In their quest to convince discontented Plain folks not to defect from Plain ranks, Weaver and Zimmerman appeal at the close of their first chapter to the New Testament’s admonitions for Christians to submit to spiritual leaders. They write:
We live in an individualistic society. It’s all about me, my beliefs, my opinions, my rights. This attitude wants to in-filter into the church and we are in danger of losing the Anabaptist way of submission to God, the brotherhood, and ordained ministerial authority. … In the Anabaptist way, group authority guides personal conviction. The Holy Spirit would not give a person one conviction and his brother the opposite one.
The very commandments in the Bible to submit to the brotherhood and the ministry implies that opinions will differ but may not override church authority. Paul admonished the church in Rome not to quarrel over opinions and differences.
It is another matter when a church is willfully disobeying the Bible. But too often people leave because they have a different way of interpreting a confusing verse, not because Bible doctrines have actually been dropped (p. 12).
All this is generally true. The Bible has plenty to say about believers’ obligation to submit to God, secular government, employers, church leadership, and one another (Jas. 4:7; Rom. 13:1–7; Tit. 2:9; Heb. 13:17; Eph. 5:21). Of those five, however, there is only one to which Christians are always supposed to submit—God. The other four are composed of human leaders who themselves may not be submitted to God.
Scripture makes it clear that there are times when Christians should not submit to secular government, employers, church leadership, or other Christians. When any other authority stands at odds with what God expects of us, we are obligated—due to our higher obligation to always submit to God—not to submit to them. That means we are obligated to disobey them. It is just that simple.
That is certainly what the original Anabaptists believed. Many of them forfeited their lives because their dedication to God motivated them not to submit to civil and religious authorities. You can read their inspiring stories in The Martyr’s Mirror.
The original apostles once similarly suffered flogging by civil and religious authorities for preaching the gospel. But after being flogged and warned, they kept right on proclaiming the good news (see Acts 5:40–42). They did not submit. Peter and the apostles declared, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
Peter and John’s similar Spirit-inspired response to the Jewish Sanhedrin, who commanded them to no longer teach about Jesus, instructs all of us about our own call to God-honoring civil disobedience:
Whether it is right in the sight of God to give heed to you rather than to God, you be the judge; for we cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard (Acts 4:19–20, emphasis added).
Church Authorities
Although we generally expect church authorities to be worthy of our trust, Jesus warned His followers about “false prophets” who are “wolves in sheep’s clothing” (Matt. 7:15). His analogy reminds us that such spiritual wolves could be right among the flock. They appear to be harmless sheep but “inwardly are ravenous wolves.” They aren’t servants of the sheep, but predators.
I think very few Plain leaders can be considered spiritual predators. Nevertheless, sincere leaders can be “the blind leading the blind,” to borrow another of Jesus’ descriptions of some spiritual leaders (see Matt. 15:14). Those who are misguided themselves are apt to mislead others.
Current Plain leaders, like all other sincere Plain folks, have been taught Plain doctrines from childhood, and Plain thinking is not easily challenged within Plain circles. Tradition runs very deep, questioning is discouraged, protective walls are tall, disagreement is dealt with by expulsion, and the Bible is often interpreted through Plain lenses. In fact, anyone who challenges Plain tradition or doctrine from the outside or inside is often referred to as a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
I am not seeking to criticize Plain leaders. If I had been raised Plain, I would likely think just like an average Plain person. I would interpret the Bible through a Plain lens. If I didn’t understand German and was discouraged from reading an English Bible, I would have a hard time comparing what I was taught with what the Bible teaches. But if my beliefs were indeed misguided, I would appreciate anyone who would love me enough to try to help me see what I was missing. I am trying, with love and humility, to be one such person, even though some view me as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In previous chapters, I have sought to show from the Bible that (1) the Plain interpretation of the phrase “the world” is generally unbiblical, (2) the Plain belief that God has a lower standard for English people to get into heaven and a higher standard for Plain people is also unbiblical, and (3) nothing in the New Testament resembles any Plain ordnung. If I succeeded in persuading you on these points, you now realize that your Plain bishops and ministers have been misleading you. They are probably entirely sincere, but they are still misleading you on some very important issues. The biggest of these issues is the idea that you must keep hundreds of rules that can’t be found in the Bible if you want to enter heaven. They are making man-made rules equal with God’s commandments.
