Mennonite Confessions of Faith: 1921 vs 1963 vs 1964 - Edsel Burdge

I think an early Swiss Brethren person, leader, could have written that if they weren't writing in German. I mean, I think this is really—my personal feeling—this is really a good statement. Okay? It covers a lot of bases. It deals with salvation as, in a sense, as an ongoing process that has a beginning in the work of the Holy Spirit. And then it lives a life of victory over the flesh, the world, and Satan.

Welcome to Anabaptist Perspectives. We are here with Edzel Birge to talk about 20th-century Mennonite confessions of faith. Welcome, Edzel. Thank you. The plan that I have in mind is to start by giving some background about three confessions of faith: the one from 1921, the one from 1963, and the one from 1964. So we'll give the background information and talk about these and how they came about, then talk about ways that the confessions have been used, then finally talk about some possible good ways and bad ways to think about these statements now. Okay.

So. Okay. This is Edzel's third episode with us. Earlier in 2025, we did two episodes: one about being plain and one about North American Mennonites from 1730 to 1930. Right. So today we're focusing on 20th century, primarily, so our listeners can go back and listen to the previous history one if they want some details about what happened in the two centuries in North America prior to what we are talking about today.

So let's begin by talking about the 1921 Garden City Confession. It's still widely used among Mennonite churches, and at the same time, from some places, it often receives heavy critique as a fundamentalist distortion of Anabaptism. So there's some critiques that I have in mind when I bring it up. One example critique has been offered by John D. Martin, who notices that non-resistance and non-conformity are placed in the restrictions section.

So maybe we can talk about that, but let's start by talking about its origins and how and why it was made. Okay. Well, one of the things you have to understand is that in the, let's say, the last decade of the 19th century is really a pretty pivotal decade for the Mennonite church. This is when some of the—we have kind of the sloughing off of the old orders.

We have Mennonite church getting into new methods, new methodologies that bring some different kind of theological emphasis to them. So they're interested in Sunday school, protracted meetings, missions, and stuff like that. And at the same time, you have a set of young leaders who, I would say, really, it's the first generation of any "educated" leaders. You have people like Daniel Kaufman, who was converted in the 1890s.

He had gone to normal school, trained to be a teacher. He was a principal in a public school. He was converted after as an adult. And one of the things that I think I have noticed is that the normal schools were institutions that were geared toward training school teachers. They weren't colleges, okay?

Later in the 20th century, they morphed into colleges and so on, but they had a particular pedagogical purpose. And I think some of the ways in which people like Daniel Kaufman and so on formulated things reflect the pedagogical methodologies that they were taught in normal school. So it's a much more organized, systematic sort of approach to knowledge, okay? Whereas before, you know, if a Mennonite preacher was preaching a passage of scripture, he would have a text, and he would kind of work down through the text. And depending on the skillfulness of the preacher and so on, it may be kind of a rambling decors. It may be something held together. But with this new generation of young leaders, we begin to have sermons that are more topical, more have an outline to them, point by point, and so on.

And for many young people, particularly, this was very captivating. It was—I mean, they were hearing something that, you know, probably was akin to what they had gotten when they were in school themselves, that kind of—and so on. And so I think that that pedagogy was really an important thing for thinking about how to formulate what you think, how to formulate knowledge, how to communicate. And that's really reflected in Daniel Kaufman's work. And in 1897, he wrote this really interesting book called Manual of Bible Doctrines. And if you go to the table of contents, he has a chapter on creation. He has a chapter on the fall of man, on sin, on faith, on repentance. It goes into conversion, regeneration, justification, redemption of man, the ministry, members in the church, baptism, communion, foot washing, the woman's prayer head covering, and the solution of the salutation of the holy kiss, anointing with oil, marriage, non-conformity to the world, non-resistance, swearing an oath, going to law, secret societies, sanctification, and prayer.

So those are the topics he's covering. He's covering them in a very systematic kind of way. And this became a very popular book, okay? It's very accessible. It's pretty readable, actually. He was a good communicator. So this introduced a more different way of kind of approaching knowledge and theological understandings and so on. And it wasn't necessarily off-kilter, okay? It wasn't necessarily off-kilter what had happened before, but it is a different kind of approach, all right?

Well, in 1911, the Mennonite, the General Conference of the Mennonite Church, which had been formed in 1898, I think, or maybe '97, it's a pretty new organization. And it was something that was created by the Mennonite conferences in the West, primarily.

