He concludes his section on God by asking the question: “What does such a discussion avail?” The godless cast it to the winds; the devout do not need it. For they know God through experience and not through argument or reason. God graciously manifests Himself in their hearts and begets faith in them. This statement clearly shows Zwingli’s theory of the way of knowing God. Philosopher though he was and naturally inclined to convince others of the truth by logical argument, he always acknowledged in the end the limitations of the human reason and bowed in submission to the authority of divine revelation and devout living, which man cannot attain by effort but must ultimately receive through faith. MAN In his discussion of man, the second factor of religion,
Zwingli assumes that man can no more know man than he can know God. “The knowledge of God,” he says, “is denied to our understanding because of its feebleness and His glory and splendor, but the knowledge of man because of his boldness and readiness in lying and dissembling.” As “the cuttlefish hides himself in his own blackness,” so does man conceal himself “in thick clouds of hypocrisy.” The author, accordingly, does not confer with flesh and blood, that is, with science and history, for his doctrine of man, but turns directly to the sacred oracles. For “under no other teacher or guide than God alone will it ever be granted to see the secrets of the human heart.” Faith, however, he considers as indispensable for knowing man as for knowing God. “For unless faith be present,” he says, “so that a man believes that every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God is true, he will be as far from knowing himself as is the distance between spirit and flesh.”
He begins the discussion of the nature and character of man with the fall and the consequent sinful state of man. Man was tempted by the devil, whom Zwingli puts in place of the serpent, and was lured by his wife to disobey God’s command. The impulse to yield to temptation was man’s philautia (self love), which was the tap-root of his fatal desire to be like God and to know good and evil. The immediate result of his sin was death, not the death of the body but of the soul. This amounted to nothing less than the complete perversion of his moral nature—“to love himself more than God, more than any one; this at last is to be dead, this is the death that is sin, this is the character of corrupted fallen man.”
Zwingli was a radical pessimist in his estimate of man’s condition after the fall; his was the pessimism which underlies Paul’s doctrine of redemption. His conception of sin as disease (morbus, Bresten) does not minimize his pessimistic idea of the natural man. He declares relentless war against the semiPelagianism of Rome and against the optimism of Erasmus expounded in his recently published De libero arbitrio.
His theory of salvation was the direct outcome of his doc- trine of depravity. “To become a devout Christian,” he says, “one must despair of oneself and cleave to God only.” He conceded no saving value to human efforts: trust in them in any
form ended in the total perversion of religion. In a passage that sears and blisters, he pillories his adversaries, saying of them: “Your distinguished theologians and hypocrites of animal appetite, not knowing this [that man is altogether bad], are satisfied—to quote but one of their views belonging to false religion—to grant that man’s heart is prone to evil; at the same time attributing to him unimpaired power of choice, so as to be able freely to stretch out his hand towards anything he chooses. This is nothing else than trying to weave a rope of sand or to make an angel out of Belial.” This doctrine of the unimpaired power of choice was, in Zwingli’s opinion, the fontal source of all the ills of the Catholie Church. For it made room for saving merit in man, the creature, and to that extent detracted from the honor that belongs solely and wholly to God the Creator. RELIGION After a prolonged analysis and definition of the two factors of religion, he proceeds to consider the relation of God and man in religion, not without repetition of ideas in the preceding sections. He keeps close to the Bible and, without further ado, he traces the beginning of religion to God’s call of Adam hiding in the garden. “Religion took its rise when God called runaway man back to him… O wonderful and unspeakable graciousness of the heavenly Father!” Here he is in accord with Melancthon, who, also, found, in the third chapter of Genesis, the sin, repentance, and justification of Adam. He presupposes two conditions as fundamental in his idea of religion: God’s initiative and man’s response to divine grace. The “nakedness of Adam” symbolizes the utter helplessness and hopelessness of man. Instead of venturing to return to God he flees from Him. Zwingli asks the “theologians,” Catholic and humanist, whom he has always before him: “Does it seem as if Adam would ever have come back of his own motion to ask for grace?” He himself answers the question: “You will certainly admit that he would not have returned, if the Lord had not followed him in his flight.” He prods them still more, saying, “Why, then, will you not admit that the acquired faith (fides acquisita) about which you talk so much is a fiction?” He is convinced that his feet are planted on a rock when he cites the words of Jesus: “For no man is
able to come to me unless the Father draw him.”
Man’s extremity, however, is God’s opportunity. “He judged more kindly than the guilt deserved” and received back into favor “this traitorous deserter.” Without the initiative of divine grace there would have been no religion. To put it in a negative form in Zwingli’s own words: “Suppose God abandons Adam, he will never come back to Him from whom he has fled.” Hence the general principle: “Suppose God abandons man; he will never seek Him by whom he was created.” ‘The second condition of religion is that man responds to God’s call and accepts the proferred grace. Man cries out of the depths of despair—a despondency that is born of God’s revelation of man to himself. In the light of the divine word he sees his own sin and misery, so that “he utterly despairs of himself.” Then only does God freely manifest His bountiful grace, which is irresistible and cannot be taken from him. For a man whom God calls “is forced to respond whether he will or not.”
The effect of God’s grace is “the clinging of man to God,” the “constant adhesion to Him with unshaken trust in Him as the only Good.” But Zwingli’s strong ethical bent would not suffer man merely to cling to God and in a mystie way enjoy His grace. True religion includes “an eagerness to live according to the will of God.” “Christians therefore will anxiously and unceasingly pore over, study, and consider the ways in which they can please Him and deserve well of Him.” The way of serving God is to be found in His word alone—to which “we shall add nothing” and from which “we take away nothing.” But “they only ean understand the word of God who are born of the Spirit or are drawn of Him.”
