CALVIN, ZWINGLI, AND LUTHER

CALVIN

Calvin lived for only fifty-four years, and struggled with ill health for much of that time. By the time he went to Geneva to stay, about half of his life was already spent, but he was enabled to do a vast amount in the years that remained. He was both a hard-working pastor and a professor of theology, and his counsel and advice were sought through both personal applications and also written correspondence from across Europe; yet he was a prodigious writer as well.

John Calvin studied medieval theology and then trained for the legal profession where he came into contact with the Christian humanism current in France at the time. He became more committed to the study of Scripture and the Reformation teaching, and, in 1536, published the first version of his ‘Institutes of the Christian Religion’. Recalled to Geneva in 1541, Calvin worked for many years, taking the lead in defining the new forms of Christian life and work, and of church and community life.

Calvin’s work in Geneva added greatly to the widespread fame which his writings had already brought him. He gave final expression to his theology in 1559 and 1560 by publishing the last version of his ‘Institutes’ in four parts. Calvin wanted to continue and complete the work begun by Luther and other Reformers.

This gives some idea of the impact that the man had on Europe, and therefore on Scotland, and demonstrates how closely intertwined his name is closely intertwined with the post-Reformation history of the Scottish nation. It is interesting to note that the first two volumes of the English language translation of his Letters by Dr Jules Bonnet were published in Edinburgh, rather than in England.

An informal poll conducted amongst members of a Baptist church produced an interesting result. The question was asked, “What nationality was the Reformer John Calvin?”  Over half of those who gave an answer believed that he was Scottish.

ZWINGLI

Zwingli was the pioneer of the Swiss Reformation. Ordained in 1506, he became rector of Glarus, where he was a diligent pastor and effective preacher. In 1516 he had a new charge at Einsiedeln, where he was able to immerse himself in Erasmus’ Greek New Testament. Appointed people’s priest in Zurich in 1519, he used the Great Minster pulpit for a systematic exposition of the New and Old Testaments.

Zwingli initiated the radical programme of reform that rapidly changed Zurich’s ecclesiastical life, and impacted the canton as well as neighbouring cities like Basel and Berne. Prominent changes included the ending of the Mass, the rejection of the papacy, suppression of the monasteries and the pruning of customs and practices according to Scripture.

From 1525, Zwingli found himself at odds with the Roman Catholic church and also caught up with the Anabaptists and Lutherans. Such controversies diverted resources and weakened the force of reform, and Zurich became increasingly isolated. The Swiss Forest Cantons caught Zurich unprepared at Kappel in October 1531, and Zwingli fell in the defeat, which caused a setback to the Reformation in German Switzerland.

Among the many works that Zwingli had published was ‘On the Lord’s Supper’ which sparked off the sacramental debates among the Reformers, each of them followed by further polemical treatises. Theologically, Zwingli steered the Swiss churches into courses that would distinguish the Reformed family. Even if he did not himself develop all the emphases that characterise the reformed churches, he sketched many of the outlines both practically and theologically.

LUTHER

Martin Luther’s background was marked by a deep religion and a dignified poverty, both of which he carried to the grave. He entered the monastery of the Augustinian Hermits of Erfurt in 1505, and was ordained as priest in 1507. Sent to Rome in 1510 on monastic business, his eyes were opened to the corruption of the curia. In the following year, Luther became Doctor of Theology and was recalled to Wittenberg as professor of biblical studies.

In 1517 Luther’s Ninety-five Theses against the sale of indulgences sparked off the Reformation movement. The theses spread rapidly, overrunning Germany within a fortnight and impacting Europe shortly after. By 1519 Luther was virtually at the head of the Reformation movement. In the following year, he published ‘On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church’ in which he fired a broadside at the Catholic interpretation of the Eucharist.

A papal bull of 1520 ordered Luther’s books to be burned as heretical and he was given sixty days to recant. Luther burnt the bull and was duly excommunicated. In 1522 he stabilised university and church life in Wittenberg and faced the problems brought on by the Reformation. In addition to the fanatics, he had to deal with the more responsible Catholic resistance. The Peasant’s War of 1525 wounded the Reformation by alienating scholars and humanists and many who had supported the Reformation turned against it.

1529 brought the division within Protestantism on the doctrine of the Eucharistic presence, and the Reformation, which had barely begun, was suffering schism. This fact was not lost on Luther, who had not set out to break away from the Catholic Church.

