Heinrich Bullinger
Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, the successor of Huldrych Zwingli as head of the Church of Zürich and a pastor at the Grossmünster. One of the most important leaders of the Swiss Reformation, Bullinger co-authored the Helvetic Confessions and collaborated with John Calvin to work out a Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper.
Life
Early life and studies (1504–1522)
Heinrich Bullinger was born to Heinrich Bullinger Sr., a priest, and Anna Wiederkehr, at Bremgarten, Aargau, Switzerland. Heinrich and Anna were able to live as husband and wife, even though not legally married, because the bishop of Constance, who had clerical oversight over Aargau, had unofficially sanctioned clerical concubinage by waiving penalties against the offense in exchange for an annual fee, called a cradle tax. Heinrich was the fifth son and youngest of seven children born to the couple. The family was relatively affluent, and often hosted guests. As a small child, Bullinger survived the plague and a potentially fatal accident.At age 11, Bullinger was sent to the St. Martin's Latin school in Emmerich in the Duchy of Cleves. Though the family was wealthy by standards of the day, Bullinger's father refused to provide the boy money for food. He encouraged his son to beg for bread for three years, as he had done, and by doing so increase the boy's empathy for the poor. At St. Martin's Latin school, Bullinger studied classic texts, including Jerome, Horace, and Virgil. He was also influenced by the Brethren of the Common Life and their adoption of the Devotio moderna, which emphasized Christian living and the reading of the Bible. Due to this influence, he expressed an interest in becoming a Carthusian monk.
In 1519, at 14, he went to the University of Cologne, where it was supposed he would prepare to follow his father into the clergy. Although there is no evidence that Bullinger was initially aware of Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses or the Leipzig Disputation of 1519, a year later, he had definitely been exposed to Reformation teaching. He read Peter Lombard's Sentences and the Decretum Gratiani, which led him to the church fathers. Bullinger discovered that the Fathers relied more on Scripture than did Lombard and Gratian, and this discovery encouraged Bullinger to read both the Bible and Luther, including The Babylonian Captivity of the Church and The Freedom of a Christian. He also read works by other Reformers, such as Philip Melanchthon's Loci communes. Now believing that salvation came through God's grace rather than through man's good works, Bullinger was converted to Protestantism. Later in life, he wrote that he had also been encouraged to embrace the Reformation because of the humanist influence of two of his teachers, Johannes Pfrissemius and Arnold von Wesel. Other intellectual influences on Bullinger included the humanism of Erasmus and Rodolphus Agricola, the theology of the church fathers Cyprian, Lactantius, Hilary, Athanasius, Jerome, and Augustine, and the theology of Thomas Aquinas.
In 1522, as a follower of Martin Luther, Bullinger earned his Master of Arts degree but ceased receiving the Eucharist. He also abandoned his previous intention of entering the Carthusian order. When he returned to Bremgarten, his family accepted his new theological views. Though Bullinger was called to lead an abbey in the Black Forest, he found its monks worldly and licentious and so returned home again and spent some months reading history, the church fathers, and Reformation theology.
Kappel Abbey and the early Swiss Reformation (1523–1531)
Kappel Abbey (1523–1528)
In 1523, he accepted a post as a teacher at a Cistercian monastery, Kappel Abbey, though only under the condition that he would not take monastic vows nor attend mass. At Kappel Abbey, Bullinger initiated a systematic program of Bible reading and exegesis. He also tried to reform its Trivium curriculum in a more humanist and Protestant direction. Bullinger discovered that the monks barely understood Latin, and so he preached to them in Swiss-German. By 1525, the abbey had abolished mass, and the next year all the monks renounced their vows as they participated in their first Reformed Eucharist.During this period, during the Reformation in Zürich, Bullinger heard Huldrych Zwingli and Leo Jud preach; and in 1523, he met them. Bullinger became a friend and ally of Zwingli and was present at the Zürich disputation of 1525. Under the influence of Zwingli and the Waldensians, Bullinger moved to a more symbolic understanding of the Eucharist. In 1527, he spent five months in Zürich studying Greek and Hebrew while regularly attending the Prophezei that Zwingli had established there. Zürich authorities sent Bullinger with the city delegation to assist Zwingli at the Bern Disputation, an occasion where he met Martin Bucer, Ambrosius Blaurer, and Berthold Haller. In 1528, at the urging of the Zürich Synod, Bullinger left Kappel Abbey and was ordained as a parish minister in the new Reformed church of Zürich.
Meanwhile, Bullinger wrote theological treatises on the Eucharist, covenants, images, and the relationship of the church to society, important topics he continued to develop in his later writings. He sent these treatises to neighboring cities, attempting to win them to the Reformed position; and these treatises were attacked by Roman Catholics defending papal infallibility and transubstantiation. Bullinger's humanism was also evident in his writings about the church fathers, his belief in the study of liberal arts as preparatory for the study of Scriptures, and even a play he wrote about the classical story of Lucretia.
