The Reformation was a struggle over the essentials of the faith. Protestants had to articulate their understanding of biblical teaching. In this sense, the Reformation confessions were a natural flowering of the Protestant commitment to the Bible.
REFORMED CONFESSIONS PROLIFERATE
The Reformed tradition was equally committed to the cause of confessionalization. Depending on how wide a net we cast, there were roughly forty to fifty Reformed (or Reformed-influenced) confessions written between 1520 and 1650—by far the most of any Protestant tradition. In 1523, almost immediately as the Reformed tradition began, Huldrych Zwingli drew up the Sixty-Seven Articles in order to provide an articulation of the points at stake in Zurich. This was followed by the Ten Theses of Berne (1528), the First Confession of Basel (1534), and several others as cities began to adopt the Reformed perspective. Others would follow in other countries, with the French Confession of Faith (1559) and the Scots Confession (1560).
The reason for so many Reformed confessions comes as a result of their context. The Reformed faith was always led by a band of brothers (despite the modern impression that John Calvin alone created Reformed orthodoxy). But the Reformed tradition was born in several cities and countries almost at once. From 1520 onward, city after city embraced the Reformation, often piecemeal, and quite a few even before reform came to Geneva. Therefore, there was no singular voice like Luther’s to shape the foundational documents of Reformed confessions.
As a result, church after church, community after community spent a sizable portion of their energy codifying a confession for their local churches. This is why most Reformed confessions identify with the city of their origin: this was the confession for this city, this church, not for all Reformed churches to embrace as one.
Still, as historians and theologians point out, there is a harmonization of these Reformed confessions that unites their diverse voices into a singular Reformed voice. Their differences are not so great that we cannot see their unity on issues of salvation, worship, and practice. Today, many churches recognize a basic harmony of what is called the Three Forms of Unity—the Belgic Confession, the Canons of Dort, and the Heidelberg Catechism—a unity not of authorship but of witness to Reformed principles.
I This is not to say that all Reformed confessions are identical. As the
Reformed faith spread from the Swiss cantons to Germany, France, the Netherlands, and then to England and Scotland, there were noticeable differences of emphasis or application. These confessional identities formed the initial steps that would give rise to the diversity of Reformed denominations and communities as we know it today.
THE REMONSTRANTS AND DORT In the Netherlands, for example, the rise of Arminianism within Reformed churches provided the context of the Synod of Dort (1618–19), a unique application of Reformed principles to the challenges of Jacob Arminius. Having studied in Geneva under Calvin’s successor, Theodore Beza, Arminius returned to the Netherlands to serve as a pastor. (One great irony is that Beza wrote a letter of recommendation for Arminius as he returned home.) Arminius, though, increasingly had doubts about Reformed scholasticism and its teachings on predestination and grace. In time, his teachings became the rallying cry of several other leaders against the Calvinist establishment.
After the death of Arminius in 1609, the Arminian position—also known as the Remonstrant faith—soon codified five points that were submitted to leaders of the Dutch war to separate from Spanish-controlled Catholic regions of the Netherlands. The Synod of Dort met in response to this and rejected each of the five points. Thus were born the so-called five points of Calvinism, though the synod’s intention was not to reduce the faith to five points, but merely to give answers to the five points of Arminianism.
Moving ahead to the later seventeenth century, we see this same individual expression of Reformed principles in the London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689). As the creation of Puritan Baptists—or Primitive Baptists—this confession was written by those committed to Reformed doctrine who nevertheless differed with Presbyterians, Anglicans, and Dutch Calvinists in terms of their polity and rejection of paedobaptism. This confession was the culmination of generations of Baptists that emerged in England and would come to define Reformed Baptist views for centuries. (to be continued)
Dr. Ryan Reeves is assistant professor of historical theology and assistant dean of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Jacksonville, Fla.
First published in Tabletalk Magazine, an outreach of Ligonier. Website: www.ligonier.org/tabletalk. © Tabletalk magazine. Used with permission