SCOTLAND

The Scottish reformation story is largely about other people rather than Calvin himself. As far is Scotland is concerned, Calvin was an invisible man whose presence was nonetheless felt very strongly. Though he never set foot in Scotland, his influence deeply affected the religious life of the nation, but this was achieved through other people rather than Calvin himself. One of the principle players was a gentleman known as Beza, who was, during the latter years of Calvin’s life, most intimately associated with him.

William Cunningham, a nineteenth century Principal and Professor of Church History at Edinburgh’s New College, has this to say about Beza: “Beza was one of the very ablest defenders of Calvin’s system of theology. He succeeded to the high position which Calvin had long held, not only in Geneva, but in the Protestant world; and was, for a period of above forty years after Calvin’s death, the most prominent and influential theologian in the Reformed church. He exerted great influence for a very long period in most of the Reformed churches, and in none more than in that of Scotland.”

It is impossible to speak about Calvin and Scotland without mentioning the name of John Knox, and Knox’s contribution to reform in Scotland cannot be underestimated. It is therefore interesting to realise that John Knox was advised and encouraged by Beza in the course of his arduous struggle in Scotland with the Church of Rome.

Yet, in both Edwardian England and in Geneva, Knox influenced the course of the English reformation years before he began to dominate its Scottish counterpart. When he travelled to Geneva, Knox received a hearty welcome from Calvin, and venerated Calvin as a father. Knox was said to be never so happy as when he was in the company of John Calvin.

Back in Scotland in 1559, Knox wrote one of many letters to Calvin to ask his opinion on a number of matters. Letters flowed between the countries and Calvin, the invisible man, was in Scotland to stay. Indeed, when Knox’s first wife died in 1561, Calvin wrote a letter to Knox in which he expressed his sympathy over his loss. Then, writing in a letter to Goodman in the same month, Calvin said, “I grieve not a little that our friend Knox has been deprived of his most sweet wife; but I rejoice that, afflicted as he has been, he has continued to labour for Christ and the Church.”

This demonstrated the closeness of the relationship between Calvin and Knox, and the Reverend Professor Henry F. Henderson had no doubt about the significance of that relationship: “Calvin’s great and masterful mind exercised a powerful influence over John Knox, and, through him, over Scotland and other lands. In everything that came from Knox’s pen, after 1559, in his Liturgy, his Confession of Faith, his book of discipline, and in his pamphlet on Predestination, we can trace the spirit and the ideas of Geneva.”

On 6^th November 1559, Matthew Parker, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Sir William Cecil: “God keep us from such a visitation as Knox has attempted in Scotland!” The ‘visitation’ resulted within less than a year in the abolition by the Scottish Parliament of the jurisdiction of the Pope in Scotland, and the ratification of the Confession of Faith.

No wonder Calvin wrote to Knox on 8^th November 1559: “As we wonder at success incredible in so short a time, so also we give great thanks to God.” John Calvin, though himself unseen by Scotland, was in the life of the nation to stay.

The reform in Scotland, and the name of Calvin, had such a far-reaching impact that the national church was often referred to in Calvin’s time as the “Calvinistic Church Of Scotland”. Charles Bell wrote, “For the Protestant church in Scotland, the ‘federal Calvinism’ was to become the criterion of orthodoxy for the next 250 years.” Right up to the present day, Calvinism is often spoken of as denoting the theological viewpoint of a person or persons, and scholars argue over the rights and wrongs of Calvin and Calvinism. 

I wonder what Calvin himself would think of it now. Have his Institutes become institutions? Is his name applied by some people to theologies of one flavour or another without truly knowing what the man himself believed?

The invisible man is still in the nation of Scotland today, that is certainly clear. Whether his reforming spirit is alive and well, is another question altogether. Though having made such a significant impact on the nation of Scotland, perhaps John Calvin would take no great comfort from the state of the Protestant church today, but would now, as then, be calling for reform.

THE EUCHARIST

The Eucharist is an early patristic name for the Lord’s Supper, or Communion. The Eucharist is nowadays to be considered as the bread and the cup. Strictly speaking, it was originally two parts of the larger meal – the action round the bread while they were eating, and the action round the cup after supper – but the two parts came together early in the second century and the two thanksgivings were amalgamated.

Disagreements between Christians over exactly what the Eucharist was and what it was not have dogged the Protestant church since the Reformation itself. Luther, Zwingli and Calvin could not agree on this issue, although these three were by no means the only people involved in dispute over interpreting the Eucharist.

Also to be considered is the controversy about the Eucharist that came to a head at the Reformation and concerned the sacrifice of the mass, or Eucharistic sacrifice. Was the Supper that the Lord instituted an offering of His body and blood, or a feast upon His body and blood, which were to be offered at the cross?

