Use of the Fathers in the Eucharistic Debates between John Calvin and Joachim Westphal

Abstract

This essay examines how John Calvin and Joachim Westphal used the early church fathers in the sixteenth-century debates over the Lord's Supper. In the midst of competing Lutheran and Reformed interpretations of the Lord's Supper, the reformers looked to ancient authorities in support of their views against competing opinions. As controversies erupted, not only between Catholics and Protestants but among the Protestants themselves, references to the church fathers increased as the reformers appealed to the ancient tradition for confirmation on doctrinal and liturgical issues. This essay compares how Calvin and Westphal referred to the church fathers to authorize their own interpretations concerning the Eucharist and contributes to current conversations on the use of the early church fathers in the construction of Protestant "orthodoxy," and the history of biblical interpretation during the Reformation. This essay relates to a larger project, which examines the problem of religious authority during the European Reformation.