Swiss Reformation Research Articles

Sacred History. Uses of the Past in the Renaissance World ed. by Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan (review)

Sacred History. Uses of Past in Renaissance World. Edited by Katherine Van Liere, Simon Ditchfield, and Howard Louthan. (New York: Oxford University Press. 2012. Pp. xxiv, 339- $125.00. ISBN 978-0-19- 959479-5.)In her preface to this important volume, Katherine Van Liere rightly points out that its subject-the historiography of Christianity in Renaissance- is an emerging in scholarship (p. vii).The first four chapters in volume, therefore, aim to give an introduction to this field. Anthony Grafton, in opening chapter History in Early Modern Europe: Tradition and Innovation, issues a warning: beginning of wisdom in such a vast field is to recognize how little we actually know about precise practices of ecclesiastical scholarship and how they mutated from generation to gen- eration, community to community, and to subject (p. 8). He gives a helpful summary of how modern scholars have usually seen differences between Renaissance humanist historians and church historians. According to this view, Renaissance humanist historians set out to discover an unknown past, whereas church historians looked for support for pre-existing theses. Humanists looked at human actions (as opposed to providence) as decid- ing factors in history. They felt, in their present, a historical distance from past (not a presence of tradition); and they applied new critical methods to historical sources (p. 5). Grafton shows that these distinctions are true only up to a point, because there was much cross-fertilization: Renaissance schol- ars were far more interested in church history than is usually acknowledged. Examples of this are Poggio Bracciolini, Lorenzo Valla, and Desiderius Erasmus. Grafton then looks at church historians proper and how they took up and expanded Eusebius of Caesarea's model in their writings.Euan Cameron gives an introduction to Protestant visions of early Christianity in Renaissance. Beginning his discussion with idea that the reformers were in some senses humanists and in others anti-humanists (p. 27), Cameron sees a development from humanist-inspired to doctrinal- apocalyptic Protestant church history in sixteenth century. The key issue for Protestants was to explain why error came into after apostolic times. Prevailing models of church history did not suit Protestant view of grand-scale theological defection of medieval Church (p. 31), and so historians of Reformation had to reinvent their discipline.The human- ist-inspired histories (such as those by Swiss Reformers Joachim Vadian and Heinrich Bullinger) emphasized human fallibility and deterioration of what had been, initially, good intentions in religious life.The doctrinal-apoca- lyptic variants, on other hand (such as Magdeburg Centuries), main- tained that wrong teachings and dilution of ideas of Gospel inevitably led to degradation from early on. According to Cameron, for Protestants ecclesiastical history was not sacred, since they rejected notion that anything in human life could be made 'sacred' or imbued with holy properties through association with religion (p. …

