Zwingli’s argument many not be original, but his marriage of classical metaphysics and evangelical soteriology had a prophetic ring, anticipating the advent of Reformed Orthodoxy after his premature death. On that score, Zwingli’s Exposition adds a contribution that defined the Reformed Church for centuries to come.
The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, by Matthew Barrett
“For we teach not a single jot which we have not learned from the sacred Scriptures. Nor do we make a single assertion for which we have not the authority of the first doctors of the Church…those ancient Fathers who drew more purely from the fountainhead.”
- Ulrich Zwingli, An Exposition of the Faith, 1531
“So ought the blind heretics who have lost the holy faith fall into the dark abyss of all heresy so that your lords can easily see what a false and devilish faith these hardened men teach, who are full of contradictions.”
- Johann Eck, letter to Swiss confederates
It isn’t really appropriate to see Zwingli as a secondary Reformer. Zwingli came to his convictions apart from Luther. Barrett considers him the father of the Reformed Church; a Reformed tradition exists in large part due to Zwingli. Citing Bruce Gordon, Zwingli “was the artist, while his successor Heinrich Bullinger and Calvin in Geneva were the craftsmen.”
Zwingli was versed in humanist and Scholastic methods. He learned not only Latin, but also Hebrew and Greek; he studied the Scriptures, the church fathers, and the medieval Scholastics, ranging from Peter Lombard to Thomas Aquinas. He was also familiar with the via moderna – Scotus, Ockham, and Biel.
A year before Luther’s ninety-five theses, he was preaching sermons in the Benedictine house – preaching that was not only doctrinal but also political. For example, he had no tolerance for the bribes that pervaded Swiss business; he stirred up dissatisfaction with the Swiss mercenary service, which served to make the magistrates wealthy.
Things were slowly being changed: the Grossmünster dropped the Ave Maria from its liturgy; Zurich stopped providing mercenaries to foreign territories. Yet, even by 1520, the Reformation did not take hold in Zurich, with the civic leaders still trying to maintain cooperation with Rome.
At a dinner party in 1522. While he did not partake, Zwingli encouraged others to eat sausages. Zwingli considered Lent’s restrictions were a return to the law, something for which he found no Biblical basis. The bishops wanted to punish Zwingli, but the magistrates prohibited this.
Next in his sights came clerical celibacy and the prohibition of marriage. Later, news came out that he was already secretly married. Zwingli would tackle or work through or argue for Divine Simplicity, the imago Dei, and the perspicuity of Scripture.
Few theologians in the history of the church take the imago Dei as their starting point for their doctrine of Scripture. In that sense, Zwingli’s logic was original.
“Let us make man in our image.” Following the patristics, Zwingli saw this as an allusion to the Trinity. As God was not made of parts, this could not mean a physical image, but spiritual; it was a thirst after God, driven by man’s innate longing for eternal bliss. God’s breath in Adam implanted a longing for eternal life.
How does one know the way to salvation? The Carthusian, the Benedictine, the Dominican, and the Franciscan each have their answers, and each answer is different. The pope had his answer as well: “It is easiest with an indulgence.”
Why is it, asked Zwingli, that nobody turns to Christ, whom John called the light of the world?
When it came to Scripture, he seemed to offer it the premiere position of authority, but not the sole authority: “…we should give to it a trust which we cannot give to any other word.” As an aside, I find whatever caricatures are made of sola Scriptura, the reality is that this is the case for even the staunchest five solas Protestant: there are authorities other than Scripture, just none higher than Scripture; no other authority is infallible.
Which comes to the next caricature: that each individual is free to discover his own truth about doctrine and teaching. There are two issues I take with this: first, that unless one decides to practice his Christianity alone, he will come under someone’s teaching, and, depending on the denomination, to varying degrees he will come under the authority of a priest, bishop, pastor, or elder.
Second, and more fundamentally: once people began moving around – immigrating, emigrating, etc. – they were bound to enter into a situation where they were, in the plainest sense, free to discover their own truth: they could choose in which denomination, in which tradition, to participate.
In almost all traditionally Christian countries, a Christian is free to attend any one of a dozen or more different churches, each affiliated with different denominations and traditions. In other words, each individual is free to find a community that corresponds closest to what he individually believes to be the truth.
Returning to Barrett: by October 1522, the council in Zurich recognized Zwingli’s departure from Rome, and Zwingli was considered one of the worst heretics among the Reformers. Zurich was not ready to part from Rome, so it came up with a compromise: Zwingli could not continue as a priest, but he was allowed to continue as a preacher.
The situation was growing in intensity. In January 1523, a disputation was to be held; Zwingli prepared sixty-seven articles for the disputation. He began: Christ was the head of the Church, not the pope. He moved through several points of belief and practice that could not bind conscience of the believer: papal supremacy, the Mass, the intercession of saints, pilgrimages, vows, purgatory, and others.
