Dean keeps insisting “faith is necessary for any sacrament to be effectual,” warning that without this, sacraments become “mechanical” and drift toward the errors he associates with Rome/Orthodoxy; what do you think he means by “mechanical,” and what examples have you seen where sacraments (or even “decisions for Christ”) function that way?

**Direct Answer** By “mechanical,” Dean seems to mean treating baptism and communion like automatic religious techniques that work regardless of repentance and faith—almost like a spiritual machine. In his view, when faith is removed, sacraments become detached from real inner conversion and can slide into empty ritual. **Support from Transcript:** • Dean states his first major point: “Faith is necessary for any sacrament to be effectual. We are saved by grace through faith.” • He warns that some discover early-church sacramental language and “get excited and drop this side of faith…necessary for those sacraments to be effectual.” • He says that drop leads to “the eras of…Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism…because it becomes this mechanical thing and the faith is not necessary.” • He contrasts “mere symbols or human ceremonies” with “real acts of God upon the believer,” implying the sacraments are not magic but also not empty. • His examples from confessions repeatedly tie sacraments to “repent,” “believing souls,” “true faith, love, and obedience,” showing what prevents “mechanical” use. **Discussion Follow-ups** The transcript doesn’t give modern case studies, but it raises

Dean argues that God works through baptism and communion as “channels of his grace,” calling them “real acts of God upon the believer,” not “mere symbols”; what does that claim reveal about God’s willingness to use physical, communal actions to give grace, and what parts of your tradition resist that idea (even if you would never say it out loud)?

**Direct Answer** Dean’s claim suggests God willingly attaches his gracious action to embodied, visible practices—water, bread, wine, and a gathered people—so that grace is not only talked about but experienced and received. The resistance he targets is the instinct to reduce sacraments to “mere” mental remembrance or human ceremony. **Support from Transcript:** • Dean’s second key point: “God works through the sacraments as channels of his grace in our lives.” • He clarifies: “These are not mere symbols…or human ceremonies, but real acts of God upon the believer.” • On communion he stresses “the real presence of Christ is present, not merely in the elements… but also in the gathered community.” • He critiques memorialism as: “nothing is happening here…only for memory,” and says he doesn’t think Scripture leads there. • Multiple confessions he quotes describe sacraments as “external, visible actions” that are also “inner and invisible and spiritual acts of God through Christ…bringing us justification, spiritual nourishment.” **Discussion Follow-ups** Which language feels safer in your setting: “obedience symbol” or “God acts here”? What fears surface—superstition, loss of control

Dean’s key move from 1 Corinthians 10:16–17 is that Christ’s “real presence” is not only “in the bread” but also “in the manifestation of the gathered community”; how would an early Christian (or early Anabaptist hiding “from house to house… at night”) have recognized whether Christ was truly present among them?

**Direct Answer** Based on the transcript, they would recognize Christ’s presence by more than correct words over bread and cup: it would show up as a unified, faithful body living Jesus’ teachings in love, obedience, and even costly commitment to one another. In other words, the gathered community itself would “look like Jesus,” not just perform a ceremony. **Support from Transcript:** • Dean highlights 1 Corinthians 10:16–17: the cup and bread are “a communion…participation…sharing,” and “we, though many, are one bread and one body.” • He interprets it: Christ’s presence is “manifested not just in the bread… but also in the manifestation of the gathered community.” • He quotes an early Anabaptist court report: they met “from house to house… at night… read and studied… and commemorated the nighttime meal,” showing communion embedded in community life under pressure. • The Zolikon “Congregational Order” ties the Supper to mutual sacrifice: be “willing to give our body and life for Christ’s sake…for the sake of all the brothers.” • Dean’s third key point: real presence “will always produce a real incarnational manifestation…puts the teachings of Jesus into practice.” **Discussion

Dean says Christianity becomes “at least partly Gnostic until the real presence of Christ is manifested in a tangible way within the body,” and he connects “living presence fades” to a church that can “sanctify violence” and unite with the state; where do you see “devout in language, but detached from life” in modern Christianity, and what would have to change for your community to become a visible contradiction to that drift?

**Direct Answer** The transcript’s main diagnosis is that when Christ’s presence is reduced to abstract talk, Christianity can become “devout in language” while real life looks nothing like Jesus—opening the door to coercion, violence, and church-state fusion. Dean’s implied remedy is an embodied, communal discipleship where Jesus’ teachings are practiced so tangibly that the church becomes a living contradiction. **Support from Transcript:** • The introduction summarizes Dean’s warning: “When that living presence fades…Christianity drifts into abstraction, devout in language, but detached from life.” • It says such faith “remains at least partly Gnostic until the real presence of Christ is manifested in a tangible way within the body.” • It links abstraction to historical outcomes: “capable of sanctifying violence and uniting church and state in complete contradistinction to the teachings of Christ.” • Dean’s framing of sacramental theology is incarnational: Christ’s presence is “meant to be embodied in a people who looked like Jesus.” • His third key point insists the real presence “will always produce a real incarnational manifestation…puts the teachings of Jesus into practice.

Dean claims it’s an anachronism to label Zwingli simply “memorialist,” and he critiques the oversimplified transubstantiation-vs-memorialism spectrum; how has that inherited spectrum shaped your instincts about what is “safe” to believe, and what do you lose when sacramental debates are reduced to a two-option chart?

**Direct Answer** Dean argues the common two-option chart distorts history and narrows faith: it pushes people to choose between “wafer-worship” on one side and “nothing is happening” on the other, instead of grappling with the biblical and early-Christian sense of mystery and real participation. When debates are reduced to a spectrum, you lose the deeper question of how Christ’s presence forms a people into his likeness. **Support from Transcript:** • Dean presents the spectrum: transubstantiation (where the wafer “can actually be worshipped as God…Council of Trent”) versus memorialism (“nothing is happening here…only for memory”). • He says, “I personally feel that both sides of this is wrong…[neither] represents the early Christians…[nor] the scriptures.” • He places the early Anabaptists “somewhere in this middle…mystery,” but says they are often “thrown under…memorialist” because of Zurich/Zwingli associations. • He calls it anachronistic and explains “anachronism” as forcing later categories onto an earlier time. • He reports asking Zwingli’s successor, who reacted that the “memorialist view” label is “absolutely not” a fair representation. **Discussion Follow-ups** What be

The transcript includes the “radish slice” court testimony and other reactionary lines (“just as if someone elevated a radish slice”); what specific abuses surrounding the Mass does Dean say provoked such rhetoric, and how do you discern when protest language is a needed correction versus when it becomes its own distortion?

**Direct Answer** Dean suggests the “radish slice” rhetoric was provoked by what the Mass had “become” in the late medieval period—especially claims and practices that treated the host as an object of worship and pushed an overly physical, even grotesque understanding of Christ’s presence. He implies protest is needed when it targets real corruption, but it becomes distortion when it denies the sacrament’s true mystery and real grace. **Support from Transcript:** • Dean cites the 1525 St. Gall testimony: “a piece of bread or a slice of radish…as much good as the host,” and elevating the host is “as if someone elevated a radish slice.” • He says such statements are “reactionary” and promises to show “what was the thing that they were actually speaking against.” • He describes transubstantiation’s extreme: the wafer “can actually be worshipped as God, as the Council of Trent clearly states.” • He traces medieval excesses: an oath requiring belief the elements are “handled…broken…crushed by the teeth,” plus “miracles…bleeding” host stories. • He argues this long buildup created “a lot of culture around the mass and a lot of excesses…which the reformers…were concerned about.” **Discu

"Sacred Roots: The Anabaptists, the Sacraments, and the Words of Jesus" by Dean Taylor

956 views • Nov 18, 2025

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November 8, 2025

Strength to Strength welcomes Dean Taylor for another episode on the Radical Reformation.

In this episode of Strength to Strength, Dean Taylor revisits the Radical Reformation through the lens of the sacraments—Baptism and Communion—and challenges many of our modern assumptions about them. Too often, he argues, the early Anabaptists are dismissed as anti-sacramental. In reality, their vision was profoundly sacramental—rooted in a realized Incarnational real presence that placed Christ Himself at the center, not stopping with mere ceremony or institution.

Drawing from both the Early Church and the Radical Reformers, Dean explores how this Incarnational presence was meant to be embodied in a people who looked like Jesus—not ending in dogmatic definitions or legalistic systems, but in the lived result of putting the teachings of Jesus into embodied practice on the earth. When that living presence fades, he warns, Christianity drifts into abstraction—devout in language, but detached from life. Such a faith, he argues, remains at least partly Gnostic until the real presence of Christ is manifested in a tangible way within the body. History bears witness to the tragic outcome: a faith adorned with piety yet emptied of compassion, capable of sanctifying violence and uniting church and state in complete contradistinction to the teachings of Christ.

Dean does not claim the Anabaptists had the last word on sacramental theology. He acknowledges that each Christian tradition contributes valuable insights and encourages believers to learn from one another outside of sectarian lines. Yet he contends that the divisions of the Reformation often obscured something vital: a living theology of the Incarnation.

An interactive question-and-answer period follows.

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Full description: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87AH1M3jwzI

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🎧 "Sacred Roots: The Anabaptists, the Sacraments, and the Words of Jesus" by Dean Taylor

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

Welcome to Strength to Strength. We're here to offer you resources that will strengthen your obedient, love-faith relationship to King Jesus and to offer you solid footing in a shaky world.

So today's episode, we're welcoming Dean Taylor for another part of our Sacred Roots series. The title is The Anabaptist, The Sacraments, and the Words of Jesus. Dean Taylor is going to revisit the radical Reformation through the lens of the sacraments, which are baptism and communion. He challenges many of our modern assumptions about them.

Too often, he argues, the early Anabaptists are dismissed as anti-sacramental. In reality, their vision was profoundly sacramental, rooted in a realized incarnational real presence that placed Christ himself, not stopping with mere ceremony or institution. Drawing from both the early church and the radical reformers, Dean explores how this incarnational presence was meant to be embodied in a people who looked like Jesus, not ending in dogmatic definitions or legalistic systems, but in the lived result of putting the teachings of Jesus into embodied practice on the earth. When that living presence fades, he warns, Christianity drifts into abstraction, devout in language, but detached from life. Such a faith, he argues, remains at least partly Gnostic until the real presence of Christ is manifested in a tangible way within the body.

History bears witness to the tragic outcome: a faith adorned with piety, yet emptied of compassion, capable of sanctifying violence and uniting church and state in complete contradistinction to the teachings of Christ. So Dean does not claim the Anabaptists had the last word on sacramental theology. He acknowledges that each Christian tradition contributes valuable insights and encourages believers to learn from one another outside of sectarian lines. Yet he contends that the divisions of the Reformation often obscured something vital: a living theology of the incarnation.

So after the talk, we will also have a time of question and answer, like normal. Can we have a prayer here to get started? Please. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for today. Thank you for your goodness and who you are. Thank you for your—thank you for the fact that you're a God who, after people have turned away from you and walked away and sinned and made a broken mess of this world, that not only did you love us enough to make a way for us to be made new. And I just pray your blessing on this talk. I would pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Okay. Thank you, Dean. Go ahead.

Okay. Let's dive in here. Um, I do want to say, um, I did a recent, um, four, one and a half hour things with Anabaptist Perspectives. Hopefully, we can, um, uh, do the link to that, um, as well. And in that, um, I want you to know that I labored over keeping this as short as possible. My wife was actually like, "How long could you possibly—you've already done this. You just did this with Anabaptist Perspectives." And I said, "Well, this is supposed to be short." And so this is probably going to go about an hour and a half, if that's okay. But there's a lot of kind of grenades that I just throw out there, and you can't just throw them and not, you know, back them up.