Lancaster, Franconia, Washington, Franklin Conference really didn't want too much interest in it. They weren't really that much interested in a general conference. But Virginia was. Virginia very much was involved, actually, in 1911, after the old order split happened in Virginia, which I think is 1903, 1904. After that split happened in Virginia, there's more of a closer alignment with these more, again, what Daniel Kaufman referred to as aggressive conservatives, people who are conservative in their practice, particularly when it comes to issues of non-conformity, non-resistance, and so on like that, but are really interested in outreach, in missions, in a more, to use Theron Schlebaugh's terminology, a more quickened church life.

Church life is a little fast-paced, has a little bit more activity and stuff to it, actually quite a lot more activity to it. But in 1911, at the Mennonite, at the General Conference of the Mennonite Church, they said that we feel the need for a book, a good book of doctrine. And they referenced this book. They said, "Manual of Doctrine has been good for us," but they wanted something that was more detailed. And they said, "We don't mean this to replace our confession of faith, which was the Dortrek Confession." Okay? They don't mean this to replace the Dortrek Confession, but we mean it to expound upon it, okay, to give more detailed explanation. And so what they came up with was this book called Bible Doctrines and came out in 1914.

It's interesting. And so that's where it is. Daniel Kaufman was the editor. He didn't write all the chapters. He wrote some of them, but it was actually—there were about 10 or so authors who wrote—were assigned chapters and wrote them. And he was the editor and oversaw the project and it came out in 1914. Now, was it based upon his earlier book? There's parallels to it. There are parallels to it. In a sense, but this Manual of Bible Doctrines is solely his work.

Yeah. There are parallels to it, but of course, this is a much bigger book, goes into more topics. I mean, so you can look at—so we have a chapter on God, creation, man, angels. That was really one I found interesting. A number of years ago, I had a friend of mine who was asked to teach at a Bible school, and his one class was on angels. And he called me up and said, "Edsel, I have a teaching this thing on angels. What do you think?" I said, "Angel, you're teaching a class on angels?"

I said, "Well, that's really—" And what it was is that that particular Bible school had these doctrinal classes, and they were based not on this book, but on a successor, Doctrines of the Bible, which is very common. I think it's still in print. And among 20th-century Mennonites and then among conservative Mennonites, it's been a very important book. And again, it has a chapter on angels.

And I thought, "Oh, well, okay. I guess I could preach a sermon on angels. I'm not sure if I could teach a three-week course on angels." But he told me it actually went well after it was over with. But so—and then you have this chapter on the Bible, okay? And that reflects—you know, it's interesting because with Dortrek, the authority of the Bible is assumed. There are references to the scriptures and what the scriptures say and so on, but the authority of the Bible is not contested in 1632, okay? It's not contested among Mennonites. It's not contested among Protestants. It's not even contested among Roman Catholics. Everybody believes in the authority of the scriptures, so it's not a contested thing.

By 1914, among Protestantism, we have this movement or this phenomenon called modernism. And it is a secularization, a rationalization of Christian faith. It tends to kick out the supernatural, depending on how far-reaching it goes with individual modernists. We deny things like the virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ. And of course, the other thing we have coming in is Darwinian evolution. And that raises all kinds of problems, not just among Protestants and so on. Because again, these are all seen—and of course, alongside this is this question about, you know, what is the Bible? Okay? Is it the revelation from God, or is it the account of ancient people's encounter with God and so on? And how authoritative is it for us today?

Those are questions that modernism raised. And the answer to them were not very orthodox. And so there's a lot of controversy in Protestant denominations across the board about this. And Mennonites are not unaffected by those discussions. Some of it is because some of this new generation of leaders are reading Protestant works, and they're aware of it.

They're going to—some of them are going to normal school, some of them are going to college. And this is kind of in the air. It's kind of in the ethos and so on. Modernism also aligns itself very nicely with a political social movement called progressivism in the United States during the 1890s up until the 1920s, in which there's a call for governmental reform, addressing some of the evils of society.

It's kind of dealing with the detrimental impact of industrialization and so on. There's concern for—and how this grows, what is referred to as the social gospel movement. And oftentimes, this sort of rational, secularized, anti-supernatural mindset combines itself with this social justice thing. And so you have—what's his name? Sheldon writing a book about what would Jesus do. It became a very popular book. People read it and so on and so on. And interesting, Daniel Kaufman writes an editorial about this in the Gospel Herald. And he read the book, apparently. And he said, "Well, you know, it's all the buzz and so on." But he said, "Well, you know, actually, what we should ask is, what did Jesus do?"

