Studies in REFORMED THEOLOGY AND HISTORY AUDENS n VlVtaS Volume 1 Number 1 Winter 1993 PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Studies in REFORMED THEOLOGY AND HISTORY AftDfNS O VlVWS EDITORIAL COUNCIL CHAIR Thomas W. Gillespie EDITOR David Willis-Watkins EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Barbara Chaapel Sang Lee Ronald de Groot Elsie McKee Jane Dempsey Douglass Daniel Migliore Nancy Duff James Moorhead William Harris John Wilson EDITORIAL COUNCIL Edward Dowey 1995 Wilhelm Neuser Dawn de Vries Jung Song Rhee Richard Gamble Thomas Torrance John Leith Nicholas Wolterstorff Brian Armstrong 1998 Heiko Oberman Fritz Biisser Janos Pasztor Brian Gerrish Leanne Van Dyk Robert Kingdon Nobuo Watanabe Irena Backus 2001 Bernard Roussel John de Gruchy Jean-Loup Seban John Hesselink Willem van ’t Spijker William Klempa Michael Welker Editorial Offices Princeton Theological Seminary, CN 821, Princeton, NJ 08542-0803 fax (609) 497-7728 v/ Is I THE DISPUTATIONS OF BADEN, 1526 AND BERNE, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/studiesinreforme11prin THE DISPUTATIONS OF BADEN, 1526 AND BERNE, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church IRENA BACKUS ARDENS VlVWS PRINCETON THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY Studies in Reformed Uieology and History is published four times annually by Princeton Theological Seminary. All correspondence should be addressed to David Willis-Watkins, Editor, Studies in Reformed Theology and History, CN 821, Princeton, NJ 08542 0803, USA. Fax (609) 497-7728. MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS Contributions to Studies in Reformed Theology and History are invited. Copies of printed and electronic manuscript requirements are available upon request from the Editor at the above address. COPYRIGHT AND PERMISSIONS No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without per- mission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © 1993 Irena Backus. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. ISSN: 1067-4268 This book is printed on acid-free paper. 3 Contents Editor’s Foreword vii Preface ix I The First Exchange of Pamphlets Prior to the 1 Baden Disputation, 1524-1526 Sebastian Hofmeister and His Antwurt ujf die Ableinung 1 Doctor Eckens The Disputation is Arranged 6 Pamphlets by Fabri and Murner before the Disputation 8 Eck’s Pseudologia 1 The Coherence of the Roman Catholic Attack 17 II The First Thesis of the Baden Disputation 19 [21 May-8 June 1526] The real body and blood of Christ are present in the Sacrament of the Altar. Peter Lombard against Augustine 19 Aristotle, Berengarius, and the Real Presence 21 The Meaning of HoclDas 23 The Use of Irenaeus 25 Tradition and the Scripture 27 Eck and the Lutheran Doctrine of Real Presence 30 Other Speakers 36 III The Second through Fifth Theses of the 39 Baden Disputation Thesis Two They are also really sacrificed in the Office of the Mass for the 39 Living and the Dead. Zwingli on the Sacrifice of the Mass 39 The Disputation 40 Thesis Three Mary and the saints should be called upon as intercessors. 48 Thesis Four The images of the Lord Jesus and the saints must not be removed. 53 Thesis Five There is a purgatorial fire after this life. 58 Conclusion 61 v Vi BADEN AND BERNE DISPUTATIONS IV ZwinglTs Attempt to Repair the Damage 63 Die Erste Antwort (21 May 1526) 63 Die Andere Antwort (3 June 1526) 67 V Wider Echoes of the Baden Disputation 71 Quibus Pmeiudiciis in Baden Helvetiorum Sit Disputatum 71 Epistola Antonii Haliei The Warhajftige Handlung 74 The Publication of the Acts 76 VI The Berne Disputation (6-26 January 1528) 79 The Three New Theses 79 Flashback to the Methods of the Zurich Disputations of 1523 80 Discussion of the First Three Theses at Berne 82 Thesis Four concerning the Real Presence 90 Thesis Five concerning the Sacrifice of the Mass 93 Thesis Six concerning the Saints 95 Thesis Seven concerning Purgatory, and Theses Eight, Nine, and Ten 97 Conclusion 98 VII Sermons During the Berne Disputation 99 VIII Some “Post-Berne” Publications 111 Caussa helvetica 111 Eck’s Verlepjung 115 Neiiwe Zeitung 117 Conclusion 121 Bibliography 123 Index of Persons 127 Biblical Index 129 , Editor’s Foreword The years covered by Dr. Backus’ study were ones of crucial transition in diplo- matic and theological alignments. This study makes more widely available than before, an analysis of the contents of the debates that occurred during the two disputations treated. The study is also especially valuable for the way it sets these disputations in the larger framework of correspondence and pamphleteering, which variously served to bring the dissenting parties closer together or to rein- force the deep divisions that had already been identified. The Hapsburg agenda, the specter ofthe Peasants’s Revolt, the shared rejection ofnonmagisterial and non- Roman Catholic challenges, the Turks’ gains that made for otherwise unpredict- able alliances -all these and more add to the dramatic material out of which the political changes and theological positions traced by this study were partly shaped. One is not really so surprised, given the background of the developments traced here, at the outcome of the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. One is, however, im- pressed again with the extent of a common will to find reconciling ways and the careful formulary efforts that prevailed through the next decade. The accomplish- ment of the Ratisbon Colloquy in 1541 appears all the more extraordinary, and, one must say, all the more tragically ineffectual, given the history of the efforts represented by the Baden and Berne (to use the variant spelling used in this study) Disputations. Irena Backus is Professeur Titulaire at the University of Geneva, in the Institut d’Histoire de la Reformation. She is a member of the Advisory Council of Studies in Reformed Theology and History, the Editorial Board of the new edition of the Calvini Opera , the Executive Committee of the Erasmus of Rotterdam Society, and the Executive Committee of the Zwingliverien based in Zurich. Among her main publications are The Reformed Roots ofthe English New Testament, Pittsburgh, Penn- sylvania, 1980 (.Pittsburgh Theological Monographs, vol. 28); a critical edition of Mar- tin Bucer’s Commentary on the Gospel ofJohn, Leiden, 1988 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought, vol. 40); Lectures humanistes de Basile de Cesaree: Traditions latines Paris, “ - 1439-1618 1990 ( Collection des Etudes Augustiniennes. Serie Anti quite,” vol. 125); edited, with Francis Higman, Theorie et pratique de Vexegese. Actes du troisieme colloque international sur Vhistoire de Vexegese biblique au 16e siecle, tenu a vii Vlll BADEN AND BERNE DISPUTATIONS d’histoire, is Geneve... 1988 , Geneve, 1990 (Etudes de philologie et vol. 43). She pres- ently editing a survey volume, to be published by Brill, on the topic of some as- pects of the reception of the Church Fathers in the West, and is engaged in doing a critical edition of Erasmus’ Paraphrases of the Gospel of John (for the Amsterdam Edition of Erasmus’ works). Although there will be some exceptions (this initiating issue for example), Studies in Reformed Theology and History intends to publish studies of a size between articles for journals and full-length monographs. Each issue will be by one author on one topic. The aim is thereby to make available and affordable concise scholarly resources prepared by an international community of researchers. As it is, there are numerous worthwhile studies done by scholars, not a few of them in so-called third-world countries, which do not receive the wider circulation that they merit. The series is generously underwritten by donors who themselves are committed to historical and theological research. The burning bush, the logo chosen for the series, usually appears with the pas- sive form used to describe it in Exodus 3:2: the bush was blazing “yet it was not consumed.” It is used, probably as an ornament rather than the printer’s device, in a 1576 edition of Peter Vermigli’s Loci Communes , with the tetragrammaton at the center of the blaze but with no accompanying words (R. B. McKerrow, Print- ers’ and Publishers’ Devices in England and Scotland, 1485-1640 , London, Chiswick, 1913, item 197 and p. 74). The emblem was used as part of the seal of the Re- formed churches of France, Spain, England and Wales, Scotland, and Ireland. The latter used the active participles yet with the disjunctive: “burning but living.” The positive expression conforms well to Calvin’s interesting commentary on Exodus 3:2. He warns against the allegorizers who see in the bush the human nature of Christ which is not destroyed by the divine nature, or who see the wood as im- perfections through which, nonetheless, God’s revelation occurs. Rather, for Cal- vin, the burning bush is simply a reminder of two things: that in times of crisis God causes light to shine in darkness for the people; and that the Church is always sustained and comforted by God’s presence. Another reason for the choice of this logo is the prominence of the tradition that has attended to a secondary sense of “ardent”, one which insisted that true knowledge is affective and that learning and piety, far from being antithetical, are mutually corrective and complementary. Critical scholarship, carried on by schol- ars fervently dedicated to respectful but prophetic appraisal of a heritage’s past and future, quickens an intellectual curiosity and enlivens one’s response to contem- porary demands and possibilities. It is not so much a matter of“burning but none- theless living” as “burning and therefore flourishing.” David Willis-Watkins . Preface The object of this short study is to show something of the shaping of reformed theology and its methods in the two Swiss Disputations, Baden, held in May 1526, and Berne, held in January 1528.