And I want you to know that I genuinely labored. You know, the old saying is, um, it's, uh, your sermon would have been a lot shorter if I had more time to prepare. And so I really tried to make this, make this shorter. So, um, as we get in, there are some very important, I think, points in the way the radical reformers dealt with the sacraments. And I think it's very important for today. I think many people trip up at this point in faith and with the early Christians. And it's something that I think is just very dear to my heart and very needed. So with all that, let's dive in. So people frequently hear me say, you know, that I think one of the essence of Anabaptism came from a letter I read from Conrad Grebel, his to Vadian, and two different letters.

And one is that he said, "I believe the word of God without complicated interpretation. And out of this belief, I speak." And another one, he says, "The teachings of the Lord have been given for the purpose of being put into practice." And I saw years ago I did something small on the sacraments.

And some of the comments said, "Okay, what about this is my body?" Or, "Baptized for the remission of sins." I mean, these are very plain things. So, and then they said, "Oh, not that one." So in other words, we believe in a very simple interpretation of the scriptures, but when it comes to, um, the sacraments, when, when, um, Jesus said, "This is my body," or, um, "Baptism for the remission of sins," we, we fell back there. And so I thought it was—I thought it's a good statement. It's, it's a, uh, it's a good challenge. And so, um, that's kind of what's driven me to be able to give, um, give the proper view here. Um, before we even go into, let me hit some of those passages that people will bring up on how we are to properly use these things.

So here's one, um, when it has refers to baptism and salvation. Um, it's found in Acts 2:36. And have your Bibles here if you want to go with this. But, um, one of the fundamental passages, excuse me, it says, "Therefore let the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." This is Peter, of course, preaching on Pentecost. Now, when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the rest of the apostles, "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Then Peter said to them, "Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."

We'll see that the early Anabaptists were very—used this a lot as far as the order of how things come in our salvation. Preaching of the word of God is there. An act of faith is happening, causing convictions in the heart, and then followed by baptism for the remission of sins. And as long as the faith part is there, the other part follows, you'll see, as I hopefully to demonstrate. Another big one in baptism comes out in 1 Peter 3:20.

Peter, given the analogies of different things, he says, "Who formerly were disobedient, when once the divine long-suffering waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water."

There is also an antitype which now saves us, baptism. Not the removing of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That word answer there is a loaded word. I don't have time to really develop it. Some translations give an appeal. The Germans give it more as a boond, like a pledge. It's an interesting sermon just in that one loaded word, but let's go on. Matthew in communion.

And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to his disciples and said, "Take, eat. This is my body." Then he took the cup and gave thanks and gave it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you, for this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." So this idea here of that him having the bread and saying, "This is my body," what do you do with that? Um, is of course one of the big, um, controversies in the time of the Reformation. And then in this other one, in Luke, uh, other version, and he took bread, gave thanks, and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, "This is my body, which is given for you.

Do this in remembrance of me." And so people in different groups, however they would stress this, we're doing this in remembrance, or we are doing this in some kind of metaphysical reality of Christ's presence in the communion, of course, is the debate when it comes time to, uh, the Reformation. Um, John comes up a big one. Uh, John chapter 6, and the language there that Jesus, when he's preaching there, and the multitude is there, and they're hungry, and he he starts making this analogy to himself, and he says, "I am the living bread which came down from heaven. If anyone eats this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I give is my flesh."

And later on, "Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. He who eats this bread will live forever." It's one of the low—if it's not the longest, one of the longest chapters in the Bible. Further down in that chapter, the disciples are discussing this and said, "This is a hard saying. Who can understand this?" And then he gives this interpretation in verse 63. It is the Spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are Spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.

So again, this becomes very debated between the different Protestant groups, the different Catholic groups of of how and what way is this manifestation of the flesh? And are we spiritually connected to this, or is there some sort of corporal—I mean, does the community actually bleed? You'll see is coming up in this conversation. Um, and so this is another passage that becomes very, um, uh, very important. One of the ones that I think the verse that really ties it a lot to the Anabaptists is is found in 1 Corinthians 10:16, at least a reference to the communion. It says, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ?"

Quantania, a fellowship. "The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ? For we, though many, are one bread and one body, for we all partake of one bread." This is profoundly powerful language here, and speaking about how the manifestation of Christ in us, in the body, is real, um, but it's manifested not just in the the bread, it's there in the bread, but it's also in the manifestation of the gathered community. Different, uh, Bible versions is, uh, give it ESV gives this, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? And then here's another one, new NLT version. It's a sharing of the blood of Christ. Anyway, this quantania, this fellowship with Christ in reality, um, it becomes very important to the Anabaptists.

So as we look at the whole spectrum of the discussion, um, that happens, uh, certainly in the Reformation, but actually, uh, it can go much further than, uh, before that, um, kind of goes like this.

Where you have, excuse me, where you have transubstantiation on one side, um, where on one side, and then you have memorialism on the other. So transubstantiation, we'll get into a little bit, just a tiny bit, was actually, it comes to the point where the bread, the wafers, can actually be worshipped as God, as the Council of Trent clearly states.

Over to the other side is memorialism, where it's nothing is happening here. We are doing this nothing but because we're commanded to, and there's no spiritual presence, is a memorial. We're doing it only for memory, uh, or for reverence and for, uh, to remember what Christ has done for us. In the middle is like a mystery.

And I would say that if, if, if all my only point today is to prove that the early Anabaptists, um, were somewhere in this middle, it'd be easy. But usually what happens is, is, is Zwingli, uh, is over, is used as said to this memorial view. So he believes, they say, so that I'll discuss this. The story is that Zwingli had this only memorial view. The other side is transubstantiation. I personally feel that both sides of this is wrong. I don't believe it represents the early Christians, and I certainly don't think it, um, represents the scriptures of what we see. To be able to, that, that Christ is talking about something that, that the bread can actually be worshipped itself, I don't believe is correct, my personal feeling.

Um, memorialism, I don't think is what the scriptures are leading us to as well. In the middle is this mystery. And as you'll see, most people who believe in some sort of real presence are somewhere in this middle. Um, and I'm going to show you, but unfortunately, excuse me, unfortunately, when people discuss the Anabaptist view of the sacraments, because we started under Zwingli, many times we're thrown under this, most of the times we're thrown under this memorialist view. And I, and I don't think that's proper.

So as we look at the different groups, though, I want to have to be, uh, you know, the ones that have come down to our communities that we have today. You know, the ones there's, there was different fringe groups and the ones that died out here and there, but the ones that we have, you know, that we would have communities and families and, and missions with and generally feel part of the same family with, um, are those the Dutch Mennonites, the Swiss Brethren? We would have some through the spiritualist wings, although that one kind of faded out also. The Hutterites, the Pilgrim Marpek, um, and the Amish and the German Baptist Brethren. You'll see the, the, the later ones, the Amish and the Brethren are very real parts of the Anabaptist community today.

Um, and they actually bring a, um, a depth to the sacraments. Um, it kind of completes the package, I think, in a very, a very helpful way. So these are, there's differences, as you'll go, we'll see through all of these. I'm not going to get into the details. You can see some of the other ones, um, that I did like for Anabaptist perspective. We go to a little more details on the different quotes. But in general, I think they present something that's, that's very valuable to us, and they complete it. Now, I want to say this as a disclaimer as I dive in.

I don't want to, I'm not here to set an Anabaptist view of the sacraments over and against everyone else, as if the 16th century finally solved the riddle. I do not believe, when I read the actual sources of the early Anabaptists, that they themselves spoke in that way. It's not like there's this book on the sacraments, you know, and unfortunately, most of what we have is, is just trying to keep themselves alive, either writing an apology to the Catholics or to the Reformers, saying, "Don't kill us. We believe this," and trying to explain that, and it's under duress, and it's difficult sometimes to pull out what they believed. So I don't want to represent them that way.

I don't think they represented them themselves that way, and I don't think we should either. However, I strongly believe that the concerns that they had surrounding the sacraments are needed today as much as they were then. Unfortunately, the, the concerns that the Anabaptists brought about the discussions of surrounding the sacraments are not heard today, and they really need to be. To have a true early Christian view of the sacraments, I honestly believe these concerns that the Anabaptists brought about the sacraments need to be brought out, and I'll explain that as we go, go forward.

What are some of those points? Okay, first of all, faith. Faith is necessary for any sacrament to be effectual. We are saved by grace through faith. You'll see that I believe that most of them would have had a very strong view of baptism and communion, and even saying that we're baptism for the remission of sin is a common statement amongst the early Anabaptists and modern Anabaptists, uh, particularly early Anabaptists. And this is, this is said without apology. However, as an essence, there must be faith. Many people, uh, particularly in the kind of kingdom circles, um, um, people start studying the early church. They, they find out, oh, it says here that baptism is for the forgiveness of sins.

There's a real presence in communion. And it suddenly, somehow, we get excited and drop this side of faith is necessary for those sacraments to be effectual. And that's where we end up, I believe, into the eras of, of Orthodox, uh, you know, Greek Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism and such, because it becomes this mechanical thing and the faith is not necessary. So I'll talk about that a little bit as we go through that, but faith is necessary for any sacrament to be effectual.

Number two, God works through the sacraments as channels of his grace in our lives. These are not mere symbols to most or human ceremonies, but real acts of God upon the believer. So in communion, the real presence of Christ is present, not merely in the elements. You're going to see this coming out in an amazing way, but also in the gathered community. And this is a very important point the early Anabaptists made. You're going to see. And then finally, the sacramental real presence of Christ will always produce a real incarnational manifestation of the body of Christ here on earth. This body of Christ puts the teachings of Jesus into practice.

You see this in the early Christians. You see this in the early Anabaptists. And this is a point that really we need today, um, when we discuss sacramental theology. All right. So in general, though, I don't want this to be presented sectarian. Many of the things I'm going to be talking about, you don't have to leave your tradition to embrace. And I, my theory is we should be unified until we can't. I like to have a Catholic spirit, to be Catholic with a small c. I think it's very important. Uh, the sectarian language surrounding the sacraments is dreadful. It's, it's, it's wrong. It's sinful. So I think we should be unified until we can't, not unified only by accident.

Oh, you happen to pray, I pray. No, we should try to see how we can be unified. And I think that's what it means to be Catholic with a small c. Um, and I'm very strong on this. One of my axioms is if an argument has lasted over 500 years, it's probably not stupid. These are thousand-year-old arguments, at least. And I think a lot of them have wisdom in their concerns. And if we're fair to them, we'll see points in all the different traditions that they can add to our discussion on the sacraments. And I don't think we should, oh, they're stupid. They didn't understand, or they didn't understand. They never read the fathers, or they never did this.

Usually those kind of low-level discussions of the sacraments don't, aren't very fruitful. So this is a point I think is, uh, important to me. So the first Anabaptists, let's dive in. Um, all right. So we talk about the first Anabaptists. We see that, you know, it's growing fast. 1525, we start to see, uh, 500 years ago, we start to see these little movements of things during the, during the Reformation. And here's one court report. It says, small fellowships of Anabaptists spring up like mushrooms everywhere. And it goes on to say, they move from house to house for meeting in order to remain inconspicuous, where they read and studied the holy writings and commemorated the nighttime meal.

So we see the early Anabaptists, you know, going into, um, hiding, um, but yet still communion was something important to them, um, even when they were having to meet at night in the secrets, uh, and that kind of a thing. Um, early on in Zolichen, so when you're in Zurich, right up the road is Zolichen, um, is where the first community was worked out. And we have, we think it was written there, the Congregational Order is a precious, precious, uh, the first confession of the early Anabaptists. And it's, it's amazing. It talks about the Brethren's meeting, Brethren meeting three or four times a week. Uh, it talks about what they should read, let it not be frivolous.