And we can read the gospel accounts, and we can see what Jesus did. And so rather than some kind of imaginary thing about, "Well, this is what I think Jesus would do," Kaufman's call was, "Look at what Jesus did. Read what he said. Read what he taught. Go by that. Don't go by some kind of product of your imagination where you think, 'Well, this is how Jesus was, and so this is what I would think he was doing,'" which I think is actually a fairly insightful approach to it. I think I said in my earlier talk, I like Daniel Kaufman. I do. I don't necessarily agree with everything, but I like him. He was an important person who did, I think, a lot of good for the church.

And I think there are criticisms of him, most of which I think are unwarranted. And that's my personal opinion. But so then we have the—like I said, we have this thing on the Bible. Then we have the Lord's Day. We have three chapters on Satan and his works. And then we have the plan of salvation. And we have the—so we have redemption, the atonement, faith, repentance, justification, conversion, regeneration. A lot of those topics actually are parallels here, except for when it comes—there's no separate—in Manual of the Bible Doctrine, there's no separate chapter on the atonement. There is in Bible Doctrines and then later on in Doctrines of the Bible.

Kaufman in 1897 kind of collapses those under one thing called redemption. And it's interesting that most of his chapters, not a long chapter, but most of his chapter on redemption is simply an excerpt, a large excerpt from Dortrek, okay?

And so that's a very interesting thing that happened. But the 1914 Bible Doctrine chapter on the atonement is the first one that—I mean, there may have been and may have happened in the Herald of Truth or something of its own. But as far as I know, it's the first book that I've seen where it introduces the idea of penal, of penal substitution in a Mennonite writing. And let me see here if I think I can find it. I'll just read it to you because it's hardly defined.

It's just kind of said in passing. Okay. The nature of Christ's death. And he says, "Penal, penal because of guilt. His death was not the death of a hero primarily, though he was the greatest of heroes. Neither was it a result of a series of circumstances which could not be avoided. His death was a result of his own choice, for he clearly says, 'I laid down my life. No man takes it from me. The offering of his soul was for a purpose, for purposes penal because of sin and the guilt of man.'" And that's all he says. Doesn't actually define what penal is.

Doesn't go on to talk about penal satisfaction in the way that the Protestant, particularly reformed persons, would suit. So I think this was written right by John E. Hartzler, who, interesting enough, later on kind of became a lightning rod. He became president of Goshen College and kind of became a lightning rod there and seems to have then kind of drifted in a fairly modernist direction later on.

And so it's always interesting to me that he's using this language. And Doctrines of the Bible can basically say the same thing, but doesn't really describe what penal is other than this, the because of sin and guilt. It's penal because of sin and guilt. Amen. Doesn't really go on and expound it very much. So this is sold. It's promoted. People are reading it, though there was some dissatisfaction later on with it. Well, as I said before, we have this religious movement called modernism. It really impacts Presbyterians, Methodists, Congregationalists, Northern Baptists, not really Southern Baptists, and so on. Most of the major Protestant denominations it has an impact on. And there are struggles over this and so on.

There's controversies and so on. And it often then results in a number of church splits in the 1920s and so on. But in the early 1900s, a group of Protestant scholars got together, and they wrote a series of essays on various doctrinal points that they thought were threatened. And these were published as the Fundamentals. That's where the term fundamentalism comes in. It's because of this set of about six or seven small books with these essays in. And you have people like—it's a really interesting kind of thing. For example, you have B.B. Warfield, who was a Presbyterian, a very highly respected biblical scholar and so on, who is part and parcel of this. But interesting enough, he believes in evolution, which is a really curiosity.

And he was a fundamentalist. He was a fundamentalist, yeah. And later on, fundamentalism, I think probably by mid-20th century, becomes really identified with dispensationalism and premillennialism and stuff like that. And that's certainly a major element of—I mean, it's a major element within the fundamentalist movement. But early on, it wasn't that way. I mean, that was always there. There's some people there always that way. But it wasn't all that way. And people like Macon, who was at Princeton and was kind of the academic fundamentalist.

