Huldrych Zwingli

Scripture alone, and applied more stringently than Luther applied it: what lacks positive scriptural warrant is removed rather than tolerated. Zwingli put this first in his system where Luther put justification — Article 1 attacks the claim that the gospel needs the church's endorsement, and the closing paragraph of the disputation refuses any argument not brought from Scripture. He offers in the preamble to be corrected, but only by Scripture.

All who say that the gospel is nothing without the approbation of the Church, err and cast reproach upon God.Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), Article 1, in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom I, §51, p. 363

The Zurich Bible of 1531, produced under Zwingli in his last year, prints the deuterocanonical books in a closing appendix headed Apocryphi, with a title page saying these are books not reckoned as biblical by the ancients and not found among the Hebrews — useful reading, not Scripture. That is a 66-book canon in practice. It is placed at contested rather than researched because the Zurich Bible was a committee's work with Leo Jud and Konrad Pellikan, the relevant preface is only commonly ascribed to Zwingli, and no statement in his own signed works settles the Apocrypha.

WORTH CORRECTINGSchaff records that Zwingli did reject one book by name, and it was a New Testament book, not an Old Testament one: he refused to treat Revelation as apostolic or to use it for doctrine. That is a separate question from the Apocrypha and should not be folded into it.

No listed stance fits. Zwingli expects to meet Hercules, Socrates, Seneca, the Catos and the Scipios in heaven, and he admires Seneca's letter to Lucilius as an expression of real faith. But he does not get there by natural revelation. He asks who wrote that faith on Seneca's heart and answers that God did, directly; he grounds the whole argument in Romans 9 election and insists that all who come to God come through Christ. So the inclusivist stance describes his conclusion but misdescribes his mechanism — nothing in creation or conscience moves anyone toward faith on his account. And clear-suppressed is wrong at the other end: he explicitly refuses the inference that pagans are therefore without excuse.

WORTH CORRECTINGZwingli is quoted in both directions and misread in both. He is not a proto-universalist — he holds that Christ is the only way and that the unbelief that damns is the unbelief of those who have heard. He is also not saying natural religion saves: in the Commentary on True and False Religion he holds that a man may discern that God is but not what God is, and that even the philosophers' knowledge of God was God manifesting himself, not human reason reaching up.

For what do we know of the faith each one has written in his heart by the hand of God? Who does not admire the faith of that holy man Seneca, as his letter XXXIV to Lucilius discloses it?Declaration Regarding Original Sin (1526), p. 12, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Plainly and conventionally Nicene, and stated first of all in the confession he sent to Charles V: one God, three persons, one essence, with the Apostles', Nicene and Athanasian Creeds named as his own. Zwingli conceded the ecumenical creeds without argument — the Trinity was not what he was fighting about, and he says so by treating it as the ground he shares with his accusers.

First of all, I both believe and know that God is one and He alone is God... that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are indeed three persons, but that their essence is one and single. And I think altogether in accordance with the Creed, the Nicene and also the Athanasian, in all their details concerning the Godhead himself, the names or the three persons.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), p. 36, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Chalcedonian, argued at length and quoting the Athanasian Creed directly: the whole man — body and soul — assumed into the person of the Son, both natures keeping their own properties, one person and not two. The care is not incidental: his case against the bodily presence in the Supper depends on Christ's humanity being genuinely local, so the two-natures grammar had to be exact. In the Fidei Ratio he draws the consequence directly — "only the deity can be everywhere" — and denies that the humanity of Christ is wherever the divinity is.

WORTH CORRECTINGZwingli's device here is *alloeosis*, not the *communicatio idiomatum*, and the two are opposites in this quarrel. Alloeosis treats a statement about one nature that is predicated of the person as a figure of speech — "something is said of the divinity of Christ which really belongs to the humanity, or vice versa" — so nothing is really shared between the natures. Luther's communication of attributes says the sharing is real, which is what lets him hold a body present in the elements. He answered the alloeosis by name in the Confession Concerning Christ's Supper (1528), calling it "a devil's mask." Describing Zwingli as working the communication of idioms inverts the dispute.

And, although both natures, the divine and the human, have so preserved their character and peculiarity that both are truly and naturally found in Him, yet the distinct peculiarities and activities of the natures do not separate the unity of the person any more than in man soul and body constitute two persons.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), pp. 36–37, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Nothing found in what was read. The question of what the other elohim of the Hebrew Bible are — a divine council, human rulers by office, or nothing at all — is not posed anywhere in the Sixty-Seven Articles, the Declaration Regarding Original Sin or the Fidei Ratio, the three works read in full for this entry. His treatment of the one God is polemical against the invocation of saints and against images, and it never turns to the unseen realm of the Old Testament. The Exposition of the Christian Faith, the Commentary on True and False Religion and On the Providence of God were not read, so this is a report on a partial corpus, not on everything he wrote.