We'd monish one another. Um, it says that we should have this common fun. It's radical economics. It says that gluttony should be avoided. And then it says this about the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper shall be held as often as the brothers are together, thereby proclaiming the death of the Lord and thereby warning each one to commemorate how Christ gave his life for us and shed his blood for us, that he might also be willing to give our body and life for Christ's sake, which means for the sake of all the brothers.

So this idea, I just read an article, I'm trying to think of the name, John Schmidt, uh, I'll show it here a little bit. This idea, this theology of martyrdom, it's an interesting concept of this in the times of persecution, this commitment to one another, uh, and giving our life for each other. Christ gives him life for us. And that back and forth we see in the communion is, is powerful. And we see here they had it, um, actually very often. Um, so let's, let's dive into some of their quotes. And then I'm going to hit some of the, the heavyweights that I think, um, get it said and an important thing that I think is important for us today.

So let's hit some of their quotes.

All right. To be fair, um, when we go through them, certainly there are some very, um, seemingly reactionary or very low views, if you would, of, of the sacraments from the Anabaptists. It's not like, well, so where do people get this idea? Yeah, they're, they're there. Um, so like for here's, here's a one found in 1525. We don't know who this is.

A court record of some new converts in St. Gall and Switzerland in 1525 shows one of whom testified that, quote, "God has blessed all things. And if a believer ate a piece of bread or a slice of radish, it would do him as much good as the host."

Another witness testified that when the priest elevated the host, it is just as if someone elevated a radish slice. So we see these kind of reactionary statements, and I'm going to show that what was the thing that they were actually speaking against. And that when we talk about the mass as it was being expressed in the time of the Reformation, it wasn't just Anabaptists. As a matter of fact, we don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure that this was even an Anabaptist. It's very early St. Gall in 1525. It would be pretty early to be in St. Gall.

Um, you have even in the Catholics and the Reformers a reaction to some of what the mass had become. And you get this kind of language. And certainly these, these kind of languages you'll, you'll find among some of the, the early Anabaptists. So let's look at Michael Sattler. So he's an obvious, um, uh, early Anabaptist that's important. Um, and Michael Sattler's interesting, and you get something that I, I noticed. So on the court trial, when you read Michael Sattler's trial, um, he is asked about the mass. And in that, he does deny a real presence in the communion, um, seemingly very clearly. Um, the, his baptism statements are a little less clear. Um, but it's interesting when he's working in the greater group, uh, just months before creating the Schleichheim Confession, and it's proclaiming a statement of faith for the, or not a statement of faith, rather, an agreement that the early, um, that the early Anabaptists had.

Um, that language is seemingly purposely careful not to deny things. It says what it is. It doesn't say what it's not. And I find this to be common through almost all the statements of faith of the early Anabaptists. And I think this is an important point.

Because if we're going to believe, if we're on the side that this is a mystery and that, you know, when we're talking about baptism and communion, I mean, how could you ever explain the, the depth of that? And I, so I think the idea of a mystery is important. And so I usually like to say, my, my usual statement is, I'm uncomfortable with putting the word merely and any of the sacraments in the same sentence. You know, where you say, oh, this baptism is merely a blah, blah, blah, blah, or this communion is merely a this or that. Um, unless you're saying merely, it's, it's much more than that. But trying to reduce it is un, is un, um, I don't think it's, it's good to do.

And so what I see in the Schleichheim Confession, which we believe Michael Sattler was a part of, it says that they kind of meet there for the, the Lord's Supper. It doesn't give a very clear in the Schleichheim, um, of a real presence yet, but it doesn't deny it. And so there's certainly room within the Schleichheim Confession. In his confession, I will say, it does seem to be on the low side of it. Conrad Grebel also, these are very early 1525, 1526, 1527 types of, uh, leaders. Conrad Grebel, we know a young man, um, also early on writing even in, uh, 24, I think it is for, uh, to Thomas Münster, when you're just seeing some of the radicals writing back and forth.

Um, and he's giving, uh, Thomas Münster warnings about using the sword and, and these different things. And there's an interesting statement in there where many, much of the language seems to be on the, the low side of, of the sacraments. He does go on to say this. He says, "For the bread is simply bread, yet by faith the body of Christ and an incorporation into the body of Christ and with the brethren. One must eat and drink in the spirit and in love, as John 5 and elsewhere indicates, and as Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11 and as Acts 2 clearly teaches." So this idea of manifesting the body of Christ by faith, um, I see more and more through the early Anabaptists.

And there's a whole line, I wish I could give credit. I don't want to in any way say that this has all just been my research. Actually, I've been very blessed by the research of, of many, um, Anabaptist scholars these days looking into these things, particularly on these, um, on this idea of the, the sacraments in the early Anabaptists. I'll be sharing some of those. Well, here's one right here. The Conrad Grebel review, I was, I was really appreciated this. And John Rempel has been sort of a leader in this, I, the studying the sacraments in some of these, um, these early, these early Anabaptists. And this one by, oh, Joel Schmidt, here's the one on discussing Mendel Simon.

So Mendel Simon has many views that seem very, um, very, uh, uh, memorial-like. And, and we know that even part of Mendel Simon's testimony of, of faith, he's struggling over the mass. Like, what are you guys doing? And there's, there's all this wickedness, there's all these things going on. And so, and yet you're, you're believing and you're forcing us to believe these certain particular things about the mass that he very much struggled with. And we see that coming out in much of his language. However, I think this is what, um, Joel Schmidt here is saying in his paper that they put in the, uh, Conrad Grebel review, um, that it's not a complete picture and that once we can see what it is that the early Anabaptists and the early Reformers and even many of the early Catholics before the Council of Trent were trying to say and to speak against, which is the idea of what this whole mass had become, then we can see, once we get that out of the way, then we can see some of, of their more, um, sacramental language coming through.

And so here's one that came out from that paper. He says, um, the external use, this is, uh, quoting from Mendel Simon, "The external use of the sign is nothing but a false show and hypocrisy. If the thing which is invisibly represented is not present with it." That means the faith, this idea of faith having to be there. But where the mystery is joined to the signs for which purposes they are ordained, there the baptism of Christ and the supper of Christ are present as the scriptures teach. This co-witness of faith in us and in, um, the sacraments you'll see coming out more and more in the, in these, uh, these early Anabaptists. Here's another quote I, I was able to get from this, um, this study.

It says here, "But where the Lord's church, but where the Lord's church, the dear disciples of Christ have met in Christ's name to partake of the Holy Supper in true faith, love, and obedience, there the outward perishable man eats and drinks perishable bread and wine, and the inner imperishable man of the heart eats in a spiritual sense the imperishable body of body and blood of Christ, which cannot be eaten or digested, as it was said." And so here we do see in, in Mendel Simon, this paper is trying to say it's not a complete picture to call Mendel Simon a mere memorialist. And I think this is where some of these studies are trying to, to bring out.

And I think it's important to say this. So the Conrad Grebel, the Michael Sattlers, that there's, um, they were very concerned what was happening in the mass was wrong. Um, but that doesn't mean they were mere memorialist. Um, so there's others.

As we go just a little bit further, I've gone through the, all the different confessions of faith, and they're, they're actually very interesting to see how they discuss these sacraments with the idea of faith in us and co-witness with the sacraments and how that comes out in a beautiful way. And I think these are one of the things that I think are very important for today's discussions on the sacraments. Here's one by the Swiss Brethren in Hesse, which is, uh, in, in Germany today, um, in 1578, very early here. It says, "Christian baptism, we believe, acknowledge and confess a Christian baptism, which has to happen internally and externally.

Internally with the Holy Spirit and fire. Outwardly with water in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. To those who have repented, believe the gospel, confess their sins, their faith, confess their faith and desire to be baptized." And then a little later, "Concerning the Lord's Supper, the night meal, we believe, acknowledge, and confess that the Lord's Supper is an ordinance and command by our Lord Jesus Christ and a strong bonding of the blessed fellowship of all believers with their Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the bread and wine are received with the mouth, so also the heavenly body, the flesh and blood of Jesus Christ are received by the believing soul spiritually in faith."

So clearly this is not a mere memorialism and a Swiss Brethren confession that through faith we are communing. This is that 1 Corinthians 10 quantum Nia with the real presence of Christ. Very powerful language there. Um, another one in 1610, uh, confession of faith. Um, this is in the, the Dutch area, Holland area. Um, there's a couple ones on, I found on, on communion and baptism. What Christ has now accomplished in glory according to his priestly office, he celebrates his spiritual supper with believing souls, making them partakers of the living food and drink of the soul.

In these holy sacraments alone is appropriated the fruit, power, and worth of his work upon the cross. Speaking strongly about the sacraments and how God from Jesus, from heaven is manifesting through this, uh, with the, with the believers. It goes on, it goes on. We must know Christ according to the Spirit that he baptized us and washed us with the Spirit and with fire, feeds us with heavenly food and drink, and makes us partakers of his divine nature. And then concerning the sacraments, concerning the holy sacraments, Jesus Christ has instituted two sacraments in his holy congregation, baptism and the holy supper.

These are external, visible actions and undeserved divine grace given to us, though unworthy by God. They are inner and invisible and spiritual acts of God through Christ. And watch this now, in cooperation with the Holy Spirit, bringing us justification, spiritual nourishment, and subsistence to repent and believing souls.

Likewise, we testify thereby in partaking of the sacraments to our religion, repentance, faith, and obedience, committing ourselves and good conscience to the service of God. And he goes on. Again, I tried to cut just to keep this short as much as I possible. The external supper brings to our mind the office and ministry of Christ in glory, his institution of the spiritual supper with believing souls, feeding them with spiritual, with truly spiritual food. So again, very clear, uh, uh, connection. This is also would have affected the 1610 with Hans de Rees and the, uh, proto-Baptist, um, that would have been working with them in, in, um, in England.

Um, so very clear language that we see there. Uh, a confession of John's sense. This would have been a northern Germany and the Netherlands, um, confession trying to bring a lot of people together. Um, what do we all agree here? You know, the idea. And it says this, listen to this language on the communion.

The holy supper of the Lord is also called the Christian unity. It is observed among believers only and not with consecrated, but with ordinary bread and wine. It is done not merely as a memorial of a costly, holy, and bitter suffering of death and the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Jesus Christ. It is also the consoling fruit which is provided in it for all believers. In their strength, believers are moved not only sincerely to sorrow over the bitter suffering and death of Jesus Christ, which was necessary for redemption from their sins, but also to praise and bless the Lord for their benefits, which flow from the supper with inner spiritual thanksgiving. It also strengthens their Christian brotherly and spiritual unity with a holy God-pleasing life to the praise of the Lord.

So again, they're very clear to say we're concerned what's happening with the mass, but just to call this a mere memorial, that's not the kind of language I'm seeing in these, in these, um, confessions. Prussia, which would have been now further up, we're heading towards Russia now and, uh, the northern Germany, Prussia, close to Russia, um, says this, speaking of baptism, the grain that comes to the truly believing from God's way, if we get this from God to us, applied to them through baptism is not putting away of the uncleanness of the flesh, but the washing of the inner sinful impurity of souls through the shed blood of Christ.