And he helped to lead a group out and formed a new Presbyterian denomination because they felt the Presbyterian church was going to the dogs with liberalism. He definitely is not a dispensationalist, okay? And categorically not. And so it's an—but there are elements, and this is the other thing that has happened too, is that in the 1890s, you have people like J.B. Smith and Amos A.D. Wanger and Amos D. Wanger and so on, who go to fundamentalist Bible schools like Moody Bible Institute. And there they pick up on dispensationalism and adapt it to their Mennonite setting. It's not the full-blown seven dispensations and so on like that, but they pick up language. And so they're starting to talk about the church age, which is a dispensationalist term to refer to the time now, and then talking about a future millennium, talking about—you introduce the terminology of the rapture of the saints and so on, all that kind of dispensationalist timetable and so on.

And that creates a lot of controversy within the Mennonite church. But there are particularly rather young leaders in the 1890s, early 1900s, who pick up on this and make it their own and promote it within the Mennonite church. Daniel Kaufman does not. He is not a dispensationalist. He actually holds to a more traditional Mennonite, I would say, a millennial, generally speaking, kind of thing. And as editor of the Gospel Herald, okay, which first starts publication in 1908, and he's the first editor, holds that position until soon before his death in the 1940s, he senses that that issue, it could be very divisive in the church. And so he really does not allow much to show itself in the Gospel Herald on eschatology.

There's one time, I think, in the '30s in which he allowed basically kind of almost a symposium in which different viewpoints could be presented and appeared in the Gospel Herald and so on. But he really kind of kept it tamped down because he thought it was, even though he was a millennial himself. And he wrote a booklet about his position, which is a really nice little book.

So there's this thing about modernism. And people like John Horsch, who's an interesting person because, again, he is not premillennial or dispensationalist, but he really is caught up in the whole concern about modernism. And he believes that it's having its impact on the Mennonite church.

Older historical scholarship and so on sort of pooh-poohed that idea. And they said, well, it's John Horsch and company. They were just kind of tilting at windmills or something, sort of a Don Quixote kind of thing. But Nate Yoder, in his dissertation on American Mennonites and Fundamentalism, that's not exactly the title, but that's sort of its topic.

And Goshen College kind of became the focus of this concern about modernism. And Nate Yoder has shown in his dissertation that there actually was modernism at Goshen, that there were professors there who were using modernist texts, texts that were written by modernists in their classrooms and stuff like that, in Bible classes and theology classes and so on. And so there actually was modernism there. But it was also kind of interwoven with more traditional Mennonite concerns about non-conformity and dress and all that kind of stuff, which at Goshen was really being pushed.

I mean, they were really pushing the boundaries of that. And around 1920, J.B. Smith, who had gone down, was the first principal of Eastern Mennonite School. He was actually from Ohio, but he came down and was the first principal there. He somehow or another got hold of a picture or a photograph of a play that was put on at Goshen College by students. And of course, in the 1920s, the idea of plays among Mennonites, you know, you just didn't do that kind of stuff. That's not what Mennonites did. That was, ooh. But this was not only a play, but this was a play of people dressed up in costumes and stuff like this. And somehow he got a copy of this and he made postcards of it.

And he sent this out as a mailing to Mennonite preach ministers in the country and saying, "See what is happening at Goshen College." And any well-respecting Mennonite minister, particularly here in the East, would have been horrified by that. And so the theological liberalism and the kind of more traditional Mennonite concerns about non-conformity, which again are being contested in the early part of the 20th century. And it's because of that that we see in the early part of the 20th century among various conferences. I mean, many of them had disciplines going back to the 1870s and so on.

But those disciplines become much more detailed. And it's because things were being contested. And I think that's one of the things we have to keep in mind because some people read these disciplines with the increasing detail as introducing new things and so on, but they're not. They're normally the result of a practice that is being contested and the need to firm up that particular practice and so on. So here we have this modernism.

And of course, liberalism in the sense of non-conformity issues too. And they're all kind of woven together. And so in 1918, at Virginia Mennonite Conference, J.B. Smith is there. He's now a minister in Virginia Mennonite Conference. He had come from Ohio, all right? But as principal, he's living there in Virginia. A.D. Wanger, who is originally from Pennsylvania, had been an early evangelist, traveled very widely.

He was now living out in the Denbigh, Virginia area. Okay. And then you have this other person who, I would say, probably after Daniel Kaufman is a giant in the land. I mean, I mean that in a good way. I mean, he's just a gigantic figure. I mean, he was actually big and tall too.

Physically, he was rather imposing.

Interesting person is from his family was from Virginia, but he was from Kansas. He was ordained a bishop out there. And around about this time, I'm not sure exactly when, but he moves to Virginia and to the Denbigh area, which is a fairly new Mennonite settlement in Virginia, and becomes the bishop there and thus a bishop in Virginia Conference. So in 1918, and all these men, by the way, are premillennials.

