A learner’s guide
- Christian family
- Magisterial Reformation
- Historical setting
- Swiss, French, Dutch, Scottish, and other sixteenth-century reform movements
Historical origin
Where this tradition came from
Reformed churches developed through figures such as Huldrych Zwingli, John Calvin, Heinrich Bullinger, and John Knox. Continental churches often receive the Three Forms of Unity, completed by the Canons of Dort (1618–19). Presbyterian churches commonly receive the Westminster Standards (1646–47).
Authority
How teaching is discerned
Scripture alone is the supreme and sufficient rule, interpreted in the church with attention to creeds and confessions. Confessions carry real but subordinate authority and are always subject to correction by Scripture.
Salvation
How God saves and transforms
God graciously unites believers to Christ, justifies them through faith, adopts them, and brings them to holiness and glory. Classical Reformed theology stresses election, effectual grace, and God’s preserving work while also calling people sincerely to repent and believe.
The church
Leadership and belonging
Typically presbyterian or synodal: local churches are led by elders and connected through regional and wider assemblies. Some Reformed churches use related structures that differ from the Presbyterian pattern.
Sacraments and ordinances
Baptism and the Lord’s Supper
Baptism
Infants of believers and adult converts are baptised as a sign and seal of God’s covenant promise. Its benefits are received by faith, and its efficacy is not tied to the moment it is administered (Westminster Confession 28.6).
Communion / Eucharist
Christ is truly offered and received by faith through the Holy Spirit; his body is not locally contained in the bread and wine. The Supper nourishes believers and visibly expresses communion with Christ and his body.
Gathered life
What worship may feel like
Preaching, prayer, psalm and hymn singing, baptism, and the Lord’s Supper are central. Some churches follow a strict regulative principle; frequency of Communion and musical style vary widely.
Distinctive emphases
- God’s sovereignty and covenant
- Union with Christ
- Confessional theology
- Rule by elders in graded assemblies
- The whole of life lived before God
Read with care
Internal diversity and a common misconception
Where members differ
Presbyterian, Continental Reformed, Congregationalist, and Reformed Baptist streams (the last heirs of the seventeenth-century Particular Baptists and the 1689 Confession) overlap but are not identical. Disagreements concern baptism, worship, spiritual gifts, predestination, gender, sexuality, and public theology.
Do not assume
Reformed theology is larger than the doctrine of predestination. Its centre is the Triune God’s covenant work in creation, redemption, church, worship, ethics, and the renewal of all life in Christ.
Go to the source
Read this tradition in its own words
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