It gives a scripture. Through it, we have acquired the forgiveness of sins through Christ's blood as the covenant with God of a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus, believers can comfort themselves with a comforting promise of eternal blessedness. And then it goes on about communion and gloriously in his heavenly being, he is our soul's life-giving bread, food and drink, and unites himself in the holding of his spiritual supper with all true believing souls. So again, I think that these are just important. It's interesting with, with the Hutterites, Peter Rittman, um, and he describes in his apology, I call it the apology of Peter Rittman or his confession of faith. And he speaks a lot about, again, what he sees in the Lutherans and what he's seeing in the Catholics.

He talks about the need for this order of preaching, receiving faith. But then when it comes to baptism, his, he has, he doesn't, it's, it's not at all like this is just some mere ordinance that he's doing. For instance, when they're giving even the instructions in the Hutterites how to give the baptism, it says this, the baptizer and the congregation kneel with the baptismal candidates to ask God's forgiveness for their sins.

Then the baptist, so the baptizer and the congregation kneels, everybody kneels, and the baptismal candidates to ask God's forgiveness for their sins. This is the act of the baptism itself. Then the baptizer takes pure water and pours it over each one ready for baptism, saying, I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in accordance with your faith. God has forgiven your sins and drawn you into his kingdom. Henceforth, sin no more that nothing worse may happen to you. And then he goes on to say, since in baptism a person's sins are left behind and forgiven and the church has the key, baptism should take place before the church, in front of the church.

However, if it is not possible to reach the church, the baptism may do it alone. So, uh, one last one I'm going to discuss, this kind of brings in a, the, the, the, the latest to the, to the old groups of Anabaptists, the Brethren, which we have the German Baptist movement coming into, um, this fold, have very strong language in this. Um, so here's one from 1850, um, Peter Need, which was a, a, um, uh, a very big, uh, figure there in the, in the, um, German Baptist, puts it in this strong language. He says, we have evidence enough from the word of God to convince us that baptism for the forgiveness of sins is a gospel doctrine, that in this institution, the believer can have all his sins washed away.

But how astonishing it is that so many of our modern Christians should overlook and set at not this part of the counsel of God. They will not have the forgiveness of sins to be connected with baptism. It's too mean, too contemptible, a thing to be connected with salvation. They have become wiser than Christ, the apostles, the old fathers, and therefore will not suffer baptism to be a means of salvation. Very strong. You, you, they had like general conferences where they're, they're all even discussing what to do with ministers who don't use this kind of language in their, um, in their groups. So just to throw those out, um, I wanted to put those up front because it could be kind of heavy just to see one quote after another, one quote after another.

Now, if I may, let's go a little deeper and see what it is when we discuss how the, the radical Reformation discussed these sacraments and get into some deeper meaning and why this matters. Okay, Dean, you're, you're giving us lots of these quotes and why does this even matter? First of all, you know, when we talk about all this, it's, uh, and, and many times these discussions on this idea, on one side is transpensation, the other memorialism, it, it's so much an anachronism. Um, it's not true to the time. Matter of fact, just a few months ago, um, I was though over at, um, I was in, um, the Grossmunster and the, the, the leading head elder, Christian Valtti, who is the successor of Zwinkli.

All right. So he gave us an amazing tour. It was a very generous, uh, tour of it with Anabaptist perspective. We were doing the tours over there. And when we were finally finished in the tour, I had to ask him a question. I said, I got a quick question. I study the sacraments a lot and I'm wondering, you know, you're the successor of Zwinkli, so to speak. Um, Zwinkli is often called, he has this memorialist view, you know, and I said, is that a fair representation of, of even his view? And he like, oh yeah, you could tell that he was like responding that absolutely not. And so I realized, okay, yeah, that a lot of this is anachronism of what we are reading back onto the 16th century.

And anachronism for, for those who haven't heard that word before, it's when you take something in history, a topic, a, um, a theology, a term, and you put it into an earlier time or vice versa where it doesn't fit. Here's a picture I have of Abraham Lincoln with a stereo, you know. Um, and so anachronism is an important thing to, to, to understand. Anachronisms are an important thing to watch for when we're studying our scriptures, when we're studying the early church, uh, and, and or the Reformation time, and to see what was it they were actually talking about. So when Conrad Grebel and Felix Mons and, and Michael Sattler were talking about and coming against these things, what exactly were they dealing with at their time?

And I'm afraid that just showing these graphs are, are not sometimes healthy. When it comes to the sacraments, just like this painting here, it's loaded with anachronisms, loaded with anachronisms. I mean, it's so much put on the early church. You know, when you read the DDK and you read the simple faith and you try and you think that, okay, this is, we're supposed to believe the faith that was believed by everyone at all times and all places. And you read the DDK and its simplicity or the Jester Martyr or the, the, the, the early representations of these, these sacraments, and they're very simple, filled with faith, and they always come and, and manifest us to look like Christ.

But let's dive in. What, what was it? What was it? If you were an early Anabaptist that you were even talking about when you were involved with the discussions of the sacraments, I've got this, this, follow me here, follow me here. Um, can y'all see still this? Wait, can you still, can you see this picture of the Vatican here?

Can someone tell me? Yes. Okay, great. All right. The Vatican Museum has this amazing, um, okay, so this is painted by Raphael. It's in the, if you go to the Vatican Museum and you go to, uh, um, up close to the Sistine Chapel and you have the Raphael rooms, um, you have here where Julius II, Pope Julius II, would have commissioned this in around 1509. And the, the room is loaded with Renaissance, uh, understanding of the time painted around 1509. I mean, everything from the floor, uh, of Julius II, Pontifex Maximus, to the ceiling, everything's a story, everything from everything. Okay. So just for sake of time, I won't go into it. But one thing in this room is you're setting here the most famous room, which would have, they believe was Julius II, the warrior pope's, um, room is you have these two images on either side.

So imagine his desk right here in the middle. So you have in every, you know, historical theology or philosophy class, you always get this school of Athens. So here you have the school of Athens, um, with Plato over here and Socrates and over there, and you've got, uh, Aristotle, and I'll discuss this in just a second.

On the other side, you have, um, the sacraments. This is called the disputation now, but when, uh, Raphael painted it, it was just called theology. So you had here the meeting of philosophy and theology. On the sidewalls here, you have the arts. Um, they show the muses and the different, uh, pagan, uh, muses and how we take things even out of the, the, the, the, the sarcophagus, you know, the tombs and bring it out. This is Renaissance. And over here you have canon law, you know, and bringing this all together, you have Neoplatonism, uh, without apology. And it's not, that's not all bad, but you have to understand that when they were discussing the mass, putting this with this was all part of the plan.

Now let me go to back to our slides here and why this matters. So this is really important. So bear with me on this. And it gets a little deep, but bear with me because I think it's important. So you here have in the, the school of Athens painting, you have Plato pointing up with, this is always brought up in philosophy classes. He has Timaeus, which is, is, um, his book where he really goes into his forms. So he's saying that the forms, the essence of what's really true is up in the heavenlies. And this is what's known for Plato's view.

Aristotle, you see his hand is coming down and he has his book on his ethics and he has it down here. He says, no, but it's, it's up there. And, and he would believe the forms truly were in another realm, but they exist in the, the, the thing itself.

And so on the other side, you have the sacraments and it coming down with the focus on the wafer itself. You can see the theology of all this Neoplatonism coming together, that the true essence of who Jesus Christ is exists in the forms in heaven, but coming down and existing here.

And so they would take this as a monstrance they had and they would put the wafer in here and literally worship the, the council of Trent, which I'll show you, makes it where you literally worship the bread because they're showing in a Neoplatonism kind of idea that the, the actual presence of Christ, if it's true in heaven, but manifested here, we can then worship the bread itself.

Um, and this is where I believe it goes too far with the early church and the, um, and the, the, uh, the Anabaptists and the Reformers and immediately the Catholics before the Council of Trent. So in the early church, and I'll have time to, to really go into a, a big, uh, it was very clear they believed in the real presence. Here's just one quote from Tertullian, just one of many, uh, he, uh, Tertullian writing, he declared plainly enough what he meant by the bread when he called the bread his own body. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the New Testament to be sealed in his blood, affirmed the reality of his body.

So again, you even have more clear ones than that in the early church.

But it's not like you see anything like this idea of worshiping this bread itself, nor even the elements, the, the real presence stopping merely in these bread, but yet being manifested in the gathered believers, like, which is the concerns I believe the Anabaptists bring to it. Because listen to, to like this quote from Tertullian as well.

Having taken the, the bread, he says again, his reasoning against the Gnostics. The Gnostics didn't believe that Jesus was coming to earth. Um, and he says this, having taken the bread and giving it to the disciples, Jesus made it his own body by saying, this is my body. Then watch, Tertullian goes on to say, that is the symbol of my body.

And then Tertullian says, there could have not, there could not have been a symbol, however, unless there was first a true body. An empty thing or phantom is incapable of a symbol. He likewise, when mentioning the cup and making the new covenant to be sealed in his blood, affirms the reality of his body, for no blood can belong to a body that is not a body of flesh.

So in this, I think it's important. Uh, again, I don't have time to go into a, a deep view of the early church, but I very much believed in a real presence in the community, with a, in the, in the, uh, communion.

But to, to bring that into this sort of Neoplatonic concept of that now we go through the math that we can now worship this bread or it loses even to be called a symbol any longer. I, I honestly just don't see that in the early church. Um, as clearly, uh, I don't think Tertullian would be using this kind of language as that was the case.

And this was before the Reformation. This was a, a more of the way the discussion was, was back and forth. You know, unfortunately, at the time of the Reformation, a lot of sectarian lines were drawn. But like, as you go through the, the middle ages and the, the different ones, you see big discussions on what does that actually mean to be the real presence, you know, in, uh, in the communion and, and to what way, to what degree is that? For instance, there was this big debate in 1059, and Berenger was the, the big dispute. And you're looking through middle ages, uh, disputes. This was a big one. And he rose up and he said, I just think the language that we're using about the real presence, yes, he believed in the real presence very clearly, but you guys are taking it a little far.

It was very alarming to the different Catholic groups. And so they made him say a, a oath that, that you're going to have to say, or that you're going to get excommunicated. This, and this is part of the oath. He says, I, Berenger, believe in my heart and openly profess that the bread and wine which are placed on the altar are after consecration, not only a sacrament, but the true body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that sensually, and here's the point of the middle ages, sensually, not only in sacrament, but in truth, they are handled and broken by the hands of the priest and crushed by the teeth of the faithful. So this idea of literally eating and chewing on the body of Christ was a medieval, um, thing that was debated back and forth, and this became an oath for a while.

Um, through this, you had lots of different miracles that were supposedly happening with sacraments, bleeding, and different things happening and all these different stories. Here's a book I have here that just mentions all of these different, um, manifestations during this time of this, apparently this, what it meant for the body to be present. Finally, you do come to Thomas Aquinas, and he makes some clarifications here. How, okay, he says the body of Christ is not in this sacrament in the way a body is in a place, which is bound by the dimensions of a place, nor in, nor is it broken by being divided, but it's in the species that it's broken. In other words, the accidents, uh, this Neoplatonism concept, the accidents or the Aristotle idea.

And then he goes, the chewing affects only the species, not the body of Christ itself. Or if the body of Christ were sensually broken, it would follow that it's corrupted, which is impossible. So finally, okay, so somebody, um, kind of tampered that a little bit, but nevertheless, where I'm taking us is all of these hundreds of years of this kind of discussion, um, rising up through the church produced a lot of, uh, a lot of culture around the mass and a lot of excesses around the mass, which the reformers and many, uh, and I mean reformers both in the Protestant and, um, and the, uh, Catholics, uh, it mattered. Um, that from the Catholics and the Protestants that were concerned about.

