Ep 428: The Decentralized, Non-Violent Faith of the Anabaptists, with John Roth

[00:00:03] Voiceover: Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the status quo. Expand your imagination and tackle controversy head on. Let’s stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It’s time for the Libertarian Christian podcast.

[00:00:22] Cody Cook: You’re listening to the Libertarian Christian Podcast, or perhaps watching Libertarian Christian Podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and a member of the Christians for Liberty Network. Our guest today is John Roth. John is a scholar of the Radical Reformation as well as contemporary global Anabaptism. John served as a professor of history and was editor of the Mennonite Quarterly Review at Goshen College from 1985 to 2022. What I believe it was retired. The, uh, the review was, uh, just a few weeks ago. He retired also as project director of Anabaptism at 500, an initiative at Menno Media which commemorates the 500th anniversary of the beginning of Anabaptism and which produced this book, The Anabaptist Anabaptism. I’m trying to make sure you can hear me to the Anabaptist community Bible. It’s a wonderful book that I got a hold of, and I’ve been using for our my devotionals with my kids. So, John, thank you so much for joining me.

[00:01:18] John D. Roth: It’s great to be here, Cody. Thanks for the invitation.

[00:01:21] Cody Cook: Absolutely. Well, and I want to talk more about the community Bible and the Anabaptism at 500 efforts. But I also just have maybe some general questions that could be of interest to our audience here. So, you know, the audience of the libertarian Christian Institute is going to have some significant overlap with Anabaptist theological emphases like nonviolence, opposition to war, commitment to the Kingdom of God above the kingdoms of men. And as an Anabaptist myself, I’ve been really keen to introduce these approaches or their approaches, the Anabaptist approaches to these ideas, to a more ecumenical Christian audience. That’s going to have some some sympathies with those ideas. Right. And so maybe I’ll start by asking what you think Anabaptism has to offer at 500 years old now, particularly in an American context where we see the Christian right has seemingly set aside both Christianity and conservatism to align with MAGA. That was those were always kind of emphases. Maybe we would disagree with how they used them or how they approached them, but but they were always sort of there. Um, but now MAGA maybe called into question those commitments to Christianity and conservatism on the right in Christianity. Uh, and maybe while we’re talking about that, uh, perhaps a follow up question, do you think the right’s, uh, small shift toward non-interventionism could actually be maybe a bit of light in an otherwise fairly dark movement? Is that something that the right is now getting right in a way that they didn’t under, uh, you know, Bush and Reagan?

[00:02:42] John D. Roth: Yeah. Well, there’s a lot packed into those, uh, those questions. Um, it would be important for me to start by saying that, uh, Anabaptism is part of the Christian tradition. It is not a sectarian movement that has some special revelation from God. Say we’re part of the movement that begins with the creation story and follows the story of, uh, as it’s told in the Hebrew Scriptures and the revelation of Jesus, the story of the early church. And there are even elements, even though Anabaptists have tried to sometimes distinguish themselves from both Catholic and Protestant tradition, in another sense, we’re deeply indebted to both the Catholic tradition and the various Protestant traditions. Uh, and and we’d see ourselves as, as fellow travelers in the Christian tradition. That said, um, there have been some, uh, I think, not unique, but quite distinctive, uh, emphases that have been part of the Anabaptist tradition in one form or another, expressed differently in different cultural settings across time. There’s not a kind of absolute essential Orthodoxy of what all Anabaptists, how it must be practiced, I would say. But there are some distinguishable emphases that are worth noting that I think are relevant, uh, today. Um, um, you know, a couple of years ago, the United States Surgeon General, I think, reported that the major, the number one health, uh, challenge facing the United States wasn’t cancer. It was loneliness. People feeling disconnected from each other and the profound mental and physical spiritual consequences that that has.

[00:04:31] John D. Roth: And part of the Anabaptist tradition from its beginning has been that the Christian life is inherently communitarian. Um, one is not an isolated follower of Jesus. To become a Christian is not just to make this a, you know, sort of on off switch. I accept Jesus Christ into my heart as my Lord and personal Savior. And then suddenly everything changes. It is essentially a decision of metanoia, of turning around, of repentance and following in the company of other believers who have also committed themselves to be disciples of Jesus. So that strong emphasis on community, I think, is, uh, intensely relevant in the fragmented, atomized world that we live in. The clear commitment to love of neighbor that has an expansive understanding of who the neighbor is. I would say, is an enduring theme that’s relevant today. We live in a violent world in many ways, and the impulse to righteous violence, if we know that we are on the side of goodness and right and truth, and that somehow justifies the means we use to defend or to achieve this righteous end is so pervasive, and the Anabaptists consistently challenged that logic. We are called to see the divine image of God in every human being when God looks down on the world. I don’t think God sees the world with the colors of the map that we’re used to seeing on the globe. I don’t think God sees, uh, political boundaries. I think God sees a fallen humanity that God is seeking to redeem.

[00:06:28] John D. Roth: And that means that my sense of who my brother and sister are is expansive, and it includes the enemy. And, um, that is embracing. It’s challenging. Uh, I would never say that the Anabaptists got it right, uh, consistently, but that has been an enduring theme that the call to love is not just to love those who look like us, those who are like us, our family, uh, but those who, um, stretch our sense of empathy and compassion that I think is as relevant as ever before in a world of late stage capitalism, where the gap between the rich and the poor is getting wider and wider, and the anxieties and uncertainties, even in this, one of the most wealthy countries in the world about economic matters, the Anabaptist tradition has consistently taught that followers of Jesus are going to share their possessions again, not just with family, but with the community of believers and with the geographic community, with those in need, and that possessions are not meant to be held, Old, but to be stewarded, to be shared. I think all of those those themes that emphasis on community and emphasis on love, an emphasis on sharing. One could add other things practical live discipleship as a daily call. Um, all of those things seem to me to be entirely relevant today, as they have been for the last 500 years of the Anabaptist tradition.

[00:08:18] Cody Cook: Well, and yeah, there’s there’s a lot there that’s so good. Um, I mean, I’ll mention this just kind of as, maybe as a clarifying point and maybe I’ll be interested to see if you agree or disagree with me when you talk about late stage capitalism. You know, obviously, libertarian Christian podcasts, as libertarians, we like the idea of free markets. And one thing I think that, um, that the traditional Anabaptists, the Anabaptists have valued and I think an insight here is that they were not necessarily saying as, as some on the left would say that we need a state that’s very involved in the market, we need a state that’s very involved and redistribution through force. But the early Anabaptists believed that we were stewards, that we had an obligation to share what we had a moral obligation to share what we had. But they were not necessarily saying, we need to get the government out here doing these redistributive policies. This was always sort of in a sort of a voluntaryist ethic. Is that a fair assessment or is there would you see nuance that differently?

