Skip to content

Course 12 · Lesson 6.2

Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition

11 minute read

Lessons in this course

Course 12 outline

Module 1: The Apostolic Fathers and the Early Apologists

  1. Who the Apostolic Fathers were: Clement, Ignatius, Polycarp and the Didache
  2. Church order, worship and martyrdom in the second century
  3. Why Christians wrote apologies: charges, persecution and public defense
  4. Justin Martyr, philosophy and the Logos

Module 2: Irenaeus, Tertullian and Origen

  1. Irenaeus against the Gnostics: the rule of faith and apostolic succession
  2. Tertullian and the beginnings of Latin theology
  3. Origen: biblical scholarship, allegory and speculation
  4. Heresy and orthodoxy: the scholarly debate about early diversity

Module 3: Creeds and Councils: Nicaea to Chalcedon

  1. From baptismal confession to creed
  2. Arius, the Council of Nicaea (325) and Athanasius
  3. The Cappadocian Fathers and the Council of Constantinople (381)
  4. Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): one Christ, two natures
  5. The seven councils and how the churches receive them

Module 4: Augustine, Chrysostom and the Desert

  1. Augustine: life, conversion and the Confessions
  2. Augustine on grace, the Pelagian controversy and the City of God
  3. John Chrysostom: preacher, pastor and critic of wealth
  4. The Desert Fathers and Mothers: Anthony, Macarius and Amma Syncletica

Module 5: The Medieval Church and Scholasticism

  1. The medieval setting: monasteries, cathedral schools and universities
  2. Anselm and the method of scholasticism
  3. Thomas Aquinas: life and the structure of the Summa Theologiae
  4. Aquinas on faith, reason, nature and grace
  5. East and West: the growing divide and the schism of 1054

Module 6: The Reformation and the Counter-Reformation

  1. Luther and the question of justification
  2. Zwingli, Calvin and the Reformed tradition
  3. The Radical Reformation and the English Reformation
  4. The Council of Trent and Catholic reform
  5. Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant readings of the Reformation

Module 7: Modern Theology and Tracing a Doctrine

  1. The Enlightenment and its challenges to inherited doctrine
  2. Schleiermacher, liberal theology and Karl Barth
  3. Vatican II, Orthodox renewal and the evangelical and Pentecostal movements
  4. How to trace a doctrine: development, change and corruption

All courses

Program / Course 12: Patristics and Historical Theology / Lesson 6.2

What you will learn

  • Describe how Zwingli’s reform in Zurich differed from Luther’s in Wittenberg.
  • Outline Calvin’s career and the shape of the Institutes of the Christian Religion.
  • Explain the Reformed teachings on God’s sovereignty, election and the Lord’s Supper.
  • Describe the debate with Arminius and the Synod of Dort.

The big idea

The Reformed tradition began in Swiss cities with Huldrych Zwingli and took its most influential form in the teaching of John Calvin. It shares with Lutheranism the teaching of justification by faith alone, and it adds a strong emphasis on God’s sovereignty, a close tie between the Word of God and the life of the church, and a disciplined Christian life. Reformed thinkers disagreed with Lutherans over the Lord’s Supper and later argued among themselves about election. The tradition shaped churches in Switzerland, France, the Netherlands, Scotland, England and North America.

Key terms

Reformed
The family of Protestant churches that follows the teaching of Zwingli, Calvin and their successors, including Presbyterian and many Congregational churches.
Sovereignty of God
The teaching that God rules over all things and that nothing happens outside his will.
Election and predestination
The teaching that God, before the world began, chose some people for salvation by grace. Calvin and the Reformed tradition affirm it, and other Christians interpret the biblical passages differently.
Real presence
The teaching that Christ is truly present in the Lord’s Supper. Churches differ on how.
Presbyterian
A form of church government by elders, called presbyters, in representative assemblies, characteristic of many Reformed churches.
Regulative principle
The Reformed idea that public worship should include only what Scripture commands or clearly warrants.
Remonstrants
Followers of Jacobus Arminius in the Dutch church, who in 1610 presented objections to Calvinist teaching on election, grace and perseverance.

Background

Huldrych Zwingli (1484 to 1531) was a priest and humanist who became the people’s priest at Zurich in 1519. He began preaching straight through the Gospels and, in 1522, supported those who ate meat in Lent, saying that Scripture did not forbid it. The Zurich city council backed his reforms. Zwingli removed images and altars from the churches, simplified worship around preaching and made the Lord’s Supper a memorial. He died in battle at Kappel in 1531.

