¹ In the Reformed tradition terms such as ‘the Lord's Supper’ or ‘Holy Communion’ have generally been more prevalent that ‘Eucharist’; by using the latter term, I seek neither to disparage nor to discontinue such denotations, but simply to frame my exploration in terms of current ecumenical parlance.

² Certainly, the various iterations of ‘Reformed’ identity have rested on more than simply the doctrine of the eucharist: other doctrines – notably christology, election and sanctification – have been equally contentious and determinative at different points in the relationship between the Reformed and other traditions. At the same time, given that systematic theology is compelled to integrate its reflections on sacramental theology with its reflections upon other doctrines, and given that eucharistic theology is intimately bound up precisely with these other doctrines – christology, election, and sanctification – it should not surprise to find this sacrament to be a regularly presenting issue of discord.

³ Unfortunately, this means that the documents of the Westminster Assembly, together with the flurry of catechetical documents which anticipated and accompanied its deliberations, are beyond the scope of this investigation.

⁴ For example, in Plantinga, Richard J., Thompson, Thomas R. and Lundberg, Matthew D.’s An Introduction to Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)Google Scholar, reference is made to Zwingli's ‘symbolic understanding of the Eucharist’, in which ‘the Eucharist is a symbolic remembrance of the death and resurrection of Christ, who is “present” in the Supper only by virtue of the faith of the Christian recipient’ (p. 491). By contrast, it is asserted, Calvin ‘argues that Christ is not physically present, but holds that Christ is truly present in spiritual form, since the divine Logos as the second person of the Trinity is present everywhere’ (p. 496). These statements are all highly infelicitous.

⁵ Gerrish, B. A., ‘Sign and Reality: The Lord's Supper in the Reformed Confessions’, in The Old Protestantism and the New: Essays on the Reformation Heritage (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1982), pp. 118–30Google Scholar.

⁶ The typology is mentioned without any dissent by, among others, Rorem, Paul, ‘Calvin and Bullinger on the Lord's Supper’, Lutheran Quarterly 2 (1988), pp. 155–84Google Scholar (hereafter ‘Part I’) and pp. 357–93 (hereafter ‘Part II’), at ‘Part II’, p. 383; Bierma, Lyle D., The Doctrine of the Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism: Melanchthonian, Calvinist, or Zwinglian? (Princeton: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1999)Google Scholar, passim; Allen, Michael, ‘Sacraments in the Reformed and Anglican Reformation’, in Levering, Matthew (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 292–3Google Scholar. Venema, Cornelis P. seems to misrepresent the typology when he writes that ‘Gerrish places the second and third views together as representing the consensus of the Reformed confessions over against the Zwinglian view: Christ is communicated by means of the sacrament’, in ‘The Doctrine of the Lord's Supper in the Reformed Confessions’, Mid-America Theological Journal 12 (2001), p. 114, n. 32Google Scholar. Emidio Campi, meanwhile, raises an unspecified reservation about the typology in ‘Consensus Tigurinus: Werden, Wertung und Wirkung’, in Campi, Emidio and Reich, Ruedi (eds), Consensus Tigurinus: Heinrich Bullinger und Johannes Calvin über das Abendmahl (Zürich: TVZ, 2009), p. 31Google Scholar.

⁷ For a slightly more expansive account of the relevant material, see Nimmo, Paul T., ‘Sacraments’, in Nimmo, Paul T. and Fergusson, David A. S. (eds), Cambridge Companion to Reformed Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), pp. 80–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Zwingli, Huldrych, ‘An Account of the Faith’, in On Providence and Other Essays, ed. Hinke, William John (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1999), p. 48Google Scholar.

⁹ Zwingli, Huldrych, ‘An Exposition of the Faith’, in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. Bromiley, G. W. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2006), pp. 262–5Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Zwingli, ‘An Account of the Faith’, p. 46.

¹¹ Zwingli, ‘An Exposition of the Faith’, p. 258.

¹² Bullinger, Henry, The Decades, ed. Harding, Thomas, tr. H. I., 5 vols. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009–10), vol. 5, p. 234Google Scholar.

