Augsburger, Daniel A.

English

Andrews University

248 SEMINARY STUDIES Klaassen, Walter, ed. Ambaptism Revisited: Essays on Anabaptist/Mennonite Studies in Honor of C .  J. Dyck. Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1992. 210 pp. $14.95. As the title indicates, Ambaptism Revisited provides a second look at many of the issues raised by the radical reformation. It expresses the views of the Mennonite revisionists, among whom C. Dyck had a very important place. Dyck is mostly known for having rejected the beautiful picture of "the Anabaptist vision" of the Goshen School of Mennonite historiography and insisted on the less- idealistic need to distinguish between several, often conflicting, strands of Anabaptism. For many readers this book may well become Ambaptism Rezised. The first part of the book is devoted to sixteenth-century Anabaptism, and the second to contemporary Mennonite problems. The contributions are written by well-known specialists and are well worth reading. The first article, by W. 0. Packull, considers the issue of the impact of the radicals upon the other reformers in the context of the Lutheran- Anabaptist debates in Hesse in 1538. While the inclusion of discipline among the marks of the true church is not an Anabaptist contribution, it is clear that their sharp criticisms of moral corruption in the Lutheran Church provided strong impetus for the adoption of discipline and confirmation. This essay also confirms Bucer's fundamental agreement with the radicals on the desperate need for the reformation churches to foster more eagerly spiritual and moral regeneration among their members. Several articles prove that the radicals were much more affected by their environment than usually recognized. The flexibility of their theological positions in the Confession of 1538 and the inclusion of a section on their agreement with the Apostles' Creed in the Hessian Confession of 1578 reveal their longing for public acceptance. In fact, Arnold Snyder's study of the 1578 Hessian Confession of the Swiss Brethren confirms the conclusion that one cannot take the Schleitheim Confession as "the" statement of Anabaptist theology. On the important topic of the Lord's Supper, it is clear that the concept usually attributed to the Anabaptists, "bread is nothing but bread," was certainly not the general position of the radicals. The 1578 Confession states clearly that '"bread is received spiritually by faith, in the believer's soul," strongly suggesting a Calvinist influence. The same belief is expressed in several other confessional documents. In one of the few articles that do not deal with the Swiss Brethren, Spuke Voolstra shows that the Waterland Congregation in Amsterdam was deeply affected by the divisions of the Calvinists on the relation of reason and faith in conversion. Some of the members agreed with the Arminians that regeneration comes from an intellectual knowledge of the truth of Scripturn, while others taught that conversion requires an inner, spiritual experience, a testimonium intemum Spiritus Sandi. Even the refusal of the oath was not a pure expression of biblicist restitutionism. It had for many a very prudential dimension, since Anabaptists at Ziirich were not BOOK REVIEWS 249 executed for their beliefs but for breaking the oath they were required to take that they would cease preaching their beliefs when they were released from prison. Walter Klaassen's article on the rise of baptism of adult believers in Swiss Anabaptism is extremely valuable, because it clearly delineates the four main phases in the development of that practice: first, the pre- Anabaptist Zwinglian phase of the questioning of the biblicism of infant baptism; then the Miintzer-inspired discussion of the relation of faith and baptism; third, the discovery of the invalidity of infant baptism and the duty to be rebaptized; and finally, the phase of persecutions. His study of the significance of Grebel's letter to Miintzer is superb and demonstrates that the demand for knowledge and faith before baptism was a radical infringement of the barrier between the clergy and the laity: believer's baptism was a public assertion of the spiritual equality of all Christians and amounted to an expression of deep anticlericalism. The articles devoted to the contemporary Mennonites are valuable for readers who are not members of that religious tradition, because they provide historiographical information on the development of historical revisionism within that movement and reveal the strictures under which an historian of his own denomination has to do his work. The whole book is a fitting tribute to Cornelius Dyck, whose unassuming scholarship and commitment to his church are an inspiration to all who know him. Andrews University DANIEL AUGSBURGER Lust, J., E. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, compilers; with the collaboration of G. Chamberlain. A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1992. liii + 217 pp. $19.95. In the early 1820s J. Schleusner prepared his Novus thesuurus phililogico miticus, sive lexicon in L X X  ... . Though called a lexicon, it was more a study of Septuagint (wtx) Greek-Hebrew parallels. It was reprinted several times in quick succession, but has long been out of print. In the interim, the only available lexicon has been the Liddell, Scott, Jones Greek- English Lexicon of classical Greek as supplemented by Barber. Not even their intermediate lexicon, a distillation of the larger work, covers all of the wtx vocabulary. At the 1991 SBL annual meeting in Kansas City, two scholars, one from the USA and the other from Europe, met and discovered that they were pursuing similar goals: an updated LXX lexicon. Since then they have collaborated, and under the leadership of Lust, took less than a year to produce the first volume. This volume covers a-t and so will presumably be followed by at least two more volumes. Except for proper names, it contains all the words 

Anabaptism Revisited: Essays on Anabaptist/Mennonite Studies in Honor of C.J. Dyck [review] / Walter Klaassen, editor.

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Anabaptism Revisited: Essays on Anabaptist/Mennonite Studies in Honor of C.J. Dyck [review] / Walter Klaassen, editor.

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