ABSTRACT
The middle decades of the 16th century saw the consolidation of Reformed Protestantism as a mature theological system. Bullinger’s Decades, the Heidelberg catechism, the Second Helvetic Confession: all appeared during this period, and all testify to the growing preoccupation of the ‘second generation’ of Reformed churchmen with precise doctrinal definition. This process did not take place in isolation, but in the context of polemical debate with theological opponents. As is well known, the evolution of Reformed Christology proceeded against the backdrop of the ongoing Eucharistic schism with the Lutherans. In the same way, from the late 1550s confrontation with various Italian radical thinkers over the doctrines of the Trinity and the two natures of Christ forced the Zurich divines to undertake a reconsideration of those questions. In the course of that exchange, Bullinger and his colleagues reiterated their commitment to Nicene orthodoxy, along with their conviction that the Reformation entailed not a radical break with Christian tradition, but the resumption of the church’s natural development, interrupted by the rise of the papacy. It was to the early church creeds, the ecumenical councils and the orthodox Fathers that the Zurichers invariably turned when detailed responses to the radicals’ arguments were required. Just as previous polemical exchanges with Catholics and Lutherans had helped define where the Reformed churches stood in relation to more conservative opponents, so the conflict with the Italian ‘heretics’ and their followers in eastern Europe set the limits to Zwinglian radicalism. The episode clarified what the Zurich divines understood by reform: an attack on ‘a limited spectrum of doctrinal and practical abuses with the intention of reaffirming the values of the historical church catholic’. 1 It reaffirmed their sense of solidarity with the Constantinian and post-Constantinian church 171(Reformed polemicists identified closely with the Fathers in their conflicts with ancient antitrinitarians) and buttressed their claim to catholicity, and therefore to exemption from the penalties for heretics prescribed by the Theodosian code.
