Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-45l2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-27T15:10:01.081Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sixteenth-Century Reformed Perspectives on the Minority Church*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

David Wright
David Wright
Affiliation:
New CollegeThe Mound Edinburgh EH1 2LX
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

If one may combine hypothesis and anachronism, I reckon that John Calvin would be highly uncomfortable in the pluralist society of the West at the end of the second Christian millennium. Even if we do not find him enunciating in so many words Zwingli's bold axiom that ‘a Christian city is none other than a Christian church’, nevertheless the central thrust of the reform in Geneva is clear – that the whole city be united in the honour and service of God. All children should be baptized, and no open dissent or defiance of the Christian order to which the city was corporately committed should go unchallenged. This, at any rate, is the conventional account of a fundamental platform of the Genevan Reformation, shared in large measure by Zūrich, Strasbourg and other cities, but not by Lutheran territories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 48 , Issue 4 , November 1995 , pp. 469 - 488
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 From his late (published 1531) exposition of Jeremiah (dedicated to Strasbourg), Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke XIV (1959), 424Google Scholar; see Walton, R. C., Zwingli's Theocracy (Toronto, 1967), 169, 218.Google Scholar

2 Doumergue, E., Jean Calvin, Les hommes et les choses de son temps, vol, VII (Neuilly-sur-Seine, 1927), 84–88Google Scholar; Monter, E. W., Calvin's Geneva (New York, 1967), 133–134.Google Scholar

3 CO [= Calvini Opera] IX, 892–3; ET in Bonnet, J., Letters of John Calvin, vol. IV (Philadelphia, 1858), 372–377Google Scholar. See Haroutunian's, J. discussion of Calvin as ‘Interpreter for the Suffering Church’, in Calvin: Commentaries (Library of Christian Classics XXIII; London, 1958), 37–39.Google Scholar

4 Letter to Anne Locke, 9 Dec. 1556, ed. Laing, D., The Works of John Knox (Edinburgh, 1855), vol. IV, 240.Google Scholar

5 ‘Europa afflicta: The Reformation of the Refugees’, Archiv für Reformalionsgeschichte 83 (1992), 91–111 at 102.Google Scholar

6 On Zephaniah 1:1–3, CO XLIV, 4; ET by Owen, John, Commentaries on the Twelve Minor Prophets …, vol. IV (Edinburgh, 1848), 186–187.Google Scholar

7 On Haggai 1:2–4, CO XLIV, 85–6; ET by Owen, op. at., vol. IV, 325.

8 Deutsche Messe und Ordnung Gottesdiensts, WA [= Weimarer Ausgabe] 19, 72–113 at 75; ET by Thompson, Bard, Liturgies of the Western Church (Cleveland, 1962), 125–126 (altered).Google Scholar

9 Martin Luther. Shaping and Defining the Reformation 1521–1532 (Minneapolis, 1990), 255Google Scholar. For earlier and later intimations of the same ideal in Luther, see Bellardi, op. cit. (n. 10 below), 109; cf. Bornkamm, H., Luther in Mid-Career 1521–1530 (London, 1983), 478–479.Google Scholar

10 Bellardi, W., Die Geschichte der ‘Christlichen Gemeinschaft’ in Strassbutrg (1546–50). Der Verzuch einer ‘zweiter Reformation’ (Leipzig, 1934)Google Scholar; Hammann, G., Entre la secte et la cité. Le projet d'église du réfamateur Martin Bucer (1491–1551) (Geneva, 1984), 76–82Google Scholar, 363–86; id., ‘Ecclesiological motifs behind the creation of the “Christlichen Gemeinschaften”’, in Wright, D. F. (ed.), Martin Bucer: Reforming Church and Community (Cambridge, 1994), 129–143.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 J. Kittelson, ‘Martin Bucer and the ministry of the church’, in Wright, op. cit., 83–94 at 89–94. Cf. also Brady, T. A. Jr., Ruling Class, Regime and Reformation at Strasbourg 1520–1555 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought XXII; Leiden, 1978), 274Google Scholar on the subversiveness of this ‘clerically-led conventicle movement’.

12 Hammann, op. cit., 358–9.

13 Cited by Bellardi, op. cit., 26 from the 1553 edition of the Gospels commentary (cf. Hammann, op. cit., 361–2); Enarrationum in Evangelia… (Strasbourg, 1527)Google Scholar, liber II, ff. 214v–5r (most copies lack liber II).

14 D. F. Wright, ‘Infant baptism and the Christian community’, in Wright (ed.), op. cit., 95–106 at 106, 102.

15 Enarratio in Evangelion lohannis (1528, 1530, 1536), ed. Backus, I. (Martini Buceri Opera Latino, vol. II; Leiden, 1988), 77.Google Scholar

16 ‘Bucer's influence on Calvin: church and community’, in Wright (ed.), op. cit., 32–44 at 40.