[00:09:18] John D. Roth: Yeah, I think there is a perennial, um, temptation to project back on the Anabaptists of the 16th century, uh, a kind of, uh, understanding of relation to the state. Uh, that makes sense to us today. And I’d say, by and large, the Anabaptists lived in a very different, um, relationship to the prince, to the magistrate than we do in participatory democracies, uh, in which they had basically no voice in telling the state what to do, and didn’t presume that they would instruct magistrates about their policy. Um, other than you shouldn’t you shouldn’t be coercive on matters, especially on matters of conscience. Um, that was about the extent of political counsel that 16th century Anabaptists were ready to give the state, in large part because the relationship of Prince to subject, um, didn’t invite that kind of of conversation. Uh, and so when the Anabaptists talked about a communitarian way of life, community of goods, shared possessions, mutual aid, They were thinking of followers of Jesus who have voluntarily committed themselves to follow Christ and are now in a relationship of trust and transparency with each other, usually in a fairly local setting. And that in that context, our possessions are to be shared freely. Um, so I’d be cautious about reading in libertarian, um, political, economic, um, assumptions into early Anabaptism. Um.

[00:11:19] Cody Cook: Would you also be cautious about reading in progressive political contemporary? Yeah, because because, I mean, I agree with you that libertarianism is a modern movement. It comes later. But but I think what I do see in common is this idea that, you know, there’s that they have this idea of the church and the world. The world is the domain of violence. The church is a voluntary community. And I do see I agree, you’re right. They don’t have this sort of fully fledged political Ideology or theology about what the state is supposed to be doing. But you do sort of see, you know, guys like Simons and Hubmaier who will say who who will speak to the state and say, you’re getting out of line here. You know, you’re you’re you’re involved in these offensive wars for profit. You are going after people just because they disagree with you on a point of theology. And that should be a matter of conscience. And so I do see maybe, maybe like an incipient kind of maybe what could lead into a libertarian or voluntaristic, uh, political ethic that says there is a legitimate domain for the for the state or for government, but it’s within this kind of framework that we they don’t use the term, but like a natural law framework, that there are things that are acceptable for government to do and things that are not acceptable for government to do.

[00:12:27] John D. Roth: I think that’s, uh, that is a fair description of, um, at least the Swiss, um, Swiss Brethren, the Swiss South German Anabaptism, by and large, regarded the guarded the state with respect. Uh, you know, based on Romans 13, uh, would say the state is an ordering of God. It serves a useful function. It is better than anarchy in the sense of complete, uh, lack of of of an ordering. Uh, but it has a pretty limited function. And, um, it is outside. The perfection of Christ is the language of the Schleitheim Confession. And therefore we can call on Christian magistrates to be Christian. Um, and Menno said, yeah, you can be a Christian magistrate. He didn’t he assumed you wouldn’t be able to be a Christian magistrate very long. But it was a a worthy aspiration to wield power in a way consistent with the teachings of Jesus. And at the the point at which they do speak the strongest has to do with the freedom of religious conscience. At the very least, governments should not be using the coercive power of the sword against people on the basis of their belief. And some Anabaptists would extend, especially the Dutch Anabaptists to a century later would develop something approaching a theory of religious liberty in which they would say, and that holds for the the Muslim, the Anti-trinitarian. It holds for everyone, not just we’re not making a special plea for ourselves.

[00:14:15] Cody Cook: Yeah. And I notice there’s a little bit of maybe attention in Simons because he says some of the things that we talked about at kind of voluntarism, but he also sort of has this idea that, well, maybe the government should also be punishing certain kinds of heresy and homosexuals and stuff like that. And I feel like there’s a little tension that Simons introduces that I don’t see, like in Marpeck or the Swiss Brethren in the same way. But, um, I was, I was interested when you talked about the idea of kind of this expansive idea of love for neighbor, this kind of who is my neighbor sort of question. And I’d asked about, um, whether whether MAGA was was an improvement on sort of example, the neoconservative approach to war because they tend to be less interventionist. But there’s also this idea that, you know, that J.D. Vance has suggested of of a ordered loves. Right. That will well, maybe, um, we should have a more restricted view of thinking about who is my neighbor, who am I obligated to. And so maybe maybe the question is maybe, maybe I’d be curious to hear what would you say? That MAGA may be coming to some better conclusions about a less violent foreign policy, but their motives are are ultimately not focused on this idea of love, of neighbor, of of an expansive view of that, but maybe just sort of well, that just seems like a waste of of our personal time and treasures and resources. Is that maybe a would you say that or would you nuance it differently? I’m just kind of curious to see what you think.

[00:15:39] John D. Roth: Well, at some level, I personally I can’t speak for all Anabaptists, but I would say I personally celebrate whenever a government says we are going to, um, avoid, uh, intervention in other places around the world that involve our military. So. Great. If Non-interventionism is part of, uh, the Trump or MAGA foreign policy. Great. But it never is that simple. I mean, this really is you were alluding to emerges out of an isolationism that is really intensely nationalistic. And it has also implied we have no responsibility at all for the well-being of anyone beyond our borders. And so, um, the withdrawal of humanitarian aid, um, is something I wouldn’t celebrate. Um, but that said, I. I’m not someone who thinks. Well, if only Mennonites. If only Anabaptists were running the State Department. If only they put us in charge, we would have policies that would indeed reflect the kingdom of God. I don’t I don’t believe that, um, in for almost all of our 500 years, the Anabaptist movement has been a, uh, almost it feels almost insignificant minority within the broader Christian tradition. And it seems to me, given that place, uh, that our our calling in the larger Christian world, we don’t need to present ourselves as another lobbying voice alongside the American Medical Association and the American Rifle Association and every other. I think our distinct contribution might be to ask, how can the church devote its imagination and its resources to sometimes sacrificial engagements with other people in the world, often who are who are often in circumstances of profound human need and often um, and, and ask, is there a is there can we be a model of an alternative body politic? And if anyone else takes notice, great. Um, but the goal is not ultimately to seize the levers of power. And I think that’s implicit in so much of the Christian impulse today, not just I it’s not just Christian nationalists. It’s not just MAGA. I think it runs deeply throughout a pretty broad swath of of Christians, including North American Anabaptists. Yeah.

[00:19:00] Cody Cook: Um, yeah, I agree. Yeah. Well, because, I mean, obviously there does seem to be some kind of a room for like a prophetic kind of activism. But the question is how much? Because, I mean, Anabaptists have tended to, like you said, live this sort of life of a kind of a witness. That is through being an alternative community more than it is about, you know, lobbying and telling government what to do, even though we may have some ideas about that, that, that issue. And so, yeah, finding I think the right balance is difficult. But but I think I agree that Anabaptists are. I think Anabaptists have done a better job of trying to find that balance of asking those questions than what you’ve seen from maybe American evangelicalism, which just sort of goes all in on power as, as the means of trying to make a better world. Um, I, I will ask to this one aspect of historical Anabaptism, and maybe there’s a way of politicizing this in a way that maybe it’s not as central. Um, but is is basically Anabaptism lack of interest in borders. Uh, and so, you know, early Anabaptists were always stepping over political boundaries to, to preach the gospel as they understood it, or sometimes just fleeing oppression and looking for a safe place to be. They were often refugees. And I heard you tell a story on, um, the Anabaptist Perspectives podcast about Elsie Baumgartner. And this was just she was one example among among many. But, uh, that example, I think, really stuck with me of of her story, and I thought our audience would resonate with it, and it had to do with the reference to Psalm 24 one the earth is the Lord’s, which you sort of track. It’s the influence of that verse in Anabaptist theology later. Um, but Baumgartner might be the earliest example of it. So do you recall that story? And can you, um, talk about it a little bit?

