The Theology of the Heidelberg Catechism

A Reformation Synthesis

Lyle D. Bierma

• Editorial: Westminster John Knox Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781611643183
• Categoría: Theology & Religion
• Categoría: Christian Theology

The Heidelberg Catechism, first approved in 1563, is a confessional document of the Protestant movement considered one of the most ecumenical of the confessions. Published to coincide with the catechism's 450th anniversary, this book explores the Heidelberg Catechism in its historical setting and emphasizes the catechism's integration of Lutheran and Reformed traditions in all of its major doctrines. An appendix contains a translation of the Heidelberg Catechism recently prepared and adopted by three of the Reformed denominations that recognize the catechism as one of their confessions: the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), the Reformed Church in America, and the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

1
INTRODUCTION

During the 400th anniversary year of the Heidelberg Catechism in 1963, The Christian Century ran an editorial overflowing with praise for this age-old manual of Christian doctrine. The catechism was “the most attractive, ‘the most sweet-spirited’ of the confessions of faith that came out of the Protestant Reformation.” More than that, it survived “as the most ecumenical of the Protestant confessions,” since, according to the editorialist, it was written to mediate the views of Lutherans and Reformed at a time when Germany was being torn apart by theological controversy. As such, the HC might still be “the confession of faith which can serve as the doctrinal basis for denominational reunion,” but at the very least it deserved “the careful study of all ecumenical-minded Protestants.”¹

The Christian Century was not the only voice in the early 1960s to portray the HC as a kind of ecumenical statement of faith. James I. McCord, then president of Princeton Theological Seminary, also wrote on the occasion of the HC’s quatercentenary that the catechism could be considered “the most ecumenical confession of the Reformation period,” in part because “it is remarkably free from dogmatic definition and, except for the mooted question 80, is singularly nonsectarian in character.”² Columbia Theological Seminary professor Shirley Guthrie saw the HC as “‘ecumenical’ in the best sense of the word” because “it generally is not a polemic against anything or anyone but simply a positive statement of what Christians (not just ‘Calvinists’) believe.”³ For the Dutch scholar Arie Lekkerkerker, “a certain ecumenical intent” behind the production of the HC was due to Heidelberg’s location on the theological fault line between Lutheran and Reformed Protestantism.⁴ And according to New Brunswick Seminary president Howard Hageman some years later, Zacharias Ursinus, the main author of the HC, demonstrated an ability to capture “the central thrusts of Reformation theology” that united several Protestant traditions and to avoid many of the “theological eccentricities” that divided them.⁵ All of these statements echoed Karl Barth’s claim already in the late 1940s that “the Heidelberg Catechism is a document which expresses a general evangelical comprehension.” Apart from the HC’s stance on the omnipresence of the ascended Christ, the relationship between physical and spiritual washing in baptism, and the nature of Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper, there are no exclusively Reformed doctrines in the catechism, and “a reasonable Lutheran should also be able to stand on this ground.”⁶

As the 400th anniversary of the HC came and went, however, so did most of the discussion about its ecumenical nature and potential. Now that we have reached the 450th anniversary, it is worth asking why so few ecumenically minded people during the last fifty years have given the catechism the careful study that The Christian Century had called for and whether such study would still be of any ecumenical value today. A major barrier to viewing the HC as a kind of ecumenical document is that for most of its history it has been identified almost exclusively with the Reformed branch of Protestantism. Within sixty years of its publication, the German text had been translated, often multiple times, into Latin, Dutch, English, Hungarian, French, Greek, Romansch, Czech, and Spanish for use by Reformed congregations in the regions of Europe where those languages were read or spoken.⁷ At the Reformed Synod of Dort in the Netherlands in 1618–19, not only the Dutch delegates but also the foreign representatives from England, Scotland, Switzerland, and various parts of Germany declared their approval of the HC as a Reformed confession.⁸ In the centuries that followed, the catechism traveled with Reformed emigrants and missionaries to every corner of the globe, and today it is one of the most widely used and deeply loved statements of the Christian faith in global Reformed Protestantism. In North America alone, there are at least twelve denominations with European Reformed or Presbyterian roots that still recognize the HC as one of their confessional documents: the Canadian and American Reformed Churches, Christian Reformed Church in North America, Free Reformed Churches of North America, Heritage Reformed Congregations, Hungarian Reformed Church in America, Netherlands Reformed Congregations, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), Protestant Reformed Churches in America, Reformed Church in America, Reformed Church in the United States, United Church of Christ (one of whose four feeder streams was the former German Reformed Church), and the United Reformed Churches in North America. In the words of John W. Nevin, the HC “became the Catechism emphatically of the Reformed Church, the counterpart in full of Luther’s Catechism.”⁹