After he has defined the human side of religion, he directs a winged, piercing shaft at the “impious.” “It is, therefore, madness and utter impiety to put enactments and decrees of certain men or councils upon an equality with the word of God.” To trust in any other than God’s word is falsa religio; “to hang upon the utterances of God alone” is vera religio. Zwingli never fails to combine grace and law in the Christian life. In opposition to Erasmus and all forms of humanism, he emphasizes man’s total disability and the sole sufficiency of
divine grace. In the face of Rome he puts emphasis upon law and obedience—but law as revealed in the Bible and obedience motived by loyalty to Him who saves. He escapes bald heteronomy and servile submission to authority by blending, in the religious life, the divine favor of forgiveness, the revelation of the Scriptures, and the enlightening and compelling spirit of God in the soul. Man obeys the will of God, accordingly, without coercion of law through the free volition of love. This is the vital principle of Reformed ethics and the heart of Reformed piety.
So far Zwingli has discussed religion and its two factors — (od and man—without special reference to Christ; yet he UN has no thought of religion save as it is revealed in the Serip-tures. Its essential content is the immediate relation between God and man, growing out of faith in God’s grace and expressing itself in paternal and filial piety, which might be described as a sort of prophetie monotheism. He fails to show how this relation is realized through Christ and His atoning death. In his interpretation of religion he is theocentrie rather than Christocentric. He does not approach God through Christ but Christ through God, as we may infer from his own words: “The knowledge of God precedes the knowledge of Christ.” He formulates the fundamental thesis of the section on the Christian religion as follows: “Christ is the certainty and pledge of tlie grace of God” (certitudo et pignus gratiae Dei). This Wernle terms the basal idea of the Zwinglian theology. What he hitherto assumed he now explains by showing Christ’s part in God’s redemptive work. His treatment of Christ is wholly controlled by soteriological motives.
The author finds the rational ground for the assurance of divine grace in the Anselmic theory of satisfaction. For once he agrees with the “theologians” who say that “God’s justice must be satisfied.” But he is quick to denounce the scholastic assertion, “facere quod in se est” (that man is to do what is in him), as a shallow and false estimate of human nature, rendering the satisfaction of Christ superfluous. Those who teach this doctrine do not know either the righteousness of
[Der evangelische Glaube nach den Hauptschriften der Reformatoren,]
[vol. 2, “Zwingli” (Tübingen, 1919) p. 171.]
God or the actual unrighteousness of man.” God alone therefore can provide satisfaction; and He has done so through His incarnate Son. In a single paragraph Zwingli concisely summarizes the way of salvation. “God enlightens us,” he says, “so that we may know ourselves. When this happens we are driven to despair. We flee for refuge to His mercy, but justice frightens us. His eternal wisdom finds a way by which to satisfy His justice—a thing wholly denied to ourselves—and at the same time to enable us, relying on His merey, to enjoy Him. He sends His Son to satisfy His justice for us, and to be the indubitable pledge of salvation; but on condition that we become new creatures and that we walk having put on Christ. The whole life of the Christian, therefore, is repentance. For when do we not sin?” The last clause is almost identical with the first of the Ninety-five Theses of Luther.
In an unusually significant, though rather incidental, passage, Zwingli assures us that God did not require the satisfaction of divine justice to protect Himself against “the adversary,” the Devil, or because the Potter was not free to make out of the clay whatever vessel He chose. It was the purpose of God “that by this example of justice He might remove ^^ drowsiness and sloth from us and show us what sort of being He was—just, good, merciful.” Zwingli also warns the reader not to inquire too boldly into the counsel of God, but to rest satisfied with the words, “It so pleased Him.” In other words, Zwingli intimates that Christ’s atoning work had effect upon God, and, by way of example, deeply influenced man. The atoning death of Christ, therefore, had value not only for God but also for man—a distinetly Zwinglian idea. Christ was clothed in flesh (carne indutus), not merely to satisfy the justice of God so that in merey He might redeem men; but, also, that the divine majesty in coming into contact with the earthly world would not be too terrifying; or, conversely, to beget hope in men, when in Christ, the Almighty Son of God, they see a brother.” This “unheard-of and extraordinary fact” was conceived by God only with the beginning of human misery (ab exordio humanae miseriae proposita praeceptaque est). Zwingli finds the first evidence of God’s redemptive purpose in Genesis 3: 15—clearly an infralapsarian point of view.
The incarnation of Christ was foretold in prophecies, types, and symbols throughout the Old Testament. It was accomplished through birth from the Virgin, who remained ever virgin, so that Christ would be sinless and holy, since the sacrificial victim had to be free from blemish. Following Paul’s idea of the first and second Adam, Zwingli draws a contrast between the two in ten theses, in order to show how the ills brought upon men by the sin of the first Adam were healed by the righteousness of the second Adam.
The life and doctrines of the historical Jesus are considered under three aspects: 1. His birth in a stable, His boyhood, and His subjection to His parents, to prove the poverty, humility, and humanity of the Savior; 2. the miracles and benevolent work as evidence of His divine mission and authority; 3. the passion, following in detail the record in the Gospels, showing how He triumphed over death and hell, through His death, His descent into hell, His resurrection, and His glorification. “All this I have briefly narrated… in order to make clear to every beholder the righteousness of Christ by which He healed the wound of Adam.”
Of the character of Jesus, His teaching in parables and in the Sermon on the Mount, the quality and beauty of His life, he makes no mention; nor does he say what Christ meant for him in his own heart and struggle for life, as friend, companion, comforter, and co-worker. Zwingli writes as a theologian and defines Jesus the Savior in the language of dogma. To do him full justice we must listen to him as a preacher in the Grossmiinster, when he thrills his hearers with the call of the Savior: “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavyladen, and I will give you rest.”