Okay? They're all premillennials. Are you disappointed? Oh, yes. Very much so. But I have a few friends that are premillennials, and we're good friends. They just happen to be wrong. But okay. In December 6th and 7th, 1918, one of the things in conference sessions in the old Mennonite church, it was typical for all the bishops to address the conference at the beginning of the conference. And in his opening remarks at conference, Brunck said he had two reasons for coming to this conference. First, to lift my voice against the corrupting and blighting influence at work against the church and to save this conference from destruction. If I fail to do that, to at least cleanse my own hands.

It's ambitious. He is mild-mannered. He is not. Okay? Combative, yes. He's one of these people that when he wrote a book, in case you wanted to miss what the main point was, he put them all in capital. He put it all in capital letters. Okay? So you can make sure that this is important, what I'm saying here. And you could almost feel like if he was speaking, that he would raise his voice and be very emphatic here.

Okay? But at that conference, they had questions that came before conference that they were supposed to decide on. And one of the questions that came before the conference in Virginia in December of 1918 is, in view of the fact that liberalism for many years has steadily gained ground in spite of all efforts, general and local, made to control it, what action can this conference take to safeguard our district from its blighting and destructive effects and prevent the undermining of the old faith? And so that's, I mean, you can sort of hear George Brunck talking here. Okay?

And it was resolved. This was what they agreed to. Since this conference is uncompromisingly opposed to the tenets of liberalism as destructive of the faith of the gospel, we hereby record ourselves as in full support of the verbal inspiration of the scriptures, the substitutionary character of the atonement, the personal return of the Lord, and other fundamental doctrines denied by the advocates of the new theology. Of course, the new theology is modernism. And so these are, I mean, these are concerns that Orthodox Methodists would have had, Orthodox Presbyterians would have had, Orthodox Baptists would have had, Orthodox disciples of Christ would have had. These were all, I mean, in that sense, it's not really that distinctive of a concern.

But it does reflect the fact that these are contested issues. And the thing I would have to say is that the concerns here, it's not as though something new came into the Mennonite church. Mennonites who have always believed in the inspiration of scriptures, they would always believe that Jesus died for us, that he was the substitute for our sins. They have all believed in the personal return. I mean, these were kind of foundational doctrines that, yes, this is part of who we believed. And now they're being questioned. But I think the reality is, and Brunck says this at one particular point, he said, "Listen, we could just kind of assume churches in general in the United States, Protestant churches in general in the United States, believed these basic kind of things.

And they weren't really something that we had to worry about. We had to worry about our more Mennonite kind of things as far as." But now these are also being contested. And these folks believe they're also being contested in the Mennonite church. And if Nate Yoder is correct, and I think he is, there were pockets. I don't think they were very big pockets, but there were pockets where they were being questioned.

And there was a set of younger persons, particularly persons who went to Goshen and so on, and some other places who, yeah, they were very heavily impacted by modernism and so on. So it's not a, they're not tilting at windmills here. Okay? This is a very real concern. And they're trying to address it. But at the same time, they are picking up on some theological ideas.

These three men are premillennials, and so some of their things are buying into that kind of stuff. But not all persons concerned about modernism are that way. Like I said, John Horsch wasn't by any means, but he was very concerned about it. He wrote books about it. His book, Modern Religious Liberalism, it's probably his less than his biggest book, but it came out, I think, in '21 or something like that. It wasn't printed by a Mennonite publisher. It was printed, I think it was printed by Moody. I'm not sure. It was used at Moody Bible Institute as a textbook because it was, and Horsch was a diminutive man. He was very small, sort of a bandy rooster kind of person who was very combative in his writing, painfully shy as an individual, but very combative in his writing.

And even, I mean, he's the foremost Mennonite historian in North America in the early part of the 20th century. And his son-in-law, H.S. Bender, really built upon what John Horsch was doing. But some of what Horsch is writing when he's talking about early Anabaptism, he's really trying, he's defending it against some things. And particularly, one of the things that he does not like is how the liberal Dutch Mennonites in the early 20th century tell the Dutch Mennonite story. Okay? Because he feels, and he's right there, that they actually bring some of their very liberal theological viewpoints and impose them on early Anabaptist history.