¹³ Second Helvetic Confession (1566), §21, in Reformierte Bekenntnisschriften (hereafter RB), 7 vols. to date (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 2002–), vol. 2/2, p. 330, with modern translation in Cochrane, Arthur (ed.), Reformed Confessions of the Sixteenth Century (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2003), p. 284Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Bullinger, Decades, vol. 5, p. 403 (translation modernised).

¹⁵ Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T., tr. Ford Lewis Battles, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), IVGoogle Scholar.xiv.1.

¹⁶ Calvin, John, ‘Exposition of the Heads of Agreement’, in Tracts and Letters, vol. 2, ed. and tr. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2009), p. 227Google Scholar.

¹⁷ Calvin, Institutes, IV.xvii.1.

¹⁸ Ibid., IV.xvii.10.

¹⁹ It might be observed in passing that this typology may not be quite fine-grained enough to be definitively helpful in understanding the different eucharistic theologies within the Reformed tradition. In particular, there may be questions as to whether the category of ‘symbolic memorialism’ does sufficient justice to some of the later material in the Zwingli corpus, and as to whether the category of ‘symbolic instrumentalism’ does sufficient justice to some of the mystical statements in Calvin. On this and related themes, see Paul T. Nimmo, ‘Reformed Theologies of the Eucharist: A New Typology’ (forthcoming), and – with a rather different reading of the tradition – Riggs, John W., The Lord's Supper in the Reformed Tradition: An Essay on the True Mystical Presence (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2015), pp. 112–13Google Scholar.

²⁰ In that year was published the strongly memorialist Zürich Confession (1545), in RB 1/2, pp. 456–65.

²¹ Rorem, ‘Part II’, p. 384.

²² See Rorem, ‘Part I’ and ‘Part II’, passim.

²³ Spinks, Bryan D., Do This in Remembrance of Me: The Eucharist from the Early Church to the Present Day (London: SCM Press, 2013), p. 278Google Scholar. This point is hugely important in light of the significant error in the standard English translation of the Consensus of Zürich which wrongly renders organa as ‘instruments’.

²⁴ Importantly, the term exhibere does not simply mean ‘to exhibit’ in the sense of modern English: for Calvin and others, it can only mean ‘to confer’, ‘to impart’, or ‘to bestow’. See David F. Wright, ‘Infant Baptism and the Christian Community in Bucer’, quoted in Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me, p. 280.

²⁵ Bierma, Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism, p. 23.

²⁶ Rorem, ‘Part II’, p. 379.

²⁷ In Gerrish's typology, the ‘symbolic memorialist’ position associated with Zwingli would form the third, albeit bottom, note of this scale. See Bierma, Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 9–20, for compelling evidence of how different theological descriptors have been applied to the Heidelberg Catechism for precisely this reason of ‘adequacy yet not sufficiency’. Gerrish also mentions this complexity in respect of descriptors of types of theology: for example, the eucharistic theology of the Geneva Confession ‘could be interpreted Calvinistically, but its language does not require such an interpretation’ (‘Sign and Reality’, p. 123).

²⁸ Among introductions to the Scots Confession, see M'Crie, C. G., The Confessions of the Church of Scotland: Their Evolution in History (Edinburgh: Macniven & Wallace, 1907), pp. 14–21Google Scholar; Henderson, G. D., ‘Introduction’, in The Scots Confession 1560 (Edinburgh: St Andrew Press, 1960), pp. 9–27Google Scholar; and Ian Hazlett, ‘Confessio Scotica 1560’, in RB 2/1, pp. 209–18. For an excellent bibliography, see Hazlett, ‘Confessio Scotica 1560’, RB 2/1, pp. 230–9.

²⁹ Its official adoption by the Church of Scotland itself was – for a variety of reasons – a rather more protracted affair: see Hazlett, ‘Confessio Scotica 1560’, p. 217.

³⁰ Ibid.

³¹ Ibid., p. 218.

³² The text of the Confession used here is the critical edition prepared by Hazlett and found under ‘Confessio Scotica 1560’, RB 2/1, pp. 240–99. References to the text will be given in the text by chapter and page number.

³³ Significantly, the preposition ‘in’ in the phrase ‘in the sacrament’ is susceptible of diverse interpretations – it could mean ‘in’ with reference to instrumentality, but could also mean ‘in’ with reference to time – see Rorem, ‘Part II’, pp. 373–4. While Calvin might lean towards the former, Bullinger might lean towards the latter.