John Calvin (1509 to 1564) was born in France, studied humanism and law, and underwent a conversion to the evangelical cause around 1533. He fled France, and in 1536 published the first edition of his Institutes of the Christian Religion in Basel. Invited to reform Geneva, he was expelled in 1538, spent three years in Strasbourg, and returned in 1541. He remained in Geneva until his death. He wrote commentaries on most of the Bible, preached constantly and reshaped the church and city life of Geneva.

Calvin revised the Institutes several times, and the final edition of 1559 is five times as long as the first. It is a systematic summary of Christian teaching organized around the knowledge of God, Christ, the Spirit, and the church.

Step-by-step explanation

Step 1: The Lord’s Supper and the Marburg Colloquy

Zwingli and Luther agreed on much, but not on the Lord’s Supper. Luther held that Christ’s body and blood are truly present in, with and under the bread and wine, because Jesus said this is my body. Zwingli taught that the words mean this signifies my body, and that the Supper is a memorial in which believers publicly affirm their faith. At the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, the two met and agreed on fourteen of fifteen articles but not on the Supper. The division of Protestants over the sacrament began there.

Calvin took a middle path. He taught that Christ is not physically in the bread and wine, as the body of Christ is in heaven, but that through the Holy Spirit believers truly feed on Christ when they receive the Supper in faith. Reformed churches have varied between a memorial view like Zwingli’s and a spiritual presence view like Calvin’s.

Step 2: The shape of the Institutes

In its final form, the Institutes has four books: on God the Creator, on God the Redeemer in Christ, on the way the grace of Christ is received through the Holy Spirit, and on the external means by which God invites people into the society of Christ and holds them in it, the church and the sacraments. It opens with the claim that wisdom consists of knowledge of God and of self. Calvin says that all people have a sense of God, but that because of sin it needs Scripture as spectacles to read correctly.

Calvin stresses the unity of Scripture, the authority of the Word, the central role of preaching and the work of the Holy Spirit in giving faith. He summarized the true church by its marks: the Word of God rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.

Step 3: Election and predestination

Calvin taught that God, out of his free mercy, chose some in Christ before the foundation of the world, and that others are passed over. He insisted that this teaching should comfort believers by grounding salvation in God’s faithfulness, and that it should be handled with humility and not speculation. He and his followers argued that it follows from passages such as Romans 9 and Ephesians 1.

Critics, then and now, argue that the doctrine makes God the author of sin or destroys human responsibility. Calvin replied that God is just and that people are responsible for their sins. Lutherans, Catholics and Orthodox Christians have generally rejected the more rigorous forms, and have read the passages differently, stressing human response or God’s foreknowledge. Within the Reformed tradition itself, theologians have debated how to state the doctrine.

Step 4: Arminius and the Synod of Dort

Jacobus Arminius (1560 to 1609), a Dutch professor, questioned the stricter forms of predestination, arguing that election is based on God’s foreknowledge of faith and that grace can be resisted. After his death his followers, the Remonstrants, set out five points in 1610. The national Synod of Dort (1618 to 1619) rejected them and affirmed five points in reply: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints. These are often summarized by the acronym TULIP, a later device.

Arminian teaching passed into the Church of England and then into Methodism through John Wesley. The disagreement between Calvinist and Arminian views remains one of the main lines of Protestant theology.

Step 5: Church, society and legacy

Reformed churches stressed ordered church government, congregational discipline and education. Geneva became a refuge for Protestants from France, England and Scotland, and its model influenced John Knox, the Huguenots, the Dutch and the English Puritans. Confessions such as the Heidelberg Catechism (1563) and the Westminster Confession (1646) set out Reformed teaching.

The record also includes shadows. In 1553, Michael Servetus, who denied the Trinity, was burned in Geneva after a trial in which Calvin took part and supported a guilty verdict, though he had urged a less cruel form of execution. Historians discuss how far Calvin personally controlled Geneva and how to judge this act in the standards of his age, when many Christians of all confessions executed heretics.

  1. Why might someone find the doctrine of election comforting? Why might another find it troubling?
  2. What is gained and lost in treating the Lord’s Supper as a memorial?
  3. How do the marks of the church compare with how you would define a true church?
  4. What does it mean to say that Scripture is spectacles?
  5. Why did a political and religious conflict arise so quickly around predestination?
  6. How do you weigh a great teacher’s achievements against his cruelty?