He devoted ten articles to the magistrates: they had authority over their subjects – not only civil authority, but also regarding the church. They were to govern according to the will of God.
The magistrates, still not ready to depart from Rome, attempted to find a way to avoid alienating Rome yet still leave room for Zwingli: the gospel should continue to be preached by all clergy in Zurich. Rome couldn’t possibly object to this! Most importantly, it was the magistrates, and not the church, that ruled.
Next would come the issue of images and icons. A second disputation was scheduled for October 1523, just to deal with this matter. Opinions within Zurich ranged: from all white walls, to some allowance for images. The papacy would conclude that the Swiss Reformers were, indeed, schismatic.
Zwingli offered some mature moderation on this topic:
Removing images was pointless if the hearts of the people had not changed first. Before there was a renovation in externals, there needed to be a spiritual renovation…
The magistrates came to a decision: images financed by the church would be protected; those financed by private individuals would be removed. This didn’t sit well with those who found all images to be idols. In the months ahead, iconoclasm escalated. Even a figure of Christ sitting on a donkey was hurled into a lake. Eventually all images were removed entirely.
The next year, 1525, would mark the abolition of the Mass. But it wasn’t enough to merely abolish. Something would have to replace it. While prayers to Mary and the saints were dismissed, the preacher’s petition for Christ’s intercession remained. Penance was out, but not corporate confession. They did not kneel before the Eucharist, but they did kneel to receive the Lord’s Supper.
Conclusion
Zwingli did not merely deconstruct; he also would reconstruct according to how he understood the Scriptures. He established a program to educate a generation of evangelical ministers after him: the Prophezei.
Whether Zwingli’s Prophezei or Calvin’s company of pastors is in view, both examples push against the popular interpretation of Reformation preaching that says sola scriptura means anyone and everyone can simply open, understand, and apply the Scriptures.
Much of their work was to, in effect, prejudice those being taught to read and understand Scripture through a doctrinal lens. In other words, doctrine was taught in order that a lens was available through which Scripture could be interpreted.
Epilogue
The Anabaptists. Zurich could not ignore this movement. It came to the point that arrests were made, but this was insufficient to stop the movement. In November 1525, they turned to execution for those Anabaptists who would not recant; they would be drowned in the river.
Zwingli was no silent observer but supported the decision, saying, “Whoever will be baptized hereafter will be submerged permanently.”
In the opinion of the Anabaptists, Zwingli was no better than Saul holding men’s cloaks as they stoned Stephen.
I recently had the opportunity to read the last chapters (on the Anglican liturgy) of Dom Gregory Dix magisterial "The Shape of the Liturgy'. Dom Gregory Dix was a monk in the Anglican Benedictine abbey at Nashdom. Dix convincingly argues that Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, author of the 1549 and 1552 Book of Common Prayer, was in theological agreement with Ulrich Zwingli, whose conception of the Eucharist shaped the rite found in Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer in its earlier and later forms. According to Dom Gregory, Zwingli, and by implication Cranmer, would have preferred to have abolished the Eucharist altogether, but there was too much evidence in the Scriptures of the place of that rite in the practice of the early Church. So, Zwingli and his English follower reduced the meaning and importance of that rite. Receiving Holy Communion was on the same level as a devote reading of the Scriptures. Eating the Body and Blood of Christ: had not Abraham and the Old Testament patriarchs and prophets done that, at a time when the Eucharist was not accessible to them? The Eucharist was shorn by Zwingli of its relationship to a True Presence and its relationship to a true sacrifice. Zwingli and Cranmer's view of the celebration of the Lord's Supper reminds me of those times I spent at Libertarian think tank events. At a point late in the proceedings, the conferees would dine (and drink) together sumptuously, and we would be encouraged by an official of the sponsoring institution to remember the generosity of the founder of the institution in providing us with such fare. Dix also discusses the relationship between the rule of prayer and the rule of faith. In post-Reformation England, the official Liturgy embodied a teaching at odds with the faith of the Church, as embodied, say, in Richard Hooker or Lancelot Andrewes. Cranmer's political philosophy also, I hazard, had its roots in Geneva. For the reformed Swiss, I believe, the civil magistrate was the minister of the secular arm of the Reformed church. For Cranmer, the clergy were the religious magistrates of the Sovereign, just as judges and sheriffs were his secular magistrates. Archbishop Cranmer was a man of courage, but not necessarily of consistency. When ordered by his new sovereign Queen Mary to submit to the creed of the unreformed Church, he chose disobedience in order not to offend his conscience. This, of course, was the same behavior, and rationale, of Thomas More and John Fisher.