A Reason to be a Mennonite

By Reuben Sairs

I need a good reason to be a Mennonite. Otherwise I would have stayed in the other Christian communions that have been part of my sojourn - an unlikely blend of Jesus people, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, and, going back far enough, even some Charismatic Catholics.

Most systems of belief make sense if you take the prescribed first step. First moves are very important. Depending on your first step, you could end up in any number of Christian camps-Reformed, Catholic, Pentecostal, etc. Where you end up will make perfect sense, after you take that first step. You can spend a lot of time explaining or defending a way of looking at the Christian faith, but you must explain that first step to convince anyone. Why should I become a Mennonite and not a Roman Catholic or even a Baptist?

Most people today take the approach that it doesn't matter. They think "You can't figure it out anyway." "Motives are what matter?are people sincere, do they have a heart for the Lord, etc." But I need a reason. I have found that Christian groups are about equal when it comes to motives. More importantly, I wasn't born into this faith. Family traditions would lead me out of the church, not into it, so where should I go? I need a reason to be a Mennonite.

That reason will be tied to my first step. I have several friends whose conversion testimonies are similar to mine, but we have ended up in different corners. Why did one become a Calvinist , another an Episcopalian, and the other a Roman Catholic?

We all made first steps; we all think we are right; we all defend our choice. The Calvinist with his covenant theology finds the New Testament not quite as new as I do. The Episcopalian friend is delighted, I'm sure, to use his mind to create a balanced faith that involves traditions which in the long run might have proved more comfortable for me, too! The Roman Catholic friend surrenders his understanding to the authority of Rome. In each case, our view of authority and our guiding principles seem to be determined by that first step. We will read the Bible in light of our first step.

My first step might be called New Testament finality. I think it explains Anabaptist Christianity. What are the elements of this Anabaptist Christianity that make it different? Here's a short list: a church order based on New Testament models; conversion-the new birth, rather than human birth-as the point of entry into God's kingdom; believer's baptism based on an adult confession of faith; not going to war; not swearing oaths; not bullying secular society; a church willing to live peacefully in a pluralistic society, but unwilling to conform to it.

Mennonites have the misfortune of being ethnically hidebound, thus resembling the old covenant more than the new at times. We have appealed to the Old Testament inconsistently to support legalist understandings of dress, Sabbath keeping and tithing.

I didn't make this doctrine up. Many sources could be quoted. Let's take a look at two of them. Timothy George says in the Theology of the Reformers:

"According to Menno, Jesus Christ really did bring something new. The Old Covenant was displaced by the radical newness of Christ's kingdom. The mainline reformers stressed the continuity of the two testaments. For them there was really only one covenant in two dispensations. This principle enabled them to justify infant baptism by analogy to its Old Testament counterpart, circumcision. They also found in the Old Testament a pattern for church-state relationships. The Anabaptists denied the legitimacy of this appeal to the Old Testament by pointing to the normative status of the New Covenant."

The Mennonite Encyclopedia article on the Bible says, "a striking characteristic of the Anabaptists' attitude toward the Bible is their principle of the supremacy of the New Testament. For them the Old Testament was not binding in the same sense, and in so far as it disagrees with the New it was superseded and abrogated."

Don't read into these statements the idea that the Old Testament isn't the word of God. Anabaptists, unlike their contemporaries, were able to see the separation that exists between the kingdom of God and the rest of the world because they recognized that the church's self-understanding comes from the New Testament first. They tried to restore the church to the pattern of the New Testament, the pattern followed before Christianity became an established religion, before the church used the language of the Old Testament to build an earthly kingdom.

It is not an exaggeration to say that New Testament finality explains the Bible interpretations that lead to the things that are different about Mennonites.

Instead of identifying with a doctrine, many Mennonites understand themselves in terms of specific practices - as the people who don't do this, or who do that. But practices are bound to change, and we shouldn't be opinionated about applications. Loss of certain practices doesn't necessarily mean the church has lost its way ... maybe it found a better way. I do believe, however, that if New Testament finality is forgotten, we will find other ways to interpret the Bible, and this particular flame called Anabaptism will go out.

Why did I make this first step of New Testament finality? First, the New Testament seems to me to insist on its own supremacy. For instance, there is Hebrews 8:6: "But now He has obtained a more excellent ministry, inasmuch as He is also Mediator of a better covenant, which was established on better promises."

When I consider my friends who made different first moves, I raise the following challenges:

• The inability to make critical distinctions between the Old and New covenants leads them to mistakenly apply God's promises to Israel in the Old Testament to modern secular nations in a futile attempt to Christianize them. This seems to me to be a failure. God is working across national boundaries.
• They often apply Old Testament blessings and curses to Christian individuals and modern states that would seem to be inconsistent with Jesus' teaching. Nations can't turn to Christ in national repentance the way the Jews did. We must be born again individually.
• They seem to always introduce a level of legalism back into the faith because there is no universal Christian agreement as to what constitutes the ceremonial law and the moral law of the Old Testament.
• They have a tendency to tone down the New Testament in order to harmonize it with the Old Testament.

New Testament finality resolves the tension of having an international body of believers living in different countries. If we go by the New Testament first, Christians killing others is a terrible scandal. New Testament finality explains how Christ is King of a different sort of kingdom that stretches past all political boundaries. I think a church developed along these Anabaptist lines has the strongest chance of thriving in our new century.

• It can cope with pluralism and minority status for believers.
• It can cease antagonizing the world by trying to use the muscle of the state to Christianize the nonchristian world.
• It will practice nonviolence without denying the violence of the world.
• It allows us to consistently take New Testament teaching at face value.

My first move is called New Testament finality. I believe it is a reasonable choice that allows us to see the Christian life and church in its proper light. It is the reason I am a Mennonite.

Reuben Sairs is a faculty member at Rosedale Bible College. He is also the college's librarian. He lives in London, Ohio, with his wife, Vicki, and attends London Christian Fellowship.

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