Huldrych Zwingli on the Lord's Supper

A memorial and sign; no presence in the elements

THE POSITION

"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.

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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.