Therefore, when spiritual leaders who mislead you by means of unbiblical ideas about what is required to get into heaven then say you must submit to them because the Bible requires submission to church leaders, you are under no obligation to submit to them. In fact, if you know the biblical truth, you are responsible to gently, lovingly confront those spiritual leaders—for their own sakes and for the sake of those whom they are misleading. To submit to such spiritual leaders would be to disobey God. When such spiritual leaders expect you to submit to them, it is like a blind person expecting a seeing person to follow him. No seeing person would allow a blind person to lead him. The only people who would allow a blind person to lead them are other blind people. And no seeing person would remain silent if he saw a blind person leading anyone!
What Does the 1632 Dordrecht Confession Say?
Again, I want to emphasize my sympathy and respect for all Plain leaders and all Plain people. They have all been born into a unique culture and religious system. There are many praiseworthy aspects of Plain culture, passed down from the original Anabaptists who loved Jesus. And there are many sincere, wonderful Plain people.
But their current religious system is not like that of the original Anabaptists. The centerpiece of the faith of the original Anabaptists was the new birth and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. They had no ordnung but the commandments of Christ, which is why you won’t find anything about any ordnung in the 1632 Dordrecht Confession. Since they had no ordnung, there is no record of them requiring ordnung vows of baptismal candidates or semi-annual ordnung vow renewals of everyone. Nor is there any record of them shunning anyone who transgressed the ordnung. Beyond that, there is no record that they avoided using any man-made technology available to them or dressed any differently from anyone else in their European communities.
But here is the real shocker for modern Plain folks: Not only is there no mention of any ordnung in the Dordrecht Confession, but it actually contains a prohibition against any ordnung. Allow me to show this.
The title of Article 5 of the Dordrecht Confession is: “Of the Law of Christ, that is, the Holy Gospel or the New Testament.” There are three phrases in this title: “the Law of Christ,” “the Holy Gospel,” and “the New Testament.” The last two are alternate descriptions of the first one. In other words, Article 5 is all about the Law of Christ, which can also be referred to as “the Holy Gospel” or “the New Testament.”
What is the Law of Christ? It is a biblical phrase found in 1 Corinthians 9:19–21 that clearly refers to all of Christ’s commandments, just as the phrase “the Law of Moses” in the same passage refers to all the commandments God gave through Moses. The original Anabaptists focused heavily on the commandments enumerated in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, believing that they introduced higher standards.
So Article 5 is all about the believer’s obligation to obey Christ’s commandments. In quoting Article 5 below, I have noted, in brackets, every time the Law of Christ is referenced, either directly or indirectly, and I have used all capital letters to highlight Article 5’s clear prohibition against creating any additional rules beyond Christ’s commandments:
Of the Law of Christ, that is, the Holy Gospel or the New Testament: We also believe and confess that before His ascension He instituted His New Testament [the Law of Christ], and, since it [the Law of Christ] was to be and remain an eternal Testament, that He confirmed and sealed the same [the Law of Christ] with His precious blood, and gave and left it [the Law of Christ] to His disciples, yea, charged them so highly with it [the Law of Christ], that neither angel nor man may alter it [the Law of Christ], NOR ADD TO IT [the Law of Christ] nor take away from it [the Law of Christ]; and that He caused the same [the Law of Christ], as containing the whole counsel and will of His heavenly Father, as far as is necessary for salvation to be proclaimed in His name by His beloved apostles, messengers, and ministers—whom He called, chose, and sent into all the world for that purpose—among all peoples, nations, and tongues; and repentance and remission of sins to be preached and testified of; and that He accordingly has therein declared all men without distinction, who through faith, as obedient children, heed, follow, and practice what the same [the Law of Christ] contains, to be His children and lawful heirs; thus excluding no one from the precious inheritance of eternal salvation, except the unbelieving and disobedient [to the Law of Christ], the stiff-necked and obdurate, who despise it [the Law of Christ], and incur this through their own sins, thus making themselves unworthy of eternal life. (Jer. 31:31; Heb. 9:15–17; Matt. 26:28; Gal. 1:8; I Tim. 6:3; John 15:15; Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15; Luke 24:47; Rom. 8:17; Acts 13:46).
