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The Heidelberg Catechism was also probably the work of a single man, Zacharias Ursinus, who was a key Reformed theologian in the city of Heidelberg. The ruler of Heidelberg in the early 1560s was Frederick III, who converted from Lutheranism to the Reformed faith. That is odd to modern evangelical ears, for the reason noted above: the matter that really divided Lutheran from Reformed, the Lord’s Supper, is of little consequence to those who focus simply on a few isolated doctrines which they regard as constituting the gospel and as providing an adequate basis for the Christian life. By contrast, this was a matter with deep theological and political implications in the sixteenth century.

Thus, when Frederick converted, his conversion created various issues in the city of Heidelberg. First, he needed a statement that would allow for the territory to have a confessional identity. Second, he had a divided faculty at his university, where Reformed, Philippists, and Gnesio-Lutherans were engaged in conflict with each other, a conflict which inevitably spilled over into church life and thus into politics. What Frederick determined to do was commission a confession that might form the basis for ecumenical rapprochement between the Reformed and the Philippists, which would isolate and marginalize the hard-line Gnesios.