History of the Reformation and Reformed Churches — Unit 2: Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich: The First Reformed City

Key Verse

"Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path." (Psalm 119:105, NKJV)

Learning Objectives

When you finish this unit, you should be able to:

1. Describe how Huldrych Zwingli came to Zurich in 1519 and began to reform the city by preaching the Bible.

2. Explain the main steps of the Zurich Reformation between 1522 and 1525.

3. State the Anabaptist objection to infant baptism, the way Zurich treated the Anabaptists, and the Reformed answer.

4. Compare Zwingli's teaching on the Lord's Supper with Luther's at Marburg, and explain how Bullinger and Calvin later stated the Reformed view.

5. Describe the long ministry of Heinrich Bullinger and name three things he contributed to the Reformed family.

The Voice of This Course

This unit is written from inside the Reformed tradition for Reformed students. We honor Zwingli and Bullinger as our fathers in the faith, but we do not praise them blindly. Where historians raise hard questions, or where Zurich acted in a way we regret, we say so, and then we explain what the tradition teaches. The only perfect standard is the Word of God, which is "a lamp to my feet."

Zurich and the Man Who Came to Preach

In the early sixteenth century Switzerland was a loose union of cantons, each with its own government. Zurich was a prosperous city on a lake, ruled by a city council. The church there was bound closely to the life of the city, and many of its priests were poorly taught. Swiss young men also served as paid soldiers for foreign princes, a trade that brought money and also grief to many homes.

Huldrych Zwingli was born in 1484 in the mountain village of Wildhaus. He was educated in the humanist way, which meant that he valued the original languages and the writings of the early church. He served as a priest in Glarus and later at Einsiedeln. At Glarus he went with Swiss soldiers as a chaplain, and what he saw of the mercenary trade made him its opponent. He admired the scholar Erasmus, who published a Greek New Testament in 1516, and he studied the Bible deeply.

On the first day of 1519, Zwingli began his work as the people's priest at the Great Minster, the main church of Zurich. Here the history of the Reformed churches begins. He did not follow the usual cycle of church readings. He announced that he would preach straight through the Gospel of Matthew, chapter after chapter, and then through other books. This method of preaching through a book is called lectio continua, and Reformed preachers have followed it ever since. Zwingli believed that the preacher must not choose texts to suit himself, but let the Bible set the agenda. The Word is the lamp, and a lamp must be held open for the whole room.

An Independent Beginning?

Historians ask a fair question: did Zwingli learn the gospel from Luther? Luther's call for reform came in 1517, two years before Zwingli came to Zurich. Some writers think Zwingli simply followed Luther. Zwingli himself insisted that he had come to his teaching from Scripture, from the church fathers and from Erasmus's New Testament, before he gave much attention to Luther's writings. Most historians now accept that he developed his views in important ways independently, while also admitting that Luther's example encouraged him.

We have no need to settle every detail. The Reformed answer is that the Holy Spirit was working in many places at once, opening the Scriptures to many pastors. All these men, Luther and Zwingli alike, were instruments of God. The common teaching they reached was salvation by grace through faith, in Christ alone, with Scripture as the final authority. That agreement from different starting points is itself a sign that they were reading the same Word.

The Reformation of Zurich, 1522 to 1525

The reform of Zurich did not come in a single day. It came in steps, each tested by Scripture and decided by the city.

The fast of Lent, 1522. During Lent of 1522, some citizens ate sausage at the home of a printer, in open disregard of the church's rule about fasting. Zwingli was present but did not eat. He then preached and wrote that the Bible does not command such a fast, and that human rules cannot bind the conscience. Compare Jesus' words about teaching "as doctrines the commandments of men" in Mark 7:7. The council was drawn in, and the question was now public: what does Scripture require?

The public disputations, 1523. The city council called a public meeting in January 1523 to hear Zwingli answer his critics. He prepared Sixty-Seven Articles, which stated that the gospel is the center of faith, that Christ is the only head of the church, and that human traditions bind no one unless the Bible supports them. The council decided that he should continue preaching, and that all preachers should teach only what they could prove from Scripture. A second disputation in October 1523 turned to images in worship and the Mass.

