Sacramentarians

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SACRAMENTARIANS

Certain Reformers who denied the Real Presence of the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist. Among the Sacramentarians (name given them by Martin Luther) were Huldrych zwingli, Johannes oecolampadius, and Andreas karlstadt. Martin bucer adopted a mediating position, and John calvin could do no better than to imitate Bucer's syncretism. That Sacramentarianism did not appear until the mid-1520s shows that it had no intrinsic connection with the principal Reformation doctrine of justification by faith. Rather, it was the fruit of the rejection of the teaching authority of the Church. In its day the controversy was sharp. At the Marburg Colloquium (1529) Luther and Zwingl met at the behest of Bucer, but did little more than exchange mutual recriminations. A compromise statement was framed in the Wittenberg Concord (1536), but the issue lived on in the churches of the Reformation. The controversy occasioned the development of ubiquitarianism among the Lutherans.

Bibliography: l. christiani, Dictionnaire de théologie catholique (Paris 190350) 14.1:441465. k. algermissen, Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche, ed. j. hofer and k. rahner (Freiburg 195765) 9:243244.

[m. b. schepers]