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Primary Sources

These are not confessions, they are the documents that made the Reformation. Polemical, constructive, and in some cases written under mortal pressure, they established the theological categories that the confessions later codified. The arguments here preceded the consensus.

Martin Luther · 1517
The Ninety-Five Theses

The spark. Ninety-five propositions for academic disputation, posted at Wittenberg on October 31, 1517. Aimed at the indulgence trade and the papal theology behind it. Not a comprehensive confession, a protest that became a revolution.

Martin Luther · 1525
The Bondage of the Will

Luther’s own answer to Erasmus on the freedom of the will, and the book Luther considered his most important. It establishes the anthropological foundation of the Reformation: the fallen will is enslaved, and salvation is entirely of God.

Huldrych Zwingli · 1523
The Sixty-Seven Articles

Sixty-seven theses presented at the First Zurich Disputation in January 1523. Zwingli defended his Reformation preaching against Rome and established the sola scriptura framework that would define the Swiss Reformed tradition.

John Calvin · 1536–1559
Institutes of the Christian Religion

Not a confession but the architecture behind every Reformed confession. Four books covering the knowledge of God, the knowledge of Christ, the reception of grace, and the external means of grace. The most comprehensive Protestant theology ever produced by one mind.

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Caleb Welsh · Theology & Scripture

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