It's okay. So there's that. And that's so this idea I want you to understand that when we come and discuss what the reformers were even talking about, when you see the spectrum of transubstantiation on one side and, and, and memorialism on the other, these spectrums were loaded with theological baggage that were hundreds of years old by the time we discussed it. So today we meant, where are you on the spectrum?

It's, it's, uh, it's, it means something. All right. So does faithfulness matter? Um, the other thing that they were just, were concerned with, both the Catholics, the Protestants, and the Anabaptists before the Council of Trent, at least before these lines were drawn, is it, is it okay that we just, there's wickedness everywhere? I mean, there was actually taxes on, on how, on how having concubines. If you're a priest, okay, you have to be celibate, but you can have concubines. Matter of fact, with Julius II there, the pope before him, um, had actually his concubine or his wife, hidden wife, living in the Vatican with him. And so all of this was like, okay, we've got, you know, killings happen.

We've got this, this, the wickedness that's, that's happening. Does this, how does this, does any of this affect our sacramental language of baptism and what it means to be in faith and salvation and communion and doesn't any of that count? Well, they had an answer to that too. They would, they claim, well, the Donatist tragedies, uh, they gave this kind of impression that says the priest has to be perfect. So they would denounce the, the Anabaptists as Donatists or the people who would say that your life matters as Donatists. And really, that's not fair either. I mean, yes, okay, it's not as if maybe the minister, if he's having a doubt, can affect the sacrament, but doesn't faith matter at all?

The, the believer, the, the person taking the, the sacraments, doesn't that matter? And so the reformers believed that it did. So the doctrine that they were coming against was this idea of ex opera operato, which simply means from the work it was performed. I don't care, don't look at our life or, you know, don't be criticizing us. We, because we have these proper channels of, of apostolic succession and we have these proper things, we can guarantee these sacraments ex opera operato from the work performed. We've got it. And if you're not, the only way you can know for sure is not from your holiness of your life or whether you look like Christ or anything is if you have all these proper channels of, of all of these, uh, uh, uh, different things that they had in their, uh, their dogmas on church order and structure and these sorts of things.

The reformers from both the Catholics and the, the reformers during the time of reformation were like, we've got it, talk about this. Erasmus was bringing these things up. Many of the Catholics were bringing these things up and reformers were bringing these up. And here's the thing, I get it. I get it that, well, what do you do with heresy? So, you know, for instance, um, as the church went on, you had to deal with heresy. So like, um, I have two bullseyes here. So here you have the main bullseye, the big one. But over here, let's say you have areas talking about something, then you have to go outside of here to deal with this heresy because it wasn't necessarily something we received from the apostles, but we have to deal with it.

And people like Justin Martyr are amazing in the early church of like discussing human philosophy. But yet when he brings his apology back over and over and over again, it looks like Jesus. When he describes the church, when he describes the faith, it keeps just giving us summaries of the teachings of Jesus.

Unfortunately, later on, finally you go off to the side that becomes Christianity and the basics, the teachings of Jesus and the life of Jesus becomes obscured. And then this is the point where it gets very bad and very dangerous is now when you start mixing that kind of, you can't touch us because we've got this proper channel of succession. We've got this proper channel of, of, uh, the way we interpret these, um, uh, dogmas of communion and sacraments and, uh, ordinations and such. And then you mix that with the state, it gets really bad, really bad. You know, Jesus said, he, Jesus called them to himself, the verse from Matthew 20, and he said, you know that the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and they exercised dominion and those who are great exercise authority over them, but you, yet it shall not be so among you.

And so this idea of forming this together with the state church together becomes very dangerous. And this is part of what everybody was dealing with during the time of the Reformation. And it's part of what we have to worry about today. I bring this up and I, I'm going to bring some, some points that I, I think are very needed for today. So when Constantine did this and he became the, brought the church and the state together, and of course we don't have time to go into details on that, it's no innocent thing.

Um, and I don't blame Constantine. He was an amazing leader. I, I, I blame the church, but when he brought the church, church and state together, he even formed, brought it from Rome to Constantinople, uh, modern day Istanbul, created a giant tower of himself, put a naked statue with a sun god hat on. Um, he, he had his, his son executed, his, uh, uh, brother-in-law executed, even though he swore that he wouldn't. Um, his children after him still, who supposedly now were new Christians, were made him a pagan god. And yet somehow through all that and their, their discussions of the sacraments and what church is and how you're only a proper sacrament is if you're in this thing now that Constantine and the church has ordered as patriarchs and, and different things, that's not Christianity.

Um, and it's, and it's concerning because of what happened after that. You know, there's this quote by Tolstoy, and it's a very pointed quote, and it brings this, and I'm bringing this up because of trying to take the view of what they dealt with in the sacraments and, um, and bring it more to, um, how they saw it from a completely different angle. So Leo Tolstoy, when he's talking about now the forming of this church and the state together, um, he brings up this, um, this, this statement, and I think it's, it's very pointed, and I think it's, it's, it's good that it's pointed. So let's, let's, let's dive into this. Okay.

So Leo Tolstoy, um, talking about this idea of the church and state when it came together, um, and comparing that to the teachings of Christ, he says this. Um, he said, no one said to him, no one said to Constantine, so I think we shouldn't blame Constantine. It's, it's the church's fault. And he said, no one said to him, the kings exercise authority among the nations, but among you, it shall not be so. Do not murder. Do not commit adultery. Do not lay up riches. Judge not, condemn not, resist not him that is evil. But they said to him, you wish to be called a Christian and to continue to be a chieftain and a robber, to kill, to burn, to fight, to lust, to execute, to live in luxury.

That can all be arranged. And they arranged a Christianity for him, and they arranged it very smoothly, better even than could have been expected. They foresaw that reading the Gospels, it might occur to him that all this Christian life is demanded, not the building of temples and worshiping in them. This they foresaw, and they carefully devised a Christianity for him as would led him to continue to live his old heathen life unembarrassed. On the one hand, Christ, God's Son, only came to bring salvation to him and to everybody. Christ, having died, Constantine can live as he likes.

So as this builds up to the Reformation and the state church and the protection that they had on the sacramental theology in both the communions, the baptisms, the infant baptisms, the, uh, ordinations, finally you're rising up in the time of the Reformation when the Bible is now beginning to be out. Um, Erasmus is getting people to read the, the scriptures in the Catholic Church. Luther's doing this. Um, many reformers in the Catholics and the reformers are crying out, but unfortunately at the time of Reformation, strong sectarian lines are made. And I think this is a big problem.

Um, um, and now today, now today we can't hardly discuss these things, um, outside of those sectarian lines. I, I again, I said at the beginning, I don't think the Anabaptists had the last word on the sacraments. And there's many things I love to read, um, from both Catholics and Protestants and reformers of the depth that brings into onto the ordinances. I love the, the reformed view of, of the script, the reading of the scripture and the gospel as a, as a, uh, sacrament. But after these strong sectarian lines, it brings into this debate and brings us to the place where these, these radical reformers were at this time.

So this is, is difficult. So in the Council of Trent then, finally, as all the fights and, and Luther has his now thing and, uh, you know, starting and the, and the different groups are fighting, finally the Council of Trent strikes back and they have their own Reformation where they draw lines that are very unfortunate. And this is where they actually lay out the canon that we are to not only is a real presence there, but we can actually worship the bread itself. And then this becomes the, the transubstantiation on the other side.

And so if it goes through, this is not just a communion thing, but we can march around with it. That's what that actually said there. We can actually march around with it. And you, it's like literally Jesus Christ was walking down the road, no matter what our life is like, no matter what we're expressing and that kind of a thing.

So where did the Anabaptists now come to this whole world? A thousand years of these discussions and these, and then now they're taking the words of Jesus, believing these things, reading the early church, reading these things and, and saying, wow, so what do we do with this? There's a, this is a perfect example here in the Martyrs' Mirror, written just a few years after the, the Council of Trent. Simon Dinkremers is like Northern Belgium. Um, and you see the image there of a procession coming through. This is right after the Council of Trent made it where it's dogma and anathema if, you know, you speak against this kind of a thing. Um, and there's the Anabaptists with this little shop.

What do you do? You can see the kind of, um, people that are, are crying out to him, you know, very well dressed there saying, you got a bow. This is, and what was going through his head there?

It's interesting in this account in the Martyrs' Mirror, and it gives us now, it erases the anachronism of, of what all this actually meant. So eventually he was captured, and it doesn't tell us exactly, assume burned at the stake because it was Catholics usually burned people at the stake. But it gives us even the details of the, um, the, the person that was arresting him, the bailiff. Uh, and it says this about it. It says the bailiff who had him executed on returning home from this deed was laid upon a bed of severe sickness and constantly exclaimed with sorrow and remorse, "Oh Simon, Simon."

And all of the priests and monks sought to absolve him. They were nevertheless not able to give him the least comfort, but he soon died in despair, an instructive and memorial example to all tyrants and persecutors. It's a, it's a, it's a very, uh, meaningful, um, touch there of, uh, uh, uh, or a touchstone there of, of what they were actually dealing with. So when you're having this debate, okay, so all this about memorialism and transubstantiation and, well, how that's, it's about, so all that you mean this in your theology, yet you're actually killing people. How can you claim to have the real presence when it's connected to a state, uh, coercion and, and these types of things?

So it became very difficult for them.

So let me show you how it didn't get much better with the reformers. This is one of my favorite paintings. It shows the, this famous, uh, Marburg Colloquy, which was a, a debate between Martin Luther and Zwingli. And this is where we get the line of, of, uh, Luther on one side and Zwingli on the other. I love it because, uh, in this, so you see, look down on there, Zwingli, I mean, excuse me, Luther, uh, draws on the, the table with chalk, "This is my body." And so as he's doing this discussion, so the, the story goes is that they're fighting over this and, um, Zwingli keeps making memorialist statements and Luther keeps just pointing to, "This is my body."

And so finally they break up and at the end you see he's trying to, uh, Zwingli's trying to shake his hand and Luther's like, "No, I won't shake your hand," you know. Um, and it's, uh, it's a powerful statement. So this is where we get the, the idea then. So, okay, so which side are you on? So they say Luther was consubstantiation, meaning not quite transubstantiation, but consubstantiation true. I, I have not found that Luther actually used that term. As a matter of fact, he did not like the Neoplatonic reasoning that came with transubstantiation. But nevertheless, he's given that view.

Then memorialism on the other side. And so asking the Anabaptists then, well, whose side you're on? Well, all of your discussions are coming at it from the wrong place. So bear with me now as you try to walk through how this meant something so different to them. As I looked at this, okay, so whose side are you on? Okay, whose side are we on? And today, whose side are we on? So let's look at Zwingli. Okay, well, by this time, Zwingli would have overseen six executions in Zurich of Anabaptists, okay, starting with Felix Mons.

And so, okay, um, you're going to be talking about the real presence of Christ, yet you're killing people who differ on how you baptize and when you baptize. Luther had already by 1525 called for thousands, the deaths of thousands of peasants in his work labeled against the murderous, thieving hordes of the peasants. And you're asking me which side I'm on? Then I consider the Greek Orthodox. They, they invented the burning at the stake, killing of the Bogomils. Um, they used this burning at the stake. It, it visited them again in Russia in a terrible way. Um, and the Catholics through hundreds of years of, of actually church-sanctioned ecumenical councils sanctioning the persecution and killing of Muslim, Jews, um, Waldensians, Bogomils, and, and, and different ones.