17 Léonard, E. G., A History of Protestantism, vol. I: The Reformation (London, 1965), 113–114.Google Scholar

18 Cf. Bellardi, op. cit., 109–11.

19 I owe my knowledge of this correspondence to Oberman, ‘Europa afflicta…’ (n.5 above), 97–8.

20 Heinrich Bullinger Werke, Abteilung, Zweite: Briefwechsel, Bd. 2, ed. Gäbler, U. et al. (Zürich, 1982), 58–59, 63 (no. 70).Google Scholar

21 Ibid. 75 (no. 74).

22 Ibid. 78 (no. 75).

23 Ibid. 57 (no. 70).

24 Eire, C. M. N., War Against the Idols. The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge, 1986), 260–264.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25 ‘Europa afflicta …’, 91, 110 (‘the program of the reformed counter-culture of the refugees’).

26 Cf. Pettegree, A., Foreign Protestant Communities in Sixteenth-Century London (Oxford, 1986)Google Scholar, and Emden and the Dutch Revolt. Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford, 1992).Google Scholar

27 Ed. Fraenkel, P., Martini Buceri Opera Latina, vol. IV (Leiden, 1988)Google Scholar. Ginzburg, Carlo, in II Nicodemismo: Simulazione e dissimulazione religiosa nell’ Europa del ′500 (Turin, 1970)Google Scholar, regarded a partial unsigned copy of this Consilium as the work of Capito; see Matheson, P., ‘Martyrdom or Mission? A Protestant Debate’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 80 (1989), 154–172Google Scholar at 159–62.

28 CO V, 239–78; ET by Beveridge, H. in Tracts and Treatises, vol. III (Edinburgh, 1851), 359–411.Google Scholar

29 Ed. Fraenkel, 13 (3.49), 69 (29:306), 93 (42:375).

30 Ibid. 5 (1:1–6).

31 Ibid. 10 (2:37).

32 Ibid. 157 (66:698).

33 De Fugiendis …, CO V, 260; ET Beveridge, vol. III, 388. Cf. Higman, F., ‘;Bucer et les nicodémites’, in Krieger, C. and Lienhard, M. (eds), Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe. Actesdu collogue de Strasbourg (28–31 août 1991) (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, LII; Leiden, 1993), vol. II, 645–658Google Scholar at 648, 650.

34 ‘Sur le principe central – que 1’ Eglise papistique est une vraie Eglise – il faut dire que Bucer est clair, net et cohérent, tandis que Calvin est évasif; Higman, art. cit., 649.

35 CO V, 245; ET Beveridge, vol. III, 367.

36 Eire, op. cit., 266–7.

37 Ed. Fraenkel, 5–6 (1:7–8).

38 Ibid. 8 (2:19). See Higman, art. cit., 650, and Matheson, art. cit., 156–7, 159, 169–70, on the importance of the theme of vocation.

39 De Fugiendis…, CO V, 273; ET Beveridge, vol. III, 405–6.

40 Martini Buceri Consilium, CO VI, 625. Bucer is throughout this (625–6) preoccupied with ‘winning, gaining’ Catholics. For (slightly differing) accounts of the genesis of this Consilium, see Eire, op. cit., 245–7, and Higman, art. cit., 652–3. Eire, 247 n. 51, wrongly asserts that Bucer was supporting Calvin. As Higman shows, his position had not changed in its essentials from 1540. See further for a comparison of Bucer's, Calvin's and others' views on the mass in this context, Pollet, J. V., Martin Bucer. Etudes sur les relations de Bucer avec Les Pays-Bas, L'Electorat de Cologne et L'Allemagne du Nord (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought XXXIII; Leiden, 1985), vol. I, 293–320.Google Scholar

41 Ed. Fraenkel, 166 (69:761). Passages like this one strengthen Higman's suggestion, art. cit., 647 n. 5, that the Consilium may have been written for a Catholic priest now committed to reform.

42 De Fugiendis …, CO V, 264–5; ET Beveridge, vol. III, 393–4. Cf. Eire, op. cit., 256–7.

43 Ed. Fraenkel, 132–3 (56:549).

44 Calvin's Old Testament Commentaries (Edinburgh, 1986), 184–187.Google Scholar

45 CO XLIII, 505; ET by Owen, , Minor Prophets, vol. IV, 34–35.Google Scholar

46 CO XLIII, 429–30; ET by Owen, , Minor Prophets, vol. III, 402.Google Scholar

47 CO XXXVIII, 404; ET by Owen, John, Jeremiah (Edinburgh, 1854), vol. III, 132.Google Scholar

48 CO XXXIX, 202; ET by Owen, , Jeremiah, vol. IV, 453.Google Scholar

49 CO XXXVIII, 652; ET by Owen, , Jeremiah, vol. IV, 69.Google Scholar

50 John Calvin and the Church. A Prism of Reform (Louisville, KY, 1990), 96–117.Google Scholar

51 Institutes4:l:2; ET by J. T. McNeill and F. L. Battles, vol. II, 1013–14. Cf. Wiley, art. cit., 108–9, and 113: ‘The church as the elect is a biblical emphasis that tends to come forward in the worst of times.’

52 Ibid. 114.

53 ‘Europe afflicta…’ (art. cit.), 109.

54 Ibid. 110. For the place of the suffering minority in the Marian exiles' notions of ‘the true church’, see Dawson's, J. E. A. essay on ‘The Apocalyptic Thinking of the Marian Exiles’, in Wilks, M. (ed.), Prophecy and Eschatology (Studies in Church History: Subsidia X, Oxford, 1994).Google Scholar