The will is in bondage and cannot free itself — but Zwingli reaches that by a route no other Reformer took. He argues that original sin is not sin in the strict sense, because sin means guilt and guilt means a deed done knowingly, and no descendant of Adam ate the fruit. It is instead a disease and a condition: Adam was sentenced to slavery rather than death, and a slave begets slaves. The bondage is therefore inherited as a state, not imputed as guilt, and only the blood of Christ can cure it.

WORTH CORRECTINGZwingli's 'disease, not sin' is regularly read as a soft or semi-Pelagian view of the fall, and Schaff himself said it prepared the way for Arminian and Socinian opinions. That misses what Zwingli is denying. He is denying inherited guilt, not inherited inability: in the same paragraphs he says a dead man cannot beget a living man nor a slave a free man, and he will let critics call the condition heinous and criminal so long as they mean by it a condition rather than a crime. He is arguing about the word, and he says so.

For this reason, I have said that the original contamination of man is a disease, not a sin, because sin implies guilt, and guilt comes from a transgression or trespass on the part of one who designedly perpetrates a deed.Declaration Regarding Original Sin (1526), p. 5, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Unconditional, and stated in the sharpest possible order: election does not follow faith, faith follows election. Zwingli uses this to argue that infants who die may be elect even though they never believed, and that Mary, John and Paul were elect before they had faith. Unlike Augustine and Luther he does not arrive at predestination from anthropology; he starts from God's sovereignty and freedom and treats foreknowledge and foreordination as the same act, which is why the Reformed doctrine of election reaches its hard edge in him before it reaches it in Calvin.

WORTH CORRECTINGIn the sermon On the Providence of God (1530), the fullest thing he wrote on this, he goes further than the Fidei Ratio and further than Calvin was comfortable with — Calvin called the essay paradoxical and immoderate. Schaff quotes the Latin: 'Nos cum Paulo in hac sententia sumus, ut praedestinatio libera sit, citra omnem respectum bene aut male factorum' — with Paul we hold that predestination is free, without any regard whatever to deeds good or bad (Opera IV. 114). This entry could not check the English of On Providence directly.

...on account of God's free election, which does not follow faith, but faith follows election, about which see the following article. For those who have been elected from eternity have undoubtedly been elected before faith.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. V, p. 42, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Faith is confident trust, and its mark is certainty rather than assent to a list. Zwingli describes the believer as sealed by the Spirit, calling God Father confidently and fearlessly, untroubled about the inheritance — and he makes that security itself the evidence of election, since the Spirit cannot deceive. He does not set out the knowledge-assent-trust triad that later Reformed writers use; he goes straight to trust.

For the Spirit cannot deceive. If He tells us that God is our Father, and we confidently and fearlessly call Him Father, untroubled because we shall enter upon the eternal inheritance, then it is certain that God's Spirit has been shed abroad in our hearts.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. VI, pp. 43–44, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Righteousness is Christ's and is reckoned to the believer; nothing of the sinner's own contributes. Article 22 of the Sixty-Seven states it as a bare identity — Christ is our righteousness — and draws the consequence that our works are good only so far as they are his. The Fidei Ratio shuts the door on the alternatives by name: no justification or satisfaction resting on works, no expiation or intercession from any saint, one sole Mediator.

WORTH CORRECTINGZwingli is routinely read back through the mature Reformed vocabulary of imputed versus infused righteousness. He does not use it. What he says is that righteousness is Christ's and that works add nothing — which rules out the infused and transformative options but does not itself supply the later technical account.

Christ is our righteousness. From this it follows that our works are good so far as they are Christ's, but not good so far as they are our own.Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), Article 22, in Schaff, Creeds of Christendom I, §51, p. 364

The definite-versus-universal question belongs to the generation after him — Dort (1618-19) is ninety-five years after the Sixty-Seven Articles (1523) — and Zwingli never poses it. What he does say cuts against a narrow reading: if Adam ruined the entire race and Christ did not redeem the entire race from that calamity, then salvation is no longer a match for sin, and "as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive" would be false. He is arguing about the reach of Christ's remedy for original sin, not about for whom Christ died; who is finally saved is settled elsewhere, by election.

WORTH CORRECTINGThe quotation on this cell is not evidence of a stance; it is the context in which he declines to take one. It comes from the same paragraph of Fidei Ratio art. V that the `election` cell quotes, and Zwingli's next move there is straight to election, not to the extent of the atonement. The tier is `contested` rather than `researched` for that reason: a quotation can show what he does say, but no single passage can establish that he never framed the question, and several of his works were not read.

For if Adam by sinning could ruin the entire race, and Christ by His death did not quicken and redeem the entire race from the calamity inflicted by the former, then the salvation conferred by Christ is no longer a match for sin.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. V, p. 42, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Placed here as the consequence of his election doctrine rather than as a position he defends. Zwingli says the believer knows himself elect because the Spirit's seal cannot deceive, and that those ordained to eternal life believe — which leaves no room for a genuinely elect person finally falling. But he never takes up apostasy as a question in the works read here, and the pastoral problem the later Reformed tradition wrote about at length is simply not on his page.