[00:20:49] John D. Roth: Sure. Um, I think I encountered that story while I was doing, uh, primary source research in the archives in Zurich and came across an interrogation record, uh, where the authorities had arrested, uh, in I think it was May of 1525. So relatively soon after the Anabaptist movement began with the first voluntary baptisms in January of 1525, uh, and she had been arrested for the crime of being allowing herself to be rebaptized. And I think it was the second or third time she’d been arrested. And the authorities were exasperated with her and were contemplating what kind of punishment? Uh, and in a gesture of leniency, they, uh, said, uh, asked her if they, uh, expelled her, uh, if she would promise not to return. And she said, uh, no. Um, and she cited, uh, Psalm 24. One might sound like a prooftext claim, but she cited that first part of that verse, the earth is the Lord’s. And she said, God made this world for me as much as you. And that, uh, basically in religious matters, you have no jurisdiction. Over. Over where I’m going to, to travel. And, um, that was only that. That’s only one of many later, uh, references to this, to this verse, Psalm 24 one in which in other interrogations, in confessions of faith, in hymns, in letters to each other, of encouragement. This phrase the earth is the Lord’s gets repeated, um, frequently. I mean, uh, it’s not, um, you know, it’s it’s not the, um, the slogan of every Anabaptist, but it’s striking how often it gets cited. And as you begin to reflect on that, why does this verse keep showing up? Uh, it seems to me that it is illustrative of a certain Anabaptist understanding of Christian discipleship in that it points, first of all, to, um, as Elsie used it, a statement about politics.

[00:23:11] John D. Roth: Generally, wherever Anabaptists have landed, they have been grateful to political authorities where they’ve been given the freedom to worship as they pleased. But they’ve carried their passports lightly and at at the moment when it seemed that governments could no longer tolerate, for example, their commitment to pacifism or to nonviolence. Uh, and we’re introducing compulsory military service, for example, or in the case in Canada in the 1920s where the government said you may not have your own schools, uh, and you may not teach your children in German, you have to get in line with the nationalizing project and teach in English according to the provincial curriculum. They said, well, um, we will leave, we’ll go and find some other place. And so the sense is that God is present in every part of the world, and we will wherever we land, we can be the people of God. And while we respect governments, we don’t regard our identity as citizens to be a primary point of reference. So that’s that political point. And I would say that’s been a challenge for Anabaptists, Mennonites in North America, particularly in recent years, with the political polarization, the sense that you do need to align yourself politically and you do need to claim a nation. I mean, I lamented when the Mennonite Church of North America, uh, in the early 2000, had what was going to be a merger and ended up being a split in which we nationalized our churches.

[00:25:03] John D. Roth: So now I’m part of Mennonite Church USA, and we have Mennonite Church Canada. And in the Mennonite World Conference, many of our member churches are national churches. They define themselves by the nation that they are part of. And I get it. I understand that. But one reason why I’m so committed to Mennonite World Conference is because it does hold out for us the imaginative possibility that ultimately we are part of a movement that’s bigger than our nation states. Uh, the second part of the earth is the Lord’s is an economic claim that, um, is, on the face of it, obvious. I think most Christians would say something like, yes, creation belongs to God, and we are put on earth here as stewards of creation. But the impulse towards property and defining and defending our identity around property, uh, is close to what the Hutterites, for example, an Anabaptist group that practiced community of goods, says his original sin. That sin begins with mine and thine. And that notion of of ownership in Genesis three is what leads its. It is the clearest example of the fall of humanity and what leads to the first homicide. And it’s that, uh, besetting challenge ever since of idolatry. We we possess things and turn them into gods. And for the Hutterites to be transformed, to be a new creature in Christ is to let go of that deep impulse to claim things as yours, and to say the earth is the Lord’s is a reminder that all that we have is given and trust, and that we should be ready to share it as freely as it’s been given to us.

[00:27:03] John D. Roth: Um, and then finally, I think the earth is the Lord’s is a eschatological statement. It’s a claim about ultimate sovereignty that has to do with where human history is heading. And I think there is an impulse among human beings to make history come out. Right. We think we are the ones who are pulling the levers of of history. And we are. We are entrusted with a certain responsibility. But in the end, God has already won the victory. The victory is already been won in the person of Jesus and the victory over death over evil. Christ’s ascension. The victory has been assured. And if we know that Christ has won, that we can allow ourselves to be more relaxed about, um, our current moment in history. And frankly, it’s one reason why the Anabaptists could go to their death as martyrs. Go into the the the the fiery, uh, martyrdom, singing with joy, because Death is not the end. They they know that the the earth is the Lord’s. And to have that clarity gives you a sense of, um, uh, of graciousness. It gives you what the Anabaptists called gelassenheit a yieldedness. That is not an abdication of responsibility, but it is a perspective that means we don’t engage every issue with white knuckles, worried that if we don’t win this argument, somehow Christianity is at stake here, or the the movement of God is going to collapse.

[00:29:00] Cody Cook: And God’s going to lose. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. No. And as I heard you speak about those three emphases or three different ways of thinking about the earth being the Lord’s, the word that comes to come to my mind is stewardship, that we have been entrusted with something. But ultimately it’s it’s the results are up to God, right? We have a responsibility, but we have to trust God with what he’s given us. Yeah.

[00:29:25] John D. Roth: And I would recognize even as I, I advocate for this, that has been put into practice in the Anabaptist tradition in many different ways. You know, take the we could go down the economic tracks, the political track, or even this question of of martyrdom. And there is no one right Anabaptist or single Anabaptist approach to that. I mean, my Hutterite friends have taken it to, um, rejecting private property. Um, I have a retirement fund. Um, I do give thought for the morrow. Um, you know, I wouldn’t pretend that I am indifferent to, um. I’m a property owner, but I hope, I hope inspired, encouraged, goaded by this awareness of a bigger picture. I hope that it is not where I put my absolute trust, and that I could imagine a joyful life with far less than I have. And it would be okay.