The result of the redemptive work of Christ is set forth in the section on the Gospel, which opens with the words: “Christ suffered all these things for us.” Gospel is the good news “that sins are remitted in the name of Christ.” He defines what it is, what it does, and how it is to be received. The word itself means “good tidings.” In Mark 16: 15-16, we are told what the gospel does—“it is a thing which saves believers.” In Luke 24: 45-47, we are told what the gospel is—“that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
unto all nations.” “No heart ever received tidings more glad.” But gospel becomes “glad tidings” only to those who despair of themselves, which comes from a knowledge of ourselves in the light of God. “The divine Spirit alone enables man to know himself.” Through a knowledge of his sins man is brought to repentance and finds refuge in divine grace. “For when our consciences are laboring amid narrows and cliffs of despair, what tidings more joyful can be brought us than that there is at hand a redeemer who will bring us forth into a large place, and a deliverer and leader who can do all things, for he is God.” The gospel includes more than the offer of forgiveness; it “teaches us to embrace not only grace but a new life.” He sounds the ethical note: “Our lives and characters must be changed; for to be a Christian is nothing less than to be a new man and a new creature.” Zwingli reiterates his convietion that moral living is the fruit of divine grace, though divine grace does not depend on moral endeavor.
Although in the section on the gospel repentance was discussed, Zwingli devotes a whole chapter to its further consideration. He calls attention to the wide difference between evangelical repentance and Catholic penance under priestly direetions. The latter he regards as a mere caricature of the former. The evangelical Christian has deeper insight into his sin and misery, at least theoretically, than the average Roman Catholic. When men despair of themselves they can not be satisfied with works of merit but are driven to find refuge in Christ’s merits alone. Repentance does not cleanse men of their sins but it is a safeguard against lapsing into the sins of which they repent. Even though “men constantly sin through the weakness of the flesh, their sins are not imputed unto them, because of their faith.” God requires that men bring forth fruits worthy of repentance. It does not suffice that we are baptized or that we say: Lord, Lord; but we must do the will of the Father. Zwingli has little or no understanding of sacramental mystieism; he transforms everything into ethical living. “All the writings of the apostles are filled with this idea, namely, that the Christian religion is nothing else than a firm hope in God through Jesus Christ and a blameless life wrought after the pattern of Christ as far as he giveth us.” On the basis of Serip-
ture Zwingli proclaims the paradox that men are saved only through Christ and yet a good life is demanded of those who are saved.
Zwingli concludes the first part of his exposition of the essential elements of “true religion” with two brief chapters on The Law and Sin.
Law is defined “as nothing else than the eternal will of God.” The term does not include civil laws, “which have to do with the outer man” and which “change with the exigencies of the times,” or ceremonial laws, which were “abolished by Christ.” The divine law, to which he refers, has to do “with the inner man” and is “eternal.” It is written by God “into the heart of man.” Through the law men are to come to a knowledge of sin; but it also serves to point the way of life. It is not abolished by Christ, though He is the end of the law. In Him it is fulfilled through love: love is the fulfilment of the whole law. “They, therefore, who serve under Christ are bound to do that which love orders; what love does not order or what does not proceed from love either is not enjoined or is not profitable.”
Zwingli is alone among the three great reformers in making the distinction between man’s sinful nature and his actual sins. He distinguishes between inborn sin (called morbus in Latin, Bresten is Swiss German), which comes from Adam, and actual sins, which are voluntary transgressions of the law of God. “Sin that is transgression is born of sin that is disease.” Inborn sin, the old man, the flesh, are synonymous terms. The primary motive of sinful man is philautia, self-love, which impels us to flee virtue and to pursue lusts, and to resist and to strive against the law of nature—”love thy neighbor as thyself.” Men left to themselves would consume and destroy one another, unless God had hedged in man’s selfish desires by the restraint of the natural law: “What thou wouldst that man do unto thee, do thou unto others.”
We are freed from law for the breaking of which we are under condemnation. We are not freed from it in the sense that we are not bound to observe it, for it is unchangeable and eternal. We are freed only through love, “for he that loves does all things freely.” He adds: “God, therefore, has put in
our hearts a fire by which to kindle love of Him in place of love of ourselves.” When this love burns in us we shall do all things not by compulsion but freely and cheerfully. Thus we are freed from law because we spontaneously obey it. We are free from law when we are in Christ Jesus: for us there is then no condemnation. We are sons, and therefore not under law but under grace.
Experience, however, proves that even those who are in Christ continue to sin. The life of the Christian, as appears in Romans VII, is a continual conflict between the law of sin and the law of the spirit of life. It leads men to cry out in despair: “Who will deliver me from this body of flesh?” Zwingli found solace in Paul’s triumphal ery: “Thanks be unto God who giveth us the victory through Jesus Christ our Lord.” “By these words,” he says, “I think the very perplexing problem with which we are struggling is cleared up, viz., how it happens that a blamelessness is demanded which we can not possibly offer, and yet Christ is the efficient guarantee for the sins of all.” This is one of the glaring paradoxes of the Christian life. Another follows close on the first: “Man therefore is ever dead, as is shown by his works; at the same time he ever lives, as is perceived by the anguish of his soul.” So long as man has faith he never ceases to lament his unhappy proneness to sin; only when faith dies out does he become indifferent and callous to sin and the fear of God.
This form of unbelief (infidelitatum et incredulitatum) is the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost. Unbelief is “the sin unto death.” The author defines it at length: “It is, therefore, lack of faith alone, which we call infidelity or disbelief, that is never forgiven; for it never lays hold of or worships God, never fears Him, never regulates itself according to His will, never avoids sin not to offend Him.”