Differences in belief about the Eucharist led to what has been called the ‘Supper strife’ among the Reformers in which Zwingli and Luther were opposed, while Calvin, among others, took a mediating position. In the midst of reform, there was disagreement and division among the Reformers themselves, and it is a disagreement that still exists today.

Calvin rejected the Lutheran explanations of the mystery of the efficacy of the Eucharist, and thereby added his own fuel to the fire of controversy that did so much to cause division among the Reformers. Despite the fact that they were of one mind in criticising the Roman Catholic doctrines of the Sacraments, the Reformers were unable to agree about the precise nature of the doctrines that should replace them.

Over the Eucharist, there was bitter acrimony among Protestants. “The Reformed party was a kingdom divided against itself, Lutheran was warring with Zwinglian, and Calvinist with both,” as Henderson observed. Yet few things astonished Calvin more than the lack of agreement among the Reformers. With regard to the attacks made by Reformers upon Reformers, Calvin wrote, “O God of grace, what pleasant sport and pastime do we afford to the Papists, as if we had hired ourselves to do their work!” Calvin longed for unity among the Protestant churches and pleaded for this from the pulpit to great and influential congregations.

Zwingli, Luther and Calvin all rejected the view of the Catholic Church on the Eucharist. They all rejected transubstantiation, which is the idea that the bread and wine actually change into the substance of Christ’s body and blood. Agreement on the point of departure was not however matched by agreement on a destination.

Luther’s view was that Christ’s body and blood are present ‘with, in and under’ the bread and wine, instead of replacing them. This view came to be known as consubstantiation. Cunningham, in describing this view, called it a “great error”: “Consubstantiation, the real presence, not of Christ but of Christ’s body and blood in the Lord’s Supper, or the co-existence, in some way, of the real flesh and blood of Christ, in, with, or under, in, cum or sub, the bread and wine in the Eucharist. This was a real remnant of Popery.”

Zwingli moved further away from transubstantiation and he regarded the Eucharist as a sign or symbol, “emblematically and figuratively representing or signifying Scriptural truths and spiritual blessings; and that the reception of them is a mere commemoration of what Christ has done”. In fairness to Zwingli, there is some difficulty in ascertaining precisely what his views on the Eucharist were, and there is reason to think that, towards the end of life, he ascribed a higher value and a greater efficacy to the Eucharist than he had previously done. In his 1525 work, ‘De Vera et Falsa Religione’ he admits that he had spoken of the sacraments somewhat rashly and crudely, and indicated that his views were heading in what most Protestants would believe to be a sound direction.

In the last work written by Zwingli, the ‘Expositio Fidei’, he gave some indications of regarding the Sacraments as not only signs but as seals, signifying and confirming something done by God through the Spirit as well by the receiver through faith. Since it was not published until after Zwingli’s death, his contribution to the controversy could not be developed any further.

Calvin was Augustinian in regarding the Eucharist as a sacrament with dominical authority, as a visible sign of an invisible grace. He insisted that the Eucharist gave what it represented, since we are not asked by the Lord merely to look, but to eat and drink. In this, he rejected the view that that Christ gave the bread and wine as mere symbols representing his body and blood and meant simply to stimulate our memory, devotion and faith.

Calvin saw the Eucharist as a sign of a life-giving union between Christ and a person, and this union was increased and strengthened when the Eucharist was received by faith. The Eucharist was, by Calvin’s view, inefficacious apart from the faith of the recipient: “Only those who are united by faith benefit from the sacrament; they alone truly or in reality can be said to eat Christ’s flesh. It is a matter of the work of the Spirit, and therefore, of faith. Only through the Spirit can one eat Christ’s flesh.” Calvin was maintaining that, if there was no faith, there was no benefit for the person participating in the Eucharist. He set out what he saw the Eucharist as being and what it achieved, while, at the same time, opposing the views of Luther and Zwingli:

