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This book explores the origins and development of one of the most significant doctrines of Reformation theology. The innovative ways in which the Zurich reformer Huldrych Zwingli and his successor Heinrich Bullinger thought about the relationship between the Old and New Testaments left an indelible mark on the Reformed tradition in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Distinctively, Zwingli and Bullinger emphasized the continuity of both testaments and spoke of a single covenant between God and humanity. This would become one of the defining teachings of Reformed Christianity. This book follows the development of their "covenant theology" in the Reformation and argues for its adoption by John Calvin in Geneva and the German theologians of the post-Reformation era.
List of contents
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Part One: Zwingli as Initiator
- Chapter One: Testamental Discontinuity, 1519-1525
- Chapter Two: Zwingli's Covenantal Turn of 1525
- Part Two: Heinrich Bullingerand the Development of a Tradition
- Chapter Three: Mutual Influence, to 1534
- Chapter Four: The Centrality of the Covenant, 1534-1551
- Chapter Five: Consolidation, 1551-1575
- Part Three: Receptions
- Chapter Six: Calvin
- Chapter Seven: Heidelberg
- Epilogue
- Appendices
- Index
About the author
Pierrick Hildebrand is an Associate Researcher at the Swiss Reformation Studies Institute at the University of Zurich and a minister in the Reformed Church of Bern. His research interests lie with the history and theology of the Reformed tradition in the Reformation and early post-Reformation.
Additional text
Pierrick Hildebrand transforms our understanding of covenantal thought in the Reformation by moving beyond familiar texts through his extensive use of unknown manuscripts. Rather than reviving the old debate of Zurich versus Geneva, Hildebrand presents a much more nuanced and persuasive account of the emergence of a defining idea of the Reformed tradition.
