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Examined Doctrine

Huldrych Zwingli on the person of Christ

1484 – 1531 · REFORMED
READ IN A PRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°
STANCE

One person in two natures, unconfused and undivided

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)

THE POSITION

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.

SCRIPTURE
JOHN 3:13 · BSB

13 No one has ascended into heaven except the One who descended from heaven—the Son of Man.

12 OTHERS HOLD THIS

CalvinChalcedonJonathan EdwardsThe Church of Eleven22 Statement of FaithEphesusSecond London Baptist ConfessionLutherJohn MacArthurPhilip MelanchthonJohn OwenR.C. SproulWestminster Confession
Word united to flesh, with the human soul underemphasizedATHANASIUS
Affirms both deity and humanity before the categories were fixedCHRYSOSTOM · IRENAEUS
See all 19 figures on the person of christ →

ABOUT THIS FIGURE

Reformer of Zurich and the first Reformed theologian to leave a confession — the Sixty-Seven Articles of 1523 predate Augsburg by seven years. He pushed further than Luther on the Supper, which split the early Reformation at Marburg in 1529, further than anyone on the reach of election, and further than any other Reformer on who might finally be saved. This entry rests on the Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), the Declaration Regarding Original Sin (1526), the Fidei Ratio sent to Charles V (1530) and the Exposition of the Christian Faith written weeks before he died in battle — the last of these read only in its chapter on eternal life.

13 OF 18 POSITIONS QUOTED
Everything Zwingli holds →
Cite this page

"Huldrych Zwingli on the person of Christ", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/zwingli/christology (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/zwingli/christology).

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