Patient Separation in Marpeck's Theological Rhetoric
2011; Volume: 85; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
0025-9373
Autores Tópico(s)Religion and Society Interactions
ResumoAbstract: In current historiography and theology, Marpeck is typically seen as more flexible and politically engaged church leader, by way of contrast with the disciplined separation associated with Swiss Brethren communities. This essay argues that Marpeck saw relationship between the coercive sword of the magistrate and the disciplining ban of the Gemeinde, urging separation from the impatient use of both practices insofar as they were expressions of power. On this view, Marpeck understood separation as defensive posture of withdrawn purity and more as an active practice of Christian freedom. Hence, Marpeck's commitment to patience in church discipline can be interpreted as upholding more, rather than less, vigorous separation from the world compared with the Swiss Brethren whose worldly practices of hasty banning he criticized. AN ENGAGED MARPECK? In the past several decades, the scholarly projection of Marpeck has increasingly highlighted his social and political engagement while at the same time downplaying the role of separated ecclesiology in his writings. Already in 1976, in Anabaptists and the Sword, James Stayer argued that Pilgram Marpeck represented what he called a more moderate type of apoliticism and tamer when compared with the Anabaptism of Michael Sattler and the Schleitheim Brotherly Union. (1) For Stayer, the more thoughtful, conciliatory Marpeck made Marpeck's communities both threatening to the establishment and more appealing to contemporary scholars. (2) Stayer recognized that Marpeck was opposed to the Christian exercise of the sword, in line with the Schleitheim Brotherly Union, but insisted that he was not a model of separation from this world and its institutions, given his role as chief engineer of the Strasbourg Council and his numerous remarks on the possibility, even if unlikely, of Christian political rule. (3) Following Stayer's cue, and pushing the point even further, Stephen Boyd presented Marpeck's political theology as supporting the Christian exercise of coercion, so long as this coercion was not directed against personal and religious conscience. (4) Sorting through number of seemingly contradictory texts by Marpeck, Boyd claimed that Marpeck in fact counseled critical participation in the use of coercive force, including possibly even police or military service, so long as it did not involve killing. (5) Mennonite theologian Tom Finger, in his magisterial survey of historic theological positions, disagreed with Boyd's conclusion, arguing that even though Marpeck accepted Christian involvement in government's socially beneficial functions, he found no evidence that Marpeck included coercive ones. (6) However, Finger did grant that Marpeck was less dualistic than Schleitheim-type Anabaptism. (7) More recently, Walter Klaassen and William Klassen, in their biography of Marpeck, offer careful assessment of Marpeck's articulation of the relationship of the faithful church to structures of governance, arguing--in contrast to Stayer and Boyd--that Marpeck was completely opposed to the exercise of any lethal power by faithful Christians, thereby refusing to cross the line into violent coercion, without ruling out altogether every single function of governance as valid Christian occupation, especially given that he had exercised such functions himself. Yet, Klaassen and Klassen also emphasized the extent to which Marpeck should be seen as man of action, of flexibility and of accommodation, distancing him from what they regarded as the more rigid stance of the Swiss Brethren and their Schleitheim Brotherly Union. (8) Neal Blough's book on Marpeck's sacramental theology concludes with perhaps the clearest proposal for posing Marpeck's theological legacy against the separation-minded legacy of the Swiss Brethren and the Mennonites. Permitting himself some pastoral comments in the last chapter of the book, Blough writes that Anabaptist particularity has taken shape in the lives of communities who saw themselves as 'separate' from the world. …
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