Preface

Preface Laura L. Knoppers (bio) In Paradise Lost, book 9, the tragic tension of the Fall is punctuated by black comedy as a newly fallen Adam, jocular and slightly tipsy, praises Eve’s sagacity, wishes that for one forbidden tree there had been ten, and eyes his comely bride with new interest: For never did thy Beautie since the dayI saw thee first and wedded thee, adorn’dWith all perfections, so enflame my senseWith ardor to enjoy thee, fairer nowThen ever, bountie of this vertuous Tree.1 As scholars have sometimes noted, Adam’s speech echoes an equally memorable moment in the Iliad, when a smitten Zeus propositions a seemingly reluctant Hera, who has in fact intentionally come perfumed, decked out, and armed with the girdle of Aphrodite to distract her husband from the battlefield of Troy.2 Like Zeus, Adam boasts of his newfound ardor, although unlike Zeus he does not praise his wife by cataloguing the other beautiful women who have aroused his desire and produced his numerous illegitimate offspring. This would not normally be the best way to flatter the jealous Hera, but she turns a blind eye, keeping her focus on getting Zeus into bed and, with the aid of Sleep, put away for the night. The humorous and parodic intertext of the duped and deceived Zeus and the scheming Hera helps to distinguish between the [End Page vii] Miltonic scenes of prelapsarian and postlapsarian lovemaking that C. S. Lewis famously objected were too much alike: “[Milton] has made the unfallen already so voluptuous and kept the fallen still so poetical that the contrast is not so sharp as it ought to have been.”3 The Olympian and Edenic husbands take their eye off the ball, so to speak: for Zeus, the field at Troy where Poseidon has come to the aid of Hera’s beloved Greeks, pinned back against their ships, and for Adam, the goal of obedience about which he has repeatedly reminded Eve, as well as the goal of being Eve’s guide and head. Neither marital pair retires decorously, whether to Olympus or to the Edenic bower; Zeus and Hera embrace atop Mount Ida, covered by a golden cloud, while Adam and Eve head for the nearest shady bank. This moment of heightened desire for Adam and Eve is also a moment of heightened intertextuality, of overlapping stories and storytellers, of breaking boundaries between sacred and profane spaces, of transgressive bodies and excessive desire. The episode serves in miniature to highlight some of the current topics in Milton scholarship with which the contributors to this volume engage. In this issue of Milton Studies, our authors bring fresh and probing insights to Milton and storytelling, embodied experience and transgression of boundaries, divine and human relations, and intertextual echo, allusion, and appropriation. The Milton that they examine is fully immersed in literary, cultural, and religious history: shaped by, appropriating, and reworking humoral physiology, monism, classical and medieval philosophy, Reformation theology, classical epic, religious and political polemic, and the Book of Common Prayer. The Milton explored in these essays looks back to the Bible, Homer, Virgil, Aristotle, Augustine, and Lucretius; his works jostle alongside those of such contemporaries as Swiss reformer Johannes Wollebius; tolerationists Lord Brook, Henry Robinson, and William Walwyn; and King Charles I himself; and they resonate forward to the writings of nineteenth century African-American women and of modern-day postsecularism. These Miltonic texts imitate, reprise, and challenge, but they are also marked by process, ambivalence, tension, and inconsistencies, [End Page viii] by angelic stories that do not add up, by gendered song that both expresses and endangers chastity, by boundaries meant to be transgressed, by inclusion that necessarily excludes, by iconoclasm that both tears down and builds up. Like the Homeric gods, the Miltonic narrative can move from reverence, dignity, and power to the absurd and satiric and back again. Opening our first section, “Storytelling and Authorship,” N. K. Sugimura looks at differing, even conflicting, models of causation, as the stories that angels tell in Paradise Lost move between a time-based, linear causation and an alternative Augustinian model of extratemporal causality. Timothy M. Harrison examines the...

Calvin's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper

Calvin's Doctrine of the Lord's Supper In order to pinpoint its proprium, it is necessary to understand John Calvin’s Eucharistic theology within the wider context of the intra-Protestant debates of his time. As a second- generation Reformer, Calvin developed his ideas explicitly in reaction to and as a middle way between the Lutheran and Swiss Reformed discussions of the 1520’s. To that end this essay first focuses on the main developments from the Middle Ages onwards, and then presents Calvin from the perspective of the positions taken up by some of his contemporaries, in particular Philipp Melanchthon. Next, some representative texts written by Calvin himself are analysed. Although Calvin’s Eucharistic views were not from the beginning a coherent and unified doctrine but developed only gradually, they may be described in a systematic-synthetic way. With respect to the matter of closed, open, and frequent communion, it is observed that for Calvin a regular celebration is essential to the deepening of the believer’s union with Christ.

"Pfarrbrüder", "Pfarrconvent" und Schweizerische Predigergesellschaft: Drei historische Beispiele der Zusammenarbeit und des Austauschs unter Pfarrpersonen der reformierten Schweiz im 19. Jahrhundert

After some introductory remarks about the Prophezei in Zurich and the Congrégations in Geneva, the essay focuses on three examples of pastoral cooperation within the 19th century Swiss Reformed churches. The Pfarrbrüder in the countryside of Basel were connected with the Moravians. They exchanged information through weekly reports and monthly conferences. Around 1830, more than half of all the pastors in the area were members. In 1840, the Pfarrkonvent became the official reunion of the pastors in Baselland. At first, they met three and later five times a year. In their meetings, one of the pastors presented a theological topic that was discussed afterwards. In addition to this, the pastors in some areas held exegetical meetings once a month including lunch and informal discussions. The Schweizerische Predigergesellschaft provided the Swiss Reformed pastors with a highly efficient network from the first conference in 1839 until World War I. At times, one third of all Reformed pastors attended the yearly conferences. The pastor associations in the various cantons of Switzerland were linked through correspondents who exchanged information on relevant ecclesial and theological topics.

