This article offers some statistics from Heinrich Bullinger’s The Decades with a brief analysis as evidence that Bullinger must be understood as the forerunner, not the father, of federal theology, due to his discussion of the covenant doctrine is limited, inconsistent, exploratory, and slightly integrated with the rest of his theological thought. Having tested Baker and McCoy’s thesis that Bullinger’s doctrine of the covenant is an organizing and central principle in most of his published works (especially in The Decades), one arrives at the conclusion that their thesis is not totally accurate. One might observe that Bullinger cannot be considered …

Traditionally, the formal origin of covenant theology goes back to Cocceius. However, elements of the covenant theology can be found throughout the whole Scriptures in a broad sense. The notion and language of covenant, grace, works, and promise were well known by the early Church and Catholic theologians before the Reformation. Passages such as Gen. 3:15, Rom. 11, Deut. 29;1, and Hos. 6:7, show such language, for example. Nonetheless, properly speaking, the theology of covenant as we know it today has its origin in the larger development of the sixteenth-century Reformation. Zwingli, a contemporary of Luther, is known for defending …

If both Martin Luther’s station-based model of vocation and John Calvin’s gift-based model have a high view of vocation (they emphasize the process of vocational discovery) and are based on the belief that God works in the world through our gifts, what is then their major differences? In the gift-based model, of which Calvin can be considered a forerunner, the dichotomy between the active and contemplative life is rejected in favor of a more holistic position. Therefore, it does not exist a separation between two kinds of life: ordinary and religious. This is so because Calvin departs from the Aristotelian/Thomistic …

Although the covenant was a relatively known theme among sixteenth-century early Reformers, Bullinger’s theology —as reflected in his treatise A Brief Exposition of the One and Eternal Testament or Covenant of God (hereafter Covenant of God) — develops further Zwingli’s notion of the covenant. Although we can’t say that the covenant is a central hermeneutical principle to understand all Bullinger’s theology, his development of the covenant offers some good insights. Testamentum as Covenant Due to the diversity of meanings, Bullinger starts clarifying his understanding of the term ‘testamentum.’ He understands ‘testamentum’ as an oath-based promise taking into account what Scripture …