Sections 12-29
In the last eighteen sections Zwingli expounds the more practical aspects of the way of salvation—the keys, the government and discipline of the church, the meaning and administration of the sacraments, marriage, vows, invocation of saints, prayer, purgatory, magistrates, statues and images. In each
section he contrasts the view of true religion with that of false religion—the one held by the Reformers, the other by the Roman Catholics. In some of the sections, as for example, that on the sacraments, he also distinguishes his own view and that of his associates from the teaching of the Lutherans and the Anabaptists. THE ΚΕΥΒ The office of the keys is power to loose and to bind as defined and conferred in John 20: 22-23: “Receive ye the Holy Spirit: whose soever sins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained.” In the author’s words, “to loose is nothing else than to raise to sure hope the heart that is despairing of salvation; to bind is to abandon the obstinate heart.” “To abandon” is explained by the words of Jesus: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words as ye go forth out of that house or that city, shake off the dust of your feet.” Again he says: “The keys are what sets free the captive conscience.” The conscience is freed and the soul is comforted “when, under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, we understand the mystery of Christ and trust in Him.” This illumination takes place when “the apostles preach repentance and remission of sin in His name, and those who hear and believe in His name are freed from their sins and consoled in their hearts.” When the apostles were given authority to “preach the gospel,” they received the office of the keys. “Here then are the keys which Christ committed to the apostles, by which they unlocked the gates of Heaven—they preached the gospel.”
In the face of the papists he vigorously denies that the power of the keys is the right to lord it over the flock or to exploit it for one’s own pleasure or profit. “Away, therefore, and away quickly, with these counterfeit keys of the Popes from the church of the faithful! For nothing is sought by them but dominion over the conscience, and when this has been acquired it opens the way for greed to the treasure of all.”
Without mentioning the name of Luther, Zwingli refutes, also, the Lutheran conception of the keys, namely, that their efficacy is in the word of God, while the priest is only the instrument through which the word operates. Zwingli traces the power of the keys not primarily to the external word or to faith,
but to the illumination of the Holy Spirit by which the word becomes active in faith. “We may be taught by the word, through human mediators, but our conscience can never find peace through human absolution unless the spirit of God opens the word in our hearts.” Wernle says: “Luther did not differ widely from Zwingli, but the latter made the difference to appear wider than it actually was.”
To whom has the power of the keys been given? The author demolishes the claims of the Romanists, who say that Christ gave the keys to Peter and his successors, according to the words in Matthew 16:19: “I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, etc.” These words, Zwingli argues, apply not to Peter alone but to the Twelve, “who all believed and confessed that Jesus was the Christ.” Peter did not lay claims to primacy, for he calls himself a “fellow-elder.” The office was not conferred upon a single person, not even upon a council of officers whom God ordained to exercise government and discipline; but “Christ promised the keys to all who, on being asked, recognized that He is the Son of God.” The power of the keys is not exercised by an official act, reserved for the ordained priest alone; it is a function of the community of believers. “The word of God, then,” says Zwingli, “by which we learn to know ourselves and are taught to trust in God, is the keys by which the ministers of the word set us free; for they that, taught by it, put all their trust in God are henceforth free indeed.” Referring to the keys, he says at another place, “that they are the faith by which the gospel is believed, that is, by which we trust in the righteousness and merit of the Son of God, and utterly deny and cast ourselves aside.”
The author summarizes his conclusion in the following words: “It is therefore established that it is by faith and not by absolution, as they call the made-up formula of papal authority, nor by any sacrament whatever that the inward man can be made secure. For faith alone knows how much trust it has in God through Christ.”
He bitterly denounces the “human presumption” which for sinister reasons has “distorted the name church as well as the thing itself so as to make it apply to some few persons only.” Reference is here made to “the popes” or to “a few
bishops or rather mumblers.” Turn “from the error of making out the popes to be the Church.” “Nowhere in all Holy Writ” is there ground for such an assumption.
The church, in the true sense of the word, “is a company, an assemblage, the whole people, the whole crowd gathered together.”
For further exposition of this topic he refers the reader to his reply to Emser, “that thoroughly impious and corrupt person.” That tract, with an introduction, forms the concluding portion of this volume.
Zwingli refutes three interpretations of the sacraments in general. He modestly acknowledges his opponents, save Emser and Eck, for whom he has nothing but contempt, as “great men,” and expresses regret that he is constrained to differ from them.
The first view, obviously that of the Catholies, resolves the sacraments into “something great and holy which by its own power (vi sua) can free the conscience from sin.” Zwingli attributes this power to God, who alone can free the conscience. “How could water, fire, oil, milk, salt, and such crude things make their way to the mind?” If such access to the inner man is not possible for these material elements, then “God alone can forgive sin and cleanse the mind.” They are wrong, then, “by the whole width of heaven who think that the sacraments have any cleansing power.” Here, as always, he will not permit the Creator and the Spirit to be bound by the creature and by material agencies. The word of God and the faith of manthese are the only means and conditions for the purification of the consciences of men.
The second view is that of Luther and his followers. They agree with Zwingli in rejecting the Catholie theory, and Zwingli agrees with them when they define a sacrament as a “symbol of a sacred thing” (sacrae rei signwm). He cannot, however, concur with Luther in the claim that “when you perform the sacrament outwardly a purification is certainly performed inwardly.” In other words, he denies that the sacraments are “signs which, when they are performed, make a
[1In the discussion of the sacraments, he stigmatizes Emser and Eck as]
[“pests to the teaching of Christ” (p. 179).]
man sure about what is performed within him.” Such assurance cannot be given by material means “though one were deluged with the whole Jordan,” nor “by a sacred formula” though it were “repeated a thousand times.” We become new men and receive the benefits of Christ “by the action of the Holy Spirit” According to the Scriptures the Spirit was given sometimes before the sacramental act, as in the case of Cornelius, and sometimes after it, as in the case of the disciples of Apollos. It is clear, therefore, that “when the sacraments are applied to man, the thing signified by them does not necessarily at once take place within them.” This again involves Zwingli’s basal idea of the manner of the Spirit’s operation. For, if the foregoing statement were true, “the liberty of the divine Spirit, which distributes itself to individuals as it will, that is, to whom it will, when it will, where it will, would be bound. For, if it were compelled to act within when we employ the signs externally, it would be absolutely bound by the signs.” The blessing symbolized by the sacraments is appropriated by faith in Christ, which is not effected by a sacramental transaction. A man, therefore, feels faith within, in his heart; for it is born only when a man begins to despair of himself, and to see that he must trust in God alone.” We are “freed from sin when the mind trusts itself unwaveringly to the death of Christ and finds rest there.”