Unquestionably, the original Anabaptists believed that eternal salvation was granted to those who repent, believe, and then obey the Law of Christ. To them, that was all that was required. Nothing more. And they also firmly believed that no one should add anything to the Law of Christ, as we just read.
But that is exactly what has happened in Plain circles. Although the authors of Why Be Plain? often misleadingly refer to the ordnung as “guidelines,” the ordnung has actually been elevated in Plain circles to be equal with Christ’s commandments, because every Plain person is required to pledge, at his baptism, to keep all the rules of the ordnung, and unrepented transgressions against the ordnung are treated as sins that result in eternal damnation. The original Anabaptists would be horrified by such an idea or practice. It would remind them of all the additional man-made rules of the Roman Catholic Church that were tied to salvation, rules from which they had been delivered.
In any case, when ordnung-promoting Plain leaders claim that the 1632 Dordrecht Confession—contained in practically every copy of The Martyrs’ Mirror, a book found in many Plain homes—is the standard for their doctrine and practice, they are ignoring Article 5, because it condemns the addition of any rules to the Law of Christ.
The New Testament on Ordnungs
As we have already seen, there is nothing that remotely resembles Old Order ordnungs in the New Testament. The apostles saw no need to add hundreds of rules to the Law of Christ.
Of course, Jesus and His apostles, who lived under the old covenant, followed the Law of Moses. They didn’t, however, follow any of the thousands of “fence laws” that were added to the Law of Moses by the scribes and Pharisees.
Moreover, Jesus condemned Jewish leaders whose traditions invalidated God’s commandments or who “taught as doctrines the precepts of men” (Matt. 15:1–9, emphasis added). He also condemned religious leaders who “tied up heavy burdens and laid them on men’s shoulders” (Matt. 23:4)—an obvious reference to extra religious obligations not included in the Law of Moses. All that should be instructive to modern Plain leaders.
The early church at first consisted solely of Jewish believers, who continued to keep both the moral and ceremonial requirements of the Law of Moses, as those requirements were the fabric of their culture. Of course, those Jewish believers also began keeping any commandments contained within the Law of Christ that were not included in the Law of Moses, such as Jesus’ commandment to make disciples of all the nations, teaching them to obey all His commandments (see Matt. 28:19–20).
Years later, when Gentiles, whose culture was pagan, began believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, some of the apostles gathered in Jerusalem to decide whether Gentile believers were obligated to keep rules that were included in the Law of Moses but not in the Law of Christ, such as circumcision (see Acts 15). They decided that the answer was no, and that essentially God was not requiring anything of the Gentiles beyond obeying the Law of Christ. Some of the Jewish-background apostles soon began to understand the same was true for them. One of them was Paul (see 1 Cor. 9:19–23).
That landmark event in early church history should also be instructive to modern spiritual leaders. The early church, when given an opportunity to add extra rules beyond Christ’s commandments for Gentile believers to obey, decided not to do so, even though those extra rules were of divine origin. They understood that the Law of Christ was sufficient.
The Simplification of God’s Laws
In contrast to Plain leaders who add hundreds of rules to Christ’s commandments, Jesus Himself once declared that everything in the Law of Moses and the Prophets can be summarized by two commandments:
One of them, a lawyer, asked Him [Jesus] a question, testing Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets” (Matt. 22:36–40, emphasis added).
