“Ulrich Zwingli”, A Closer Look by Rick Sons

Ulrich Zwingli, like Martin Luther and John Calvin, was a key player in the Reformation (also referred to as the Protestant Reformation). Unlike Luther and Calvin, Zwingli never had a following that led to the formal theology based upon his name. The theology of Zwingli was based on the Bible, taking Scripture as the inspired Word of God and placing its authority higher than what he saw as human sources such as the church fathers.

Ulrich Zwingli was born in 1484, to a successful farmer in the Toggaburg Valley of the eastern lower Alps. Zwingli was the most important reformer in the Swiss Protestant Reformation and the only major reformer of the 16th century whose movement, as I stated before, did not evolve into a church. He attended universities at Basle and Vienna and served as a parish priest in Glarus, Switzerland. Zwingli is not as famous as the likes as Martin Luther or John Calvin but he did play his part in the break with the Roman Catholic Church. Zwingli and Luther met at Marburg in 1529 in an attempt to unite the Protestant faiths. This meeting failed to do this because both men could not reach an agreement on what Christ said at the Last Supper.

Like Martin Luther, Zwingli believed in the necessity of reform. Martin Luther and Zwingli stand at the heads of two of the most influential streams of Protestant theology—the Lutheran and Reformed traditions, respectively. While the two men were united in their opposition to Roman Catholic doctrines and agreed on many doctrinal issues, they also differed so substantially in a few points of their theology that they were unable to unite their movements in a single front against Roman Catholicism.

Luther and Zwingli both emphasized justification by faith alone and the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to the believers. Both rejected the Catholic doctrines of papal authority, purgatory, priestly celibacy, veneration of saints, Marian devotion, and transubstantiation. Both affirmed sola Scriptura and the necessity and centrality of preaching in the life of the congregation. They affirmed similar views of the atonement and embraced an Augustinian understanding of salvation and regeneration. They both wrestled with the question of infant baptism but ultimately affirmed it for political reasons. In the political sphere, both embraced the idea of the Territorial Church, in which the religious views embraced by the magistrates of a given region were to be enforced upon the citizens of that region.

These wide-ranging points of agreement notwithstanding, the two not only could not unite their movements but considered each other heretics. To begin, they embraced substantially different views of the New Testament’s teaching on worship services. 

• Luther took the view that the New Testament’s explanation of the practice of the early church is descriptive, not prescriptive (the so-called “normative principle of worship”).
• Zwingli understood the New Testament descriptions of the early church’s worship to be prescriptive and binding on the church: anything not explicitly described or enjoined of believers in the New Testament was verboten.
• Luther retained much of the language and many of the trappings of the traditional Catholic service, including calling it the Mass, and left decorations and instrumental music in place.
• Zwingli excluded instrumental music, white-washed the walls of his church, destroyed all icons, and referred to the Eucharist not as the Mass but by its biblical name, the Lord’s Supper.
• Luther continued to embrace much Tradition as genuinely good and valuable, even if not binding at the same level as Scripture.
• Zwingli rejected almost all Tradition, moving beyond sola Scriptura (the church has authority with scripture) almost to the point of solo Scriptura (the Bible is the only authority).

As it turned out, it was the Lord’s Supper that prevented the uniting of the German and Swiss reform movements. At a 1529 meeting at Marburg, called to unite the two movements, Luther and Zwingli met. Though they agreed on 14 points of doctrine, they stumbled on the fifteenth: the Lord’s Supper. Most significant of the differences between Zwingli and Luther was their opinion on the body of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. They differed not only on what to call the Eucharist, but also (and much more importantly) on what was happening when the elements were offered to the congregation. While both rejected the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, Luther continued to embrace the doctrine of Real Presence, arguing that Jesus is especially present in the elements. Zwingli, on the other hand, rejected Real Presence and embraced a memorial view, arguing that Christ is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Insofar as Christ might be especially present in Communion, Zwingli said, it was only by the presence of his Spirit with the church—not physically, as Luther asserted. Zwingli believed there was no trace of God in the consecrated sacraments. The service of Communion was simply an act of commemoration. The belief that there was a presence was mere superstition. In this, Zwingli differed from Martin Luther. Luther believed that “This is My body” meant just that whereas Zwingli believed that ‘My’ meant “signifies.”

The beliefs of Zwingli can be found in his ‘67 Articles’, published in 1523. They include:

• Faith demanded an active commitment to God.
• The practices of the Roman Catholic Church took one’s mind away from what Christ taught. There was no justification for these practices in the Bible.
• Whatever could not be justified by the Bible was to be abolished.
• Religion was a personal experience which did not require sacraments or ceremonies to sustain it. 
• The Bible is the law of God. 
• A truly Christian community must follow the Bible as closely as possible. 

Where did Zwingli fall in history? In a timeline we find the following:

• 1453 Constantinople falls; end of Eastern Roman Empire
• 1456 Gutenberg produces first printed Bible
• 1478 the start of the Spanish Inquisition
• 1483-1546 Martin Luther lives
• 1484-1531 Ulrich Zwingli lives
• 1509-1564 John Calvin lives
• 1536 John Calvin publishes first edition of Institutes

As with Martin Luther and John Calvin, the problem Zwingli faced was that some people were concerned that he had gone too far too soon while others, especially the Anabaptists, felt that he had not gone far enough. The Anabaptists were dealt with when Zwingli fell in with the city’s magistrates and supported the move to exile the Anabaptists. If they refused to leave the city, they dealt with them in another way – drowning. The Protestants under Zwingli were the first to persecute the Anabaptists. King Ferdinand declared drowning (called the third baptism) “the best antidote to Anabaptism.”

Zurich, Switzerland became a stronghold of Protestantism and the areas surrounding the city remained wary of a resurgent Catholic Church. They also feared that Zurich might become too powerful and assert its city powers within these regions. Also, the area around Zurich was famed for the mercenaries it provided and such a ‘profession’ was frowned on by Zwingli. In 1529, these areas around Zurich formed the Christian Union and joined with the Catholic Austrian Monarchy. Zwingli preached a religious war against them and two campaigns were launched in 1529 and 1531. Zwingli was killed at the Second Battle of Keppel in October 1531.

In the battle, approximately 7,000 soldiers from the five Catholic cantons met an army of only 2,000 men from Zurich. Zurich’s army was unsupported by the other Protestant cantons and was led by Zwingli, while the combined Catholic army was led by Hans Jauch of Uri. The main Zurich force arrived at the battlefield in scattered groups, exhausted from a forced march. The Catholic forces attacked and after a brief resistance, the Protestant army broke around 4:00 in the afternoon. About 500 Protestants were killed in the battle and while they were fleeing. Among the dead were Zwingli and twenty-four other pastors. Zwingli’s body was taken by the Catholic army and burned as a heretic.

Zwingli died before his dreams were fulfilled. It was left to Zwingli’s successor as Bishop of Zurich to establish Zurich as a center of international Protestantism. Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli’s son-in-law, served as bishop over four decades between 1531 and 1575. Zwingli’s followers, especially Bullinger, spread his Reformed influence throughout Europe, to England, and eventually to America. Bullinger’s Decades of Sermons, which began to appear in 1549, were more widely read in some parts of Europe than were Calvin’s Institutes. Bullinger’s conception of covenant theology undoubtedly played its role in the development of normative Reformed covenant theology, the federal theology during the early part of the seventeenth century. This theology was brought to North America by the Puritans in 1630.