[00:30:39] Cody Cook: Yeah, well. And, you know, and I, I’m also not a Hutterite, um, but but I’m thankful because I’m thankful that they’re part of the conversation and they’re part of the tradition because I think they give us one. Really. I mean, I think one example and maybe one testimony of what it looks like to think in terms of being stewards and of being generous with what God’s given us and if not of holding lightly on to the physical things. Um, because we want to hold on more tightly to things that are more important. And and of course, you could you could idealize the Hutterites. And, you know, there’s living together in that kind of a community with its own sort of authority structure. There’s also there’s room for abuse and authoritarianism. And, you know, a lot of problems can come out of any, any, any system. Um, but but I think there is but there is something there that I think can be a model for us to at least the more, the more and more I think about what it means to be a Christian, to be an ecumenical sort of Christian, is you might sort of come down on certain theological topics with your own conclusions, but but oftentimes it’s the conversation and it’s the differences that are so important that that I’m not reformed. But I’m really thankful about what I’ve learned from my Calvinist friends because because they’re part of the conversation. There’s a kind of a balance. And there’s a, there’s, you know, questions and answers that come up that wouldn’t have if they weren’t there. And I feel the same way about the Hutterites, um, I do this is something that some folks might have some, some thoughts about the way that we, um, that Anabaptists and that other Christians.

[00:32:11] Cody Cook: And I’ll talk about that a little bit, too. Um, have maybe almost like a canon within a canon or emphasize certain passages over others. So you mentioned Psalm 24 one, the earth is the Lord’s being a really important passage for for Anabaptists. Most people point to the sermon on the Mount as kind of like our canon within the canon, or the life of Jesus, the teaching of Jesus. And, you know, sometimes Anabaptists are accused of kind of overemphasizing some biblical passages over others, but it seems to me that other traditions do that as well. Calvinists love the letters of Paul, especially Romans, especially chapter nine of Ephesians. Protestants love the letters of Paul in general, whereas Catholics might look at the Gospels. Uh, Wesleyans love first John. And so, um, you know, can you speak a little bit to this idea of, you know, are there places within Scripture that we should kind of hang our hat on more than others, not to undermine the authority of other passages or the inspiration of other passages, but that there’s something maybe that God is giving. Because I feel like when I when I think about what the Anabaptists have to say about the canon of Scripture, they don’t undermine the inspiration of any of it. But they are really interested in those passages that tell us how to live. They’re very sort of pragmatic in that way. And so they’re always going to look at those passages with a special interest. Um, is that kind of what you see, or what do you think about this idea of emphasizing certain passages over others?

[00:33:38] John D. Roth: Yeah. Um, well, of the two examples you cited, I would say the sermon on the Mount counts for, uh, much more likely to have be emerged as a canon within the canon than Psalm 24. They cite Psalm 24, but it doesn’t have anything near the, um, kind of structural, um, significance that, uh, sermon on the Mount, the teachings of Jesus, and then the examples of the early church in the book of acts would have for the Anabaptists. And, um, this was from the very beginning, a point of difference. Um, uh, Zwingli, who died, uh, in battle, uh, in 1531 already. Uh, so he’s off the scene. He was, um, one of the early the Bible study leader around which Anabaptism emerged. Zwingli becomes the leader of the Swiss Reformation. Uh, ultimately, in some ways, the father of the reformed tradition. He died in 1531. His successors, a man named Heinrich Bullinger and Bullinger, was involved in a lot of debates with the Anabaptists, and he had he developed a tactic or a strategy that he recommended for his local pastors. Whenever you’re in engaged in a conversation or debate with the Anabaptists, it’s imperative that you start with how Scripture is going to be interpreted. And for Bullinger, Zwingli behind him.

[00:35:07] John D. Roth: But Bullinger and then I think sort of the reformed tradition, it was crucial that you get the Anabaptists to agree that the Old Testament is as authoritative for Christian for life and practice as the New Testament, that the God of the Old Testament is the God of is the same as Jesus of the New Testament, that the people of God in the Old Testament are the people of God in the New Testament, and a strong push for this kind of flat text that the Anabaptists consistently pushed back on. And they never had the, um, they never had the, the, the leisure of university study. They never, um, uh, most of the, of the theologians were were killed. That is the humanist trained university trained theologians in the Anabaptist movement of that first generation were killed by the 1530s. And so they often come before these reformed theologians who have developed really sophisticated arguments based on scriptural texts and this view of Scripture. And they come across as sounding naive. But as I read these disputation records, I think there is a profound wisdom in the Anabaptist approach to Scripture in which they say, in the person of Jesus we have the fullest understanding of the nature and character of God.

[00:36:40] John D. Roth: We have the fullest revelation of God’s purpose, God’s will for humanity. And if ever there are questions about how Scripture should be interpreted because we are Christians, we are not Jews, we are Christians. We immediately ask, what did Jesus have to say about that text? Or how might Jesus interpret this text? Or how is this text interpreted in the history of the early church? But the centrality of the Gospels and the witness of the early church is clear in Anabaptist theology, and it leaves them sometimes looking a little bit naive, perhaps about the Old Testament, although, uh, they cite it frequently. Um, they, they knew the Old Testament. They did not regard it as I mean, for them it was part of Scripture, but they were also clear that Jesus is the fullest, uh, fullest revelation. So if there’s a canon within the canon, it is this christocentric, Christ centered reading of of Scripture that I don’t think it doesn’t seem to me to be terribly contentious. It seems to me to be, um, I obvious for Christians, but I know from many, many debates with various reformed, especially scholars, uh, that it’s not, um.

[00:38:15] Cody Cook: Well. And I’d be curious to what you think about this because. Because when I think about that issue and I look at the early Anabaptists and I compare them to maybe someone like a Greg Boyd, kind of a modern Anabaptist thinker, contemporary Anabaptist thinker. It was kind of a term for it, like the new Anabaptists or something like that. I do see a difference. And I think what maybe the, the when I read the kind of early Anabaptist, I see them sort of somewhere between like a reformed hermeneutic and like a hermeneutic in that I think, like what Boyd sort of does is he says, well, I have this sort of picture of who I think Jesus is, and then I’m going to kind of read the Old Testament through that lens. And if there’s something that doesn’t quite look how look like Jesus as I see him, then we’re going to reinterpret that kind of use like an origin hermeneutic. And then the reform, just like you said, just sort of flatten it all out. To some extent. But they also, you know, you’ll and I reformed listeners. I hope I’m not offending any of them, but but I think what they would also they would also say, well, like, yeah, of course the old covenant is not, does not sort of maintain in the same way that it used to.

[00:39:21] Cody Cook: You know, the temple sacrifices the idea of even like sort of civil government. Um, you know, the civil laws, so to speak, those don’t have the same import that they do. And so what I, what I see from the early Anabaptists is what I might call a contextual reading of Scripture that says all of it’s inspired, but you have to understand it in its context. And when you have Jesus coming and saying, Moses said to you this, but I now say that it’s not that he’s saying that Moses wasn’t inspired or that it wasn’t useful for the time. He’s saying, here’s a new way of living that I’m bringing that’s coming with me. This is what the kingdom of God looks like when you detach it from the context of everything that came before that was supposed to be leading to this. And so that’s kind of how more, I think when I, when I read the early Anabaptist, I see something like that, almost like a, like, almost like a, like an apocalyptic kind of hermeneutic that Jesus comes and changes everything. Um, do you do you see that or do you think do you feel like Boyd maybe has some insights there or. I’d be curious to hear what you think.