For thus it is written in Acts: 'And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.' Those, therefore, that believe are ordained to eternal life.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. VI, p. 43, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Zwingli never asks when the Spirit comes to dwell, but he answers the question's substance twice over. The Spirit's illumination precedes and produces faith — the elect are drawn before they believe — and the Spirit needs no channel or vehicle, so grace is already present before any sacrament is administered. That rules out the baptismal answer explicitly and puts the Spirit's work before faith, which is the shape of indwell-regen. The stance is at contested because the term and the moment are supplied by this locus, not by him.

But if we be prepared without the sacrament for the reception of sacramental grace, the Spirit is present in His goodness before the sacrament, and hence grace has been shown and is present before the sacrament is administered.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. VII, p. 47, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Infants are baptized because they belong to the covenant people, exactly as Hebrew infants were circumcised — and baptism does nothing to them. Zwingli fought the Zurich Anabaptists on the first half and the whole sacramental tradition on the second: the water is a public testimony that grace has already been given, not a means of giving it. He is blunt that the sacraments are so far from conferring grace that they do not even convey it, and he notes that Isaac was circumcised without professing or believing, the promise acting in his stead.

WORTH CORRECTINGBoth halves get dropped by different readers. Baptist accounts of Zwingli tend to omit that he wrote first and hardest against the Anabaptists; sacramental accounts tend to omit that he denies baptismal regeneration outright. He held both at once, and the covenant argument is what let him.

By baptism, therefore, the Church publicly receives one who has previously been received through grace. Hence baptism does not convey grace but the Church certifies that grace has been given to him to whom it is administered.An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. VII, pp. 47–48, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

"This is my body" is figurative, on the model of "this is Jehovah's passover" — the lamb eaten every year was not the passing over but signified it, and memorials take the name of the thing they commemorate. Zwingli's argument is Christological before it is grammatical: Christ's humanity is in one place, at the Father's right hand, so a bodily presence in the elements would either destroy his true humanity or divide the person. He then presses John 6:63 — the flesh profits nothing, eaten naturally. This is the point on which he and Luther could not agree at Marburg in October 1529, and he restates it to Charles V nine months later, in July 1530, without softening it.

WORTH CORRECTINGZwingli is quoted as holding that nothing is present but bread, and that is not what he wrote. The same article opens by affirming that in the Supper 'the true body of Christ is present by the contemplation of faith' — present to the believing mind, as everything Christ did becomes present to those who give thanks for it. What he denies, and calls an error contrary to the Word of God, is presence in essence and reality, in the elements, chewed with the teeth.

In view of these passages we are compelled to confess that the words: "This is my body," should not be understood naturally, but figuratively, just as the words: "This is Jehovah's passover."An Account of the Faith (Fidei Ratio, 1530), art. VIII, p. 52, Jackson & Hinke trans., The Latin Works of Huldreich Zwingli, vol. 2 (1922)

Nothing found in what was read. Zwingli never asks whether tongues, prophecy or healing continue in the Sixty-Seven Articles, the Declaration Regarding Original Sin or the Fidei Ratio, which are the works read in full for this entry. The Exposition of the Christian Faith was read only in its chapter "Eternal Life" and cannot be reported on either way. The one adjacent remark is in the Commentary on True and False Religion — also not read directly — where he distinguishes the inward baptism of the Spirit from the outward one at Pentecost and says of the latter that it is not necessary and does not often recur in the church; that is a passing comment inside an argument about baptism, and too slight to build a cell on.

WORTH CORRECTINGDo not read the Zurich Prophezei — the daily exegetical gathering Zwingli founded in 1525 — as evidence either way. Its 'prophecy' meant public exposition of the text in the biblical languages, not the charismatic gift.

Eternal conscious punishment, held as the assumed background rather than defended. Zwingli states the alternative bluntly in Article 15 — believe the gospel and be saved, disbelieve and be damned — and speaks in the Fidei Ratio of the sinner facing nothing but the pains of eternal punishment. But nothing in the works read argues against annihilation or universal restoration, and his eschatological energy goes elsewhere: abolishing purgatory, refusing soul-sleep, and pressing how far election might reach. Left at established because nothing found rules out the alternatives in his own words.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe is firm that the state of the dead is not ours to map. Articles 57–59 deny purgatory outright and then add that the judgment of the departed is known to God alone, and the less God has revealed of it the less we should try to know.

No position, and for a specific reason rather than a gap in the record. Zwingli did not regard Revelation as an apostolic book — 'it does not savour of the mouth and genius of John,' he said — and on that ground never used it for doctrine at all. A reading of Revelation 20 was therefore not something he was going to produce. Nothing in the Sixty-Seven Articles, the Declaration Regarding Original Sin or the Fidei Ratio — the works read in full here — sets out a scheme for Christ's return beyond the creedal affirmation that he will come to judge the living and the dead. The Exposition was read only in its chapter on eternal life and is not reported on.

WORTH CORRECTINGThis is a deliberate exclusion, not an oversight, and it is worth distinguishing from Luther's low estimate of the book. Luther kept Revelation in his Bible with a hostile preface; Zwingli simply stopped citing it.