But he probably does some of the same thing. He brings some of his more, quote-unquote, generically fundamentalist viewpoints into his presentation. "We recommend that a committee be appointed whose duty it shall be to further investigate the menace of liberalism as affecting the church, that they draft measures safeguarding our conference district from the inroad and destructive blight." There's that word blight again, "that they report their findings and work to our next conference for approval. We also make an appeal to the general conference to take decisive and scriptural action in unmistakable terms opposing the tenets and delusions of the new theology and that she take such measures as will purge the church from this calamitous peril." And so J.B. Smith, A.D. Wanger, and George R. Brunck are appointed to this committee.

So in 1919, in October 1919, at the next conference, they report their findings. And J.B. Smith, at this particular point, the committee is referred to as the Committee of the Investigation of Liberalism in the Church. And what these three men have done is that they actually have drawn up a statement of fundamentals.

And the Virginia Conference adopts that statement. It's 18 articles, kind of an imitation of the Dirkwright Confession. And it starts out, whereas the Dirkwright Confession starts out with God, the Creator. All right? The Virginia 18 articles start out with a statement about the Bible. Okay? And it says, "We believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of the Bible as the word of God that is authentic in its matter, authoritative in its counsels, inerrant in its original writings, and the only infallible rule of faith and practice." And one of the things I remember when I was taken into the church, the last instruction class I had, the bishop came over and went through the Confession of Faith, which was the 1921 Confession, and our discipline.

Okay? But one of the things I really, one of the things I do remember from that is his explanation about this first article. And he really, he talked about, the thing I remember is him talking about inerrant in its original writings.

Okay? And he explained to me, and it's interesting that he had sophistication enough to do this. He was a farmer and so on. But he explained, he said, "We don't have the original manuscripts. And over time, some mistakes have come into those things, but we believe that they were inerrant, that they were without error in the original." Okay?

But we have good enough that we know what's going on. And so that was kind of interesting to me, that that was, and that was the fundamentalist, that's definitely fundamentalist language. That's coming straight from the Presbyterian and Methodist and other fundamentalists because they're really arguing about the reliability, the authority of scripture, its truthfulness, and so on, which is one of the major things that modernists did. They love to say, "Oh, well, there's all these contradictions and stuff like that." And so fundamentalists are trying to defend the authority of the Bible once they come up with this language. Some people have problems with that language. And I don't feel that it's necessary language, personally.

I don't object to it necessarily. But some people think, "Well, this is a new way of looking at things." Well, it depends. Depends on that. But it is interesting that they felt they needed to establish the authority of the Bible. They didn't need to do that in 1632. And so in some sense, the 1921, what becomes the 1920 Garden City, Missouri Confession of Faith, which originated here in Virginia in 1919, is addressing a current issue.

And I would not say it's an unimportant issue. It's addressing a current issue. One of the things that's interesting, though, is you remember I said that with Daniel Kaufman's Manual of Bible Doctrines, when it came to the atonement and our redemption, it basically simply quotes the Dirkwright Confession in length and so on. Well, one of the things that's interesting here is when it talks about, it talks of the article on Jesus. It says, "He suffered the penalty for man's sin, dying in his substitute, thus reconciling man to God and giving free access to the throne of grace."

And so here we have again this idea of penalty, of penal substitution. And of course, 1914, it's here. It's not in Dirkwright. Dirkwright never uses that terminology. It talks about redemption. It talks about, it basically uses redemption language. There's nothing there about, talks about cleansing us of our sin, destroying the power of sin, stuff like that. But Dirkwright's understanding of what Jesus did on the cross is basically redemption. There's no talk about penalty. Okay? And of course, that's a pretty reformed, generally, Protestant, but even Roman Catholic understanding.

It comes into the Mennonite church, I think, here in the late maybe 1890s and so on. Though Daniel Kaufman isn't using it, though he's editing these two other books, so I assume he must have been, I don't know, he probably was okay with the language and so on. But again, they don't really define what we mean by penal.

Okay? They just kind of say this. Okay? So what do they mean by that? So in 1919, Virginia adopts this. And then in 1921, at Garden City, Missouri, in the General Conference of the Mennonite Church, they take this thing to it. And I mean, I'm sure there's conversations behind that, before that, leading up to it and so on, but they take it to it. And at the General Conference of the Mennonite Church, they adopt this with a few changes, with a few small changes, as they say, a restatement of their Confession of Faith. They reference Dirkwright. Okay? They reference Dirkwright as still being their Confession of Faith, but this is kind of a restating or an updating of Dirkwright, addressing some issues that weren't there.

