# Calvin on Consensus Tigurinas



## fredtgreco (Jan 24, 2009)

Does anyone know if there is an online version of a commentary or analysis by Calvin of the Consensus Tigurinas? Someone I know is looking for this.


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

1.) Do you know that he, indeed, wrote such a thing? 

2.) And if so, what are the language restrictions? Are Latin/French okay, or does your friend need English?


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## fredtgreco (Jan 24, 2009)

Paul,

I don't know, but my friend says that he wrote it about 4 years after the Consensus.

He would need English.


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

Okay, so I've found an electronic copy in my "Calvin Library" in Latin; but so far as I can tell, there does not seem to be an english translation of it: I've found the work referenced and quoted a few times by English authors, but they always quote it in Latin, suggesting perhaps there is no english edition. Hopefully a more scholarly type will prove me wrong. 

But, if you at least want the Latin for your own personal reference (I recall you were a classics major?), I can certainly send it to you.


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## Dieter Schneider (Jan 24, 2009)

fredtgreco said:


> Does anyone know if there is an online version of a commentary or analysis by Calvin of the Consensus Tigurinas? Someone I know is looking for this.


Google 'Tigurinus' ??!!


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## toddpedlar (Jan 24, 2009)

Dieter Schneider said:


> fredtgreco said:
> 
> 
> > Does anyone know if there is an online version of a commentary or analysis by Calvin of the Consensus Tigurinas? Someone I know is looking for this.
> ...



He's looking for a commentary or analysis by Calvin of this document, not the document itself...


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## Dieter Schneider (Jan 24, 2009)

Well - there are some comments ... I am only trying to be helpful.


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

Found it. Vol. II of Beveridge's _Tracts Relating to the Reformation_. The English translation is contained therein.


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## fredtgreco (Jan 24, 2009)

Thanks, Paul!

I assume that you mean this one on Google Books:

Tracts Relating to the Reformation - Google Book Search

I found it from your description above.


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

Latin Editions

Start on the page above, and scroll for page after page containing all related documents subsequent to the Consensus in Latin. (It looks like there's more material in here than the English link below, so I posted it for your reference if you want it.)

Tracts Relating to the Reformation - Google Book Search

And the above link will take you to an English edition beginning with Calvin's _Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper_; if you continue, you will find English versions of much of the Tigurinus material.

-----Added 1/24/2009 at 07:14:11 EST-----

Yep. You beat me to it.


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## Semper Fidelis (Jan 24, 2009)

Can somebody summarize what the document is about?


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

Rich, are you asking about the Consensus itself, or the Defenses and Responses to it?


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## Semper Fidelis (Jan 24, 2009)

Both.


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## Prufrock (Jan 24, 2009)

Also, for anyone who visits the link to read it, here is a brief summary of what's going on in the English link. Page 200 is where the related material starts: letters back and forth from Geneva and Zurich. On p. 212 starts a copy of the Consensus itself; and p. 221ff contains Calvin's Exposition thereof, written in 1554.

Here is a link to a quick summary of the historical setting from Schaff's _Creeds of Christendom_, for those who are unfamiliar with what was happening.

-----Added 1/24/2009 at 10:19:22 EST-----

Rich,

I haven't read the 1554 exposition before (I'm doing that right now), so I can't comment on that.

The agreement itself is 26 articles agreed upon by Geneva and Zurich on the nature of the supper (and sacrament in general). I don't know if there is really much more to say than that: it's probably just as quick to read the document itself as to read a summary. Here is a PB thread which contains the whole document.

Hopefully, a resident historian on the board can post something more regarding its historical significance (which I understand to be pretty big), and something on the subsequent materials. Perhaps Dr. Clark, if you're out there??

If no one more learned posts anything on Calvin's in the next day or so two expositions of the Consensus, I'll give a summary of my reading of it for you.


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## toddpedlar (Jan 24, 2009)

Well, if you bought the Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th centuries in English Translation, you'd have the Consensus, Rich  

Now for my own surprise. I can't believe I didn't think of this when this question was first posted... The relatively recently republished (2002, Christian Heritage) Treatises on the Sacraments, which I've had for 5 years or so contains both the Consensus Tigurinus and Calvin's Exposition. It's a reprint of the volume to which Paul pointed us....Hot dog! I.e. it's in print  Guess what I'm reading tonight!


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## Semper Fidelis (Jan 25, 2009)

Todd - thanks for the book titles.

Paul - read the link. I was familiar with some work between Bullinger and Calvin to refine each other's views on the Sacraments but was unfamiliar with the document that pulled that together nor was I aware of its impact. You can see the fingerprints of that consensus in our own view.

BTW, I found this interesting:


> The Consensus was adopted by the Churches of Zurich, Geneva, St. Gall, Schaffhausen, the Grisons, Neuchatel, and, after some hesitation, by Basle, and was favorably received in France, England, and parts of Germany. *Melanchthon declared to Lavater (Bullinger's son-in-law) that he then for the first time understood the Swiss, and would never again write against them; but he erased those passages of the Consensus which made the efficacy of the sacrament depend on election.*



...and the Lutheran view has been irrational on that point until today.


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