³⁴ See Rorem, ‘Part II’, pp. 365–75; and Bierma, Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 9–20. For Bullinger, note particularly Bierma, Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism, p. 18, n. 72.

³⁵ In the following paragraph, meanwhile, the benefit of participating in the eucharist is not simply ‘the verray instant actioun of the supper’ – ‘yit sall it efter bring frute furth, as lively seid sawain in gude ground’ (XXI.285).

³⁶ The agent of the making ‘effectuall’ of the sacraments at whatever time is declared in what follows to be Christ alone (XXI.285), though this is evidently not incompatible with believing that that the effect of the sacraments is ‘wrocht be operatioun of the haly Gaist’ (XXI.283).

³⁷ Locher, Gottfried W., ‘Zwingli's Influence in England and Scotland’, in Zwingli's Thought: New Perspectives, tr. Aylor, Milton and Casson, Stuart (Leiden: Brill, 1981), p. 371Google Scholar.

³⁸ Spinks, Do This in Remembrance of Me, p. 294.

³⁹ B. A. Gerrish, ‘Sign and Reality’, p. 127. Indeed, Gerrish continues: ‘It has indeed been said that the sacramental affirmations of the Scots Confession can lay claim to a validity that is transconfessional: not just reformiert but reformatorisch’; this claim seems rather difficult to accept in light of the above.

⁴⁰ Hazlett, ‘Confessio Scotica 1560’, p. 217.

⁴¹ Wright, David F., ‘The Scottish Reformation: Theology and Theologians’, in Bagchi, David and Steinmetz, David C. (eds), Cambridge Companion to the Reformation Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 177Google Scholar. This confession, Wright observes, was ‘based in part on the confession by Valérand Poullain used in Frankfurt’, and ‘appeared in the 1556 Geneva printing of The Forme of Prayers’ (‘The Scottish Reformation’, p. 177). Connecting this work and the service-book, Wright explains, ‘The service book which ordered the Reformed worship . . . of the kirk was . . . the work of a group of Scottish and English exiles at Frankfurt in 1555, whence it was adopted by the English-speaking congregation in Geneva, which counted Knox among its pastors. . . . [I]t was printed [in 1562] in Edinburgh, as The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of the Sacraments. It is misleadingly referred to as John Knox's Liturgy’ (‘The Scottish Reformation’, pp. 175–6).

⁴² As David F. Wright notes (‘The Scottish Reformation’, pp. 176–7), the General Assembly had reservations only in respect of the Second Helvetic Confession's ‘commendation of the major festivals of the Christian year’.

⁴³ See M'Crie, The Confessions of the Church of Scotland, pp. 27–35. M'Crie closes with a wonderful question and observation: ‘Could anything good come out of the packed, prelatic Assembly of Aberdeen? Well, worse things have emanated forth from that city of anti-covenanting doctors than the Confession of 1616’ (The Confessions, p. 35).

⁴⁴ ‘The Confession of Faith Used in the English Congregation at Geneva: Received and Approved by the Church of Scotland, &c.’ (1556), section IV, in A Collection of Confessions of Faith, Catechisms, Directories, Books of Discipline, &c. Of Public Authority in the Church of Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: James Watson, 1722), p. 9.

⁴⁵ Ibid.

⁴⁶ Ibid., p. 10.

⁴⁷ Second Helvetic Confession (1566), §19, in RB 2/2, p. 323, at Cochrane, Reformed Confessions, p. 277.

⁴⁸ Ibid.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 278.

⁵⁰ Ibid., p. 284 (translation altered to indicate the force of the intus interim).

⁵¹ Ibid., p. 286.

⁵² ‘The new Confession of Faith’, in Maitland Club, ‘Acts and Proceedings: 1616, August’, in Acts and Proceedings of the General Assemblies of the Kirk of Scotland, 1560–1618 (Edinburgh: [s.n.], 1839), pp. 1116–39, at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/church-scotland-records/acts-proceedings/1560-1618/pp1116-1139, accessed Feb. 2018.