Marriage to Anna Adlischweiler (1529)
In the summer of 1527, Bullinger met Anna Adlischweiler, a former nun, in Zurich. Contrary to contemporary practice, he sent her a direct proposal of marriage and was betrothed four weeks later. Anna's mother objected because she wanted her daughter to marry a wealthier man and because she wanted Anna to stay by her side until her death. When the engagement became publicly known, she tried to legally break it. Though she failed in this effort, Anna did stay with her mother until her death two years later. Anna then married Bullinger on 17 August 1529. The couple had five daughters and six sons, all of the latter except one becoming Protestant ministers. The couple also adopted other children.Hausen and Bremgarten (1528–31)
In June 1528, Bullinger took up a part-time preaching position in Hausen. Shortly thereafter, in February 1529, Bullinger's father renounced Roman Catholicism. Though most of his congregation approved, city officials were wary because of the threat of Roman Catholic protests. Nevertheless, after a few months of debate, those sympathetic to the Reformation prevailed, and Bullinger was chosen to replace his father. Within a week of his first sermon, the images and church altar were removed from the church. Bullinger's father also officially married his mother on 31 December in a Reformed ceremony. In Bremgarten, Bullinger preached four times a week and held a well-attended Bible study every day at 3 in the afternoon.Ministry at Zürich (1531–1575)
Installed at Zürich (1531)
While Zwingli viewed war as an appropriate way of spreading the Reformation, Bullinger did not. When Zwingli called the cantons of Zürich and Bern to war against the Catholic cantons, Bullinger opposed him, even preaching against it. Bullinger argued that religious reform came only through the preaching of the gospel, not through war. Despite a period of peace following the First Kappel War, Zwingli once again sought military victory over the Roman Catholics. His bellicosity led to the Second Kappel War, after Roman Catholics attacked Bremgarten, where Bullinger was ministering. Zwingli's supposed reinforcements turned out to be Roman Catholic and deserted him, and Zwingli was killed. Although the Peace of Kappel allowed each canton to choose its own religion, Bremgarten was excluded from the agreement and re-catholicized. Bullinger and his family lost almost all their possessions and fled to Zürich.As a leading Protestant preacher, Bullinger was immediately called as pastor by Bern, Basel, and Appenzell. Only three days after fleeing from Bremgarten, Bullinger stood in the pulpit of the Grossmünster. Oswald Myconius said Bullinger so "thundered a sermon from the pulpit that many thought Zwingli was not dead but resurrected like the phoenix". On 9 December, Zürich also officially asked him to be Zwingli's successor as antistes. In part out of loyalty to Zürich, Bullinger chose to succeed Zwingli there. He retained the office until his death in 1575. Bullinger regularly preached 12 sermons a week in the Grossmünster for the first ten years of his ministry until Kaspar Megander was appointed to assume the majority of his preaching duties. Bullinger preached an estimated 28,000 sermons in the Grossmünster pulpit.
Zürich church government (1531–32)
Bullinger's most important task was to rebuild the Zürich church, even as he continued to defend Zwingli's character and theology. When the Zürich council initially asked Bullinger to be antistes, they listed seven articles as conditions for the position. The fourth article required Bullinger to be peaceful and not interfere in secular affairs. Bullinger agreed that ministers should not take civic roles, but he also stressed that the minister should retain the freedom to preach the Word of God, even if that message varied from the position of civil authorities. Bullinger's rebuilding of the church also included defending it against the Roman Catholics, who were once again poised to invade Zürich. Bullinger persuaded them that he endorsed the Peace of Kappel and did not seek political controversy as Zwingli had done. Finally, in 1532 Bullinger negotiated a compromise peace that guaranteed the freedom of Protestants in exchange for the independence of Roman Catholics in Protestant cantons.In 1532, Bullinger and Leo Jud engaged in a controversy over church discipline that developed into a debate about the proper relationship between church and state. Jud viewed the church and state as two separate institutions established by God, while Bullinger held a more traditional view. Following Johannes Oecolampadius, Jud proposed exercising church discipline separately from the secular power, while Bullinger argued that separating church and state courts was necessary only if the government were not Christian. In a July sermon, Jud not only sharply criticized Bullinger's view of church discipline, he also accused Bullinger of abandoning the Reformation. Later in the year, a synod settled the debate by siding with Bullinger. The church would be overseen by both a civil council and the ministers of the church, each with its own president. In matters of civil discipline, the council would take precedence over the ministers, but the ministers could disagree with and criticize the council.
Through the arrangements of this synod, Bullinger was able to implement his own synodal order, which became a model for other Reformed churches in German-speaking areas. Bullinger freed the Zürich church from civil authorities by assuming direct personal oversight of the other clergy. He ensured that political and clerical controversies were discussed and resolved behind closed doors; and by carefully informing himself about the 120 parishes under his supervision, he was able to direct their clerical appointments and ordinations. Jud's 1534 Catechism demonstrates that he eventually accepted Bullinger's views on church discipline.