Comparing Aquinas Teachings And The Anabaptists

Throughout the many years of Christianity, there have been numerous theologians who have attempted to copiously interpret Scripture in the means of guiding a society through God’s teachings. One of these theologians is St. Thomas Aquinas and another group of thinkers were the Anabaptists; both of whom shared fairly different views on how a just society should act. In order to compare these two distinct views of Scripture, I will state the Anabaptists’ perspectives, principally on legitimate war and violence, and then contrast them with Aquinas’s teachings followed by a discussion of the background context on their time periods and how both of them employ Scripture or previous thinkers in their writings in respective alternation. In short, the

The Reformation began primarily due to Luther and his vocal objections that Christians were not performing Christian duties; there was too much corruption. As a result, society began to pursue the right way to praise God and be Christian so everyone had this idea of “my faith is the right faith” in this time. Consequently, the Anabaptists were one of the early Reformers and they had more extreme views, such as their separation from the outside world or their literal interpretation of Jesus’s teachings on violence, which they believed to be the precise and correct method in praising God. This further supports their stance of them asserting themselves as “the true Christians” simply because they believe their faith is the correct faith, therefore nobody else’s can be. The context of their thinking heavily influences their ideals because they strived in a time where everyone was conveying their own beliefs; thus the Anabaptists had to stick firmly to their

For example, when they created their second article, the “ban”, their reasoning for it was that “The [offender] shall be admonished twice in secret and the third time openly disciplined or banned…Matt 18” (Leith 285). Therefore, they created rules to live by and searched for Scriptural support that affirmed its validity, or vice versa, but hand in hand. Having Scriptural support in their articles, they followed Jesus strictly and took the literal meanings of his teachings, such as no violence whatsoever at any time. This also gave them further reason to believe that their faith was correct and proper when many doubted them. With that being said, even though the Anabaptists did have relatively extreme views on some practices in their faith, they did have Scriptural support which they applied to each of their teachings in order to authenticate