And it did do that. That was part of what it did. But it also introduced some interesting ideas. It says here about Jesus Christ, "He was without sin, the divinely appointed substitute and representative of sinful man, making satisfaction for man's sins by his death on the cross, making the only adequate atonement for sin by the shedding of his blood, thus reconciling man to God, that he was raised from the dead, ascended to glory, and ever liveth to make intercession for us." So they introduced this idea of satisfaction. Okay? Which again, is kind of tied into a penal thing. Now, I think if I noticed here, they don't actually use the language of, they use the penal language that the 1919 one did, but they're sort of substituting the idea of satisfaction, which I think is kind of interesting.

Now, then another thing that you mentioned about my friend John Martin, his issue about restrictions. Daniel Kaufman in Manual of Bible Doctrines does use the term restrictions, but he didn't invent it. Some people blame him for it, and that's because they haven't read enough.

It's actually a term that was introduced by John S. Kaufman, Kaufman with a C, C-O-F-F-M-A-N. John S. Kaufman was from Virginia. He was a school teacher. Okay? He went to Elkhart, Indiana, and worked for John F. Funk's Mennonite Publishing Company, was the editor, really the, after a while, was really the editor of the Gospel Herald, was ordained, became one of the first evangelists.

In fact, I think Daniel Kaufman and George R. Brunck were both converted at revival meetings that John S. Kaufman had. He was apparently an amazing person. But he's the first person, actually, I think in the early 1890s in the Herald of Truth to use this term restrictions. And it is primarily applied to kind of non-conformity issues. And I think he's thinking about restrictions as being things that you're not supposed to do. All right? That's how he's using the term. You're not supposed to do these things. And then Daniel Kaufman picks up on this term, uses it in Manual of Bible Doctrine a couple of different times. He doesn't really have you do it. Okay? But in the 1919 and 1921 fundamentals, the term restrictions is used primarily to talk about non-conformity issues.

And the interesting thing is, it's like Dirkwright has a whole article simply about the state, about government, the role of government and our relationship to it. It's. And so on. The fundamentals give it a line. They say, "We believe that all Christians should honor, pray, pay tribute to, and obey in all things those who are an authority and a state and nation provide, however, that they should, in instances in which such obedience would violate the higher law of God, we ought to obey God rather than men, and that the church and state are separate, and while believers are to be subject to it, they are not a part of the civil administrative powers. That is contrary to the teachings of Christ and the apostles to engage in carnal warfare, that Christians should adorn themselves in modest apparel, not with braided hair or pearls or gold or costly ray, that the swearing of oaths is forbidden in the New Testament scriptures, that secret orders are antagonistic to the tenor and spirit of the gospel, and that life insurance is inconsistent with filial trust in the providence and care of our heavenly Father."

So here they cover in this category, this article on restrictions, our role, the role of state in the church. They pick up on non-resistance. They also talk about dress issues, and they also pick up on not swearing oaths and secret orders and life insurance. Now, life insurance is kind of a new thing. I mean, that's a controversy because life insurance wasn't around in the 1630s. Okay? So can Mennonites participate in life insurance? And there's articles in the Gospel Herald and even in Daniel Kaufman's writings and so on about life insurance and why we shouldn't take out life insurance. I'm not going to go into that. But what is interesting is, like with Dirkwright, you have an article on government.

You have an article by itself on non-resistance, okay? And so on. Whereas here, it's all kind of collapsed in this thing called restrictions. Oh, you also have an article on oath, a separate article on oath in Dirkwright. And so these are kind of, they're very quickly dispensed with. Now, that's not that they're not important. They are. In fact, most of the controversies in the 20th century are most of the issues in the 20th century have to do with this, with these quote-unquote restrictions. But this way of framing it is new. But it doesn't start with Daniel Kaufman. It starts with John S. Kaufman. Daniel Kaufman picks up, becomes a common way of thinking about things, and it's really given, how shall we say, official kind of acknowledgment through the use of this Confession of Faith.

All right? Okay. So that's really kind of an interesting thing for me. What do I think of the 1921 Confession of Faith? I'm glad not to use it. Yeah, I think that it's problematic. I think it's the theology of the atonement is problematic. I think that the way it limits things like non-resistance and the oath and other things to quote-unquote restrictions is problematic and so on.

And actually, like I said, it's really not an improvement on Dirkwright in my mind. Now, it addresses some things that Dirkwright doesn't because Dirkwright, some of the issues that were coming up in the early 20th century aren't issues in the 1630s. Would those things primarily be questions of the authority of the Bible and the errants that the Confession starts with? Yeah. I mean, the authority of the Bible, I mean, no one's questioning the virgin birth. I mean, I shouldn't say no one is. I mean, there are Sassonians and so on in the Netherlands who are essentially Unitarians and stuff like that.