The third view is that of the Anabaptists. In the words of the author: “They see clearly that the sacraments can not purify, nor that the operation of the divine Spirit is such a slave to the sacraments that, when they are performed, it is compelled at the same time to operate within.” That is, the Anabaptists aecept neither the Roman Catholie nor the Lutheran view. They teach that ‘the sacraments are signs which ^ make a man sure of the thing that has been accomplished within him” before the sacraments are administered. For example, they will baptize only those who give evidence of regeneration and faith before the baptismal act. Zwingli refutes this theory with a single question: “Why does one need baptism who already, through faith in God, is sure of the forgiveness of his sins?” Faith that requires a ceremonial to certify it is not true faith. And if the recipient of baptism
does not beforehand have true faith, his baptism is meaningless. The only reason for baptism in the case of true believers is that it is enjoined in the New Testament. At best it was a sealing, not a saving ordinance: a sign of fellowship in the congregation of the converted and awakened Christians and of separation from the world and the world church. Both they and Zwingli took the sacramental value from baptism.
Zwingli briefly defines his own view of the sacraments by saying that they “are signs and ceremonials… by which a J/ man proves to the church that he aims to be, or is, a soldier of Christ and which informs the whole church rather than yourself of your faith.” They have declarative value only, not purifying power as the Catholics claim; nor do they declare aught to the recipient, as in the Anabaptists’ view, but to the whole church they make known, in a solemn way, that the recipient either is or aims to be a soldier of Christ, and that he has faith in his heart, “relying on the mercy of God unwaveringly and firmly and single-heartedly.”
In the last paragraph of his analysis of Zwingli’s section on the sacraments in the Commentary, Wernle says:
“One can scarcely overestimate the significance of that which is new in Zwingli‘s doctrine of the sacraments, though Erasmus was his forerunner… He radically abolished their unique religious value, their significance in the way of salvation, and permitted only a political value to remain. He considers that they have nothing to do with the salvation which God, through Christ, freely gives us and through the Spirit works in our souls. On the contrary, they belong to the theocracy as pledges and testimonials of the duty or of the covenant of the people of God. A clear conception, without any remnants obscuring the clearness, by which with a single stride we go from the mysterious dawn of antique mysteries and superstitions into the broad daylight of the modern age. The sacred
[‘“Zwingli thought of the Church as a theocracy somewhat like that of]
[the Old Testament—the whole community (city or state) ruled by the]
[word of God. Baptism, e. g., was man’s initiation into the theocracy,]
[analogous to circumcision, which was the sign of admission into the Old]
[Testament theocracy. This is something wholly different from the New]
[Testament view of baptism.]
nimbus has disappeared and only the ethical duties of the Christian remain.”?
Of the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church Zwingli accepts two “and no more, Baptism and the Lord’s Supper.” The other five he regards as “rather ceremonials.” He excludes them as sacraments because “they were not instituted by God to help us initiate anything in the Church.”
Zwingli finds no difference, so far as the nature, effect,. and purpose are concerned, between the baptism of John and that of Jesus. He concedes a “slight difference” in “procedure or form.” The sameness is proved by the fact that Christ received the baptism of John and “made no change in it either in his own case or that of his apostles.” The end of both baptisms was “that we might come forth new men and might model our lives aecording to the teaching which each proclaimed.” The baptism of John required a new life and hope in Christ, and so did the baptism of Jesus. The author had small regard for the outward form of baptism: “John’s dipping effected nothing” and “Christ’s dipping effected nothing.” This aet was a mere ceremony pointing to the “real thing” —the baptism of the Holy Spirit.
Even the Spirit’s baptism is assumed to be twofold: First, “the baptism by which all are flooded within, who trust in Christ.” This kind of baptism “is so necessary that no one can be saved without it.” Second, “the external baptism of the Holy Spirit, just as there is the baptism of water.” This was the baptism on the day of Pentecost, when the apostles and disciples spoke in foreign tongues—“a sign to others rather than to themselves.” This “latter baptism is not necessary,” nor does it often recur in the church.
Zwingli does not agree with the Anabaptists when they refuse to baptize children. They claim that neither the baptized nor the unbaptized infants are under condemnation: they are not under the law. The promise is that only they who believe and are baptized shall be saved. Since infants are not capable of faith and yet are not under damnation, all infants are in a state of salvation. Zwingli claimed, however, that the children
[2Zwingli, p. 204.]
of Christians are God’s own, no less than those of the Isrzlites were God’s own; and therefore the former are eligible to baptism as the latter were to cireumceision. “If, then, the children of Christians are no less God’s than those of the Isrzlites, who would forbid their being baptized aecording to the words of Peter?” It is generally felt by scholars that by so simple an argument and conclusion he did not prove the necessity of infant baptism.
Zwingli concludes his brief discussion of baptism of infants with the promise of publishing a treatise on the subject after he finished the Commentary.
