Continental Reformed
- Grew from
- Reformed / Presbyterian
- From
- 1563 AD
- Origin
- The Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland
- Confession
- The Three Forms of Unity 1619 AD
The Reformed churches of the European mainland, distinguished from the Presbyterian line less by doctrine than by history: they took shape under different states, kept their own confessions, and reached the Americas with Dutch and German rather than Scottish settlement.
What marks it out
The Three Forms of Unity — the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Canons of Dort — rather than Westminster. Heidelberg is unusual among Reformation documents for being warm rather than forensic, and opens by asking what is your only comfort in life and in death. Dort, in 1619, answered the Arminian party and set out the account of election that later got summarised as five points.
Alongside it
Also from Reformed / Presbyterian.
In the record
-
1517 AD Reform
The Reformation begins
Luther's objections to indulgences opened a wider argument about authority, scripture and justification that divided western Christendom.
This body appears in the history but does not carry recorded doctrinal positions here, so it is absent from the comparison panels.