Calvinistische vernieuwing onder luthers vuur. Een zestiende-eeuwse controverse en haar sporen in het Dienstboek van de PKN

Abstract

In their Confession of 1566 the Antwerp Lutherans denounced the way in which their Calvinist fellow-citizens celebrated the Lord’s Supper. They blamed them for reciting the words of institution only at the beginning of their exhaustive didactic introduction, far removed from the elements of bread and wine and long before the communion. They opposed the use of I Corinthians 10, 16 and the so-called ‘London appendix’ as an inadequate substitute for the consecration formula. They rejected the Calvinist interpretation of the sursum corda, in which oral and spiritual communion are dissociated by maximizing the distance between the elements on the table and the body and blood of Christ in heaven. In short, they blamed the Calvinists for driving their aversion to magical consecration too far by separating things that should be kept together. Although the Antwerp Confession with its sharp polemics could not maintain its position among the confessional documents of Dutch Lutheranism for long, it allows a deeper insight into the roots of some specific differences between Calvinist and Lutheran Eucharistic orders even today.