Images and the Mass. Reformed teachers hold that God is to be worshiped as He commands in His Word. This idea, later called the regulative principle (Course 4), led Zurich to remove images from its churches in 1524 and to replace the Mass with an evangelical Lord's Supper service at Easter 1525. In doing so Zurich put preaching and the Lord's Supper at the center and set aside rites it believed had no support in Scripture.

The school of prophesying. In 1525 a school was founded called the Prophezei. Ministers and students gathered each morning to study the Bible in Hebrew, Greek and Latin and to hear it explained. Out of such study came tools for translation and preaching. The school shows a mark of the Reformed tradition: an educated ministry that is able to read Scripture in the original languages.

Church and city. In Zurich the magistrates took an active part in church life. The council made church decisions together with Zwingli. This pattern was common in the sixteenth century, and Catholic, Lutheran and Reformed cities all did the same. We do not defend every part of it. The Reformed tradition would later teach that Christ is the head of the church and that church and state each have their own calling. Our fathers worked within the world they had, and later generations, as in Scotland and America, worked out the relationship more clearly.

The Anabaptist Question

Not all of Zwingli's early friends agreed that he was going far enough. A group around Conrad Grebel and Felix Manz, who had been members of Zwingli's circle, decided that the Bible taught baptism only for those who believe and confess Christ. In January 1525 they baptized one another as adults, although they had been baptized as infants. Their opponents called them Anabaptists, "re-baptizers." They also taught that a true church should be a gathered community of believers separate from the civil government.

The Anabaptist objection. Believers' baptism, they said, is what the New Testament commands. Every example of baptism in Acts shows a person who first hears and believes. Infants cannot believe, so baptizing them is a human tradition, the same sort of thing that Zwingli rejected in Mass and images.

The Reformed answer. Zwingli and the Zurich pastors answered from the covenant. God made His covenant with Abraham "and your descendants after you" (Genesis 17:7), and gave the sign of circumcision to infant sons. Peter says at Pentecost, "For the promise is to you and to your children, and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call" (Acts 2:39). The apostles baptized households (Acts 16:15, 16:33). Paul links circumcision and baptism in Colossians 2:11-12. The sign is given to covenant children, as they are given other blessings of the covenant, and it calls for faith as they grow. Course 4 will return to this teaching at length.

The shameful part. We must also be honest about what Zurich did. The council ordered the Anabaptists to stop their gatherings, and it imprisoned and punished them. In 1527 Felix Manz was drowned in the Limmat River by order of the authorities. Zwingli supported the authorities' action. Historians, including Reformed historians, regard this as a grave stain on the Zurich Reformation. We do not defend the use of the sword against those who differ on baptism. The Reformed churches later learned to treat Baptists as brothers and sisters in Christ, even where we still disagree. The doctrine of infant baptism stands or falls by Scripture, not by the authority of the magistrate.

The Lord's Supper and the Marburg Colloquy

The Lord's Supper became the greatest dispute among the Reformers. Luther taught that Christ's body and blood are bodily present "in, with and under" the bread and wine. Zwingli stressed Jesus' words, "This is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me" (Luke 22:19), and argued that Christ's body is in heaven. He held that the bread and wine are signs that point to Christ and that the Supper is a remembrance and a public confession of faith.

In October 1529, Philip of Hesse, a German prince, invited the leaders of both sides to meet at Marburg. Luther and Zwingli met with other teachers. They found that they agreed on fourteen of fifteen articles, including the Trinity, the person of Christ and justification by faith. They could not agree on how Christ is present in the Supper. They parted without fellowship on that question.

Historians have long described Zwingli's view as "memorialist," meaning that the Supper is only a remembrance. Some Reformed writers think that this label is partly unfair, because Zwingli also spoke of the Spirit's work in the believer and of the church's unity in Christ. Others admit that his emphasis was heavily on the Supper as a sign of the believer's faith. Both can be true: his early stress is clear, and his own teaching had richer parts.

What mattered for the later Reformed tradition is that Bullinger and Calvin took a fuller path. In the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, a common statement between Zurich and Geneva, they taught that the sacraments are not bare signs. God uses them to seal His promises. Christ's body remains in heaven, but through the Holy Spirit believers truly receive Christ by faith when they receive the bread and wine. This became the Reformed teaching, which Course 4 will study as Christ's spiritual presence in the Supper. Against Luther, we deny the bodily presence in the elements. Against a bare memorial view, we affirm that Christ truly feeds His people.

