Huldrych Zwingli on the Trinity
One substance, three persons, co-equal and co-eternal
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.
THE POSITION
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.
17 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 the Trinity", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/zwingli/trinity (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/zwingli/trinity).