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.
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.
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.