Huldrych Zwingli on Perseverance & eternal security

No — the genuinely saved will certainly persevere

THE POSITION

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.

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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.