This study will be confined largely to one of Bucer's writings illustrating his alleged transition from a view of ministry, eucharist and communion apparently akin to that of Zwingli to one apparently more akin to, or at least compatible with, that of Luther. The tract in mind is Bucer's Bericht auss der Heyligen Geschrift (‘Advice from Holy Scripture’) of 1534. But in addition, some comparisons will be made with statements from much later in his career.

The ostensible purpose of the tract was to commend the necessity of the visible church, ministry and sacraments to the anti-ecclesiastical, anti-ministerial, anti-sacramental Anabaptists in the city of Münster in Westphalia. But a hidden agenda in the book was to advance further his distinctive mediation theology in the eucharistic controversy between Lutherans and Zwinglians; yet it could be said that Bucer's formulations in this tract are essentially pitched to appeal more to Lutheran than to Zwinglian ears. His development and basic consistency after 1530 until his death in 1551, which resulted in a degree of passive estrangement from the early Zürich theology – or at least its proponents – substantiate this. In 1537 Bucer wrote to Bullinger that he had nothing to add to what he had written in the Bericht three years previously, and that there were no grounds for mistrust.