⁵³ To turn to the catechisms of Scotland to pose questions of sacramental theology is to take up a line of enquiry which Gerrish found himself without space to explore: see Gerrish, ‘Sign and Reality’, p. 333, n. 47; given the constraints of this essay, the task remains to be completed.

⁵⁴ Wright, ‘The Scottish Reformation’, p. 176.

⁵⁵ Ibid. Henderson mentions among the pre-Westminster catechisms used in Scotland not only those of Calvin and Craig, but also those of Beza and Welsh. Of the last two, the former is explored in n. 58 below, but no copy has thus far been located by this author of the latter.

⁵⁶ Ibid., p. 188. T. F. Torrance notes that the ‘Palatine Catechism’ appeared in editions of the Church of Scotland Book of Common Order from 1615, see Torrance, T. F., ‘The Little Catechism, 1556’, in Torrance, T. F. (ed.), The School of Faith (London: James Clarke & Co., 1959), p. 239Google Scholar.

⁵⁷ John Calvin, ‘The Catechisme, or Manner to teach Children the Christian Religion’, A. 310, in A Collection of Confessions of Faith, p. 229. References to this text will be given in the text by Question/Answer number and page number.

⁵⁸ There are strong resonances between this Catechism of Calvin and ‘A little catechisme, that is to say, a short instruction touching christian religion’ (1575), written by Théodore de Bèze and available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/A09959.0001.001/1:1?rgn=div1;view=fulltext, accessed Feb. 2018. The latter also circulated widely in Scotland in this period, according to Henderson, ‘Introduction’, p. 15. The resonances exist in terms of the description of the sacraments as ‘instruments or meanes’ (section VII, Q./A.1) as well as in terms of what happens in the sacrament, which is described in terms susceptible of either instrumentalist or parallelist interpretation: ‘As I receiue with my hande and my mouth the sacrament, that is to saye, that bread and that wine, for the nourishment of thys bodye, euen so by the vertue, and power of the holye Ghoste, I doe inwardly and in my soule receiue and imbrace thorowe faythe our Lorde Iesus Christ, verye God and verye man, that by him I may liue eternally’ (section X, A.3).

⁵⁹ ‘Craig's Catechism’ (1581), heading to section 8, in The School of Faith, p. 146. Further references to this text are given in the text by page number.

⁶⁰ This can be proven, the Catechism states, ‘By the truth of [Christ's] word, and nature of a sacrament’ (p. 156).

⁶¹ This occurs by ‘the wonderful working of the Holy Spirit’ (p. 156). Cf. Wright, ‘The Scottish Reformation’, p. 187.

⁶² ‘Palatine Catechism’ (1563), Q. 66, in A Collection of Confessions of Faith, p. 315. Further references are given in the text by Question/Answer number and page number.

⁶³ Thus also Bierma, in Sacraments in the Heidelberg Catechism, pp. 29–30. He notes that both Bullinger and Calvin could subscribe to this Catechism: the text is simply silent in respect of the matters on which they differ.

⁶⁴ And perhaps such eirenic confessional outcomes finally attest not only theological diplomacy and doctrinal inclusivity, but also the complexity of dealing with the underdetermined eucharistic theology of Scripture.

⁶⁵ Such a concern grows when it is considered that the doctrine of election (rightly considered another central topic in the Reformed tradition) in the Scots Confession is far more hesitant than Calvin himself on the topic of reprobation (see Torrance, T. F., Scottish Theology: From John Knox to John McLeod Campbell (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), pp. 14–17Google Scholar). This feature of the Scots Confession in respect of election finds a remarkable parallel in its eucharistic theology.

⁶⁶ See e.g. Venema, Cornelis P., ‘Sacraments and Baptism in the Reformed Confessions’, Mid-America Theological Journal 11 (2000), p. 78Google Scholar, n. 61; Swain, Scott, ‘Lutheran and Reformed Sacramental Theology: Seventeenth–Nineteenth Centuries’, in Levering, Matthew (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), p. 362Google Scholar; Michael Allen, ‘Sacraments in the Reformed and Anglican Reformation’, in The Oxford Handbook of Sacramental Theology, p. 295.

⁶⁷ Gottfried W. Locher, ‘The Second Helvetic Confession’, in Zwingli's Thought: New Perspectives, pp. 301–2.