this assumption.52

The view of church discipline in the contemporary Anabaptist denominational documents introduced in the last chapter resonates with the theology of these two historic statements. These resonances occur under a variety of topical headings including, “Discipline within the Church,” “Discipleship,” or “Mutual Accountability.” The strictures have softened since the seventeenth century, but theological similarities remain. The Conservative Conference’s statement of practice is one example:

We believe Jesus Christ has given authority to His church to exercise corrective discipline within the community of believers. This discipline is intended to bring those who are in error to repentance, helping them to receive the forgiveness, grace, and love that are available in Jesus . . . At any point if the erring one hears the admonitions brought and repents, he/she is restored to full fellowship with Christ and His church. The purposes of discipline include maintaining the integrity and witness of the church, restoring to fellowship those who are in error, building faithfulness in the believers, and strengthening godly teaching and conduct.53

Similarly, the “Confession of Faith” used by the Mennonite Church in Canada and the United States reads:

We believe that the practice of discipline in the church is a sign of God’s offer of forgiveness and transforming grace to believers who are moving away from faithful discipleship or who have been overtaken by sin. Discipline is intended to liberate erring brothers and sisters from sin, to enable them to return to a right relationship with God, and to restore them to fellowship in the church. It also gives integrity to the church’s witness and contributes to the credibility of the gospel message in the world.54

In this statement the meaning of the word “sign” is clarified by the fact that discipline is said to “liberate,” “enable,” and “restore.” In this context, the ecclesial practice of discipline is more than a testimony or a memorial: it effects what it signifies. Anabaptists believe that the discipline of the church is a sacrament.

Both historic and contemporary Anabaptism contains elements of theology and practice in which it is recognized that God’s sanctifying task is furthered by the church community. This is the high ecclesiology by which some Anabaptist groups are recognized to be more Catholic than Protestant. The extract above from the “Confession of Faith” is an example of the church’s concrete involvement in liberating individuals from bondage to sin. In this practice, Anabaptist groups approach a clear naming of the church community as a body through which God acts. It might seem as if we need only to apply the theology of church discipline to Christian initiation to recover the objective elements of baptism. In a limited sense this is true, but it is also simplistic.

These contemporary documents do not offer many general statements about the function of the church in the divine economy. At one point the “Confession of Faith” used by Mennonite denominations in the United States and Canada comes close. Under the heading “Discipleship and the Christian Life,” it says, “The experience of God through the Holy Spirit, prayer, Scripture, and the church empowers us and teaches us how to follow Christ.” Despite being one of the strongest statements in this regard, it is important to notice what it does not say: it does not say that we experience the Spirit through the fellowship of the congregation; it does not say that we learn to pray in the congregation; it does not say that we learn to rightly read Scripture by participating in congregational life. This confession does not say these things because it seems not to assume that Christians learn to follow Jesus in the presence of others. In fact, the statement that directly precedes the one just quoted reads: “We believe that Jesus Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow him. Through the gift of God’s saving grace, we are empowered to be disciples of Jesus, filled with his Spirit, following his teachings and his path through suffering to new life. As by faith we walk in Christ’s way, we are being transformed into his image. We become conformed to Christ, faithful to the will of God, and separated from the evil in the world.” This is the lead paragraph in this confession describing “Discipleship and the Christian Life.” It is only in the context of an individualized, spiritual encounter with Jesus that the church is named as a way in which people “experience God.” The nature of response to the call of Jesus as stated here almost disregards the church.

The Brethren in Christ, like other Anabaptists, affirm the church’s role as a disciplining body. Under the heading “Nature of the Church” their denominational statement says, “The objective of church discipline is to restore the erring church member and to maintain the integrity and purity of the church’s fellowship and witness.”55 In contrast to this, the view propounded under the heading “Coming to Faith” describes initiation in faith as an individual process involving personal encounter with God. The Spirit is invoked as the causal bridge between the unseen realm of divine activity and the gritty physical world of repentance and obedience, the church—the visible community of Christ’s followers—fades from view. In a relevant part of the “Coming to Faith” section we read:

The salvation graciously provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ becomes effective in our lives by the ministry of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who prepares us for faith in Jesus Christ. He awakens us to our need, enables us to acknowledge our guilt, and calls us to respond to God in faith and obedience. The response of faith is a personal reliance on God’s grace and a turning from sin to righteousness . . . [Repentance] is expressed in genuine sorrow, forsaking sin, and a change in attitude toward God, preparing for the continuing ministry of the Holy Spirit. Repentance includes a willingness for reconciliation and restitution.

As in the “Mennonite Confession” this portion of the Brethren in Christ “Articles of Faith and Doctrine” fails to parallel what is said about church discipline.