William Tyndale on Covenant and Justification

This article offers a fresh interpretation of William Tyndale’s doctrine of justification with particular reference to his concept of covenant. It resists past scholarly attempts to resolve the apparent tension in his theology between faith and works in favour of either solifidianism or legalism. Instead, a close examination of Tyndale’s publications suggests that he maintained the gracious nature of justification without adopting justification by faith alone in the style of Martin Luther. Tyndale emphasized love for divine law as the essence of Christian righteousness. The gradual development of reciprocity in his concept of covenant came to undergird this formulation. Greater clarity with regard to Tyndale’s own theological position exposes misplaced comparison between Tyndale and Luther whilst encouraging the identification of views shared with Erasmus and the Swiss reformers consistent with certain trends in late-medieval theology.

Contributors

Willem J. van Asselt, PhD, is Honorary Senior Lecturer of Church History (retired), Department of Theology, Faculty of Humanities, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, and Professor of Historical Theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty, Leuven, Belgium (since 2008).Address: Evangelische Theologische Faculteit, 3001 Leuven, Belgium; W.J.vanAsselt@uu.nlLuca Baschera, PhD, is Research Fellow at the Institute for Swiss Reformation History, University of Zurich, Switzerland.Address: Institut für Schweizerische Reformationsgeschichte, Universität Zürich, Kirchgasse 9, 8001 Zürich, Switzerland; Luca.Baschera@uzh.chAndreas J. Beck, PhD, is Professor of Historical Theology and Director of the Institute of Post-Reformation Studies at the Evangelical Theological Faculty,

The Lord's Supper for Baptists: A Spiritual Meal, a Snack, or a Placebo?

Baptists and other evangelical Christians have some unique challenges in Table worship. They are essentially alone in insisting that the Lord's Supper is not a sacrament — “a visible sign instituted by Christ to symbolize or confer grace.” They are more comfortable calling it an “ordinance,” which acknowledges Christ's institution of the act and their own obedience, but hesitates to claim any spiritual benefit. Their fears of “sacramental heresy” were confirmed in pre-Reformation abuses by Roman Catholics, especially those connected with transubstantiation and the concept of ex opere operato. In the sixteenth-century Reformation, the new Baptists and others in England, and Anabaptists on the Continent, were more radical than the magisterial denominations in “policing” table participation and limiting its meaning. Basically, they were followers of the Swiss reformer Ulrich Zwingli, who heralded communion as remembrance and Christian education, with no expectation of special grace. From the beginning, their table service was limited to brief prayers of thanks for the bread and the cup, improvised by deacons. The passing centuries contributed little to a meaningful Lord's Supper for Baptists. What we need now is a full, complete service of actions and words, with full remembrance of our Lord from eternity to eternity; full thanksgiving for all we remember; full awareness of our eating and drinking symbols of Christ's body and blood, which, by faith, can nourish us as he promised; and full recommitment of believers to love God completely and neighbors as themselves. The total result could be the spiritual maturation of believers through worship, and repetition of the full Gospel story for the uncommitted.

Między sceną a dziełem. O reformującej roli dramatów muzycznych Richarda Wagnera

In Between stage and work of literature. In the reforming role of Richard Wagner's musical dramas the author tries to show that musical dramas of the German composer were actually important artistic events which could contribute to the understanding of the complex relations between the stage and the musical drama as preserved in the score. The lack of the unequivocally outlined conception of the work - incomplete at different levels and unspecified in its many aspects - gave an impulse to numerous stage experiments which appeared to be of significance just from the point of view of the history of the theatre. And so the history of staging Wagner's dramas became a part of its history; Adolphe Appia, a Swiss reformer of the theatre was one of the first to find this regularity and tried to present it on stage using all the historical changeability of the latter.

:Europe's Reformations, 1450-1650: Doctrine, Politics, and Community

Part 1 Part One: Introduction Chapter 2 Premises Chapter 3 The Reformation in European Perspective Part 4 Part Two: Doctrine to Live By Chapter 5 Late Medieval Background Chapter 6 Martin Luther, to 1521 Chapter 7 The German and Swiss Reformation, 1521-1526 Chapter 8 The German and Swiss Reformation, 1526-1555 Chapter 9 The European Reformations Part 10 Part Three: Politics Chapter 11 The Wars of Italy, 1494-1559 Chapter 12 Wars of Religion, 1562-1648 Chapter 13 The European Reformations Chapter 14 England's Reformations, 1527-1660 Part 15 Part Four: Society and Community Chapter 16 Late Medieval Background Chapter 17 The German and Swiss Reformation Chapter 18 Reformations Across Europe Chapter 19 Europe's Reformations in Global Perspective