The Lord’s Supper was the cardinal issue in the Reforma- — tion, and when Zwingli wrote the Commentary controversy — was reaching its height, on the one side with the Roman Catholics, on the other, with the Lutherans and the Anabaptists. The author for good reasons devotes most space and care to the exposition of this subject. He acknowledges, also, that he has advanced beyond the view he set forth two years before in the 18th article of the Sizty-seven Conclusions (1523).?
The Greeks called this service εὐχαριστία; thanksgiving; Paul speaks of it as communicatio, communion. Zwingli accordingly defines the Lord’s Supper as “the thanksgiving and common rejoicing of those who declare the death of Christ, that is, trumpet, praise, confess, and exalt his name above all others.” He reminds us that the reverse of communicatio is excommvunicatio, exclusion from the fellowship of believers who put their trust in Christ alone.
He bases his own exposition of the Lord’s Supper upon John 6:26sq.; and with his interpretation of the words of Jesus he refutes the views of his opponents—the Roman Catho-
[1The preface of the tract Von der Taufe von der Wiedertaufe und von]
[der Kindertaufe, was dated May 27, 1525. The Commentary was in press,]
[March, 1525. In the Conclusions and their Explanation, Zwingli ascribed a twofold]
[purpose to the Lord’s Supper: a remembrance of the sacrifice of Christ and]
[an assurance for the weak that Christ has redeemed them. In the Commen-]
[tary he omits the second purpose and resolves the Eucharist wholly into]
[a memorial of the death of Christ. See Finsler-Kóhler-Rüegg, Ulric Zwingli;]
[eine Auswahl aus seinen Schriften, chapters 8-9; also, Wernle, Zwingli,]
[p. 210.]
lics, the Anabaptists, and the Lutherans.
In answer to the Roman Catholic theory of “sacramental eating,” he says: “They are wrong who think that in this chapter (John 6) Christ is saying something about sacramental food.” He heaps words of biting irony (salsa ironia) upon the contemporary theologians who distort, to the abuse of the sacrament, everything they have drawn from this passage (John 6) and lean toward Berengar and the Catholic scholastics. Berengar in his first recantation (1059) affirmed that “after consecration the corporeal and essential body and blood of Christ are present.” They are handled by the priest, “broken and torn by the teeth of the faithful.” This opinion Zwingli regards as “opposed by all sense and reason and understanding and by faith itself.” Innumerable people eat and drink sacramentally the body and blood of Christ, and yet they are not in God nor is God in them “save as he is in an elephant or a flea. To abide in Christ means to cling in love to God, with the same love He “gave himself for us, and this is only possible through faith.” He says further: “Observe what a monstrosity of speech this is: ‘I believe that I eat the sensible and bodily flesh.” For if it is bodily, there is no need of faith, for it is perceived by the senses; and things perceived by sense have no need of faith, for by sense they are perceived to be perfectly sure.”
Zwingli refuses to accept the modification of the views in the confession of Berengar offered by those who say: “We eat, indeed, the true and bodily flesh of Christ but spiritually (sed spiritualiter).” These persons fail to see that the two statements cannot stand: “It is body” and “it is eaten spiritually.” “To eat the fleshly body spiritually” amounts to making “body” into spirit, and this is not possible, philosophy bearing witness. Zwingli, however, does not deny one the right to speak of spiritual eating (de spirituale manducatione). So we may infer from his own words: “Meanwhile I leave every one free to hold what view he will of spiritual manducation, provided he rests on Christ’s diet and not his own; until he has weighed what I am going to bring forward about the words of Christ.” He himself can conceive of no other spiritual eating than what he describes as follows: “We eat spiritually, when through the grace of God we come to Christ”; or “To eat
spiritually the body of Christ is nothing more than to put your trust in Christ.”
In his own interpretation of Christ’s words in John 6, he makes “bread” equivalent to “gospel” and “eat” to “believe.” Augustine, also, identified edere (to eat) with credere (to believe). Zwingli goes a step further and makes “faith” equivalent to food when he says: “This food then of which Christ speaks is faith.” In place of “sacramental” food he puts “spiritual” food; and the eating of it is “that we believe in Christ.” “He that eateth of this bread, me, to wit, that is, that believes on me, hath eternal life.” True to his idea of the close relation between faith and life, he sounds an ethical note in the Lord’s Supper. “So, surely,” he says, “they, also, that eat me, that is, that believe on me, will fashion themselves to my pattern. Ye will in vain pretend that ye believe unless ye also change your life.” Wernle says: “Both together, the memorial of the death of Christ and the showing forth (Bezeugung) of brotherly fellowship, constitute the distinctive character of Zwingli’s doctrine of the Lord’s Supper. His favorite text in answer to all theories of a carnal presence (that is, Christus realiter, corporaliter, aut essentialiter) was John 6:63: “The flesh profiteth nothing”— “Tt is the spirit that giveth life.” Yet he conceded that the flesh profiteth something as an offering (caesa) but not as food (ambesa). “The flesh profiteth by being slain but not by being eaten; slain it has saved us from the slaughter but eaten it profiteth absolutely nothing.” He is our salvation non esus sed caesus, that is, not eaten but crucified. Against the theory of a visible and tangible presence in the elements he quotes John 1:18: “No man hath seen God at any time, ete.” His last appeal always is to “that indestruetible adamant (infractus ille adamas): “The flesh profiteth nothing.” He says of it: “It stands uninjured however you beat upon it, and all opposing weapons are shattered without even making a dent upon it.” Carlstadt, originally a colleague of Luther in the University of Wittenberg, proposed a new interpretation of the words: “This is my body.” He made the pronoun “this” (τοῦτο or hoc) refer to the body of Jesus and not to the bread which he broke and gave to his disciples. The passage would read thus: “This (body) is my body.” Zwingli com-
Introduction 2d mends this interpretation not because it is right but because those who hold it see clearly that Jesus did not regard the bread in his hand as bodily flesh. But in escaping the Charybdis of bodily flesh he was driven into the Scylla” of an awkward and untenable interpretation. In an argument of some length Zwingli shows that Carlstadt’s exegesis is not correct.
