Reformation
Reformed
Separated from Rome on justification and from Luther on the supper — the clearest case here of a division inside a division.
In its own terms
What this body is doing
The Reformed tradition is the one this section can source best after Rome, because it confessed more than any other: Heidelberg in 1563, Dort in 1619, Westminster in 1646. Its distinctive moves are two. On the supper it holds that Christ is received truly but spiritually, the body remaining in heaven — which divided it from Luther within a decade of dividing both from Rome. On worship it holds that what has no scriptural warrant has no place, which is the principle that removed the exorcistic material from its services entirely.
That second move is why this row looks the way it does below. The absence of a rite here is not neglect; it is a doctrine about rites, arrived at deliberately and defended in confession.
Where it stands in the tree
Descent
Separated from
The Latin West · 1523The same three questions as Wittenberg, answered further. Zurich and Geneva went past Luther on the supper and on what in worship required scriptural warrant, and the two Reformations never reunited.
Bodies that separated from it
- Anabaptist1525
Baptism, and behind it the question of whether a church may be coextensive with a society. The Zurich radicals held that baptism requires a profession an infant cannot make, and were drowned for it by the city that had just abolished the Mass.
The same questions asked of every body
What it holds
Are the gifts still given?
Described from a text the corpus holdsCeased with the apostles; the canon being complete, no new revelation is given.
Westminster I makes the former ways of God's revealing now ceased, scripture being committed wholly to writing.
Who may act?
Not established here. The first thing a rite settles, usually in its opening rubric, and the sharpest divide between an office and a gift.
What counts as evidence?
Not established here. Where a tradition decides it is dealing with a spirit rather than an illness, a grief, or nothing at all.
Where is the spirit?
Not established here. All four inherit gospel scenes in which spirits are in people. What each adds beyond that is the largest difference between them.
Whom do the words address?
Not established here. A formal difference a reader can check by counting clauses rather than by weighing tone.
What restraint is written in?
Not established here. Every one of these traditions knows the practice can harm. What each does about that is what popular accounts leave out.
What closes the matter?
Not established here. Whether the encounter ends, and who declares it, separates a rite from an ongoing practice.
This page records what a body holds and where that is written down. It takes no position on whether any of it is true, and nothing here is instruction — the rites are described by what they contain, never as something to follow.