THEOLOGY AND PIETY IN URSINUS’ SUMMA THEOLOGIAE
Lyle D. Bierma
One small window through which to view the relationship between church and school in early modern Protestantism is the Summa Theologiae (“Summary of Theology”), or Catechesis maior (Larger Catechism), com- posed by Zacharias Ursinus in 1562. Ursinus (1534–1583), who served as rector of the Sapience College (seminary) in Heidelberg and professor of dogmatics at Heidelberg University, is probably best known as the primary author of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563). However, he was also an impor- tant early Reformed scholastic theologian and a contributor to the rise of Reformed covenant theology in the second half of the sixteenth century.1 The Summa Theologiae (hereinafter ST), a catechetical work consisting of 323 questions and answers, was once thought to have been written as a preparatory document for the Heidelberg Catechism (HC). Quirinus Reuter, who included it in a posthumous collection of Ursinus’ theological works in 1612, reports that the ST was one of two catechisms commis- sioned by the magistrate of the German Palatinate, a smaller catechism for children and a larger one for adults, and that a significant part of the HC was based on these two documents.2 Three decades later, Heinrich Alting offered a similar account in his history of the Palatinate church: This task [of preparing the HC] was assigned in 1562 to two theologians, Olevianus and Dr. Ursinus, both of them Germans and accomplished in writing the German language. Each of them prepared his own draft: Olevianus, a popular exposition of the covenant of grace; Ursinus, a twofold catechism—a larger one for those more advanced, and a smaller one for the youth. From these two works the Palatine Catechism was composed.3
1 For a full account of Ursinus’ life and works, see Karl Sudhoff, C. Olevianus und Z. Ursinus: Leben und ausgewählte Schriften (Elberfeld: Friderichs, 1857); G. Bouwmeester, Zacharias Ursinus en de Heidelbergse Catechismus (The Hague: Willem de Zwijgerstichting, 1954); and Derk Visser, Zacharias Ursinus: The Reluctant Reformer—His Life and Times (New York: United Church, 1983). 2 “Catechesis, Summa Theologiae, per quaestiones et responsiones exposita: sive capita religionis Christianae continens,” in D. Zachariae Ursini…Opera theologica, ed. Quirinus Reuter (Heidelberg: Lancellot, 1612), 1:10–11. 3 Heinrich Alting, Historia ecclesiae Palatinae [1644], in Ludwig Christian Mieg, Monumenta pietatis et litteraria virorum in re publica et litteraria illustrium selecta, 2 vols. (Frankfurt: Johannem Maximilianum à Sande, 1701), 1:189.
To some extent, these early claims about the ST appear to be correct. Although there is a much greater similarity in structure and content between Ursinus’ Smaller Catechism and the HC, parallel wording can also be found between at least twenty-eight questions and answers in the Larger Catechism (ST) and the HC that have no counterparts in the Smaller Catechism. More recent research has shown, however, that these early seventeenth-century accounts of the origin and purpose of the ST were not entirely accurate. In a 1972 study of Ursinus’ theological pilgrimage from Philippism to Calvinism, Erdmann Sturm pointed to an inaugural address that Ursinus presented on the occasion of his appoint- ment to the chair of Dogmatics at Heidelberg University in September 1562. In that address, Ursinus noted not only that the HC was nearly finished but also that he would begin his lectures at the university with “a summary of doctrine” (summam doctrinae) that charted a middle path between a very basic catechism, on the one hand, and a more comprehen- sive treatment of the loci of theology, on the other. The work that best fits this description is Ursinus’ catechetical “Summary of Theology,” or Larger Catechism. If this identification is correct, then even though the ST exerted some influence on the final form of the HC, its original and main purpose was not to provide a draft for that catechism but to serve as a textbook for theological students at the university.4 What we have in the ST, then, is an example of how one of the leading scholastic theologians of early Protestant Orthodoxy employed a long- standing ecclesiastical genre (catechisms) to teach theology at the highest academic level. Our focus here will be on how Ursinus relates theology to piety in this work, that is, how he connects Christian doctrine to the living out of the Christian life individually and communally coram Deo. What we shall find is that the ST bears out one of the main conclusions of Richard Muller’s decades-long research, namely, that “the authors of scholastic theological systems were frequently persons of considerable piety and, more importantly for the historical record, also wrote works intended to develop and support piety.”5 In what follows, we shall examine, in turn, the pastoral, personal, experiential, and practical focus of the theology of the ST and then explore how all four of these emphases converge in the ST’s doctrine of covenant.
4 Erdmann Sturm, Der junge Zacharias Ursinus: Sein Weg vom Philippismus zum Calvinismus (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1972), 239–241, 246; Lyle D. Bierma, “Translations of Ursinus’ Catechisms,” in An Introduction to the Heidelberg Catechism: Sources, History, and Theology, ed. Bierma et al. (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 137–139. 5 Muller, S&O, 28.