A Pilgrimage Of Faith, J.B. Toews, 1993

ritual issues gave new vitality to a dor- mant church."* In time the older congregations appropriated many ideas and practices of the new church that they consid- ered to be right and scriptural. Cornelius Krahn spoke to the importance of the Mennonite Brethren birth as follows: "What it gave to the Russian Mennonites was a rebirth of personal piety, a living piety in which the individual believer receives assurance of the forgiveness of sins, and orders his life defi- nitely according to the teachings of Christ, particularly the Ser- mon on the Mount."55 After enlarging upon these influences he concluded: "So we see that the new religious life that came into Russian Mennonitism through the Brilder Gemeinde [Brethren] movement exerted a powerful influence both upon the religious life and the social attitude of the group.™5* 15 CHAPTER 2 A People of Bibliocentric Faith The early Mennonite Brethren, rooted in the larger Anabaptist-Mennonite family and firmly committed to the teachings of Menno, also shared their forebears* aversion to doctrinal formulations. The Anabaptist view that a practical theology of life cannot be pressed into a doctrinal system found strong affirmation among them, and perhaps explains the void of written material with a specific theological articulation from I860 to the close of the nine- teenth century.1 Abraham H. Unruh observed that the early Mennonite Brethren were acquainted with the confession of faith by Cor- nelius Ris> translated from the Dutch in 1849, but they did not refer to it in matters of faith and practice. Instead, they em- phasized Scripture as their only point of referenced The writings of Jacob R Bekker and Peter M. Friesen shed some light on the community process that led to specific deci- sions in understanding and practice, including such crucial is- sues as baptism, communion, footwashing and the character of the church as reflected in the record of the June Reform.* Another written source is the collection of some 330 sermons by Elder David Duerksen (1 850-191 0)4 and a collection of ear- ly leaders1 sermons published by Jacob and Abraham Kroeker at the turn of the century,5 These resources did not offer any organized system of the- ology nor propositionai statements of doctrine. Rather, they represented biblical texts applied to the historical and personal relationship of God to humankind. The redemptive provision of God-preparatory in the Old Testament and realized in Jesus 17 A PILGRIMAGE OF FAITH Christ-constituted the core of their theology. They empha- sized the ethical standards gove