[00:40:21] John D. Roth: Well, um. Uh, I’ll leave Boyd aside for the moment and just say, um, one of the most sophisticated approaches to this, I say sophisticated is, in my mind, is a work by Pilgram Marpeck. It’s very little known in the English speaking world. It’s called the Testament Erlauterung. The, um, an explanation of the testament. It’s an 800 page thick manuscript in which he takes a whole series, hundreds of examples of where it seems as if there is something in the Old Testament that is in tension or contradiction with the New Testament. And he juxtaposes these, and he does this repeatedly, and then he tries to step back and say, what do we have? What do we see here? And he develops a kind of three tripartite system. I’m oversimplifying, but one is okay. There’s a lot of ceremonial ritual things like you were suggesting that are clearly intended for the context for the time that don’t don’t carry over. There are themes, uh, that we see, uh, in Jesus of of God’s, uh, surprising graciousness of I despise your sacrifices. What I want, you know, let justice flow like so when you know to Jesus begins his ministry in Luke four by citing, you know, Isaiah and today in your presence, this is coming to pass that these.

[00:41:49] John D. Roth: I’m in continuity with these themes in the Old Testament, but a great deal of Anabaptist interpretation of the Old Testament is a spiritualized. So if you the story of Jonah, we’ll tell you what that means. It means and they they align it with current events. So they align it with the place of the church, and it comes out of a late medieval, one strand of medieval interpretation. But, um, much of Anabaptist exegesis of the Old Testament will strike modern readers as sort of, um, bold. You know, this points to this. This is, uh, and it’s a kind of spiritualizing of these themes. And so when you see the violence in the Old Testament, it has less to do with exact with killing people than having an absolute conviction that God is on your side over against, you know, overwhelming forces that you are facing of evil against you. Stu. So, you know, the conquest isn’t about literal physical conquest. It is about a tiny group of people, the Anabaptists, trying to survive in Christendom. And God will win the day. Uh, so, um, that’s that’s sort of a loosely constructed view of one Anabaptists interpretation, but I don’t think it’s too far off from, uh, a more generalized view of Scripture.

[00:43:26] Cody Cook: Well, and that brings us, I think, to this sort of question of hermeneutics and community hermeneutics and the Anabaptist community Bible. So this was this was produced by the Anabaptism at 500 initiative for Menno Media. And, uh, you were you were the kind of directing that. And, you know, one challenge that, that your team had is that Anabaptism today is a fairly wide movement, and not just in practices or the fact that it’s a very global movement. Um, but, you know, but but we can talk about practices, too, right? I mean, you have the communal living Hutterites, you’ve got the separatist Amish, the friendly neighborhood Mennonites, and people who people who have mortgages and retirement plans and people who don’t. And, um, but, you know, some of these kind of theological questions and these approaches to Scripture, to hermeneutics. There’s also going to be some variation. And, you know, many of the study questions and notes that are in this, uh, this Bible came from, um, like study communities that were, you know, of different perspectives. Right. And so you had some who are more conservative, traditional, some who were more contemporary or progressive. And so, you know, sometimes, you know, as I read through the questions and the notes from those, those Bible studies, I have like a little bit of a theological whiplash where, you know, you’ll read something that comes from sort of a conservative contributor, and then maybe somebody who’s kind of more like a kind of a more progressive church of the brethren or something, and they seem like very different approaches to Scripture. Um, and, you know, one one sort of seems to be saying, you know, you know, this is a difficult thing.

[00:45:00] Cody Cook: How can we kind of wrestle with the text and get something, get something out of it, and that sort of wrestling where another approach might be sort of treating it just sort of as authoritative. And we’re just going to kind of read it as it is on the, on the page. Right. And to give you one example, there’s a section, um, that positively references the influence of queer theology. And uh, and then, you know, Bonnie Christian, who was an otherwise positive reviewer, took exception to that because she comes from a little bit more of a conservative kind of theological perspective. And so what I’d be curious about, you know, was there a lot of debate about how to balance these different approaches within contemporary Anabaptism to issues like biblical authority? And do you see that diversity of thought represented in the book as a potential downside or an asset? Do you feel like it’s going to make it difficult for someone who’s maybe like a conservative, uh, you know, Mennonite or brethren in Christ or something to pick up this book and feel like, you know, this is really useful. I’m going to get a lot of good things out of this, or is it okay that there’s going to be some wrestling and some differences? I mean, how do you you know, when you when Anabaptism is conceived of sort of more broadly in that way, um, can there be a, an Anabaptist community that can produce an Anabaptist community Bible.

[00:46:14] John D. Roth: Yeah. Well, it may be helpful for your listeners just to step back one notch and put it in a little bit of a context. Uh, when we, uh, were imagining what could we do? Uh, I my work as project director for Anabaptism at 500 was connected with Menno Media, which is the publishing arm of Mennonite Church USA, Mennonite Church Canada. And so we were asking, you know, in our in our moment in time, what could we do to commemorate 500 years of Anabaptism? It seemed relevant or seemed significant that we would we would start with, uh, a Bible, or that we would go back to Scripture because the Anabaptist movement began with a group of young people gathered around Scripture as part of the larger Protestant Reformation, enthusiasm for sola scriptura, and the assumption that something, uh, relevant is going to emerge from our reading of Scripture. And so, um, we thought and Scripture has been central to the Anabaptist tradition ever since. So we said, okay, we want to do something with the Bible. And then what would that look like? And as our conversations emerged, um, we we called, we convened a gathering of about 70, uh, pastors, theologians, uh, church leaders from, I think, 14. I think there were 14 different Anabaptist groups represented, uh, including Hutterites, um, Mennonite Brethren, the whole, uh, quite a broad spectrum.

[00:47:48] John D. Roth: We said, help us. Help us imagine what this Bible could look like. And that was really important. Beginning point. And out of that, at first it was called the Anabaptist Bible. And people said, no, it’s not like the Book of Mormon. It’s not an Anabaptist Bible. It’s not a, you know, special revelation. Uh, and so the Anabaptist community Bible emerged. Why? Because in the Anabaptist tradition, when we talk about hermeneutics, the, uh, principle of reading the texts together in community is absolutely central. I mean, if you want to have private devotions, that’s that’s fine. Affirm reading the Bible, uh, on your own. But at its best, we’ve said we read Scripture gathered together, bringing who we are. We read it with the expectation that the Holy Spirit is going to emerge. We read it, anticipating that it’s going to change how we live. We read it expectantly, and we trust that our shared reading of Scripture, out of that shared conversation, something is going to emerge that we hadn’t seen before. And that approach to Scripture, I don’t think, shows up in most of the dozens and dozens of study Bibles that are available in the market today. So the standard study Bible is regarded as authoritative. And so if you read the Lutheran Study Bible or the Catholic Study Bible, uh, or any number of other study Bibles, you go to it and expect to find in the marginal notes what this verse means by somebody who speaks with authority.

