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I'm not suggesting that Baptists are heretics, but most Reformed work that I've read tends to place Anabaptists in that light, while reformed baptists who practise the same baptism rites are not. Could someone please explain?
I'm not suggesting that Baptists are heretics, but most Reformed work that I've read tends to place Anabaptists in that light, while reformed baptists who practise the same baptism rites are not. Could someone please explain?
There were different streams of Anabaptism. The Anabaptists standing in the Biblicist tradition weren't all that bad -- Bucer and Capito, for example, were on good terms with Michael Sattler (of the Schleitheim Confession). On the other hand, the Socinians were Anabaptists, too. So discussions on Anabaptism do need to be nuanced to take this into account.
You need to first understand the differences between Anabaptists and baptists. Anabaptists were the "radical wing" of the Reformation. There were several different versions of anabaptists during the Reformation, but they generally held to these distinctions:
1. Only Adults are to be baptized and those baptized in infancy are to be rebaptized.
2. The Church is a voluntary society, and its purity is maintained by having only believers be a part of it. Unbaptized children are excluded from Church membership.
3. Christians cannot be civil magistrates; government is worldly.
4. Christians cannot go to war.
5. Christians cannot make oaths of any kind.
Other distinctions include their view of the discontinuity between Old and New Testaments, their view of the Spirit speaking separately from the Word, and their view that Christians must be separate from society. There is a wide variety of belief in Anabaptism. Some held to erring views of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. The most common Anabaptists today are the Mennonites, the Amish, and the Hutterites.
Reformed and Southern Baptists come from a different tradition. They come from the English Baptists who held similar views with the Puritans, excepting infant baptism. Contrary to Anabaptists they hold to the view that the Church is made up of the elect, and will always be a mix of wheat and tares while on earth, Christians can and should take up roles as civil magistrates, it is lawful for Christians to be soldiers and go to war, there are such things as lawful oaths. Reformed Baptists hold to a continuity between Old and New Testaments, and hold that the Spirit speaks with the word not separate from it. If you have the time read William Estep's The Anabaptist Story to get a history of the Anabaptists. Read also History of English Calvinistic Baptists by Roger Oliver for a history of Calvinistic Baptists.
Many Baptists are confused about their own lineage. (Many Presbyterians are bedazzled by the various crossing lines in historical charts about theirs). The fact is that there is no direct line between the Reformation-era Anabaptists and modern Baptist belief and practice.
There are, of course, Baptists today who slip into some of the errors mentioned in posts above.
They also typically emphasized an immediate working of the Holy Spirit in believers.
Anabaptists were unfortunately lax in their study of theology, which led to all kinds of heresies and misunderstandings of Scripture. Among these, as mentioned, were the "celestial flesh" issue and the Lord's Supper issue. The Anabaptists, though, despite these shortcomings, were admirable examples of how God's people ought to live--something even their enemies recognized, albeit grudgingly.
Historically, Simon Mennos and his followers denied the humanity of Christ. They believed He was "Celestial Flesh".
As a result, if you go to a Brethren or Mennonite Church even today, you aren't very likely to hear much about Christ's redemptive work. Instead, you'll hear sermons about the "good example" that Christ came to teach us (and that usually involves some liberal politics as well).