Verbond
Verbond (league, covenant), a term much used by the early Dutch Anabaptists, who often called themselves Bondgenoten, i.e., Covenanters; the expression "van den Verbonde" is frequently found in early Dutch Anabaptist writings. It was especially used by the revolutionary Anabaptists, particularly by the Batenburgers, who were said to be "intverbond van Batenburg." This usage has misled Karel Vos and A. F. Mellink to considering the "Verbond" to mean a social league to overthrow the political order. But this is not right; as Lowell H. Zuck has pointed out in his Yale dissertation, Anabaptist Revolution Through the Covenant in Sixteenth Century Continental Protestantism (New Haven, 1954), "Their motives for revolutionary activity were not nihilistic, but religious. Their purpose was the building of a new society, the kingdom of God on earth, which God would immediately inaugurate eschatologically, after the destruction of the old. Their own revolutionary covenant signaled the end of the Old age and identified those who participate in the New age." The word is derived from the Bible (Jeremiah 31:31-33; Romans 11:27, and many other places) and it was also used by the peaceful Anabaptists, among whom "verbond" according to I Peter 3:21, meant a close relation to God, a covenant with God (Christ), as is clearly pointed out by the martyr Jan Pauw (Grosheide, Verhooren, 50), who said that baptism is a certification or sign of the "verbond," and that all who are in the "verbond" are also baptized, and that the "verbond" is nothing other than that they promise to walk in the ways of God, without deviating from them. (See also Covenant.)
| Author(s) | Nanne van der Zijpp |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 1959 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
van der Zijpp, Nanne. "Verbond." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1959. Web. 21 Nov 2024. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Verbond&oldid=85701.
APA style
van der Zijpp, Nanne. (1959). Verbond. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 21 November 2024, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Verbond&oldid=85701.
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 4, pp. 809-810. All rights reserved.
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