And Philip Schaff even, even says that by 1530, so in this time where they're discussing these things, that the, the executions of Anabaptists alone by the Catholics have reached over 1,800 martyrs. And you're going to be talking about the real presence in communion. So I try to come up with a little AI picture here. Sorry about the AI funnyness if you start looking at it closeness, but here is the, the, the story here. Can you see the, the story I'm trying to show? So you got this debate going on. Oh, what does it mean? Is it this? Is it that? Is it that? The Anabaptists are in the side going, guys, it's about Jesus.

And somehow we've got to bring the manifestation of Jesus Christ present through these conversations, not what you guys are doing. So here's the point then.

They exhorted then that what you're doing, just stop this. So Pilgrim Marpek, which is, is one of the most amazing writers and many of the scholars that are talking about, uh, the, the more sacramental sides of the early Anabaptists, bring up Marpek's and he, and he was, it's beautiful. I'll show you just a few of his quotes. He says, therefore we exhort and further request that everybody put aside semantic battles concerning the bread and the wine and search his whole heart concerning the matter. And they quoted this passage and we forget this passage a lot. It's in First Corinthians 11. So we say, okay, I have the proper apostolic succession. I have the proper this.

Imagine Corinth. They had the proper apostolic succession, the proper church order. But Paul said, because of the way that they were living their life, he says, therefore when you come together in one place, it's not the Lord's Supper.

In other words, what you're doing, it doesn't count. I don't care what you're saying, however you come up with your Neoplatonic ideas, it doesn't count. This is what Paul is saying. Another version in NET says, the Net Bible. Um, now when you come together at the same place, you are not really eating the Lord's Supper. So some of the big, I don't have time to go into a big detail, obviously, um, over, but some of the big ones, uh, Hubmeyer and Marpek, and there's been very good research. I've read this article. You can find it online by Michelle Ferguson. This is with directions, Midnight Brethren Forum. Excellent one on, um, Marpek's theology. And bringing in this idea in the real presence of a realized incarnation.

And this is the, I just love this, uh, the concept that the Anabaptists brought into this, that the real presence is not just in the bread, but present within us in the gathered community and that that should actually, uh, look like Christ. So unfortunately we have in Marpek, um, we have him no longer now just fighting against the Catholics. We have another group over here, the spiritualist, and he's making the arguments that the spiritualists are making the arguments that we don't need sacraments at all. It's just a spiritual thing. And fortunately now we get the Anabaptists actually writing about what it means for them. And this is why Marpek's writing becomes so important. And for time's sake, I'm not going to give you the whole quotes, but it's this beautiful language where he talks about that.

Well, let me give it to this one here. He said, "Whoever has the truth in his heart, the truth which is pointed to and signified by the external sign, for him it is no sign at all, but rather one essential union with the inner. If, however, I receive the sign and do not have the essence in my heart, that in my heart, what would this sign benefit anyone? Would it not be a mockery of him in whose name I received it? Accordingly, if one desires to receive the external sign correctly, he must certainly bring with him the inner and the outer essence together. Wherever and whenever that happens, then the sign are no longer signs, but are one essence in Christ, according to the inner and the outer being."

So they're talking about this communion of the body of Christ working together. Um, and he discusses this, and for time's sake, I won't give you this, but he mentions this idea of this co-witness. And then when we have this co-witness, when it's truly faith in us, then this baptism for the forgiveness of sins, then this real presence of communion in us, in the gathered community, and in we have what we have amongst this community. It's no longer just signs or symbols. It's actually part of the faith. I mean, it's part of the reality with Christ himself. And that's just amazing, I think. Um, you know, we, we get this idea in the early church too.

Um, for instance, in Tertullian, um, he mentions this. He says, "Is there one Christ for the baptized and another for the learners? Have they some different hope or reward, some different dread of judgment, some different necessity for repentance? That baptismal washing is a ceiling of faith, which faith is begun and is commended by the faith of repentance.

We are not washed in order that we may cease sinning, but because we have, since in heart we have been bathed already." Again, this idea, yes, baptism was for the forgiveness of sins, but not without the inner washing first. Origen makes a statement similar to this. He says, "Now then, because he wants to show in these matters what it means to be dead in sin, he says, do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? For we have been buried with him through baptism into death, teaching through these things that if someone has first died to sin, he has necessarily been buried with Christ in baptism.

But if the person does not die to sin beforehand, he cannot be buried with Christ, for no one who is still alive is ever buried. But if one is not buried with Christ, he is not validly baptized." This actually was quoted, this passage and the Tertullian passage by Pilgrim Marpek to the reformers and to the Catholics. So this idea of faith is, is very, uh, very important.

So the last thing that I wanted to just, uh, the point that I wanted to bring up, and this is an excellent article. Um, I recommend people getting it. It's from the Harvard Theological Review, and it's by a scholar named Kirk McGregor. And he goes and he talks about Marpek's theology on this. And they, and he brings up something that's really profound. Um, what if this?

What if we had a communion servant sermon discovered from Jesus in which he explained what he considered most important to understand about communion? So imagine, okay, so you have John 6 talking about his body. We have, you know, teachings of communion. But what if we had, like, we discovered a communion sermon preached by Jesus?

The scholar is making the, the argument that that's the way the early Anabaptists considered John chapter 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17. And pause for a moment and ponder that because it's powerful. The Gospel of John, at the end of chapter 13, there's a little indication it looks like they leave, but they, they, they don't. And they keep, he keeps preaching from 14 to 17. Then the scripture shows that he left. But when you read all of that in the context of the communion that you have there, wow, it's really powerful. Um, you get things like, "If you love me, you keep my commandment." The, the, the audience saying, "How, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us and not to the world?"

Jesus said, "If you love me, you'll keep my word." In other words, we'll be followers of Christ. He goes on in chapter 15, "You are not of the world." He, uh, uh, "If you were of the world, the world would love you, but they hate you." In chapter 16, he says, "They're going to kick you out of synagogues." And so you can imagine the way the early Anabaptists were reading this. And finally, in chapter 17, at the very conclusion of this communion sermon, Jesus is praying about this oneness with each other, this real presence. And he says, "I do not pray for these alone, but also to those who believe in me through their word, that they are all one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they all may be one in us, that the world may believe that you sent me, and the glory which you gave me, I have given them that they may be one, just as we are one, I in them, you in me, you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that you sent me and have loved them as you have loved me."

And he goes on to the very end there, "And I have declared unto them your name and and will declare it, that the love with which you love me may be in them and I in them." This incarnational theology becomes very important. And I love this article by Kirk McGregor. And he talks about this. He says, "Hubmeyer maintained that the Lord's Supper is both a commemoration of Christ's presence and far more than a commemoration. It also means a communion of Christ's body with the recipients. That is to say, through participation in the bread and wine, the recipients literally commune with the physical body of blood and Christ." He goes on, "Hubmeyer meant that during the supper, the congregation as a whole and each individual member therein are consubstantiated, using Luther's term, so-called, into the physical body of Christ, simultaneously possessing Christ's sanctified human nature and their own human natures.

He did not mean, as Wingley did, that Christ is present only via his omnipresent divine Spirit during the supper, while his physical body remains at God at Father's right hand. Likewise, by grace, Hubmeyer denoted a divine substance, watch this, that empowers the soul, a knowledge to the physical substance of wine and oil that empowers the body. By contrast, Wingley denounced that as popish, this idea that grace as substance and define grace as personal assurance and not actually that something that changed somebody." So then he finally says, "Drawing these observations together, Hubmeyer believed that the supper is physically present Christ, that in the supper, the physically present Christ enables humans to temporarily possess, watch this, his physicality during which time their souls are filled with an empowering substance.

While Wingley believed that the supper is spiritually present, Christ freshly impresses upon the souls of the recipients the datum that they possess God's unmerited favor. For Hubmeyer, the empowering substance of grace leads believers to engage in ethical behavior. While for Wingley, the conviction of God's unmerited favor leads us, uh, while for Wingley, the conviction of God's unmerited favor leads believers to act morally." But this whole process of this communion he brings up, I don't have time to get into it now. I want to wrap this up. I told you I'd go to an hour and a half and I got five more minutes.

Um, this is the spirit we get in the early church. You know, it's funny, even we read Ignatius, so we have his very strong language of the real presence in communion. But when we read it in context of the early church, it's loaded with the Gnostics didn't have the teachings of Christ, the behavior of Christ, and they didn't have this. The connection of the teachings of Christ with the sacraments was joined together in the early church and the early Anabaptists in a very powerful way.

Um, finally, uh, McGregor, uh, McGregor goes on to say, "Hence the supper proves for Hubmeyer not only to be the primal meeting point between God, the Son, and the church, but a medium and expansion of the incarnation itself." And I say this, without a realized incarnation, the view of state churches remains too close to Gnosticism. I know that sounds very terrible, but imagine if the kind of language that we would be using about the incarnation was used about the way they're describing the communion. If we're saying, "Okay, he came to this earth and was incarnated, but you know, in essence, in heaven, it truly died on the cross and truly did these things, but what we actually see, we can't see him dying on the cross."

If we were to say that, there would be screams of, "This is Gnosticism from the word go." And to be fair to them, there's a lot of emphasis with the sacramental theology of the Catholics that is against Gnosticism. The Anabaptists wanted to move this one step further, that that incarnation comes into the believers and it should look like Christ. And as Paul says, "If it doesn't, what you're doing, it's not the Lord's Supper." So in wrap up, why does it still matter?

I love this, um, I love this, uh, debate I heard years ago by Paul Shirk. He's a brother in, uh, brother in our movement. And he said this, he's, uh, and talked about, "So the idea is, okay, Dean, all right, but they don't persecute people anymore. They don't kill people anymore. And, you know, does it really apply anymore?" Uh, I, I would say that the, the way the state is still connected to the, to the, the Catholic churches and many of the reformed churches, and can even come into our circles as well, that this must be repented of. And that Paul Shirk said this, and I think it's powerful. I use it a lot. Without repentance, the same theology given similar circumstances will likely produce the same results.

Did you catch that? That unless they change this, yes, things are maybe a little better, we think, but if we don't repent of this wrong view, that we can have this sort of sacramental grace without manifesting the real presence of Christ in the congregation, it gets very, very, uh, bad. So again, through the 12th, uh, even ecumenical councils, I already mentioned this, were, were, um, you know, propagating, uh, different, uh, persecutions and burning of the stake. Uh, in the East, um, it was, it was, uh, it was just as bad. I, you know, I'm, I'm in David Brissot and I, when we were in our, um, Anglican days, I remember somebody made the joke once.

And when they were trying to explain to us all the precision of, of, uh, of the liturgy and everything. And he made this joke and he says, "Do you know what the difference is between a literal liturgist and a terrorist?"

I said, "No." And he said, "You can negotiate with a terrorist." And that would be funny if it wasn't, except that it's not. And you, the history of this is bad. Like for instance, in the, in the Greek Orthodox during the, the, the, they're kind of after the Reformation and the old, the old believers in Russia, uh, in trying to conform the state churches of Russia with the Greek Orthodox in, in the, in the East, even the way you sign the cross with three fingers instead of two ended up burning at the stake of thousands of tens of thousands. A great Moscow council, Moscow council, look it up. It's, it's, it's dreadful how these things happen.

And then, but the final things though, is this different now? Is this different? Here's where I, I would love to land all this. And I, I realize this is a lot of heavy, um, things, but very deep and rich things as well.

When we consider the sacraments, it must flow from who Christ truly is. And when it gets the coercion and when it gets mixed with the states and the, um, uh, when, when our state and the power and these types of things, historically, it always gets, it's always bad. And so are things different now, really? You know, I, when we look at the consider, particularly in the East, of how the, the Greek Orthodox, uh, coming together with emperors, having emperors set as part of the ecumenical councils, how they could read the early church and walk through those and call those ecumenical councils as sad. In the West, the pope just became an emperor himself, like Julius, who became the warring, uh, bishop.

