Henry Bullinger was a pioneer Reformer who, like his contemporary Martin Bucer, has long remained in the shadows cast by Martin Luther and John Calvin. Happily, modern scholarship is revealing both Bucer and Bullinger to have been top rank Reformers in no way secondary to Luther and Calvin. Indeed, modern research shows that Bullinger was a more thorough and consistent Reformer than both Luther and Calvin. Born in 1504 in …
Posts Tagged Reformer
Henry Bullinger
Sep 15
Lecture Subjects
Aug 21
… Baptist
James Usher (1580-1656): The Light of Ireland
Jan Laski (1499-1560): The Pan-European Reformer
Johann Gerhard Oncken (1800-1884): Germany’s Baptist Pioneer
John Albert Bengel (1687-1752): The Father of Modern Biblical Scholarship (I-II)
John Brine (1703-1765) and His Contemporaries (I.II)
John Collet Ryland (1723-92): Evangelical Educator
John Davenant (1572-1641): The Jewel of the Church
John Durie (1596-1680): Defragmenter of the Reformation
John Foxe (1517-1587): The …
… Whitgift, Whitaker and even Bancroft affirmed the same. It would be difficult to find an Anglican Reformer who disagreed!
Rutherford, severely critical of Anglican and Congregationalist understanding of Scripture concerning church and law ( Rex Lex ), rejected Crisp’s Anglican orthodoxy expressed in Christian Liberty No Licentious Doctrine, which Presbyterian Twisse nevertheless defended as did also Anglican preachers of righteousness such as James Hervey. All this led …
Demythologising History
Nov 9
… Lords’ request to reform her. Knox denounced Presbyterian and Baptist separatism. Scottish Reformer and Knox’s co-pastor John Rough suffered martyrdom, confessing that the Reformed Prayer Book of 1552 agreed ‘in all points with the Word of God’. This was Scotland’s Reformed faith until Counter-Reformation Presbyterianism outlawed it ninety years later.
… highly different positions. This is neither surprising nor helpful. Calvin was a second generation Reformer whose works reflect strong Lutheran, Zwinglian, Bullingerite and Bucerian influences in their conflicting aspects. Furthermore, whereas Calvin’s Swiss and Strasburg teachers were men of peace and developed their own theology within their own pastoral duties amongst churches who loved them, Calvin was a man of strife in a frequently rebellious church. The Geneva Council treated Calvin …
John Overall not an Arminian
Dec 27
… Alexander Nowell as Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1596. Nowell was a thorough-going Reformer, more Calvinistic than Calvin on justification, election and atonement, who loved the doctrines of grace. Whitgift made Nowell’s catechism mandatory for all theological students and clergy, so it is nigh impossible to imagine that Puritan Whitgift would have given Nowell’s post to an Arminian.
Overall was admired by everyone for his saintly life and great scholarship. His …
Contra Knox
Aug 21
… point of view which Knox opposed. So one could hardly expect me to view Knox as my ideal Reformer. Mr Wilson argues from Knox’s merits in ousting Franco-Popish tyranny from Scotland. I do not challenge these merits in the least, however questionable the New Order that Knox set up was. We must also take into account the background of the period we are discussing and how Christian men alter their views radically according to changing situations. Who would doubt, as Hugh Watt shows in …
Henry Bullinger (1504-1575)
Aug 17
… of the Churches
Bullinger’s importance for the English Reformation
Perhaps no Reformer has been so neglected in modern times as Henry Bullinger, though he produced far more sound Christian writings than Luther, Calvin and Zwingli combined. An average of four editions of his works per year were printed in Switzerland alone for a hundred years and over fifty printers in other European countries were turning out countless editions. Reformers such as Miles Coverdale translated …
… Gay does not seem to have the foggiest idea who the Anabaptists were. Indeed, the only British Reformer that he would accept as such is Hooper, whom, because of his views against vestments, he finds comes closest to an Anabaptist. Yet Hooper, whose story Gay gets hopelessly wrong, was most scathing in his comments on the Anabaptists for their low teaching on Christ and the Word of God. On the other hand, godly Jewel, who was criticised by the Marian party for being an Anabaptist is …
Portraits of Faithful Saints
Aug 18
… turns to the British section that the author’s bias becomes evident. Not one single English Reformer during the long reign of Elizabeth, be it Parker, Coverdale, Jewel, Grindal, Perkins or whoever, is mentioned by Hanko as a ‘Faithful Saint’. In Henry VIII’s reign, William Tyndale (c.1490-1536) is given due prominence and rightly so. Yet Tyndale was not the first man to complete a translation of the Bible as Hanko states. He was martyred after only completing the New Testament and …