Religious education in state schools in German‐speaking Switzerland

There are today a variety of patterns in the different cantons of Switzerland for regulating the teaching of RE. The Swiss system is based on a cooperation between Church and state which varies in relation to the history and character of the differing cantons. This allows for diversity in modes of delivering RE. In two cantons there is complete separation between church and state whereas in the majority there is some form of cooperation. State recognized religious communities (normally the Swiss Reformed and Roman Catholic Churches, but in Basel the Old Catholic Church and Jewish community also) are in charge of the RE in schools where it is taught by their representatives visiting the schools. Where state related RE is taught this is done by teachers in the school employed by the state. The presence of Turkish immigrants is raising problems for the teaching of RE in certain areas since Islam has not been traditionally state recognized. However, the inherent diversity of patterns within the 26 cantons allows considerable room for innovation feasible because there is generally an openness between the churches and from the state which facilitates this.

Heinrich Bullingers europaische Kirchenpolitik (review)

Heinrich Bullingers europaische Kirchenpolitik. By Andreas Muhling. [Zurcher Beitrage zur Band 19.] (Bern: Peter Lang. 2001. Pp. 371. $56.95 paperback.) Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575) received his call to succeed his mentor, Huldrych Zwingli, as Cathedral preacher in Zurich following the death of the latter in the Battle of Kappel (1531). If Zwingli was the pioneer and first prophet of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger gained universal renown as its consolidator. Zwingli's work and writings were soon eclipsed by the prodigious work of his apprentice and successor. In the end, Bullinger was to write more than Luther and Calvin combined. As pastor to the church in Zurich, Bullinger would become a leading confidant and counselor to religious and political leadership across Europe-soon in transition from an Age of Reform to that of Confessionalism. Andreas Muhling's study does a hefty job in mapping out Bullinger's work and correspondence with such leadership amidst the many ambiguities of the period. His focus is on the political significance of this work as Bullinger's advice issued forth from Zurich. In the introduction to this valuable volume in the series Zurcher Beitrage zur Reformationsgeschichte, Muhling lays out in a clear fashion and with reference to critical scholarship the growth of the contemporary critical apparatus around this pivotal reformer. Building on the nineteenthcentury work of Carl Pestalozzi, the scholarship of Walter Hollweg (1956) and Joachim Staedtke (1962) becomes pivotal to four phases of Bullinger research. Critical issues related to chronology, terminology, the central value of Bullinger's Diarium, and his Letters carry us to the bulk of the book and its argument concerning Bullinger's political significance. Muhling takes us through chapters that grow out of the critical framework that he provides to the political significance and foundation of Bullinger's church politics, his relationship with the Empire and with the continuing line of European monarchs to whom Bullinger dedicated his voluminous works, from Albrecht von Brandenburg (1532) to the English bishops Grindal, Cox, and Jewel (1571). According to Muhling, Bullinger's main interest was the condition and building up of a community reformed by the Word of God. Following the consolidation of the church in Zurich, Bullinger was able to carry this concern to the plane of European politics. Muhling draws attention to Bullinger's remarkable virtuosity and sensitivity in doing this. …

REBELLION, RESISTANCE, AND A SWISS BRUTUS?

Early sixteenth-century Germany and Switzerland witnessed, amongst their peasants, a growing dissatisfaction with economic exploitation and the increasing power of political rulers. The Protestant Reformation at the time had a profound influence on the moulding of this dissatisfaction into a right to demand the enforcement of divine justice. The Swiss reformer, Huldrych Zwingli, provided parallels for the demands of the peasants, while the German reformers, Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon, criticized the rebellious methods of the peasantry. Against this background the young Swiss reformer, Heinrich Bullinger, responded more positively towards the claims of the peasants by opposing the views of the Lutheran reformers in his play ‘Lucretia and Brutus’. In this drama, Bullinger propounds the first steps towards the development of his federal theory of politics by advancing the idea of oath-taking as the mechanism for transforming the monarchy into a Christian republic. The idea of oath-taking was destined to become a most important device in early modern politics, used to combat tyranny and to promote the idea of republicanism.