[00:49:38] John D. Roth: And when I first was serving as general editor of this project, I had a friend who was the editor for the Lutheran Study Bible, the ELCA Lutheran Study Bible, and I called him up and said, this is the project. How are we going to do it? He said, John, it’s very simple. You just find 66 scholars. You give them a deadline and let the let the material come in and publish it. And I knew that we couldn’t do that. We do not operate on the basis of only listening to what biblical scholars have to tell us. This is what the text means, and we have biblical scholars and we respect them, but they’re not the last or the only word. And so what I take to be the genius of this study Bible, but I think no other study Bible has something like it is that the marginal notes, the commentary which so we have a single column of the text and then commentary that is linked to a specific verse, the commentaries of three sorts. We have biblical scholars who bring the gifts of their understanding of the biblical languages, the context, the insights into theological themes. And so one cluster of commentary comes from scholars.

[00:50:56] John D. Roth: We call those biblical context notes, and they’re marked with a certain icon. And then we also turn to the voices of the past of tradition. And so we had historians read the whole corpus of Anabaptist writings from the 16th and 17th century, much of which is biblical commentary, and to excise from that. If Menno had something interesting to say about Romans 5:12, that we pulled that out and we had a massive database of Anabaptist commentary on particular scriptures. But the genius of this project is that we invited lay Bible study groups from across the spectrum of mostly North American, But we also had the invitation was translated into Spanish, French, German, Amharic and Bahasa Indonesia and invited other, uh, people, ordinary people, to participate in generating that commentary. And so if a group registered, we sent them an Old Testament, New Testament Psalms or Proverbs passage. We gave them some instructions. You couldn’t pick your favorite verses. It just we worked our way through the Bible we wanted to get through. Once we ended up, so many groups wanted to participate. We covered the text twice, which meant that there was an enormous. Somebody was a scribe and and compiled their commentary. They sent it to me. I ended up, I think, 4000 single spaced pages. Uh, that then we pulled together in conversation with the biblical context notes in the early Anabaptist witness notes, these community reflection.

[00:52:39] John D. Roth: Notes. So the commentary that you encounter in the Anabaptist Community Bible is more akin to a Jewish midrash. It is a conversation around the text that doesn’t presume to be the last or the final or the authoritative word, but it’s not nothing. It is a voice from within the community. And we we could have we could have made the whole thing. We could have filled every white space. But we very intentionally left quite a bit of white space because we assumed that the reader or readers, as you read the text, as you encounter these comments, you also are going to have something to say. And that white space is for you, uh, and your Bible study group. And so it does not I mean, we had some filters. We didn’t include everything that we didn’t have space. Um, and the invitation, we sent the invitation to 4000 congregations across the entire spectrum. Now, given church politics as it is right now, uh, most of the contributors came from MC USA and MC Canada, uh, groups. But the invitation was there to everyone. And most of the comments from the community, we said, if you feel the urge to lecture or to to use this as an occasion to consider framing it as a question, invite someone because questions are always leading.

[00:54:23] John D. Roth: You know, invite someone into the question. And for the most part, I think that’s what you’ll find. It doesn’t trouble me that there are, um, a diversity of of voices there. How could it be otherwise? And what it impoverished, potentially dead view of Scripture. If our only invitation is to read it and to hear the voice of the final authority, this is what it means. If we’re not unsettled, uh, by the voice of someone else, how will we know if the Holy Spirit is at work? And I’m okay being a little unsettled. I don’t have to agree. There’s some Anabaptist voices from the 16th century that will leave you scratching your head. And yet, I’m glad they’re there. It. It’s a reminder that there’s a different. So we have this community hermeneutic that we’ve tried to bring into, um, physical expression in this book. It’s not perfect in this Bible. Uh, it’s not perfect, but I think it was a grand adventure. And the enthusiasm with which people participated was wonderful. And, um, I hope other Christians, it’s not just for Mennonites. Certainly. It’s not just for Anabaptists. I hope if you are a person interested in Scripture, you you buy this and add it to your. Even if it as it has for you, Cody, you know, sometimes surprises you.

[00:56:04] Cody Cook: Well, and I love what you said about the white space so that you can kind of participate in the process. And as you described it, it felt a little bit more like, because I think people buy study Bibles because they want authoritative answers. They want clarity, right? And sometimes, you know, sometimes maybe, maybe the source you’re reading speaks with more clarity than he has any right to. Um, and, and so I think, you know, what sometimes we’re really concerned about is, you know, we want, you know, kind of definitive, sort of orthodox, based on sort of my own group’s understanding of orthodoxy, whether that’s, you know, you know, fairly liberal or fairly conservative or whatever. Um, answers to these kind of questions. And what was what you guys sort of produced to my mind is a bit like going to a Bible study. Right? And you’ll have people there in the Bible study who you agree with, people there who are very studied, people there who are, you know, maybe, maybe have a, some, some scholarly insights, people who are spending a lot of time talking about the historical context. And then you have people there who are who maybe will if you’re coming from maybe a conservative perspective, who may unsettle you because they’re kind of approaching the text from this kind of liberal or progressive perspective, and they’re asking questions that that, you know, annoy you or whatever. Right. Um, and so what you end up sort of producing here is it’s kind of like, well, this is what it might look like if you were to go to a Bible study that is full of people who identify as Anabaptists.

[00:57:33] Cody Cook: Maybe some of them are very conservative. Maybe some of them are very liberal. Maybe some of them are scholars. Maybe some of them are just laypeople. And, but but that idea you talk about, the Anabaptist community hermeneutic I think is a really interesting one. When we talked about things that Anabaptists can contribute to these kind of conversations, not that scholarship is bad, but that we are the church. We are the body of Christ, and the only mouthpieces of the mouth is not just the scholars, it’s all of us. We all have something to contribute. And so, you know, you read the New Testament and you have things written by Paul who’s a scholar and things written by Peter, who’s a fisherman. And so I think, you know, that idea that we come together, we have these conversations and that, you know, Anabaptism traditionally, what that usually looks like in community is if there’s not consensus, we don’t move forward. And if we can have a consensus on something, then we’ll move forward on that. But otherwise we’re going to have disagreements and we’re going to have discussions And we’re going to have some some openness to some of these things.

[00:58:32] John D. Roth: So sometimes regions.

[00:58:34] Cody Cook: Sometimes divisions unfortunately. Yeah. And so yeah. So you know, the part of me that maybe wants some authoritative answers bristled a little bit like Bonnie Christian did when I sort of read certain things. And I said, well, this just this doesn’t really feel like the kind of the conservative background of Anabaptism. This doesn’t feel like the more maybe conservative African or Asian Anabaptist, this sort of feels like, you know, you know, white, liberal, European, North American, whatever. But it’s part of the conversation. It’s part of what is in the Anabaptist movement. And so maybe there’s value in hearing it and wrestling with it, even if you are ultimately going to reject it, that it’s part of that conversation. Right? Yeah, I would agree.