This Reformed ecclesiastical identity of the HC has been buttressed over the past 150 years by a body of scholarship that finds in the catechism a distinctly Reformed theological character as well.¹⁰ Leading the way was Karl Sudhoff who, in his magisterial biography of Caspar Olevianus and Zacharias Ursinus in the mid-nineteenth century, concluded that the HC was in full accord with other Reformed confessions not only in its view of the sacraments but also in all other points of doctrine, including perseverance of the saints and predestination.¹¹ During the 350th anniversary year of the HC (1913), A. E. Dahlmann described the HC as “a clear, definite and popular statement of Reformed doctrine over against Lutheranism,”¹² and a year later August Lang put it even more pointedly: “In its characteristic features, the Heidelberg Catechism is not Lutheran, nor Melanchthonian, nor Zwinglian, nor Bullingerian, nor Bucerian, but Calvinistic.”¹³ Friedrich Winter, in a comparative study of the Augsburg Confession and the HC in 1954, determined that “the HC was by and large a product of Calvinian theology,”¹⁴ and Gustav Benrath concurred on the 400th anniversary of the HC that “the Heidelberg Catechism is and remains Calvinian.”¹⁵ A couple of years later, Fred Klooster asserted before the Evangelical Theological Society that, contrary to the 1963 editorial in The Christian Century, the doctrinal heritage of the HC is not multifaceted but “a distinctly Reformed Protestantism … rather than Lutheran, Melanchthonian or Zwinglian.”¹⁶ More recently, Klooster has maintained in a comprehensive commentary on the HC that in its general disposition and many of its features the catechism is “thoroughly Calvinistic.”¹⁷

Others, too, have claimed that the HC is Reformed in its theology but that it had its roots in the Zurich rather than the Genevan reformation. The first to advance this thesis was the Dutch scholar Maurits Gooszen, who in two major works in the 1890s maintained that the HC reflected the “original Reformed Protestantism” of northern Switzerland, particularly the spirit of Heinrich Bullinger, whose “soteriological-biblical” approach to theology was markedly different from the more “intellectual-speculative” method of John Calvin.¹⁸ Among the relatively few who have followed this line of argument is G. P. Hartvelt, who detected a major influence on the HC not only from Bullinger himself but from two of his kindred spirits in Heidelberg, university theologian Petrus Boqinus and court physician Thomas Erastus.¹⁹ Joachim Staedtke and Walter Hollweg have also argued for the strong, though not exclusive, influence of Bullinger on the HC.²⁰

Nevertheless, despite the long-standing use of the HC in Reformed and Presbyterian circles and the scholarly claims for its Reformed, even Calvinist, theology, there are at least three things that point us back in the direction of the “ecumenical” interpretation of the HC that people were suggesting fifty years ago: (1) another line of research that is often overshadowed by the scholarship that we have recounted above; (2) the historical context out of which the HC arose; and (3) the text of the catechism itself.

First of all, there is another body of scholarship from the past century and a half that considers the HC not distinctively Reformed at all but rather a combination of elements from the Reformed and Lutheran (often Melanchthonian) traditions. One of the first to suggest this was Johannes Ebrard, who in a history of the doctrine of the Lord’s Supper in 1846 described the Palatinate reformation in general and the eucharistic teaching of the HC in particular as “Melanchthonian-Calvinian.”²¹ The very next year, the American Mercersburg theologian John W. Nevin characterized the HC as “German Calvinistic, or Semi-lutheran we may say, in its theological constitution and spirit.”²² The spirit he had in mind here was likely that of Melanchthon, as he indicated in a rhapsodic description of the HC four years later:

The Catechism is no cold workmanship merely of the rationalizing intellect. It is full of feeling and faith. … A rich vein of mysticism runs every-where through its doctrinal statements. A strain of heavenly music seems to flow around us at all times, while we listen to its voice. It is moderate, gentle, soft, in one word, Melanchthonian, in its whole cadence.²³

Another Mercersburg theologian of the time, Philip Schaff, used similar language: “Here the mind of Melanchthon and the mind of Calvin joined hands and the Heidelberg Catechism bears the clear marks of both. It unites Melanchthonian mildness and fervor with Calvinian power and depth.”²⁴ Nearly a century later, yet another theologian in the Mercersburg tradition, Bard Thompson, not only revived the Ebrardian term “Melanchthonian-Calvinian” (though now in reverse order as “Calvino-Melanchthonian”) to describe the HC but claimed that “the Heidelberg Catechism marks the complete development of a synthesis of Melanchthonian and Calvinist doctrine.”²⁵ J. F. G. Goeters, too, identified the catechism, broadly speaking, as the “amalgamation” (Verschmelzung) of Melanchthonianism and Calvinism into a third theological type that he termed “German Reformed.”²⁶ And most recently, Eberhard Busch has put it this way:

The Philippistic and the Calvinist directions coincided in the will to resist the splitting of the Protestant church into two confessions, despite existing differences in their understandings. The writers of the catechism were imbued with this desire of their teacher [Melanchthon]. One could easily call their text a union confession, formulated in view of the confessional age already approaching, as an attempt to work against Protestant division.²⁷

Others broadened the synthesis beyond Melanchthonianism and Calvinism. Max Göbel’s famous encomium to the HC in the nineteenth century suggested four sources: “The Heidelberg Catechism blended Lutheran intimacy, Melanchthonian clarity, Zwinglian simplicity, and Calvinian fieriness all into one.”²⁸ In addressing the question whether the HC was primarily Melanchthonian (Heppe), Bullingerian (Gooszen) or Calvinian (Lang), Staedtke concluded that, to a certain degree, all three were true. The HC was an “eclectic composition,” shaped by influences from several sides.²⁹ Neuser, like Göbel, detected the imprint of four “fathers” of the document—Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and Zwingli and his followers—with Calvin’s influence by far the strongest.³⁰ For Jan Rohls, the text of the HC represented an “integration of very diverse doctrines”³¹ from Melanchthon, Calvin, and the Zwinglian tradition; Ulrich Hutter likewise saw the author of the HC staking out middle ground between Wittenberg, Zurich, and Geneva.³² More recently, Willem Verboom concluded in a comprehensive study of the theology of the HC that the catechism reflects a combination of some of the characteristic views of several major reformers, such as Melanchthon (on law), Bullinger (on covenant), and Calvin (on creation).³³

Even some of those who have argued in the strongest terms for the Calvinist nature of the catechism have been willing to concede at least some Lutheran influence on the text. Lang, for example, found convergences with the Lutheran reformation primarily in the HC’s structural contrast between law and gospel in parts 1 and 2 and in the christocentric orientation of the catechism, according to which the believer’s only comfort lies not in the knowledge of God or the covenant of God but in the one sacrifice of Christ on the cross.³⁴ Winter could locate only a few places where the HC differed from Calvin, but he granted that the HC was not wholly untouched by Lutheran influences, including the way it treats the relationship between faith, the Holy Spirit, sacrament, and Word.³⁵ Benrath likewise saw the catechism moving at least a short distance away from Calvin and toward Lutheran theology.³⁶

A second factor that points toward a more ecumenical reading of the HC is the historical background and context of the catechism, which in turn may help to shed light on the third factor, the text of the HC itself. The three narratives of the Palatinate reformation as a whole, the religious development of Elector Frederick III, and the theological pilgrimage of Zacharias Ursinus, the primary author of the HC, indicate a pattern that could serve as a guideline for determining the theological pedigree of the catechism itself.

The Palatinate was one of the more prominent states of the Holy Roman Empire in the sixteenth century.³⁷ It was actually divided into two sub-territories, the Lower Palatinate in the Rhineland, with Heidelberg as its capital, and the Upper Palatinate in northern Bavaria. Both were under the rule of the Count Palatine, who also served as one of the seven electors responsible for the selection of the Holy Roman Emperor. Like several other parts of the German empire, the Palatinate changed its state religion from Catholicism to Protestantism during the sixteenth century, but the reformation there “underwent the longest incubation phase of any major German territory.”³⁸ Lutheran and South German Reformed influences had seeped into the region during the reign of Elector Louis V (reigned 1508–44), but it was not until 1546, nearly thirty years after Luther’s Ninety-five Theses, that the Palatinate officially became Protestant under the leadership of Louis’s brother, Elector Frederick II (reigned 1544–56). The reformation in the German empire suffered a major setback when a league of Protestant princes was defeated by the emperor in 1547 and many Catholic practices were reinstated in their territories under the Augsburg Interim (1548). With the Peace of Augsburg (1555), however, Protestantism was again fully legalized in the empire, at least in those states whose rulers were willing to enforce adherence to the Lutheranism of Melanchthon’s AC. When Louis’s and Frederick’s nephew Otto Henry (reigned 1556–59) came to the throne, therefore, the Palatinate was poised to enter a significant new phase of reform.

Looming large over this next phase of reform was the figure of Philip Melanchthon, himself a native of the Lower Palatinate.³⁹ Born in the little town of Bretten in 1497, he pursued his education in Bretten, Pforzheim, and Heidelberg—all in the Lower Palatinate—and was awarded a bachelor’s degree from Heidelberg University at the age of fourteen before transferring to the university in Tübingen. When the reformer returned to Heidelberg on a visit in 1524, he was honored by the university faculty with a silver goblet in recognition of his many achievements. The next year both Elector Louis V and the peasants of the Palatinate asked him to arbitrate in the peasant uprisings in the area, a service he willingly performed but with little success.

Following Luther’s death in 1546, German Lutheranism experienced a bifurcation into two major t...