BULLINGER, HEINRICH

Heinrich Bullinger was a Swiss Reformer and theologian, active in the com­position of the First and Second Helvetic Confessions, developer of the Re­formed doctrine of the covenant, and in 1531 successor to Huldrych Zwingli* as chief pastor at Zurich. He was born in Bremgarten, the fifth child of Henry Bullinger, parish priest and dean, and Anna Widerkehr. He was educated at Emmerich, where he was influenced by the Devotio moderna, the devotional teachings characteristic of the northern Renaissance, and the University of Co­logne, graduating with degrees in 1520 and 1522, before teaching from 1523 to 1529 at the Cistercian school at Kappel at the personal invitation of its abbot, Wolfgang Joner.Earlier, in 1520, he had come under the influence of Martin Luther's* works, especially The Babylonian Captivity of the Church and On Christian Liberty, and of Philip Melanchthon's* Loci communes, influences that led to his conversion first to Lutheranism and then to a modified form of Zwing-lianism. In 1529 he was married to Anne Widlischweiler, a former nun. After the military defeat of the Protestants at Kappel in October 1531 and the deaths of Zwingli and Joner, Bullinger was forced to move his family to Zurich, where he was appointed Zwingli's successor.

Apart from John Calvin,* Bullinger was the leading theologian on Swiss and continental reform. He had a formative role in the composition of the First and Second Helvetic Confessions, of 1536 and 1566, respectively, and of the Con­sensus Tigurinus of 1549. These confessional statements provided both a na­tional and a continental platform for Reform movements. He rejected, in numerous controversies, the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist and wrote two well-known refutations of Anabaptism. In 1571 he published a reply to the bull Regnans in excelsis, by which the pope excommunicated Elizabeth I* of En­gland. The reply went through numerous editions in Latin, German, and English. His collection of sermons, published under the name Decades because of their tenfold division, became a standard Reformed work in Europe, England, and Scotland, as well as later among the early Puritan settlers of the American colonies.

Bullinger made significant contributions to Reformed theology, apologetics, and thought, particularly through his articulation of the concept of the covenant and in his broader understanding of the doctrine of predestination. In his early work De testamento (Concerning the Covenant, 1534) he argued for the unity and continuity of one covenant stretching from the one concluded by God with Abraham through to the renewed covenant in Jesus Christ. While there remained a single covenant, the external structures or practices might change through time. Consequently, little sharp distinction was drawn between the secular and the sacred, and God's election was to some extent modified by human adherence to the covenantal laws. Bullinger was a prolific writer, producing over eighty publications on a wide range of biblical and theological issues.

J. W. Baker, Heinrich Bullinger and the Covenant, 1980.

G. W. Bromiley, ed. Zwingli and Bullinger, Library of Christian Classics, 1953.