He then proceeds, in the remaining part of this chapter, to prove that the true theory of the Lord’s Supper is not based on the meaning of the pronoun “this” but upon the verb “is” (est). The verb “is” means, in the formula used by Jesus, “signifies.”
At great length he argues this point. He cites numerous passages from the Old Testament and the New in which clearly “is” means “signifies.” See Genesis 41: 26; Luke 8: 11; Matthew 13:38. He points out that other words in the Scriptures are used not literally but symbolically. See Matthew 21: 42; Galatians 5:7; John 10, etc.
He supports his own interpretation by appeal to Wycliffe and the Waldensians. He calls to witness the church fathers, especially Origen and Augustine. “We see by these words that Origen held the view that the essential thing in this sacrament is the faith by which we believe that Christ made sacrifice for us, for this is the food of the soul.” He represents Augustine as teaching that “we do not in any other way eat Christ than through faith, trusting in him as the sure pledge of our salvation.”
The protest against the symbolical interpretation of the word ‘4s” (est) eame from Luther. He feared that if one would not take the words of the Bible in their literal sense, the way would be opened for reading all sorts of human opinions and imaginations into the word of God, and that the outcome would be either fanaticism or rationalism. Zwingli put this protest in his own words as follows: I hear some people burst forth indignantly, ‘If we are to force any word we please, thus to signify anything we please, nothing in the Holy Scripture will retain its integrity, for license will be given to the impious to twist everything into anything you like.”
This objection, which has weight, did not deter Zwingli from reaching the conclusion after careful study of all the evi-
dence, in words as follows: “This word is’, then, is in my judgment used for signifies’; yet it is not my judgment but that of eternal God.” He is ready to forego all arguments based on analogous passages in the Bible and quotations from the fathers, and to stake his whole theory upon the words, “The flesh profiteth nothing.”
Zwingli expresses regret that he is compelled to differ from men whom he highly respects, and he assures the reader that he did not rashly reach his conclusion. He says: “I secretly considered this matter with various learned men for several years, because I was unwilling to spread among the crowd thoughtlessly anything that might give rise to some great commotion.”
Zwingli was not the first one to explain the Lord’s Supper as a symbolical transaction commemorating the death of Christ. Others before him held similar views. Yet his interpretation was epoch-making because he was first among the Reformers —who expounded a conception of the Lord’s Supper that was free from every remnant of superstition and was accepted by Protestants in Switzerland and in other European lands. At the same time he preserved the seriousness, dignity, and solemnity of its celebration—an invaluable part of Christian worship. He took from it the sacramental value which was ascribed to it in the Catholie Chureh and was implied in the Greek term “mysterion.” He does not regard it as a sacrament either in the Catholie sense or in the sense of Greek or Oriental mysteries. It is a Christian celebration of Christ’s redemptive death analogous to the celebration of a decisive victory through which a people has won civil freedom. It is a thanksgiving of the congregation of believers to their Lord and Redeemer for something He has done for them; at the same time it is a pledge of renewed loyalty and obedience to Him. It is also a “holy sacramental act of initiation” by which we are “united into the one army and peculiar people of God.”
The question arises, whether or not this theory adequately explains the original purpose of the Lord’s Supper and the legitimate experience of those who have participated in it. It
[‘Reply to Emser. See below, p. 394.]
is now generally conceded that in the celebration of the Eucharist by the early Christians, those who took part in it found elements more realistic and with deeper religious values than are contained in Zwingli’s theory of it. He finds no place for the central idea of a living personal fellowship between the glorified Christ and His disciples upon earth. He resolves it wholly into a solemn service commemorating an historical redemptive act which of course has significance for believers to the end of time. The distant historical fact is central; not the present living fellowship of the Lord and His people.
Calvin felt this defect in Zwingli’s theory. On that account he was for years in closer sympathy with the Lutherans, especially those of the Melancthonian type in South Germany, than with the Zwinglians. The fact, also, that in the course of a generation Calvin’s view of the Lord’s Supper prevailed even in German Switzerland seems to indicate that Zwingli’s theory came to be regarded as one-sided and unsatisfactory.
Zwingli, however, will always be considered the forerunner of all modern Christians to whom the idea of mystery in the Lord’s Supper in a realistic and sacramental sense is offensive and who profess to worship God in spirit and in truth, that is, with an enlightened mind unhampered by baseless superstitions. For these men Zwingli will remain the Reformer of the Sixteenth Century who, in his thinking, approached most nearly to that of the modern man.’
Marriage is not to be regarded as a sacrament. Zwingli is willing, however, since ‘sacrament” has come into use, and that he may not appear “obstreperous,” that the term be applied to marriage as long as its meaning is properly defined. The reason why marriage was made a sacrament is found in an erroneous translation of the Greek word mwysterion (Ephes. 5:32) into the Latin word sacramentum. The word arcanum would have been more accurate. Zwingli, however, would prefer, in the interest of clarity and veracity, that marriage be not counted a sacrament. For it is “not made any more holy or any clearer by being called a sacrament, but darker and less clear.” Sacraments are “initiations” and nothing else, while “marriage is a compact existing between two persons only.” It
[Wernle, Zwingli, pp. 217-218.]
is an appropriate symbol of the fellowship between Christ and the Church; to make more of it is to obscure rather than to clarify its meaning.