In the East, this forming is to this day still occurring. Just in 2020, there is a, a huge cathedral built in, in praise of the military, uh, in Russia. And even in Russia, the, the many of the Orthodox are even complaining, uh, "Look at this. It kind of looks like missiles." And even this missile-looking thing that is apparently some form of a Mary or something, which is called the Mother of the Winners, um, is a, just a praise of military power all wrapped up in this sacramental kind of language. Here we have different icons and mosaics, um, with showing soldiers and people venerating in front of these things. Um, you have the blessing of, of weapons.

You have going on literally this sacramental blessing of nuclear weapons, um, going on today. Um, and fortunately, I, to be fair, there are proposals, and I'm glad there's at least a proposal. Uh, here I found this news article, uh, Russian priests that should stop blessing nukes. This church proposal said, "I think it's a great idea. Let's, let's keep that going." And there's a book like this, The Russian Nuclear Orthodoxy, of how these things get brought together. But that's the

look like Christ. So I'll wrap it up then in this final words, um, of what I saw in the early Anabaptists that for them, faith is necessary for any sacrament to be effectual. Number two, God works through the sacraments as channels of grace in our lives. These are not mere symbols or human ceremonies, but real acts of God upon the believer. In communion, number three, the real presence of Christ is present not merely in the elements, but in the gathered community in reality. And number four, the sacramental real presence of Christ will always produce a real incarnational manifestation of the body of Christ here on earth. Big point for the early Anabaptists. And this body of Christ puts the teachings of Jesus into practice.

Without this, what you're doing, it's not the Lord's Supper. So, okay, so that's it. I will throw it now. I hit right at my, um, hour and a half, and I will now hit to you, um, and see what you all think. Where do I get out of here? Yes.

Thank you so much, Dean. Um, I appreciate the fact that this could be many more hours of teaching. And as, as the farmers would say, I think you've bailed it pretty tightly here today. Um, yeah, wow, so much, so much, so many thoughts I have. But so just, I, so I tried to summarize in my own words to, to you tell me if I'm understanding this correctly or not. But I, I think what you're saying in this, in this presentation is that the two sides, um, contrasting memorialism to transubstantiation are actually a result of sectarian squabbling over the centuries, especially since the Reformation maybe. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And, and you're saying we're really missing the point if we've missed the presence of Christ in, in those, in those sacraments, but also in the gathered congregation.

And if the, and if their lives lived out, doesn't look like Jesus' life, then we missed the point. I mean, I'm so glad to hear you summarize that. That's exactly the point. So I wanted to get across. Well said. Yes. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Hey, amen. I, I really appreciate that. And like, I, and I appreciate you're bringing out the importance of faith. Um, yeah, without faith, the emptiness of these, that these things can become. Many of us in the kingdom circles, we, we get very excited about hearing language of real presence and baptism for the forgiveness of sins. And so we get real excited about that. And then we run to that, and then suddenly we're in a camp that doesn't require faith for that to be present. And it becomes this ex opera, operato. And then next thing you know it, you're up, you're falling down the lines into the Greek Orthodoxy, into the Catholics, and you've lost that Christ part.

Um, and that's a shame. And I, and I think that if we always remember that faith is the key, not to diminish, um, I'm, I'm one big on the kingdom movement to bring more meaning to the sacraments, uh, but with, but let's be very careful that we don't do this, uh, in an ex opera, operato way without the faith being the primary, um, key to that. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Great. Thanks. So I can tell that there were other people that were engaged and, and paying attention. I got a couple quotes, uh, a couple, yeah, quotes on here by Mike Ahosen. Um, he's, and some, some thumbs ups to that. So that was great. Um, I have a question for you, but I'm not sure. I guess I'm going to let, I'm going to open it up here for anyone else who's on. I, it's possible that we have a lot of questions. Um, and so, yeah, what, what questions or responses do you have for, for Dean? Um, maybe this has stirred some thinking for you. I'm sure it has. Okay.

And so just unmute yourself. If you don't have your video turned on, that'd be great if you did, if you can, um, and, and ask a question or for what you have for Dean to answer. Brother Dean, this is John D. Hello, brother John. Uh, if baptism is connected so closely with the washing of sins, and I'm not talking about baptism or regeneration, but those two are held pretty closely together, then why did the early church require a two-year instruction to catechumens before they baptized them?

I mean, they put baptism two years off into the future if you became a believer. Yeah, it's, it's a great question. And, and again, I'm glad you brought up the term baptism regeneration. I don't like the term. Um, I don't like transubstantiation and I don't like baptism regeneration because both seem to imply something that I don't think is correct. You can, you scientifically explain yourself away, but if baptism regeneration, what tends to people mean is that you are illuminated and everything starts in the water itself. It is an exaggeration, but that's kind of what's implied there. Um, and so, yeah, I, I think that's where the Tertullian vote quote there is being said, brother John, is that, um, he's talking about, is there a different God for the catechumen as there is for the, for the baptism?

And he's talking about people delaying that. I, I do struggle over, um, the delaying. If we look in the scriptures, they were so close and it makes it a lot easier. They believed and were baptized. And I, I will say that, that I struggle with that. And I know I, I liked the, and I know even my, my practice on Lesvos Island, you know, when people, when the, when the refugees would be coming over and that type of a thing, wow, I, I experienced trying to really make sure they have a genuine faith and they're not just wanting to be Americans or whatever and that type of a thing. And I tended to delay, you know, baptism there too.

Um, and so I, I don't like the three years later, uh, the early church, but it's there. Uh, and I can't deny it. Um, but it does seem that the further we draw them apart, the more obscure the, the, the easy biblical reading of it becomes.

Um, but if you think about it, this is the, the key though, faith, uh, you know, baptism saves us. It says, okay, it gives the scriptures, uh, be baptism for the forgiveness of sin. But is that the only thing that saves us?

It also says, if you confess with your mouth and believe with your heart, um, you shall be saved. That he who believes in, uh, it even says in a very strange, I don't understand the passage that, uh, that women shall be saved through the bearing of children if they, if they maintain it, you know, and such, uh, in First Timothy. So as we come and get excited about this sort of a sacramental salvific language that we get in the communion and baptism, we start reading the early church and that type of a thing. I'm all amen, amen, amen with that. However, we have to see that when Paul's describing the covenant from the old covenant to the new covenant, what's the change of the dispensation?

Faith. Yes, he uses baptism for us to enter into that, to that, um, kingdom. As a matter of fact, it's a, there's a beautiful quote both by Peter Riddman and, um, and Hubmeyer, um, where the reformer said, well, it's just like, it's just like circumcision, right? So in the baptism, um, baptism in the, uh, old covenant, um, was on eighth day babies. Why can't you baptize eight day babies in the new covenant? And it's a good argument. It's a really good argument. But both Marpek and, and, and Riddman said, we agree with you. I completely agree with you. Just let them be born first.

So, so it's a beautiful concept of, of what the covenant is. The Gentiles come in by faith. Yes, God uses baptism for the forgiveness of sins on us. And we don't need to turn that into some weird memorialism or I just do this because I'm commanded to. As Baptists, we used to say, I have a wedding ring. Now I'm still saved with or without the wedding ring. You know, that's not the language we get from the Bible. So let's not add to that, you know, and that type of a thing. But yeah.

So I asked David Berso that question about the two-year delay. And, uh, I don't know if I haven't quoted the way he said it, but the essence was the whole experience, the two-year instruction, the water being poured, it was all part of big baptize. Yeah. Uh, so that's how he explained it. It's a good point. I've heard the now, I've preached this sometimes at a baptism, um, that the baptism is the end of the beginning.

Mm-hmm. And so it's, it's a good way to kind of think of it, that this whole process of faith, but, um, I don't like to call it mere memorialism or just command or that kind of a thing. That's not the language we get. However, to remove God's working, Acts 2:36, preaching of the word of God, convicted, pricked to the heart, cried out, what shall we do? Baptized for forgiveness of sin, and they received the Holy Spirit.

Um, the order there I think is important. Well, you know me, Dean, I like to remove everything from the realm of theological debate. Uh, and so the Roman Catholics call me from the billboards and they want to know what I believe about transubstantiation. And this is my answer. And I would like to hear what you have to say. I say, why do I have to have a theology about communion? Why can't I just do it?

If it turns into the blood, blooded body of Christ, which I don't believe it does, so be it. If it doesn't, so be it. And why answer this question? Why do we have to even have a theology about communion? Well, I, you're very well said. And I think that was Marpek's response where that quote, he said, put away your semantic battles about this and check your own heart. Um, the, the, where it became so powerful and it's still there today, unfortunately done in very sectarian ways, um, is it, it usually is used in some coercion of why you have to be in my group, why you have to be Greek Orthodox or why you have to be Roman Catholic or why you have to be Russian Orthodox or Coptic or whatever.

And we protect this little thing and this little power. And it's that coercion that I think is just a tragedy to be wrapped around this. And I don't think you'd, you'd have these kinds of debates if it wasn't built into that kind of coercion. Yeah. Um, so I think you're right. And I think that's Marpek's answer. Put away the semantic battles and check your heart. Yeah. I have a lot more questions, but other people. Yeah, go ahead.

Yeah. Thank you, Dean. I really, really enjoyed that. Um, and, uh, I really enjoyed all the quotes you brought out of the early Anabaptists. I didn't realize Hubmeyer had so much to say about it. And I knew, uh, I just recently learned that Pilgrim Marpek is a great and balanced, uh, writer on this subject. And, uh, yeah, I appreciate you bringing that all out. And so my question is, if this was an important thing to the Anabaptists, how and when did it become, at least for a lot of the groups, a once a year thing?

It's a very good question. You know, as we saw in the Congregational Order in Zolokin, it was three or four times a week. Um, Marpek actually had it weekly at, in the nighttime. Um, and we see that practice.

You know, it's, I think it comes from, uh, you know, first of all, meeting in persecution and, and this type of thing. And when you're, you're getting together, it took it very meaningful. And what actually is the command? Um, Jesus said, I wish to, to, to eat this Passover with you. And so at the very least, I think at the very least we have a command of Christ, um, that, that we should be at least having it on our Passover, you know, equivalent that, that we should have that. We have in the book of Acts, it says that they, he, they met on the first day of the week for the breaking of bread. Now this is a, this is an indication that it seems that they, uh, is that every Sunday or is this, it's a testimony of what happened.

It's not a command. It's kind of like the, the community of goods. Community of goods is certainly within the realms, and of course it's within our Anabaptist expression of how we express community. It comes out in community of goods. And we see that in the book of Acts, but we don't look at it as a command.

And so, but if in my, in my, uh, the way I read the early church, of course, I would say that I would certainly lean more towards a weekly communion. And it seems like an evening would be the way to do that. I think David Berso's church does that. They meet in the evening for theirs, kind of in that way. Um, but I think the command, we have to separate the command from the practice when we look in the book of Acts. Um, uh, still, I think if you're going to apply early Christian theology, I think to be fair, you should. But, um, so yeah, I think taking it very seriously, I mean, again, one of the big battles between when the Amish came through, uh, it had gotten down to just one amongst the Swiss brethren and he wanted to do it to two.

And of course, the whole, uh, battle between them of frequent communion was, was to get that. So yeah, I, I think that this is, is something, it's not an end story. And that why I said, I don't want to consider this like the Anabaptists were the last word. I actually really like reading people on other views of the sacraments. I just really think that it's time for the, what the concerns of the Anabaptists have on the, the, the ecumenical discussion of the sacraments, this really needs to be brought to the table because it's basically completely ignored. We get, we talk about the spectrum, memorialism or transubstantiationalism.

