Reformation
Netherlands / Northern Europe
Anabaptist
Also: Menno Simons
One of the greatest organizers among the Anabaptists. He was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1524; in 1535 his brother Peter, who had become an Anabaptist, was killed by the authorities, and this threw him into a severe crisis of faith; after much anguish, Olson records, he was converted. For the next twenty-five years, Olson notes, he bravely took up the burden of leadership among the severely persecuted Anabaptist Christians of northern Europe. ⚠ He also rejected predestination and infant baptism — the latter, as Olson explains, not because it was a later custom but because it does not fit a true knowledge of the gospel and the experience of salvation.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
⭐ He is the fourth position on this thread, and he lands somewhere different from all three before him. Catholics said righteousness is infused; Luther said it is imputed; Osiander said it is Christ's divine nature come to dwell within — but the weight of Menno's side does not fall on where the righteousness is at all; it falls on conversion and the life of a disciple. Olson puts it most exactly: none of these Anabaptist theologians denied that salvation is by grace alone through faith, but they did not accept Luther's forensic doctrine of justification by faith alone, because they thought justification by faith was an obstacle to the living faith that is born in a holy life. The key word, he says, is forensic.
⚠ That is: what he opposed was not faith alone but treating justification as a matter for a law court. As Olson reports, he absolutely refused the typical Lutheran teaching that the Christian is at once righteous and a sinner (simul justus et peccator), and wanted to stress regeneration — including the giving of the Spirit and union with Christ — so that inside the regenerate sinner righteousness truly begins. One sentence of his own shows best what he wanted. As Olson gives his words: we teach this repentance and no other — that no one may, in the grace of God, piously boast of the forgiveness of sins and the merits of Christ unless he has truly repented. ⭐ He held, too, that true and sincere faith always produces a righteous life — even though, as he put it, we do not become perfect until death comes.
⭐⭐Ecclesiology and authority — he gave a seventh answer. On that thread the answers ran, in turn: elders and congregation → bishops → synods of bishops → the emperor → the bishop of Rome → (the Reformation) the priesthood of all believers plus Scripture as the standard. The Anabaptists took one step further.
⭐ Their core question was not who holds authority but who counts as the church. As Olson reports, Menno held that the true church includes only true believers who have experienced conversion and regeneration; baptism is an act of witness and commitment, a sign of entry into the body of Christ — and so it cannot take place before conversion.
⚠ On this ground they accused Luther of being inconsistent. Olson sets out their argument: if the effect of a sacrament depends on the faith of the one receiving it, how can an infant receive true Christian baptism? They regarded Luther and the other magisterial Protestant leaders as half-hearted: infant baptism was both a leftover from the church's departure from apostolic Christianity and at odds with the gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith; Luther could not carry things through, and had remained stuck in Catholic tradition.
⭐⭐ Notice that this is a first on this thread: the reforming side was charged by more thorough reformers with not being thorough enough. Luther said that pastors are not above the rest of God's people; the Anabaptists asked: then why do you still baptize infants, who cannot believe?
The church’s verdict
⭐⭐ The most important thing in this entry is two statements pointing in opposite directions, both from Olson; we set them side by side here.
First, Menno misread Luther. He charged that Luther's teaching included only a head faith or historical faith, neglecting the heart and inward righteousness. Olson judges outright that Menno's attack on Luther's doctrine of salvation may not have been fair — because Luther himself spoke of two kinds of righteousness, and the second kind he spoke of includes inward renewal through Christ. Luther stressed that the first kind (passive, imputed, alien righteousness) is real, but he did not say that nothing happens inside a person.
Second, others may misread Menno too. Olson goes straight on to say that whether Menno and the other Anabaptists accepted alien righteousness is really open to question — that is, the common judgment that the Anabaptists denied imputed righteousness is itself uncertain.
⭐ On the same page, misreadings in both directions are marked at once. ⚠ Two judgments by contemporaries must also be recorded: Menno's side felt that the magisterial reformers stressed faith so much that they neglected repentance; while the followers of Luther and Zwingli felt, as Olson reports, that the doctrine of salvation of Menno and the other Anabaptists looked more like Catholicism than true Protestantism. Catholic critics, for their part, condemned the Anabaptists for denying the penitential system and the sacraments — all three sides were dissatisfied.
What was at stake for salvation
What he guarded: if justification is only a verdict handed down in a court, a person's life can stay exactly as it was, and then the gospel comes to nothing. ⚠ What Luther's side guarded: unless that verdict comes first, a person can never be sure where he stands. ⭐ The two sides were guarding against the same danger from two directions — one against salvation becoming unreal, the other against salvation becoming uncertain.
Threads he belongs to
Justification
Aftermath Counterclaim ⭐ The fourth position on this thread — what he opposed was not faith alone but treating justification as a matter for a law court. The key word, as Olson says, is forensic.
Ecclesiology and Authority
Aftermath Counterclaim ⭐⭐ The seventh answer: the true church is the congregation of true believers. ⚠ A first on this thread — the reforming side was called half-hearted by more thorough reformers.