The confession used by the Mennonite Brethren is another example. It declares, “By calling his followers to take up the cross, Christ invites them to reject the godless values of the world and offer themselves to God in a life of service. The Holy Spirit, who lives in every Christian, empowers believers to overcome the acts and attitudes of the sinful nature.”56 Again the place of the church’s mediation of God is filled by an individualistic and incomprehensible spiritual encounter. By describing this as “incomprehensible” I aim to point out the vagaries of the language of the Spirit’s empowerment. It has no specified location, characteristic features, or physical signals. It is not clear when, how, or where the individual meets this empowerment. In other contemporary Anabaptist documents the church’s mediating role is taken not by this sort of encounter with the Spirit, but more brutishly by a sort of individual voluntariety. This language shows up quite clearly in the Brethren in Christ statement when it says, “The response of faith is a personal reliance on God’s grace and a turning from sin to righteousness.” The “Confession of Faith” of the Mennonite denominations includes a statement comparable in tone that demonstrates similar reliance upon the individual’s will: “Conformity to Christ necessarily implies nonconformity to the world. True faith in Christ means willingness to do the will of God, rather than willful pursuit of individual happiness.”

Several important observations can be made at this point. To begin with, though the concept of ecclesial mediation is not foreign to Anabaptism, as the affirmations about the ban and church discipline demonstrate, it is employed inconsistently. Though the church can excommunicate members in the name of God, it does not welcome them or nurture them in that same name. Instead, when Anabaptist churches address these more obviously positive aspects of the Christian life they do not speak of God acting through his people but of either the power of an individual’s will or the mysterious, invisible workings of the Spirit. The question is whether or not this footing provides enough traction to support the rigors of the sort of life intended.

Miroslav Volf notes the ramifications of this challenge in After Our Likeness. He observes, “Because human beings appropriate salvific grace in faith, the understanding of salvation (and thus also of the church) is shaped in an essential fashion by the way the faith is mediated. Hence, an individualistic understanding of the mediation of faith is at once also an individualistic view of salvation, and a communal understanding of the mediation of faith is also a communal view of salvation.”57 Though Volf’s categories of faith and salvation are not the operative ones in our present discussion, his insight about the link between the mediation of faith and the subsequent view of salvation is critical. If Anabaptists understand the process of initiation into the community to be one of personal and entirely spiritual encounter with God, the view of the subsequent life of that community must either uphold this initial encounter or exist awkwardly in dissonance with it. If the church is not a necessary medium through which God initiates new believers, the subsequent life of the believer will remain at odds with the claims the community makes about its role in something like redemptive discipline. The conceptual link with baptism is the belief that it functions in part as a pledge indicating of the candidate’s voluntary submission to the church’s power of the keys. The early Anabaptist leader Balthasar Hubmaier explains: “[W]hen he receives the baptism of water the one who is baptized testifies publicly that he has pledged himself henceforth to live according to the Rule of Christ. By virtue of this pledge he has submitted himself to sisters, brothers, and to the church so that when he transgresses they now have the authority to admonish, punish, ban, and reaccept him.”58 It is crucial to remember that this act of submission is granted to a body in which the candidate has voice. In the Anabaptist tradition it is not an alien clerical structure that claims divine power.

Yet the double standard remains: Anabaptist churches are willing to claim the role of divine mediator in discipline but not in welcome. They are willing to serve as the film critic but not its producer. Before turning more directly to a description of ecclesial mediation it will be useful to consider in a more formal way the two most prominent alternatives to affirming the church’s mediatorial role. I have alluded to these in various ways, yet considering representatives of these two alternatives will strengthen my case that a more directly affirmed concept of ecclesial mediation is necessary to rightly practice believers’ baptism.

Alternative One: Human Agency in Place of Divine

Stated rather crudely, one alternative to ecclesial mediation is to deny that individuals need the assistance of God to live righteously. “Righteous character” is how Thomas Finger describes the goal of salvation in the view of most early Anabaptists. He suggests they, like many Catholics, were more concerned with the goal of salvation than with the process through which it was achieved.59 This first alternative to ecclesial mediation extends, even caricatures this by denying that divine assistance is needed to achieve this goal. Here the powers of reason and the will form the gravitational field within which the human creature subdues unrighteousness. Nothing more than a clear-eyed, rational view of ethics is needed to produce the cruciform life. This alternative is ready at hand for Anabaptists because of the tradition’s humanist roots.

Balthasar Hubmaier’s emphasis on commitment is one example of a theology of baptism shaded this way. In his 1525 treatise, On the Christian Baptism of Believers, he describes the rite as “an outward confession or testimony through which visible brothers and sisters can know each other . . .”60 Summarizing Hubmaier’s view, Wayne Pipkin writes, “In the act of baptism one commits oneself to be a follower of Christ—if necessary, to the point of martyrdom.”61 The relevant idea here is that as a product of the will, commitment represents a cognitivist understanding of discipleship that privileges the role of reason. This strips baptism of any objective, effective, or performative power. It is only semiotic. For people like Hubmaier, who retained much of his Catholic training, this was tempered by a high ecclesiology so that baptism was not distanced from Christian formation. However, the same assumption cannot be made of contemporary Anabaptism where this medieval ecclesiology has been replaced by a revivalist ecclesial minimalism. The denominational statements surveyed earlier demonstrate the results of this quite clearly. This rationalist emphasis loses sight of the goodness of creation and the ability—even the preference—of God to make use of common elements and practices such as those by which the church is constituted.