Let's talk about the incarnation of Christ within the communion with God that, that we talk about in First Corinthians chapter 10. That's the element that they're bringing to the table that needs to be heard today. But yeah, it's a good question. Um, I think we should, we're open to certainly do it more. I think there's nothing in our Anabaptist tradition that would prevent us from doing it more frequently. I'll put it that way. Yeah. Amen. Thank you, brother. That's some good thoughts.

So I, yeah. Hey, brother Dean. Hey guys. Hey, brother Mike. I, uh, I, this was great. I, I appreciated the conversation. I just recently taught on this too. And so the thoughts are still fresh. And, and at the end, I brought in your third and fourth points, which is this idea of the incarnation, it like coming in and going out. And I feel like brother John D, it, it's, it sort of answers your, your question as well. He's on the phone now. Um, but I was just looking at First Corinthians 10, um, the cup of blessing, which we bless is not the communion, the bread we break is not communion, the body of Christ, for we being many are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one bread.

Yes. So is, is that one bread talking about the bread that we break or is it talking about him? Both. I feel like the, I feel like, yeah, amen. I say both. Yeah. That it's, that these things aren't, and that's not like, sometimes I feel like some people would want to say, well, that's kind of, uh, like, like cheapening it or something. But no, like he's the bread and, and that's the bread and those things go together. And that. But you're right on it. When you ponder that, how much more is that, that it's actually a reductionist view to focus this just on the wafer. And I'm not preventing it that it's not in the bread.

And then when you start reading through the early church, I didn't have time to go into a whole thing on the early church, but think about how Justin Martyr discusses that in chapter 66 of his first apology, you know, where he talks about, um, how just like we eat, uh, food and it nourishes us. Um, so the body and blood of Christ creates in us the body and blood, this, this communion that we see that in First Corinthians 10 passage you're quoting there is so real. And this is where it just blew my mind actually studying how the early Anabaptists read John.

So when you read John 13, 14, 15, 16, and 17 as a Jesus communion sermon, whoa, that's like, why would you not then? And when you, when you come onto that, you're like, yeah, this is amazing, you know? And, uh, and that becomes this oneness that we have with God and with each other and the bread and the bread. It's all part of that, that, that is powerful. Yeah.

Yeah. That, that the effect that it has on us rather than that, that, um, oversimplifying things and you get, you know, it's either this view or that view and then, or, or you find a line at some point, well, do you believe this? And like they made that guy swear that oath. Yeah. You know, are you with us or are you with us or are you with them? No. Right. Joshua, that whole answer of the capital of the Lord. There you go. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's good. And, and I, brother Wendell, I thank you for your, um, I was trying to do that. I was like, okay, what's his point? All right. What's his point?

Put it on the head of a pin. And I don't have, I love that. Mm-hmm. Uh, but you, you were able to do that. That almost should be like a tagline on this, uh, uh, on this message. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you so much, brother Dean. Excuse me. Um, you know, recently I walked past a table of young radical Catholic students and they were discussing the host, you know, in the hand, in the hand or in the mouth.

Oh, wow. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And you know, when you help us understand, you know, there's just so much. These fights are a thousand years old plus. And they're hugely packed. Yeah. Um, and I'm so thankful for the simplicity in Christ. Um, yeah. And, and for this beautiful, uh, reality of, of yes, of, well, yeah, the need for to truly be in Christ and of following him. That's the important thing. Mm-hmm. Um, and in community and the beauty of that. Um, wow. So thank you. Thank you for, for sharing this morning.

Amen. I'm so thankful that you're, uh, you didn't get called into. Yeah. I was kind of wondering in the work there. But Wendell, I want to, I want to hear your question though. You got to. Okay. Hey. Well, so yeah, I do have a question for you, Dean. Mm-hmm. So yeah, just sort of similar to, to Brian's, Brian's experience of walking past and hearing discussions on the very technicalities of this. I was just in an Episcopalian church building yesterday and I was in one of the back rooms, kind of like the little kitchen, kitchenette they had in the back. And there was a diagram there, um, showing the proper ways of preparing the table and the altar and all the different layers of, of, of fabric and everything that went into this and how it was, you know, it's just all very, um, very prescripted.

Yeah. And so yeah, I, I definitely recognize that some of these, like the way we think and talk about things can really harden into a very, um, definite ideas that we don't, we tend not to look outside of what we're used to. And, and so I really like, I like appreciate your, you're bringing this in and saying like, yes, the Anabaptists, we, we really want to hear what they have to say about this, but yet you're also recognizing, um, lots of wisdom and, and, um, depth in some other traditions and what they can bring to this discussion. But so my question is, you're pushing back on, on some really rigidly defined, um, ways of thinking about the sacraments.

My question is when, when we're actually coming down to, to practicing, um, communion or you, or whatever we want to call it, Eucharist, the, the, the Lord's Supper, um, and baptism, do work, do the words that we use matter? Okay. So I'm talking about, so there's a, there's a thing, you know, about what I'm talking about when I say the words of institution. Yes. Yes. Yes. Um, does that matter?

What do you think? Amazingly good question. Um, so, you know, my general hermeneutic of where I look at things, I use a scar. I think I've done one on this, the scripture, Christocentric, antiquity, and real. And so I look at the scriptures and then I see make a Christocentric application to that. I look to the early church and then I see how has that been practiced through the centuries, uh, as my scar analogy. So this is a, is a very, uh, loaded, obviously in good statement. I also like to be Catholic with a small c. Uh, in my, in my class, I, I teach the students, um, St. Vincent of Lorenz, uh, uh, that we should have the faith that's always from everywhere and for all, and for all times, um, from everyone, for all times, uh, that we were received, that that should always be present in us.

And so I look to the early church and see how that came through. So you're right. The, the, the West would see that without the words of institution, it doesn't count. So like when you go to a Catholic service or if you're at the Vatican or something, you'll hear a moment where the bell rings and that's after the priest has said the words of institution, this is my body. Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring. Episcopalians would have the same. It's the Western tradition. And that's when the moment changes. From that moment on, it's Christ is present. The East has what they call an epiclesis where they pray the Holy Spirit enter into the bread and make it this way, almost a little more, uh, uh, Lutheran type of view, uh, and that kind of a thing.

But still they would say the epiclesis is necessary for that to be valid. Mm-hmm. The difficulty is with that to, to, to jive that with the early church is let's say you take the DDK. The DDK has a very, uh, decently detailed, uh, of, of, of the, uh, of the early liturgy of the early church. There's no epiclesis. There's no words of institution.

And so like, wow, if that was so important that it wouldn't even count, and this is the doctrine of the apostles, you know, brought to us, the very earliest witness does not have that. Um, when we go further than that, the Justin Martyr's explanation and the way he describes that, um, he does say the words of the gospel are said. Uh, some people will say that's, that's dogmatically saying that's the words of institution. Um, um, that type of a thing.

I, I, so I, it's hard for me to be too dogmatic when I see the earliest witnesses of it do not, are not dogmatic with it. Um, that I don't, I don't see that. However, all that said, um, I usually say both.

Um, and I, and I, I like, uh, saying both. And I like this First Corinthians chapter 10, the blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the body in Christ? Because I think that this Corinthians 10 concept brings in the real presence in a very real way that manifests it not only in the bread, but a communion with us, one with us. And it brings the John, the John Jesus communion sermon to applicable to us. And I like, I like to bring that into my communion, um, uh, statements as well. I like Hippolytus's, um, uh, this is later, year 250, but his, he, he has a very elaborate communion prayer. I actually have it written in the margin of one of my Bibles.

I used to say it frequently about, you know, beating down Satan and, and the, the, you know, um, it's a pretty high church, not that great in a beachy setting, but, um, you know, so, but, but anyway, I, I still love all that and I appreciate the concerns that they're making. What are we asking for? What are we praying for?

Fair arguments, but I, I'm, I won't be dogmatic with it when I don't see it in represented in the early church. I, for me, then I can't really call it dogmatically Catholic when I don't even see it in the earliest witnesses.

Okay. Yeah. That's interesting. Thanks. So to build on this further. Okay. So I, in my experience, yeah, yeah, like that is not, the words of institution are not necessarily seen as a, as a necessary part. Mm-hmm. But then we look at the sacrament of baptism. Mm-hmm. Okay. Is a baptism valid if they're not baptized as the baptism is happening in the Father, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit?

A good question. I think it's a little different with, uh, the baptism, but let me see if that's, you can, you can pick on me if you think it's inconsistent, but Jesus commands us, go and baptize them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Um, so, um, I would say that is a command. And so I would rebaptize someone who was not baptized in those names. Um, uh, but I would not, if for most of the cases, if somebody was in genuine faith, were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I would not rebaptize them. Uh, but I do think it's necessary and I would not consider it completely valid if it did not have that in my personal take because of the commands of Christ seem explicit with that, even with the Great Commission.

And he didn't say, go and have, when you do this, do this remembrance of me. If he would have said there, and when you have communion, you know, do it saying, this is my body, it would be a kind of more equivalent to the, to the, to the, uh, baptism command.

Um, so we have to kind of extrapolate from his statement, this is my body. What is he meaning by that? And not to, to downplay it as my whole message is. But again, I still like to say it. What, you know, sometimes I see some communion prayers. I'm like, what are you even praying about? You know, it's like, and same way with communion. I mean, same way with baptism. Sometimes I always also think it's very good for us to pray the Holy Spirit on them at the end. Um, many times we forget that in our baptisms as well. But yeah, yeah, good questions. Great questions, actually. Yeah.

Very good. No, I appreciate that. That's, that's helpful for me. I was just, I was just thinking about this as I was, as I, I was, I was actually, I listened to one of your, one of your talks on Anabaptist perspectives from years ago. Oh, okay. On this. And I was thinking about this question. It's like, yeah, because I, I feel like I'm, I feel like I basically am agreeing with what you said in my practice and has been that. And, but I'm trying to figure, I'm trying to think if that is actually consistent. So, yeah, me too. Me too. And, and I'm, I'm okay to poke me, uh, if you think I'm inconsistent. I don't mind it at all.

So, yeah, amen. Yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you, Dean. Is there, are there any other questions here before we wrap this up? This is, we are at eight o'clock. I think this might be a, a, um, record. Oh no.

Okay. Well, if, well, if not, I would love if we could, um, we could close this up with prayer. And it's really good to have Micah on here. Micah Hosen. And I wonder if you would lead us in a closing prayer.

Yeah, I'd be glad to. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, um, Lord, thank you. Thank you for the truth. Thank you for your scriptures. Uh, thank you for Jesus, Lord. Thank you for this discussion, um, over, uh, the sacraments, over these things you've given us to do. Father, help us, Lord. Help us to do them and to be. That they would, in, in that, Lord, you would make us more and more like Jesus. Father, bless us as we go and those who, uh, listen to this message, Father, to cause us to grow and, um, manifest the Lord Jesus in our lives, in our churches, in our homes. Lord, we pray in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Amen. Amen. Thank you all. Yes. My blessings to you. Thank you, brother. Thank you, Dean. And God bless you all. And look forward to seeing you in two weeks from now. Oh, for the next Strength to Strength. I'm not talking to you necessarily, Dean. We're expecting you to talk to us, but maybe that'll be, that's the case.

All right. Bless you guys. All right. Bless you. Have a good day. God bless you. Bye-bye. As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.

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"Sacred Roots: The Anabaptists, the Sacraments, and the Words of Jesus" by Dean Taylor

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