[00:59:15] John D. Roth: With that review. Um, that appeared in Christianity Today because I thought she missed really the, the, the unique point of, of this. I mean, she was looking again for the authoritative word. And if you know the Anabaptist communities in North America today, who would qualify, uh, as, uh, as the authoritative, you know, as the, the Anabaptist. And that’s really important. We don’t we don’t, even though it’s called the Anabaptist Community Bible, we make very clear in the preface and elsewhere that this is one, one voice. And we’ve had, um, interest among Spanish speakers, uh, and uh, also in, um, possibly in Indonesia to replicate this or to translate it. And I’ve said, okay, possibly the biblical context notes, possibly the early Anabaptist witness notes. But if you want to do a Spanish version of the Anabaptist community Bible, you have to go to the effort of repeating the lay Bible studies.

[01:00:28] Cody Cook: How interesting. Yeah.

[01:00:29] John D. Roth: In your in your context because your context is going to elicit different readings on these texts. Then, then the window in North America did. And I would love to read that Bible. I would love to, to um, because I’m keenly aware that, um, churches in the, what we call the global South tend to be, um, more conservative in their understanding of Scripture and in their understanding of certain ethical practices, even though in every instance there are culturally specific quirks that would make conservatives here anxious. Um, but I take that as a given. I am not as anxious about diversity as many of my friends are.

[01:01:26] Cody Cook: Is is is there would you reject the idea that it’s, um, that sometimes there is value in drawing lines, though, because, like, you know, when I, you know, some people don’t like the idea of lines or labels, but, you know, when I use a word like Christian as opposed to a word like Muslim, I’m describing something, I’m delineating something. I’m saying this is different than that. And so when I did my my kind of like a concise, systematic theology of the early Anabaptists, I had to make sort of decisions about what voices I was going to privilege do. I include, uh, you know, the violent Münster ites, you know, as, as part of that? I mean, they were part of the movement, but they ended up really, over time being pushed out of what that mainstream Anabaptism was, which was nonviolent. Or do I include, you know, voices that are, uh, you know, like Leonard Shamir, who was, um, who had, you know, maybe a lower view of inspiration, arguably than than I think a lot of other Anabaptists had, who maybe had maybe more of a conservative understanding of Scripture.

[01:02:28] Cody Cook: And or do you include, um, like the Italian Anabaptists who were Unitarians? Right. And so I sort of said, well, I kind of, you know, I kind of want to say Anabaptism means something and Christian means something. And so I want to be I want to sort of include Orthodox Christians. That’s kind of part of my definition. And when I think about Anabaptists, I want to say, well, that involves a certain idea about community. It involves a certain idea about violence. It involves a certain idea about the, um, the sacraments. And so, you know, yeah, I, you know, historically, you could say I’m leaving some voices out. Um, but I also sort of in my head, I sort of have an idea about what it means to be Anabaptist, what it means to be Christian. It’s kind of normative. Is there is there something wrong with those lines? Is something wrong with normativity, or does it have its place? Just like maybe this a more communitarian approach that’s more open to sort of those conversations also has its place.

[01:03:24] John D. Roth: Well, no, there’s there’s a there’s a lot packed into that. Um, I think it’s significant that, um, the Anabaptist tradition does not have a, uh, pope. We don’t have a sacerdotum that, uh, with a teaching office that speaks sort of with ultimate authority, with finality, uh, about theological questions. We also don’t have, uh, in the Lutheran tradition, the Augsburg Confession of Faith. You know, I don’t know if there’s, uh, 80 million Lutherans in the world. They don’t agree about a lot of things, but most of them agree that scripture. You know, Luther said sola scriptura, but most of his heirs say, well, sola scriptura read through the lens of this authoritative confession. Lutheran pastors take a vow on their ordination to uphold the unaltered Augsburg Confession of Faith. We don’t have that. We don’t have that, you know, the systematic, uh, Calvin’s Institutes begin in axiomatic fashion, like a somebody, a mathematician, you know, working from beginning premises. And then there is that lockstep logic of reformed theology that, uh, you know, ends up you feel like, you know, you’ve you’re backed into a corner and. Okay, this is it. Uh, that’s a caricature. Sorry. I don’t mean to, um, we I would say Anabaptists have have rejected all of those, and we don’t we don’t turn to the state.

[01:04:56] John D. Roth: That’s not a small thing. If you’re in an Orthodox tradition, we don’t turn to the state as the last word. And so we live with a certain, um, hermeneutical anxiety or hermeneutical freedom that if Cody wants to write a systematic theology of Anabaptism, go for it. But know that you are one voice and I would hope I haven’t read your preface, but I hope there’s a certain humility in which you say there is an exercise I am, I am selecting this, but not that. And I’m I’m. Every theology is an act of creation. It’s a it’s an expression of power, not negative. It’s but but that’s that’s part of it. Um, I began this conversation by sort of, um, enthusiastically describing distinctive elements that I think are at the heart of the Anabaptist tradition. I have no problem doing that. But I also said they’re distinctive, not unique. I’m not, uh, I don’t feel a need to carve out, like, an exclusive Anabaptist set of ideas. Um, I’m much more ready to say Anabaptism is an invitation to a journey with Jesus, and you’re going to do that in the company of living friends, in the company of dead friends whose voices speak to us from the past, and we are going to encounter terrain that no one else has seen before.

[01:06:37] John D. Roth: And we’re going to we’re going to try to make sense. We’re going to be mapping our way forward in contexts. Language realities that are unique are are unique. And so we have to keep asking. We’re praying for the spirit to show up. And I’m not working from nothing. But there is for me, there is an embedded commitment to this journey of that is going to be suspicious of foreclosures and the way in which power is used to shut down options I have, I’m ready to to practice church discipline. Uh, I’m not, um, I’m not afraid of behavioral boundaries. I’m less afraid of people testing ideas and saying things that could sound heretical. And I want to just take a half beat. I’m going to take a breath before I jump in and say, no, no, no, you can’t say that. You say that you’re not an Anabaptist. Maybe in the course of conversation, it will become clear that if you want to make that argument, there’s another conversation to be had. And that’s a muslim conversation or something. I mean, if you want to be arguing consistently from the Quran, I’d say that’s interesting. But at a certain point, that’s not this conversation. Um.

[01:08:18] Cody Cook: Are you okay with the idea of maybe because. Because like I said, when we were thinking about kind of defining our terms a little bit, what does it mean to be Anabaptist or something? Maybe it’s less about boundaries on the edge, and maybe it’s more about central focuses. Because. Because I think what I, what I thought about a lot was like, what are the kind of consensuses that I’m seeing developing? And in a community hermeneutic, that kind of consensus is really important. And so at a certain point, you know, Jan Matthys, who is, you know, involved in the takeover of the violent takeover of Münster, he calls himself an Anabaptist. But at a certain point, he’s just not really he’s not really focused on the same central things that we’re concerned about. So we look at him and say, well, maybe he’s aberrant. You know, maybe he takes the name Anabaptist, but he doesn’t really represent what we think about when we think about what are the central concerns of Anabaptism. And so maybe, I mean, is that is there a value to that, do you think?