Examples

A verse and two readings

On the words this is my body, Luther said they should be taken as they stand. Zwingli said the verb means signifies, as in I am the vine. Calvin said Christ is truly given to the believer but spiritually. All three drew on the same text.

A comfort for the afflicted

Calvin wrote that a person who believes God’s election finds assurance that their salvation does not depend on their own grip on God but on God’s grip on them. Many Reformed believers have found this a comfort in times of trial.

A synod in Dort

Delegates from the Dutch church and from Reformed churches abroad met for months and issued the Canons of Dort. The synod shaped the doctrine of Reformed churches in the Netherlands and North America for centuries.

Different perspectives

Reformed and Presbyterian

Reformed churches affirm the sovereignty of God, election in Christ, justification by faith alone and the authority of Scripture. They differ among themselves about worship, church government and the limits of the atonement. They commonly see Calvin as an interpreter of Scripture and not as a founder.

Lutheran and Anglican

Lutherans agree on justification but disagree on the Supper and on election, and they often object that Calvinism diminishes the means of grace. Anglicans have included both Calvinists and Arminians, and the Thirty-Nine Articles speak of predestination in a way that both groups have read as their own.

Catholic and Orthodox

Catholics reply that grace is given to all and that human beings cooperate freely, and the Council of Trent condemned the view that the justified are unable to resist grace. Orthodox theologians reject predestination to damnation and emphasize synergy between God and man.

Scholarly views

Historians debate whether predestination was the center of Calvin’s thought or a later emphasis, how far Reformed churches differed from Lutherans in practice, and whether the Protestant ethic described by Max Weber was related to Calvinism. Many dispute Weber’s thesis.

Why it matters

Reformed Christianity has been one of the most influential branches of Protestantism, shaping worship, education and church government in large parts of the world. Its debates with Lutherans and Arminians are also the background to many present disagreements among Protestants about grace, freedom and the sacraments.

Common misunderstandings

Misunderstanding: Calvin ruled Geneva as a dictator.

Correction: He held no civil office and often clashed with the city council, which held real power. His influence was great but not absolute, and historians dispute the extent of his control.

Misunderstanding: Calvin’s central teaching was predestination.

Correction: Predestination is one part of a larger system centered on God’s glory and Christ. Later Calvinism gave it more weight.

Misunderstanding: Zwingli and Luther disagreed about everything.

Correction: They agreed on fourteen of fifteen articles at Marburg. The Supper was the issue they could not resolve.

Misunderstanding: TULIP was written by Calvin.

Correction: The five points come from Dort, in reply to the Remonstrants, and the acronym arose later.

Knowledge check

How did Calvin’s teaching on the Lord’s Supper differ from Luther’s and Zwingli’s?

Luther taught that Christ’s body and blood are present in, with and under the bread and wine. Zwingli taught that the Supper is mainly a memorial. Calvin taught that Christ’s body is in heaven but that the Holy Spirit truly unites believers to Christ as they receive the Supper in faith.

What are the four books of the Institutes about?

The final Institutes treats the knowledge of God the Creator, God the Redeemer in Christ, how believers receive Christ’s grace through the Holy Spirit, and the external means of grace, the church and the sacraments. Calvin revised the work from 1536 to 1559.

What was the Synod of Dort?

It was a synod of the Dutch Reformed church with foreign delegates in 1618 to 1619 that rejected the five points of the Remonstrants and affirmed five points on human sinfulness, election, the atonement, grace and perseverance. The five points were later summarized as TULIP.

Why is the case of Servetus controversial?

Michael Servetus denied the Trinity and was burned in Geneva in 1553 after a trial in which Calvin took part. Calvin had asked for a different execution but supported the verdict. Historians discuss the act in the context of an age in which many Christians executed heretics.

Think it through

  1. What might make a doctrine feel like good news to some and a burden to others?
  2. How much should a church’s worship be shaped only by what Scripture commands?
  3. What do you think of using memorial language for a sacrament?
  4. Why do some divisions among Christians seem to be about the same words?

Independent assignment

Reading the Heidelberg Catechism

Read Questions 1 to 11 and 60 to 64 of the Heidelberg Catechism in the library. In your notebook, write what the catechism says about the believer’s only comfort and about justification. Then compare one sentence with Luther’s Small Catechism. Add 150 words on what the two documents share and where they differ. Aim for 400 to 500 words.

Further study