Know the Creeds and Councils by Justin S. Holcomb

Author:Justin S. Holcomb [Holcomb, Justin S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2017-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

A copy of the Decrees and Canons of the Council of Trent can be found at http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent.xhtml.

CHAPTER 9

HEIDELBERG CATECHISM

1563

Historical Background

By the middle of the sixteenth century, several different strands of the Protestant Reformation had begun spreading like wildfire across the European continent. The diversity within Protestantism proved to be a double-edged sword. Unlike Roman Catholicism, which had established a solid core of beliefs at the Council of Trent, Protestants were only loosely bound together by the five famous “solas” — from the Latin word sola, meaning “alone” or “only.” The five solas are five phrases or slogans that emerged during the Protestant Reformation and that summarize the Reformers’ basic theological convictions that the Reformers believed to be essentials of the Christian life and practice. The five solas are:

1. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): Scripture alone is our highest authority.

2. Sola Fide (“faith alone”): we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

3. Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone.

4. Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King, and the only mediator between God and humanity.

5. Soli Deo Gloria (“glory to God alone”): we live for the glory of God alone.

These basic beliefs emerged in the Protestant effort to distinguish itself from the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church. On a positive note, this allowed the movement to gain traction quickly in a variety of different contexts and locations, but unfortunately it also meant that disputes and disagreements frequently arose between the different branches of the newfound Protestantism.

Disagreement between the Lutheran and Zwinglian (a group of Protestants founded by Swiss Reformer Ulrich Zwingli) factions was particularly intense. One pointed conflict broke out in Heidelberg under the rule of Otto Heinrich (1556 – 59) concerning Christ’s presence in the Lord’s Supper. The Lutherans believed that Christ’s body is really present in the bread and wine in the same way that heat permeates an iron placed in a hot fire. In contrast, the Zwinglians believed that the Lord’s Supper is primarily a symbolic service of remembrance. Since Christ’s body is at the right hand of the Father in heaven, the Zwinglians found it hard to believe that Christ’s body could be a real human body and somehow be present both in heaven and in the bread and the wine. (The Calvinists, by contrast, held a third position: they maintained that Christ is present not in body but in Spirit.) One staunch Lutheran fought for making Lutheranism the official religion of the city, and he even went so far as to excommunicate a Zwinglian deacon after getting into a fight over the communion cup with the deacon at the altar.

Because politics and religion were closely related in pre-Enlightenment Europe, it was difficult to just “agree to disagree.” So when Frederick III succeeded Otto Heinrich in ruling the city of Heidelberg, he charged the theology faculty to develop a new catechism to lay to rest the often-heated debates over the Lord’s Supper and at the same

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