Huldrych Zwingli on Election & predestination
Unconditional — grounded in God's free choice
...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.
THE POSITION
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.
48 When the Gentiles heard this, they rejoiced and glorified the word of the Lord, and all who were appointed for eternal life believed.
16 OTHERS HOLD THIS
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.
Cite this page
"Huldrych Zwingli on Election & predestination", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/zwingli/election (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/zwingli/election).