Bucer * 11 november 1491 Schlettstadt, † 28 februari 1551 Cambridge
Studeerde te Heidelberg theologie en was enige tijd hofprediker van de Paltz.
Hij is predikant geweest te Straatsburg, Ulm en Keulen.
In 1549 wordt hij hoogleraar in de exegese van het Nieuwe Testament te Cambridge.
had daar deel aan de tot stand koming van het Book of Common Prayer.
Vertaling en verklaring van de Psalmen (1529)
Martin Bucer (1491-1551) Vita und Bedeutung
The history of Great St. Mary's
"The leaders of the English Reformation preached in this church -- Erasmus, Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley. Martin Bucer, who influenced Cranmer when he composed the Book of
Common Prayer, was buried here. When Mary came to the throne, she placed the church under an interdict and ordered Bucer's corpse to be burnt in the market place. Under
Queen Elizabeth I, the dust where Bucer was burnt was brought to the church and placed beneath the brass incscription on the south side of the High Altar."
1557 Bucer's body exhumed and burnt.
Evolution of Elizabethan Ecclesiology, 1560-1590: A Key to Its Later Revival
"Great Britain enjoyed early contact with many of the Continental reformers and evidence of their leadership is clear from an early stage. Letters from Calvin, Beza, and disciples of Luther were widespread, allowing England the early blessings of reformation. Thomas Cranmer, working with King Edward VI and others, introduced several biblical reformed ideas. Martin Bucer's De Regno Christi (1551) was received warmly, complete with its plan for restructuring England church and state into a godly commonwealth. Bucer advocated a three-fold ministry of: Doctrine (by Pastor-Teachers), Discipline (Seniors) shorthand for presbyterianism, and Distribution (Deacons). Obviously following the classical four-office view of Calvin and the European reformers, Bucer's De Regno Christi included a draft of a more primitive Church System (which was referred to Edward VI with Cranmer's approval), calling for provincial synods to meet twice a year as early as 1551.[5] Had it not been for Bucer's untimely death in 1551 as he was wielding optimum influence on Edward during the compilation of the Prayer Book Drysdale believed that Bucer's draft of Church Reform for Edward VI carried the possibility of securing actual establishment: How narrowly the English Church escaped . . . a Presbyterian Constitution, or from starting along Presbyterian lines in its early reformation. [6]"
REPROBATION by Jerome Zanchius
"So Bucer somewhere observes that the punishment of the reprobate "is useful to the elect, inasmuch as it influences them to a greater fear and abhorrence of sin, and to a firmer reliance on the goodness of God."
Confessional Subscription Among the Sixteenth Century Reformers by Peter A. Lillback
"The continental Reformed practice of confessional subscription was shaped in a remarkable way by the Augsburg Confession. The early Reformed theology emerged especially from Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Bucer. Their distinctive theologies were most evident when they found themselves unable to sign the Augsburg Confession in 1530 when it was offered to Charles V. Because no exceptions were permitted to those who would subscribe the Augsburg Confession, both Zwingli and Bullinger wrote a confession and presented it to Charles. Bucer's confession was called The Tetrapolitan Confession since the four imperial cities of Strasburg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau subscribed to Bucer's confession at its presentation to Charles. The Tetrapolitan Confession was used to define the distinctive character of Bucer's theology over against Luther's. But the Confession was shortlived, since it was abandoned by the four cities later when they subscribed to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession so they could join the Smalcald League. Bucer, however, held to his confession throughout his life and confessed it in his last will and testament and on his death bed in 1548.[7] Zurich never subscribed the Augsburg Confession, and thus carried on a distinctive Swiss Reformed Protestantism in the spirit of Zwingli. Nevertheless, the Augsburg Confession exercised a decided hegemony over the nascent Reformed movement. Even Calvin, as we will see below, was a subscriber to the Augsburg Confession.
What Is the Kingdom of God? by Peter J. Leithart
"A second obstacle to understanding the Scripture's teaching on kingdom of God is that, until the last century, little attention has been devoted to this specific theme. Martin Bucer, the reformer of Strasbourg, wrote a book entitled, The Reign of Christ in England, but the other reformers devoted their efforts to defending the doctrine of justification or the Reformation doctrine of the Sacraments. When they (Bucer included) spoke about the kingdom of God, they most often equated it with the Church. This is the view taken by the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647): "The visible church consists of all those throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation" (XXV.22). The kingdom and the Church are closely linked in Scripture, and in some senses the two might be interchangeable. But in general they are clearly not identical. Jesus did not come proclaiming the "gospel of the Church"."
