Johannes Brenz - Controversies

Controversies

The Osiandric controversy about the doctrine of justification, in 1551 and the following years, which caused a scandalous schism in Prussia, was a cause of much annoyance and defamation to Brenz, who saw in this controversy nothing but a war of words. In 1554–1555 the question of the Religious Peace of Augsburg occupied his mind; in 1556 the conference with Johannes a Lasco, in 1557 the Frankenthal conference with the Anabaptists and the Worms Colloquy; in 1558 the edict against Schwenckfeld and the Anabaptists, and the Frankfort Recess; in 1559 the plan for a synod of those who were related to the Augsburg Confession and the Stuttgart Synod, to protect Brenz's doctrine of the Lord's Supper against Calvinistic tendencies; in 1563 and 1569 the struggle against Calvinism in the Electorate of the Palatinate (Maulbronn Colloquy) and the crypto-Calvinistic controversies. The attack of the Dominican Peter a Soto upon the Württemberg Confession in his Assertio fidei (Cologne, 1562) led Brenz to reply with his Apologia confessionis (Frankfort, 1555). In 1558 he was engaged in a controversy with Bishop Hosius of Ermland. The development of the Reformation in the Palatinate led the aged man to a vehement renewal of his negotiation with Bullinger, with whom he had been forced into close relation through the Interim. The question concerned the doctrine of the Lord's Supper and also involved a peculiar development of Christology, which was opposed by the Lutheran theologians outside of Württemberg, since Brenz carried to its logical conclusion the concept of "personal union," thus favoring an absolute omnipresence (ubiquity) of the body of Christ, which did not begin with the ascension but with the incarnation.