[01:09:09] John D. Roth: Yeah. I mean, to me, one of the key elements in that particular story is his turn to the Old Testament. Uh, not just the book of Daniel, uh, for his eschatological calculations, but his, uh, use of the, uh, King David modeling himself on King David as a justification for having multiple wives and for declaring himself, you know, this theocracy. Um, to me, um, that’s not a Christ centered reading of Scripture, and you’re doing something else. Uh, at that point, even if you are baptizing adults into this community of elect. Um, so, uh, but yes, I think a centered some people talk about bounded set. Centered set. I mean, there’s Mennonites. Mennonites have, uh, certain affinity for bounded sets. Um, we we define communion, part of the emphasis on community is guarding the boundaries and knowing who’s in and who’s out, and naming those boundaries and protecting them. And I think we do that at the expense of, um, renewal. Um, you don’t get to be a 500 year old tradition if there hasn’t been continual expressions of renewal. And renewal is really difficult within a bounded set community because renewal is always heresy. It’s. And yet I want to be part of a community that is open to the possibility of renewal that is, in principle, open to it, even though it’s uncomfortable. I’m not, and I don’t think just because it’s new, it should be embraced. Um, but I care about, I think Scripture, you know, the spirit is always doing a new thing and I want to be attentive to that. Yeah.

[01:11:15] Cody Cook: Yeah. I think a couple more quick questions about the community, but I think maybe my conclusion on that is we need to be able to distinguish what central and what’s not. There are certain things that we may say, well, this is something we hold with a closed hand. And maybe these other things are particular expressions, right. So a North American, you know, plain dress Mennonite, you know, may go to Africa and say, oh, plain dress doesn’t look the same here as it does where I’m from. And that’s okay, because that was never that was always an expression of something else that was more central. And we need to be able to distinguish those two things. But um, I do I know I want to be respectful of your time. We’re closing in an hour and about 12 minutes here now. Um, but I do just want to maybe kind of point to some of the other features of the book. One of the things I thought was really cool was the, uh, the kind of the wood carving, the wood carvings. Right. Originally.

[01:12:09] John D. Roth: Their lithographs, so no linocuts.

[01:12:15] Cody Cook: Okay.

[01:12:15] John D. Roth: They’re not actually. No one was carving wood. Um, but, uh, it’s a linoleum, but.

[01:12:22] Cody Cook: Right.

[01:12:23] John D. Roth: Amazing. Amazing artwork. That was important to me from the beginning, that we not just engage words, texts, but we also allow room for the spirit to speak to us with images. Right? 40 original art pieces illustrating a text or story by five artists who are just amazing.

[01:12:42] Cody Cook: Right? So you have those, you have, um, you know, sort of scholarly introductions to each book. You have those notes on the side. Some of them are from kind of historic Anabaptist, uh, thinkers and theologians. Some of them are coming from these study Bible groups, as you mentioned. There’s a way you can kind of tell the difference between the two, kind of pictorially. And, uh, the other thing I thought was really interesting was some of the stuff that shows up in the back on stuff related to the Anabaptist hermeneutic questions about the, um, the Apocrypha, which I thought was really interesting when I started to dig deep into the early Anabaptist view of Scripture, is that they were they sort of took the Apocrypha more or less for granted that there may be some exceptions there. But they said, yeah, I mean, in the not the English and the German Bibles that we’re reading, we’re seeing these books. And so there’s sort of an assumption on the face of it that they’re Scripture that changes over time, as maybe the Protestant Protestants come down with a more on sort of the Hebrew canon of the Old Testament, and then that sort of influences the Anabaptists. But some of these questions about kind of the scope of Bible, the interpretation of the Bible, um, you have some, some articles at the end that are really interesting and kind of helpful for that, um.

[01:13:51] John D. Roth: Violence in the Bible.

[01:13:53] Cody Cook: Violence in the Bible as well. Yeah. Yeah. There’s so many interesting things about this, this, uh, this text. And like I said, I’ve been using it, um, with my kids. So they see me grab this big blue book down and they know that we’re going to be going through some Bible reading, um, and, uh, yes. I mean, just maybe just as a, as a last minute thing. Um, I want to thank you for taking the time to talk with us, but maybe just kind of a quick pitch. Where can people get Ahold of the Bible? Uh, why should they? I think you’ve I think we’ve kind of been making the pitch for why they should be getting it and why it might be interesting to them, but if you have any final thoughts on that, I’d love to hear it. Hear them?

[01:14:26] John D. Roth: Yeah. I think, um, I think this is unlike any study Bible that you have in your shelf, in large part because it offers, um, not just content from an Anabaptist perspective, but an invitation to participate in a way of reading Scripture, a hermeneutic that I think is consistent with this 500 year old Christian tradition. So that, um, and as you say, the artwork is, is is amazing. Uh, and the essays are thrown in for good measure that I think you’ll find suitable for small group discussions, Sunday school discussion, if that’s of interest. Uh, the Bible itself is available. The, uh, the the content is the same, but we have three different covers. This is the hard cover. There is a soft touch. I don’t have an example right with me, a soft touch that, uh, you know, has a little, uh, uh, it’s leather like. And then we have a genuine leather edition, sort of the high end, uh, version. So three different covers, uh, and you can, um, you can purchase it at. Um, so you can buy it directly from the publisher or, uh, the Soft Touch is now available on Amazon. Uh, so it should not be a problem at all to, uh, get it from Amazon if that’s the way you prefer to buy your books.

[01:15:48] Cody Cook: Yeah. Which I know is at first. At first it wasn’t easy to find on Amazon, but yeah, now it is. Um, and I, we were talking so much about theology, I forgot that I was hosting the Libertarian Christian podcast. And one thing I should mention is the relevance of this idea of a kind of a decentralized Generalized approach to to authority and to understanding and to and to living out the gospel that you find in this, in the Anabaptist tradition and also in the Anabaptist community. Bible is very is very, very much in line with this kind of libertarian, sort of Friedrich Hayek approach of a decentralized approach to, to, to life and the truth that I think is really valuable. So, uh, well, I think that’s probably should let you go, because it is we’re going a little bit past where we normally do, but it’s been a great conversation, and I’m really grateful that I was able to get Ahold of you and that you were willing to take the time to talk about this. I recommend folks get a hold of the Bible. Uh, they’re going to be things you may like, things you may not like, but it’s going to be a great read and it’s going to be it’s worth it.

[01:16:42] John D. Roth: Thanks, Cody. And I’m going to be thinking about the connection between The Road to Serfdom and the Anabaptist community Bible for some.

[01:16:50] Cody Cook: Absolutely. Well, hey, if you if you want to have somebody to talk to to help make those connections, feel free to you. Got my email address now, so feel free to shoot me an email.

[01:16:59] John D. Roth: Very good. Thanks for your time, Cody, I, I appreciate it.

[01:17:02] Cody Cook: Thanks, John.

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