Five Things Reformed Christians Can Learn from Heinrich Bullinger

Why should a Reformed Christian make room for Heinrich Bullinger on an already crowded reading list? Because he speaks to concerns we bring to church every Sunday: assurance of salvation, understanding the Bible, disagreements among believers, and the loving care we owe one another.

After Huldrych Zwingli’s death in 1531, Bullinger served Zürich for more than forty years. He wrote the Second Helvetic Confession, helped develop Reformed covenant theology, and worked with John Calvin toward agreement on the Lord’s Supper. His fifty written sermons, collected as The Decades, helped bring Reformed doctrine into the life of the church.¹

We still confess convictions he helped explain. Here are five lessons worth considering.

1. Give troubled consciences Christ

A Christian troubled about election can spend hours wondering whether God has passed him over. Even a careful explanation of predestination may leave him unsure where to turn. Bullinger directs him to Christ:

“Let Christ, therefore, be our looking-glass, in whom we may behold our predestination.”

Heinrich BullingerSecond Helvetic Confession, chapter X²

By calling Christ our mirror, Bullinger directs a worried believer away from speculation about God’s hidden purposes to the Savior whom the gospel makes known. Christ obeyed in our place and bore the punishment our sins deserved (Romans 5:19; Isaiah 53:5 to 6). His righteousness is ours through faith (Philippians 3:9).

I know something of the difference between agreeing that Christianity is true and trusting Christ personally. I grew up in a Lutheran church and could recite the creeds long before I understood the gospel. Familiar words needed to become convictions about my own need for a Savior.³

Weak assurance, however, doesn’t mean faith is absent. Westminster Confession 18.2 and 18.3 directs us to God’s promises, the evidences of grace, and the Spirit’s witness. Those evidences matter, but our standing before God rests on Christ’s finished work (Romans 5:1; Hebrews 10:14). A frightened believer needs to hear his promise: “whoever comes to me I will never cast out” (John 6:37).⁴

2. Read both Testaments as Christian Scripture

Bullinger teaches that the Old and New Testaments reveal one covenant of grace in substance (Galatians 3:8, 16 to 18, 29). The same Savior stands at the center of both (Luke 24:27; John 5:39, 46). God’s people have never had another way of salvation.⁵

That conviction changes how we lead family worship. Abraham belongs to our family history. Paul calls him “the father of us all” because we share his faith (Romans 4:16). The sacrifices teach us why we need Christ’s sacrifice (Hebrews 10:1 to 14), and Jesus himself taught his disciples to understand the Scriptures through his suffering and glory (Luke 24:25 to 27).

Westminster Confession 7.5 and 7.6 explains that this one covenant was administered differently before and after Christ’s coming. When our children know the individual stories, we can help them see how those stories belong together. Abraham trusted the promises of the God who saves us too.

3. Work for agreement without pretending differences disappear

Bullinger and Calvin reached agreement on the sacraments in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549. They worked carefully through how the outward signs relate to the spiritual nourishment Christ gives in the Supper.⁶

Yet agreement on the Lord’s Supper didn’t settle every question. Bullinger feared that Calvin’s teaching that God ordained Adam’s fall made God responsible for sin, though both men denied that God is the author of sin. Their friendship had to bear the weight of that disagreement.⁷

We can pursue agreement on a particular doctrine without demanding agreement on everything at once or turning our backs on friends. We need to read one another accurately and ask patient questions, with enough humility to admit we may be wrong. The friend across the table deserves a fair hearing, especially when we think we already know his argument.

4. Make room for Christians who have criticized us

In 1548, an imperial religious settlement displaced Lutheran ministers from German cities. Philip Schaff records that Bullinger welcomed them, including men who had denounced Reformed doctrine from their pulpits.⁸

Their earlier criticism didn’t cancel their present need. Bullinger could defend Reformed teaching and offer hospitality to people who opposed it.

We may have time to answer a fellow Christian’s argument and little time to notice that he’s hurting, or that his family is struggling. Pay attention to the little things and see how you can encourage him or help him in a practical way.

Hospitality needn’t wait until everyone agrees perfectly about infant baptism or end times. Otherwise, some of us would eat alone.

“Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality” is an ordinary Christian calling (Romans 12:13). Bullinger gives us a concrete example worth remembering.

5. Learn from the Reformers without defending their sins

Bullinger’s hospitality doesn’t erase his support for religious coercion. In his 1535 opinion on the Anabaptists, he defended civil punishment that could include death for those who persisted in their beliefs after attempts to persuade them to recant. He advised and the magistrates imposed sentences. His advisory role still carried responsibility.⁹

Defending infant baptism doesn’t require defending imprisonment, exile, or execution for religious dissent. We can learn from his covenant theology while rejecting those measures. Scripture must correct the writers we admire, just as it corrects us.

We don’t have to master fifty sermons to benefit from Bullinger. Begin with First Decade, Sermon VI, on justification: how guilty sinners are accepted by God through faith in Christ. His teaching brings us back to the question that matters when our conscience troubles us: what has Christ done for sinners like us? The Reader’s Guide below links to the sermon and helps us read it with Scripture open beside us.

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