But Mennonites, that's not a question. It's not a question in their, I mean, they're living in a host society that is reformed and so on. And so they're not contested, those are not contested issues. But in the late 19th, early 20th century, they become, the actual what it is, is whether or not you believe in the supernatural. That's really what it boils down to. Yeah. Okay? Whether or not you believe in the supernatural or not.

And Mennonites believed in the supernatural. They always did. Okay? And I'm sure it was horrifying to most of them to think that there are people out there who didn't. I don't think we can even quite imagine today how impactful or just how assumptions were that they lived in a society that was much more ostensibly Christian in its assumptions and its religious views and so on.

I mean, I mean that in a generic kind of way. But that was really being challenged in Protestant churches in the late 19th and early 20th century. All right. Let's shift to the 1963 statement and one that is also widely used among Mennonites. I've been a member of two churches, very similar in many ways. One uses the 1921 Confession. One uses the 1963 Confession.

So let's talk about the historical context of it. What motivated the preparation of a new Confession in 1963? And what are the significant differences between this statement and the ones that came before? Well, okay. So you have 1921. Okay? The '63 Confession, my sense is that it actually comes out of a discussion in the 1950s.

One of the things that happened is that in the 1940s and '50s, there are a number of, and again, it's a product of the General Conference of the Mennonite Church. All right? And I think that what was happening is that over the period of time, as issues arose, the General Conference of the Mennonite Church issued policies or issued sort of statements. Okay?

And there's a whole bunch of them. There's really some that are very quite interesting and, well, I think well developed and so on in the 1940s and '50s. Some of them, of course, in the '40s have to do with non-resistance and the relation of the state to the government and so on.

And we also have two very important books written in the 1950s by J.C. Wanger. One is an introduction to theology, and the other one is Separated Unto God, perhaps. Separated Unto God, yes. And those are kind of, now they are meant for, and J.C. Wanger is a very good communicator.

His prose is very accessible and so on. But it's interesting is that he deals in things in somewhat of a serious system. I mean, his introduction to theology is a systematic theology. And he starts with topics and so on. And it's been a while since I've looked at it and so on. And Separation from God is dealing with non-conformity, the whole issue of non-conformity in Christian life and stuff like that. So I think these have an impact too.

And also there's a whole generation, okay, so people like J.C. Wanger, I mean, he had a PhD in theology. I think it was, I think it was PhD, maybe it was a, I know that Chester K. Lehman, who was, J.C. Wanger and Chester K. Lehman were both on the committee that worked on the '63 Confession.

Chester K. Lehman was a very interesting person. He taught at Eastern Mennonite for years, taught Bible and theology there. I had older friends who took classes under him and said he was a phenomenal teacher.

But he was also the lone Amillennius at EMC for many years.

And later, his first book was The Inadequacy of Evolution. I think that's generally the title of it, but it was actually a book about evolution. In the 1940s, he actually wrote a manuscript on eschatology and submitted it to the publishing house. But by that time, Daniel Kaufman wasn't editor anymore. And the editor there at the publishing, I mean, the person in charge of the publishing house was a premillennial. So he turned it down. And I think about 10 or 15 years ago, some conservative Mennonites got hold of the manuscript and published it. So you can actually buy C.K. Lehman's book on eschatology now, which I think was a great thing.

There was a set of books put out. There were actually books on, sort of Bible survey books were put out in the '30s. I think he wrote the New Testaments. He wrote one of those. H.S. Bender was one of the authors too.

But J.C. Wanger and C.K. Lehman are not only college educated, they're also men with doctorates. And their field is theology. And so they are fairly sophisticated theologically. And they bring those kinds of things to it. And I think generally speaking, you do have the college, you have these Mennonite colleges who are developing a lot. There are young people going to them.

And the professors are getting higher degrees and so on. And so in a sense, the persons who are really the movers and shakers in the Mennonite Church at large, who are kind of the key leaders and so on, are very well-educated men who have some theological sophistication. I think that they would have looked at the 1921 Confession as being a little, I don't know, not adequate. Okay? Not adequate for their time, not really resonating with the current generation and so on. And of course, you have to also keep in mind that these are the same decades in which the Mennonite Church is, well, non-conformity is weakening. In some places, it's evaporating quickly. All right?