Theopedia

Zacharias Ursinus

Overview

Zacharias Ursinus (1534-1583) was a German Reformed theologian best known as the primary author, with Caspar Olevianus, of the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), which later became one of the Three Forms of Unity affirmed at the Synod of Dort.1 Historians of doctrine also credit him with proposing, as early as 1562, a prelapsarian covenant in Eden that fed directly into covenant theology’s doctrine of the covenant of works.2

Life and Ministry

Ursinus was born Zacharias Baer on 18 July 1534 in Breslau, Silesia, into a Lutheran family; like other young scholars of his era he took a Latin name from his German surname, Baer (“bear”), becoming Ursinus.3 At fifteen he enrolled at the University of Wittenberg, where he studied under and became a close friend of Philipp Melanchthon for the next seven years.1 After completing his studies in 1557 he traveled through the Reformed world, meeting John Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger, and Peter Martyr Vermigli, the Italian Reformer who influenced him most theologically.1

Returning to Breslau, Ursinus published a pamphlet on the sacraments that provoked Lutheran opponents, who charged him with being more Reformed than Lutheran; the controversy drove him from the city.3 When Melanchthon died in 1560, Ursinus went to Zurich and studied under Vermigli for nearly a year.1 On Vermigli’s recommendation, Frederick III, the elector palatine, appointed him professor at the Collegium Sapientiae in Heidelberg in 1561 or 1562.3 There, commissioned by Frederick III, he completed the Heidelberg Catechism in 1563 in cooperation with Caspar Olevianus and a supporting team that played a lesser role.1 The death of Frederick III in 1576 led to Ursinus’s removal from Heidelberg; he went on to hold a professorial chair at Neustadt an der Haardt from 1578 until his death on 6 March 1583.3 His collected works were first published in 1587-89, with a fuller edition following in 1612, prepared by his son and two of his pupils, David Pareus and Reuterus.3

Theological Contribution

Ursinus’s own Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism is an extended exposition of the catechism he had co-written.4 In it he defines a covenant of God as “a mutual promise and agreement, between God and men, in which God gives assurance to men that he will be merciful to them… And, on the other side, men bind themselves to God in this covenant that they will exercise repentance and faith… and render such obedience as will be acceptable to him.”5

Ursinus’s other major theological contribution is to covenant theology’s distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant of grace. David A. Weir argues that “by 1562 Ursinus had proposed a prelapsarian covenant in Eden, which was the first really clear articulation of the federal theology by a Reformed theologian.”2 Ursinus is named, alongside Olevianus, as one of the first Reformed Orthodox theologians to describe the Adamic administration before the fall as its own covenant, a “covenant of creation” or “covenant of nature.”6 Lyle Bierma’s monograph-length reappraisal of this doctrine finds that Ursinus’s covenant of nature “offers no indication of the priority of law over grace,” and that the legal elements of his creation covenant were already anticipated in Calvin’s own theology rather than marking a departure from it.6

On the doctrine of sin, Ursinus’s commentary states plainly that any “want of righteousness,” or any inclination contrary to God’s law, is itself sin and deserving of God’s judgment, whether or not it is willingly chosen or can be avoided.7 He anticipated the objection that an unavoidable, unwilled disposition cannot properly be called sin, and answered that this distinction “is true in a civil court, but not in the judgment of God, before whom whatever is in opposition to his law, whether it can be avoided or not, is sin, and as such deserves punishment.”7 On justification, he argued that no work of a believer, even in part, can contribute to the righteousness that stands before God, “because our best works in this life are imperfect, and defiled with sin” and so “cannot be the whole, nor even a part of our righteousness before God.”4

Historical Significance

The Heidelberg Catechism that Ursinus and Olevianus produced went on to become one of the Three Forms of Unity, affirmed alongside the Belgic Confession and the Canons of Dort at the Synod of Dort in 1619.1

Weir traces the wider influence of Ursinus’s covenant-of-works proposal: after 1590 the idea of a prelapsarian covenant “appeared all over Reformed Protestant Europe,” and McCormick credits this line of covenant thinking with giving shape to later Reformed debates over justification, including the doctrine of Christ’s active obedience.2 That covenant-of-works framework later found confessional expression in the Westminster Confession’s own chapter on God’s covenant with man.2

Scholars have also asked whether Ursinus’s own covenant doctrine continues Calvin’s theology or departs from it into a more legalistic scheme, part of a wider “Calvin versus the Calvinists” debate also raised about Theodore Beza. Bierma’s own conclusion, that Ursinus’s teaching shows no priority of law over grace and extends rather than distorts Calvin’s emphasis on divine grace in the covenant with Adam, answers that question in favor of continuity.6

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Jared Heath Moore, “On Concupiscence, the Roman Catholics Rejected Augustine and the Reformed Tradition Followed Augustine,” in “A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 102-103. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  2. Micah John McCormick, “Historical Survey,” in “The Active Obedience of Jesus Christ” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 149-150n150, quoting David A. Weir, The Origins of the Federal Theology in Sixteenth-Century Reformation Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 155, 157-58. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. “Ursinus, Zacharias,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911), a public-domain reference not held in the Theopedia Library, used here for biographical facts (birth name, the Breslau controversy, Frederick III’s patronage, the Neustadt chair, and the publication of his collected works) not otherwise found in library sources. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5

  4. Aaron Thomas O’Kelley, “Justification in the Post-Reformation Period,” in “A Historical-Theological Critique of the New Perspective on Paul” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2010), 134, quoting Zacharias Ursinus, Commentary on the Heidelberg Catechism 62, trans. G. W. Williard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 333. ↩ ↩2

  5. Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, trans. G. W. Williard (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1954), 97, quoted in John Murray, Collected Writings of John Murray: Studies in Theology, vol. 4 (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth, 1982), 217, quoted in Carol Man Fen Chen, “John Calvin’s Doctrine of Twofold Grace,” in “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 53-108. ↩

  6. Carol Man Fen Chen, “Post-Reformation Development of Covenant Theology,” in “A Historical, Biblical, and Theological Interpretation of Covenants: Unconditionality and Conditionality in Relation to Justification and Sanctification” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 117-118, quoting Lyle D. Bierma, “Law and Grace in Ursinus’ Doctrine of the Nature of Covenant: A Reappraisal,” in Protestant Scholasticism: Essays in Reassessment, ed. Carl R. Trueman and R. S. Clark (Carlisle, England: Paternoster, 1999), 110. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  7. Zacharias Ursinus, The Commentary of Dr. Zacharias Ursinus on the Heidelberg Catechism, 3rd American ed., trans. G. W. Williard (Cincinnati: T. P. Buchner, 1851), 37-38, quoted in Jared Heath Moore, “On Concupiscence, the Roman Catholics Rejected Augustine and the Reformed Tradition Followed Augustine,” in “A Biblical and Historical Appraisal of Concupiscence with Special Attention to Same-Sex Attraction” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2019), 103. ↩ ↩2