Critical edition of Bullinger’s De scripturae sanctae

The latest edition of Zwingliana has a review by Amy Nelson Burnett of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln of the recently published (TVZ 2009) critical edition of Bullinger’s De scripturae sanctae authoritate deque episcoporum institutione et functione (1538). This was a joint effort by Emidio Campi and Philipp Wälchli. Campi was the immediate past professor at Zurich (succeeding Alfred Schindler) while Wälchli is one of the researchers in the Institute for Swiss Reformation History who previously worked on the critical edition of the Second Helvetic Confession.

Bullinger wrote this work in 1538 and dedicated it to King Henry VIII of England. This was one year before Bulligner wrote De origine erroris III and De omnibus scripturae libris. The work consists of two books, as may be apparent from its title. The first deals with Scripture while the second (and much longer work) focuses on church structure and leadership.

The following are some quotes from Burnett’s review:

“His chief concern in Book I is to assert the superiority of Scripture against the Roman church’s claim to judge Scripture and to be the custodian of extra-scriptural tradition. Bullinger does this by attesting both to Scripture’s antiquity – God spoke to Adam and the patriarchs long before Moses put the first books of the Bible into writing, let alone before the church established the canon – and to its completeness, since it contains all that is necessary for piety.”

“Book II deals with more practical matters of church structure. Bullinger describes how the leadership of God’s people was entrusted fist to the prophets, then to the levitical priesthood, and finally to the ministers of God’s word, who are bishops or overseers. Bullinger’s understanding of the church’s leadership is non-hierarchical: his only distinction is between the ministers and those he calls ‘clerics’, the deacons or assistants and disciples or students who are preparing for the ministry. As a consequence, his discussion of the ‘institution and function of bishops’ is a broad description of the preparation fro the tasks of ministry. He includes in it a plea for adequate financial support for ministers and emphasizes the need to maintain the schools and libraries essential fro educating the boys who will enter the ministry. Bullinger focuses on the chief responsibilities of ministers, to preach, to pray, and to administer the sacraments – but he also refers to the more specialized functions of the prophets, who expound God’s word, and doctors, including professors and schoolteachers. Last but certainly not least, he rejects the claims of the bishop of Rome to headship over the church, providing his own exegesis of the Scripture texts used to support papal primacy, describing how the church fathers regarded the bishop of Rome, and condemning the corruption of the Roman hierarchy from the pope on down.”

“Bullinger also refers several times to Erasmus’s handbook for preachers, Ecclesiastes, which had been published three years earlier, even incorporating lengthy quotations from it into his text.”