Free Church Ecclesiology and Catholicity

Teun v.d. Leer

A Believers Church contribution to the ecumenical ecclesiological debate: Looking into the other direction (Ongoing)

Dit promotie onderzoek wil een bijdrage leveren aan het debat over kerk en kerkelijke eenheid vanuit de zgn. ‘Believers Church Tradition’ (BCT). De BCT behoort tot het zgn. derde kerktype, naast het katholieke en het protestantse, en benadrukt het kerk-zijn ‘van onderop’, wat wil zeggen dat de kerk zich eerst en vooral manifesteert via gelovigen die samenkomen. Tussen 1967 en 2017 zijn er 18 ‘Believers Church Conferences’ geweest, die in dit onderzoek in kaart worden gebracht. De resultaten daarvan worden in gesprek gebracht met het oecumenische project ‘The Church – Towards a Common Vision’. De ondertitel ‘Looking into the other direction’ is een citaat van Karl Barth uit 1948(!), waarin hij zegt dat ‘It is obvious that the last remnants of sovereign authority in the idea of a corpus christianum are disappearing; this suggests that we should now look in this other (Congregationalist) direction’. Aan dat ‘de andere kant uitkijken’ wil dit onderzoek een bijdrage leveren. 

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Publications related to this research:

Leer, van der, Teun, 'Which Future Church(form)? A Plea for a 'Believers Church' Ecclesiology' in Journal of European Baptist Studies 9.3 (2009), 40-51

Daniel Drost

Diaspora as Mission. John Howard Yoder, Jeremiah 29 and the Shape and Mission of the Church

What does it mean to be church in the twenty first century? To answer this question I engage the work of American Mennonite scholar John Howard Yoder. He developed a thesis, working from Jeremiah 29, that the people of God, both Israel and the church, are called to an existence in diaspora. According to Yoder, this diaspora lifestyle is the social shape that God uses to reach the nations with His mission. He calls this perspective ‘diaspora as mission.’ Yoder’s proposal led to the main question of this study:
to what extent is John Howard Yoder’s ‘diaspora as mission’ ecclesiology coherent and helpful for engaging contemporary (post-Christendom Western) ecclesiological questions?
This question is answered by placing Yoder’s proposal within the twenty first century context, and is subsequently given a theoretical (theological and historical) and a practical critique. The latter is done by engaging three communities that are inspired by Yoder’s ‘diaspora as mission’ ecclesiology. These are Urban Expression Nederland, Shane Claiborne’s Simple Way Community and Mark Kinzer’s Messianic Jewish Congregation Zera Avraham.
Recently Yoder has been under severe criticism because of his longtime abuse of women and his theological justification of it as an eschatological ‘experiment.’ Knowing this, can we still use his work? This research develops a critical hermeneutic to his behavior and work, and the idealistic tendencies it suffers from. This critical hermeneutic is subsequently used to engage ecclesiological questions of the twenty first century.

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Publications related to this research :

Drost, Daniel, ‘Samen een weg vinden als Urban Expression in de wijk, met Yoder op de boekenplank’ in: Ingeborg Janssen-te Loo (red). Samen ontdekken. De uitdaging van de vergader(en)de gemeente: samen de wil van Christus onderscheiden. Baptistica Reeks. Amsterdam: Baptisten Seminarium, 2016

Drost, Daniel, ‘Leiderschap in de eerste joods-christelijke gemeenschappen.’ In: Jan Martijn Abrahamse en Wout Huizing (red). Van onderen! Op zoek naar een ambtstheologie voor een priesterschap van gelovigen. Baptistica Reeks. Amsterdam: Baptisten Seminarium, 2014

Drost, Daniel, ‘De volheid van Christus: John Howard Yoders spreken over ambt in de free church tradition.’  In: Jan Martijn Abrahamse en Wout Huizing (red). Van onderen! Op zoek naar een ambtstheologie voor een priesterschap van gelovigen. Baptistica Reeks. Amsterdam: Baptisten Seminarium, 2014 

Drost, Daniel, ‘De joodse wortels van christelijke gemeenschap. Vragen over identiteit.’ In: Henk Bakker en Daniël Drost (red). Andersom. Een introductie in de theologie van James Wm. McClendon. Baptistica Reeks. Barneveld: Baptisten Seminarium, 2014

Drost, Daniel, ‘Het noachidische verbond revisited?’ In: Soteria. 30ste jaargang, nummer 3, 2013

Drost, Daniel, ‘Is JHWH een gewelddadige Strijder? Een vergelijking tussen Arie Versluis’ dissertatie Geen verbond, geen genade en John Howard Yoders geweldloze benadering.’ Wapenveld. Jaargang 62, nr 6, december 2012

Jan Martijn Abrahamse

The Stripping of the Ministry: A Reconsideration and Retrieval of Robert Browne's Theology of Ordained Ministry(Completed, 10-1-2018)