“Thus when bread is given as a symbol of the body of Christ, we must immediately think of this similitude. As bread nourishes, sustains, and protects our bodily life, so the body of Christ is the only food to invigorate and keep alive the soul. When we behold wine set forth as a symbol of blood, we must think that such use as wine serves to the body, the same is spiritually bestowed by the blood of Christ; and the use is to foster, refresh, strengthen, and exhilarate. For if we duly consider what profit we have gained by the breaking of his sacred body and the shedding of his blood, we shall clearly perceive that these properties of bread and wine, agreeably to this analogy, most appropriately represent it when they are communicated to us. Moreover, two faults are here to be avoided. We must neither, by setting too little value on the signs, dissever them from their meanings to which they are in some degree annexed, nor by immoderately extolling them, seem somewhat to obscure the mysteries themselves. That Christ is the bread of life by which believers are nourished unto eternal life, no man is so utterly devoid of religion as not to acknowledge. But all are not agreed as to the mode of partaking of him. For there are some who define the eating of the flesh of Christ, and the drinking of his blood, to be, in one word, nothing more than believing in Christ himself. But Christ seems to me to have intended to teach something more express and more sublime in that noble discourse, in which he recommends the eating of his flesh, viz., that we are quickened by the true partaking of him, which he designated by the terms eating and drinking, lest any one should suppose that the life which we obtain from him is obtained by simple knowledge. For as it is not the sight but the eating of bread that gives nourishment to the body, so the soul must partake of Christ truly and thoroughly, that by his energy it may grow up into spiritual life. Meanwhile, we admit that this is nothing else than the eating of faith, but there is this difference between their mode of speaking and mine.  According to them, to eat is merely to believe; while I maintain that the flesh of Christ is eaten by believing, because it is made ours by faith, and that that eating is the effect and fruit of faith; or, if you will have it more clearly, according to them, eating is faith, whereas it rather seems to me to be a consequence of faith.”

The controversy surrounding the Eucharist, and the bitter acrimony that seemed to exist, was at least put to one side over the issue of the sacrifice of the mass, or Eucharistic sacrifice. At the Last Supper, Christ used sacrificial language. At a very early period the language of offering started to be used in relation to the Eucharist, not just in relation to the cross. Along with the doctrine of transubstantiation, the idea developed that the transubstantiated elements were offered to God, and in this way the sacrifice at the cross was repeated, or ‘made present again’.

Here the Reformers were united against the Roman Catholic teaching and in agreement amongst themselves. The offering took place at the cross, and the Passover meal was not an offering of the Passover lamb, but a feast upon the lamb that had already been offered. The Eucharist was not an offering of his body and blood, but a feast upon his body and blood, which were to be offered at the cross.

Agreement over a part of the Eucharist was easily overshadowed by the arguments between the Reformers over the meaning of the Eucharist as a whole. Calvin and Luther never met, and the one letter that Calvin sent to Luther never arrived. Perhaps much of the acrimony could have been resolved if it had been seen by Luther, for Calvin’s last sentence in the letter would surely have warmed the German’s heart: “Would that I could fly to you that I might, even for a few hours, enjoy the happiness of your society; for I would prefer, and it would be far better, not only upon this question, but also about others, to converse personally with yourself; but seeing that it is not granted to us on earth, I hope that shortly it will come to pass in the kingdom of God.”

As often seems to be the case, disagreement aired is remembered long after agreement shared. Moreover, the disagreement is enlarged to the kind of importance rarely given to the agreement. Acrimonious construction proved to be divisive, and perhaps the resulting freedom of choice was nothing more than a theological taking of sides. Yet, as Alister McGrath reminds us: “What brought Christians together, and what holds Christians together, is the death of Christ. To substitute any other bond of common allegiance for this is to lose sight of the reason for the existence of the church – to proclaim Christ until he comes again.”

McGrath has pointed out that the Reformation was born in controversy. And, though controversy can stimulate thought and encourage exploration, it can also be destructive and disillusion people. The Eucharist is supremely positive, controversy about the Eucharist does not possess the same quality.  Bread and wine are ordinary. Yet: “When they are placed at the centre of a worshipping community, and when the story of the last night of Christ on earth is retold, they become powerful reminders of the foundational events of the Christian faith.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bell, M Charles, Calvin And Scottish Theology,  Edinburgh, The Handsel Press, 1985

Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book IV, originally published in Geneva in the sixteenth century, this text is from The Christian Classics Ethereal Library as published in the public domain on the Internet

Cunningham, William, The Reformers and The Theology of the Reformers, Edinburgh, T & T Clark, 1866

Dickens, A G, The English Reformation, revised edition, Glasgow, William Collins Sons & Co Ltd, 1977

Henderson, Rev Henry F, Calvin In His Letters, London, J M Dent & Co, 1909

Knox, John, The History Of The Reformation Of Religion Within The Realm Of Scotland, Banner Of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1994

McGrath, Alister, Roots That Refresh, second edition, London, Hodder & Stoughton,

New Dictionary Of Theology published by IVP in 1988 in Leicester, edited by Sinclair B Ferguson and David F Wright