The Swiss Reformation

1The Open University The Swiss Reformation Bruce Gordon Manchester Manchester U.P. 2002 xxiv + 368 Hardback£49.99 Paperback£16.99

Review: The Swiss Reformation

Review: The Swiss Reformation

HEINRICH BULLINGER (1504–75): LIFE – THOUGHT – INFLUENCE An International Congress, Zurich, 25–29 August 2004

Heinrich Bullinger is an outstanding example of posthumous neglect by historical scholarship. Within the more narrow field of specialists, it is indeed recognised that we have him chiefly to thank for the consolidation of the Zurich Reformation, and to a considerable extent of the whole Swiss Reformation, and also that he was an important teacher and adviser for all the Reformed Churches of Europe. Nevertheless Bullinger has been to a large extent relegated to a subordinate role, not least indeed in university curricula and in current textbooks. Certainly research on Bullinger has provided basic outlines in the last decades – for example, the edition of his correspondence – but this does still not signify a general change of attitude.

The Swiss Reformation

The Swiss Reformation

Swiss Reformed Response

Swiss Reformed Response

Ethnography is Dogmatics: Making Description Central to Systematic Theology

Thepurpose of this article is to suggest that dogmatic theology is best practised through description of the world. Its method is to marry two unlikely characters: Karl Bardi, Swiss Reformed theologian, and Michel Foucault, French atheist philosopher and historian. The thesis we propose can be presented directly. Barth is well known for insisting, in his ethics lectures in Münster and Bonn (1928/29 and 1930/31 respectively) and volume II of hisChurch Dogmatics, that ethics is dogmatics. Foucault famously rejected ethics which makes universal normative claims in favour of producing descriptions of historical phenomena and letting the reader make moral judgments accordingly. His method, we suggest, understands ethics as ethnography. We have taken these two ways of thinking together and excluded the middle term: ethics. This has yielded the abbreviated form: ethnography is dogmatics.

Transcendence and Community in Zwinglian Worship: the Liturgy of 1525 in Zurich

Iconoclasm, rather than liturgical formulation, usually springs to mind when one reflects upon the events in Zurich in the mid-1520s. Indeed, historians of the Swiss Reformation have hardly interested themselves in liturgy, and one searches in vain the most recent and comprehensive treatment of Zwingli’s theology for a discussion of the subject. Ignored by both historians and theologians, the study of liturgy in the Swiss Reformation cuts the figure of the unknown guest at a party who everyone assumes is being entertained by someone else. The consequence has been that liturgy has not been allowed to inform our understanding of Swiss religious change; historians have preferred to leave it in the safe keeping of liturgists who, for the most part, have attended to the history of worship as a separate and distinct act of the community controlled by the clergy. This, surely, can only form part of the picture, for liturgy was perhaps the most inclusive act of the Church: worship was experienced by all levels of society, even if the people brought and took away a panoply of varied levels of comprehension and acceptance. As the central, public act of the Church, the early liturgies of the Reformation articulated the tangled web of convictions, needs, and requirements of communities in transition. Liturgies cannot be separated from either the beliefs which created them or the physical space in which they were performed. The ordered rhythm of words and actions in a particular locality was intended to engage the intellect and senses, drawing out responses at once emotional and cognitive. If we can glimpse something of the experience of worship, whether positive or negative, we shall have an insight into the mental world of the early Reformation.

Icarus of Basel? Oecolampadius and the Early Swiss Reformation

This article examines the role of Johannes Oecolampadius in the establishment of reformation at Basel specifically and his place in the Swiss Reformation generally. In this context there is an overview of reformation tactics and activities at Basel in the 1520s, especially concerning the role of the city council, popular movements advocating iconoclasm, and the Anabaptist problem. Oecolampadius’ relations with Luther, Zwingli, Erasmus and the radical reformers are considered.It is suggested that the importance of Oecolampadius consists in the doctrine of the eucharist and his ideas on ecclesiastical discipline as they relate to civil authority. With respect to the eucharist, Oecolampadius’ position is clearly delineated in his writings, principally his 1525 treatise and then later at the famous Marburg Colloquy in 1529. His eucharistic theology departed from the positions of Roman Catholicism, Luther and the Anabaptists. There is also a subtle deviation from Zwingli. Regarding the church and state in matters of discipline, Oecolampadius anticipated Calvin in the plea for ecclesiastically administered civil order and moral regulation. It is argued that Oecolampadius’ ideas on the eucharist and ecclesiastical discipline were foundational in the development of Reformed theology and polity and therefore the Basel Reformation is a watershed in that tradition.