There is a general concern for the role of the ordained ministry in contemporary theology. With the downfall of Christendom, institutional religion and its authorities have become suspect. Simultaneously, a renewed consciousness of the church’s participation in God’s mission to the world has shed new light upon the priestly ministry of the whole community, questioning the theological existence of a special ministry set apart by ordination. Among Baptists this is by many even regarded as a contradiction with congregational ecclesiology that grounds the existence of a local church in the faithful gathering under Christ’s Lordship, instead of a present priest or the Sacraments. ‘Other Baptists’ have in response to what they regard as an unduly functionalistic view of ministry – which reduced the role of the minister to a mere employee and an executor of some ecclesial tasks – reconnected with sacramental theology to formulate a theology of ordained ministry. In this study an attempt is made to rethink the present crisis of ordained ministry by a reconsideration and retrieval of the covenantal concept of ordained ministry in the literature of 16th century Separatist Robert Browne (c. 1550-1633). Against a dominant and oppressive state church, Browne envisaged a covenantal church separated from the world and grounded in God’s promise of provision and the obedience of the faithful. A communal church that recognized Godsend prophets to sustain them as a priestly community to live accordingly. Ordination is hence defined as a representation of God’s sending and the church’s reception. This Brownist theology of ordained ministry provides a fruitful theological framework for a missional church in a post-Christendom context. A special ministry called for the ministry of the church, whose existence flows from the local church instead of the other way around. In recent years theologians Stanley Hauerwas and Kevin Vanhoozer have urged to review ordained ministry in terms of prophethood and theological adequacy which bears a similar character: ordained ministers, as prophets among priests, called to sustain the church in its dramatical existence of living a different story in a violent world. Browne’s concept of covenant provides an adequate biblical framework to incorporate the church and its ordained ministry into God’s mission to the world.

Supervisors: Prof. dr. Eddy van der Borght, Prof. dr. Henk Bakker, Prof. dr. Curtis Freeman (external)

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Publications related to this research:

Abrahamse, Jan Martijn, The Stripping of the Ministry: A Reconsideration and Retrieval of Robert Browne's Theology of Ordained Ministry, PhD Dissertation, 2018, retrieved from: http://dare.ubvu.vu.nl/handle/1871/55723

Abrahamse, Jan Martijn, “Dumb Dogs That Cannot Bark: The Puritan Origins of Preaching Revival,” in Baptists and Revivals: Papers From the Seventh International Conference on Baptist Studies, ed. William Pitts (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2018), 288-303.

Abrahamse, Jan Martijn, “‘Is Smyth also Among the Brownists?’ Confronting John Smyth with his predecessor Robert Browne,” The Baptist Quarterly 46, no. 3 (2015): 1-10

Abrahamse, Jan Martijn & Wout Huizing, ed., Van onderen! Op zoek naar een ambtstheologie voor een priesterschap van gelovigen (Baptistica Reeks, no. 8; Amsterdam: Unie van Baptistengemeenten, 2014).

Abrahamse, Jan Martijn, “Robert Browne as an Unwanted Child: Explaining Separatism from the Nursery of Presbyterian Puritanism,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 40, no. 4 (2013): 349–365.

Kirsten Timmer

An examination of Baptist origins in the context of Baptist and Mennonite relationships in the early seventeenth-century Dutch Republic (ongoing)

An Examination of Baptist Origins in the Context of Baptist and Mennonite Relationships in the Early Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic (ongoing)
Research of baptist origins in the context of relations between English Baptists and Waterlander Mennonites in the early seventeenth-century Dutch Republic (1607-1630).
My research seeks to answer the question: which were the (dynamic) aspects of baptist origins in the context of the relations between English baptists and Waterlander Mennonites in the early seventeenth-century Dutch Republic (1607-1630)? Although in the past baptist historians have written about baptist origins and partly about the relationship between the English baptists and Waterlander mennonites during that time, there is a need to research the history of baptist origins, especially focusing on the relations between the English baptists and Waterlander mennonites. I have questioned research done by previous historians regarding the completeness and accuracy of their conclusion. The outcome of this was that their research and conclusions have not always been complete and accurate. This is caused by the fact that: 1) historians did not always have access to all of the available primary documents; and 2) even if they had, then most of them did not know the Dutch and/or Latin language which hampered them in reaching accurate conclusions. Therefore, a re-examination of baptist origins will help to complete the picture, not only of baptist origins, but also of baptists in the larger religious context of the early seventeenth century. Unless I discover primary sources with completely new information, I do not expect to completely alter the history of baptist origins and baptist and mennonite relationships during that time. I do hope to strengthen and nuance research done previously. In a way, I will try to fill in the missing puzzle pieces of baptist origins in Amsterdam and thus contribute to our scholarly knowledge about baptist history.

A few examples that help complete our understanding of baptist origins:

• The idea of consensus played a very important role among Waterlander mennonites and a crucial one in the so-called English affair (the English baptists’ request for acceptance as a true church and incorporation into the Amsterdam Waterlander mennonite congregation).
• John Smyth (English baptist) and Hans de Ries (Waterlander mennonite leader) played important roles in the relationship between the two groups.
• The English baptists were not accepted into the Waterlander congregation until 1615 (some have assumed in 1610 when the baptists sent their request to the Amsterdam Waterlander congregation)

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Henk Bakker (VU), Dr. Anthony Cross (IBTSC), contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.m