That is why I am always so amused when professing Christians ask me if I am keeping some morally-insignificant rule for which they think they’ve found a little support in Scripture. I usually tell them, “I’m still working on loving God with all my heart, soul and mind, and loving my neighbor as myself. Once I reach perfection regarding those two commandments, perhaps I can then strive for perfection in lesser things, like you.” (I usually find that people who are focused on morally insignificant rules are not doing well at loving their neighbors as themselves.)
Imitating Jesus (see 1 Cor. 11:1), the apostle Paul had no qualms also simplifying God’s expectations by summarizing all of them into one sentence:
Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Rom. 13:8–9, emphasis added).
For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Gal. 5:14).
Clearly, Paul believed that by focusing on one commandment—the commandment Jesus referred to as the second-greatest—one would keep all the commandments. So we could evaluate every ordnung rule by that one commandment. Any ordnung rule that is not related to loving my neighbor as myself is exposed as irrelevant to God. For example, how is the prohibition regarding driving cars relevant to the commandment to love our neighbor? There is no obvious relevance (unless, of course, I drove poorly and struck a pedestrian). Under normal conditions, a car could help me love my neighbor better, such as by providing a ride to the hospital in an emergency, or to a grocery store to purchase needed food.
What do you suppose the apostle Paul would say to Christian leaders who create and enforce hundreds of extra-biblical rules that have no relevance to the great commandments to love God and neighbor, as well as no moral, ethical or biblical basis, and who warn their congregations that if they don’t keep all these extra rules, they will go to hell? We really don’t have to guess, do we?
As noted earlier in this chapter, Weaver and Zimmerman declare that believers have the right to leave any church that is “willfully disobeying the Bible” (p. 12). By that declaration, they have unwittingly described every ordnung-promoting church and given every Plain person in them a right to leave.
If the truth be told, Plain people have no more obligation to submit to their bishop when he says, “You must keep the rules of the ordnung,” than they would if he were to tell them to murder the Millers. Again, I know that they are only parroting what they’ve been taught all their lives. If any of them have read this far, however, they no longer have any excuse.
Shall We Abandon the Ordnung?
Just as the Mosaic Law was the fabric of Jewish culture, so the ordnung is the fabric of Plain culture. And just as God didn’t require Jewish believers in the early church to abandon their cultural connections to the Mosaic Law, neither does God require Plain believers in Jesus to abandon their cultural connections to their Old Order ordnung.
That being said, God did expect Jewish believers to realize that their salvation was by His grace through a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (whose commandments they thus obeyed) and not due to keeping any aspect of the Law of Moses that is not found in the Law of Christ. He also expected them to view believing Gentiles as their spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ, even though those Gentiles did not keep any aspect of the Law of Moses that was not included in the Law of Christ.
Similarly, God expects Plain believers to realize that their salvation is by His grace through a living faith in the Lord Jesus Christ (whose commandments they thus obey), not because they keep any aspect of the Plain ordnung that is not included in the Law of Christ. He also expects them to view fellow Plain believers who follow only some or none of the ordnung rules as their spiritual brothers and sisters in Christ, and also to view non-Plain followers of Christ in the same way.
Plain leaders who want to follow the New Testament example of the apostles would announce the end of the ordnung as having any relevance to salvation, while affirming repentance, faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and obedience to the Law of Christ.
If they did that, we could have Plain communities full of people who would be faithfully following Christ but who would happily tolerate others in their community who keep all, some, or none of their former ordnung (that is not part of the Law of Christ), either as a matter of personal conviction or cultural preference. Some would be driving buggies and others would be driving cars. And those with cars could be taxi drivers for those who were still driving buggies! Some would be wearing traditional, cultural Amish clothing, and some would not. Everyone would love each other and get along.
This would also result in the reconciliation of thousands of Plain families who are currently at odds with each other. If the idea that the ordnung is relevant to salvation was eliminated, the result would be one big, happy family. Sounds like heaven!
