Brian Hamilton

Ethical and Evangelical

For Sattler, it is God’s action through Christ in baptism that perfects us. What falls to us is simply, as Jesus commands us, to abide together in him as he abides in the Father. Thus Sattler arrives at a profoundly ethical theology, a theology that foregrounds the call to discipleship and indeed to perfection, which is at the same time an eminently evangelical theology, proclaiming the work that God has done for us which we could not have done for ourselves. This also puts a different spin on the idea of Anabaptist humility: humility, of course, as a social virtue, but a virtue which stems from a profound sense of trust and dependency on God’s work wrought in us through baptism. Sattler does not seem quite as tempted as do Grebel and occassionally Marpeck to envision baptism as essentially a commitment on our part to do God’s work—turning baptism into a kind of military vow and removing from it any sense of gracious efficacy. On the contrary, the word ‘commitment’ doesn’t once appear in reference to baptism. Baptism is our ‘being united’—always in the passive voice—to one another and to God by the unitive work of Christ’s incarnation, death, and resurrection.

25 August 2007 |
tags: Baptism, Michael Sattler, Theological Ethics