More on Ella on Bullinger

The following quote from Ella’s book (pp168-170) indicates quite a different view of Calvin to most scholars:

“Though many scholars have emphasized Calvin's dependence on Melanchthon, Zwingli and Bucer, few have compared Calvin’s Institutes with Bullinger’s works. Walter Hollweg in his Heinrich Bullingers Hausbuch written in 1956 devotes an entire chapter to Bullinger’s enormous influence on Calvin’s Institutes, in particular the 1550 version. He states that Calvin is not guilty of plagiarism but leaves the impression that Calvin avoids the charge merely by rewording Bullinger in the numerous passages taken from him. Hollweg points out that Calvin not included Bullinger’s themes and Scriptural proofs but even the examples Bullinger gives to illustrate them. Gillian Lewis, writing in 1986 has obviously little to say about Bullinger’s influence as Calvin is his subject. However, soon after writing of Calvin’s death, Lewis turns her (sic) gaze on Bullinger and, not surprisingly, but rather critically says that Bullinger sat like a spider in the centre of the web of the Reformation. When we turn to evidence given in the recent works of Fritz Büsser, especially his Die Prophezei of 1994 in which he compares Calvin closely with Bullinger, we find there is just cause to question the idea that is so dominant in today’s Reformed churches that Calvin, under God, was the rock on which the Reformed faith was built.

As one studies the growth of Calvin’s Institutes from the six chapters of the first 1536 edition to the eighty chapters of the last 1559 edition one is amazed at the industry of the author. However, it is a compendium of Wittenburg, Strasburg and Zurich theology with very little new thought in it. Indeed, the doctrines which are outlines in it were fixed Reformed doctrines long before the major editions of the Institutes were written. Thus any influence this work has had on the theological development of other countries such as Holland, England, Scotland and the New World, is because of the thorough-going Reforms of Saxony, Pomerania, Hessen, the Palatine and the Swiss and Upper German states which had already produced enough spiritual giants to transform Protestant world theology. Though Calvin’s name alone is on the title page, its contents proudly proclaim the names of Zwingli, Melanchthon, Bucer, Capito and Bullinger besides Calvin’s own. This goes also for Calvin’s church order which is built solidly on the Strasburg orders. The one big difference between the French-speaking Reformation and the Swiss-German Reformation is that the former viewed the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper as methods of establishing church discipline whereas the latter saw them as modes of preaching the gospel to all who would receive it. Unlike Calvin, Zwingli and Bullinger never sought to discipline their people by threats of exclusion from the privileges of sitting under the gospel.”

The section of Hollweg’s book is chapter 3 of the second part: “Der Einfluss des Buches auf die Insitutio Calvins und den Heidelberger Katechismus” (pp235-238). Hollweg cites a letter dated 18 August 1545 from Leonhard Soerinus from Znaim and Bullinger’s subsequent reply concerning Soerinus’s query about Bullinger’s opinion of the Institutes.