The Death of Zwingli

Zurich's Reformation spread to other Swiss cities, but several Catholic cantons resisted it. In 1531 war broke out between the two sides. Zwingli, who served the army as a chaplain, went with the Zurich troops and was killed in the battle of Kappel on 11 October 1531.

His death raises an honest question: should a minister of the gospel take part in a war of religion? Many Protestants of his day thought it was right to defend their cities. Later Reformed teachers were more careful to distinguish the work of the minister, which is Word and sacrament, from the work of the magistrate, which is the sword (Romans 13:1-4). We honor Zwingli's courage and his faith, and we do not make his decision a model. Zurich lost the battle, but the Reformation in Zurich did not end.

Heinrich Bullinger, Shepherd of the Reformed Churches

Heinrich Bullinger, born in 1504, was a young pastor from Bremgarten who had already shown his gifts when Zwingli died. In December 1531 the Zurich church called him to be the chief minister of the city, and he held the post until his death in 1575. During those forty-odd years he steadied the church after the disaster of Kappel and made Zurich a center of Reformed learning.

His work reached far beyond Zurich.

Writer and preacher. Bullinger preached regularly and published collections of sermons on the main doctrines. Among them was his Decades, which were widely read in the Reformed churches of Europe, and which also appeared in English.

Covenant teacher. In 1534 he wrote a short work on God's one and eternal covenant, which many historians regard as an important early step in Reformed covenant theology. He taught that God's people, Old Testament and New, are one people in one covenant of grace. Historians disagree about how much influence his covenant teaching had on later Reformed thought, but all agree it was significant. Course 3 will study the covenant.

Letter writer and host. Bullinger kept up a very large correspondence with pastors, rulers and scholars in many lands. His house in Zurich also welcomed refugees from persecution, including English Protestants who fled from Queen Mary.

Confession writer. He wrote the Second Helvetic Confession. He first composed it for his own use, and in 1566 it was published and received by many Reformed churches, including those in Switzerland and Hungary. It is clear, balanced and warm.

Partner of Calvin. The Consensus Tigurinus brought the churches of Zurich and Geneva into agreement about the sacraments. That agreement shows that the Reformed family was growing as one church and not as separate schools.

Pastoral Application

A Mexican pastor in a Reformed church receives a visit from a faithful older member. She says, "At the church of my cousin, they say the Lord's Supper is only a remembrance. Our pastor speaks as if something more happens. Which is right?"

The pastor does not dismiss her cousin's church. He first reads Luke 22:19 with her and says that remembrance is a real part of the Supper, as Zwingli taught. Then he explains that the Reformed churches, following Bullinger and Calvin, teach more: God uses the bread and wine to seal His promises, and Christ feeds His people by His Spirit as they receive these signs in faith. He explains that this is not the Roman teaching of a changed bread, nor the Lutheran teaching of bodily presence. He invites her to take part with thankful faith. Finally, he asks her to speak kindly to her cousin and to explain the matter as a gift of understanding and not as a victory in an argument.

Summary

Huldrych Zwingli began preaching through Matthew in Zurich in 1519, and the city moved step by step toward a Reformation tested by Scripture: the dispute over the Lenten fast in 1522, the disputations of 1523, the removal of images in 1524, and the evangelical Lord's Supper at Easter 1525. The Prophezei trained ministers to read the Bible in its original languages. The Anabaptists rejected infant baptism; Zurich answered with the covenant, but it also persecuted them, and in 1527 Felix Manz was drowned. This persecution is a stain we do not defend. At Marburg in 1529 Luther and Zwingli agreed on much but not on the Supper. After Zwingli fell at Kappel in 1531, Heinrich Bullinger led Zurich until 1575, wrote the Decades and the Second Helvetic Confession, taught the one covenant of grace, and joined Calvin in the Consensus Tigurinus of 1549, which gave the Reformed churches a fuller doctrine of the Supper.

Further Reading

• Huldrych Zwingli, the Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), a primary source.

• Heinrich Bullinger, the Decades, a primary source.

• The Second Helvetic Confession (1566).

• The Consensus Tigurinus (1549).

• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 4, chapters 14-17, on the sacraments (Beveridge translation, 1845).

• Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology (1872-73), on the sacraments.

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