In Section 21 the author returns to the subject of marriage in relation to the celibate priesthood. Since marriage is an honorable estate according to the Scripture (Heb. 13: 4), “why should priests be forbidden to marry?” Not only does the word of God sanction it but the experience of the church with its priesthood requires it. Zwingli contends that celibacy does not work for chastity but for shameful unchastity among the clergy. “These, therefore, who forbid wives to ministers of the word build up with words to tear down with deeds.” It was common knowledge that priests, in spite of their vows, lived in concubinage and were fathers of families. In the interest of the word of God as well as of purity and integrity of living, he pleads for the right of clerical marriage.
Confession, in its true sense, is a private transaction between the soul and God. The mediation of a priest is not necessary. “As, therefore, it is God alone who remits sins and puts the heart at rest, so to Him alone ought we to ascribe the healing of our wounds, to Him alone display them to be healed.” Those, however, who are weak in the faith and sincerely distressed may consult with the minister of the word and ask counsel, and he will direct them to God and His saving and comforting grace. ‘“Auricular confession, then, is nothing but a consultation in which we receive from him whom God has appointed to the end that we may seek the law from his lips.” “Nonsense and sheer trumpery therefore are the promises of the Papalists concerning the Keys.”
The following elements are parts of true confession: 1. To praise and give thanks to the Lord; 2. To trust the Lord; 3. To acknowledge that of which you are accused; 4. To inform our neighbor or a learned scholar of our secret guilt in order that he may join us in asking forgiveness of the Heavenly Father. Zwingli admonishes the reader to confess frequently to the Lord, to begin a new life frequently; and, “if there is anything not clear, let him go frequently to a wise scholar who looks not ϑ8δ0 the pocket but at the conscience.”
Confirmation was introduced into the Church when the
baptism of infants became common. He acknowledges that at first only dying infants were baptized. That practice, however, was based upon a false assumption, namely, “that next after baptism faith washes away sin.” Before long salvation was denied infants dying without baptism. Zwingli does not offer an explanation of the true significance of confirmation, nor does he propose a modification of the rite so that it may be continued in the Church at present.
Extreme unction is “a human office of kindness.” It is an imitation of the apostolic practice of anointing the sick (Mk. 6:13). James, also, admonishes the elders of the church to anoint the sick with oil (5:14). Zwingli favors the continuance of the practice: “if occasion demands or the sickness allows, the older persons should rub the sick man, anoint him, and pray God to heal him.”
The idea that ordination impresses upon the soul a special character (character indelebilis) is a human invention.” Neither the rite nor the Catholic interpretation of it can be based upon the apostolic custom of the laying on of hands (Acts 4:30; I Tim. 4:14). “That was an external sign by which they marked those upon whom the gift of tongues was about to descend or those whom they were going to send out to the ministry of the word.” It had no sacramental value.
The episcopate is nothing more than the ministry of the word. “He, therefore, that administers the word is a bishop; and he who does not is no more a bishop than a man is a mayor or a judge who does not fill the office.” The ministry of the word, accordingly, is not an order but a function; and he who does not perform the function cannot claim the office.
Zwingli’s pet aversions are the vow-bound monks, against whom he offers the following scathing indictment: “They promise chastity, but are content with having promised; poverty, though the King himself is in greater need than they; obedience which is manifest disobedience to God and foreign to all Christian love. Therefore they betray Christ who bind themselves by these vows.” “This kind of life has been sown by the enemy, that is, Satan, like tares among the wheat of the Lord.”
The vows are contrary to the Scripture and to the nature
of man. They work unchastity, self-indulgence, and disobedience—the very opposite of the virtues which they are intended to cultivate. Continence is a gift of God, and no one has a right to pledge to God what is not in his power to give. “Those to whom it is not given” (Matt. 19: 11) ought to follow the counsel of Paul, who says: “It is better to marry than to burn” (I Cor. 7:9). Furthermore, celibacy dishonors marriage and the family. It deprives the state of useful citizens and it disregards God’s ordinance requiring that men beget and rear children. Monks evade this command. “But how?” he asks. “They go awhoring more shamelessly than dogs.”
Their pretended poverty is deception and fraud. Forin ’ reality they enjoy greater riches and more luxuries than many a wealthy citizen, without sharing the cares of wealth or the burdens of the government. They pay no taxes; they do not attend to business; “they look out for no one but themselves.” Though they are supposed to be poor monks, they enjoy all the delicacies of food in season. They clothe themselves “with skin and wool and furs so that they sometimes have to sweat in spite of themselves. In summer their robes are so open to the breeze, they lay aside so completely all heavy clothing, that you might think they could live on air.”
In no other section of the Commentary does the author write with more fascinating style, more stinging satire, more cogent argument. Wernle describes it as “a brilliant and terrible arraignment of the vow-bound monks.”
His own view of the invocation of saints is tersely expressed in the following sentence: “We worship them rightly when we
all cling firmly to that God to whom they also in their lifetime clung and taught others to cling.”.. “Faith needs no protecting patron; it knows only one God.”
Zwingli bases his opposition to works of merit on his theory of divine providence and its correlate, predestination. He assumes that God determines everything and that man of himself is capable of nothing. “Since all things are done of His activity how are we to have any merit?” The so-called good works, to which merit is ascribed, are inventions of men— “shams, snares, traps to extort money.” Works that are actually good are the “fruit of faith”; therefore “they are of God, not ours” “Why then do we ask a return for things that are not ours?”
At the close of this section he attacks the ceremonies of the Church which often are closely related to works of merit. Jesus Himself rejected them when He said: “In vain do they worship me, teaching the doctrines and precepts of men” (Matt. 15:9). The prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Amos, long before Jesus, denounced them. Zwingli contrasts the worship of God by obedience to His will in daily living and by the observance of the ritual and ceremonials of the Catholic order. Zwingli stressed the former to such an extent that he permitted, in his form of worship, as little as possible of the sensuous element. He considered the sermon as the principal part of worship, even as preaching was central in the work of Jesus. “Our ceremonies ought to be none other than those that Christ used; for by this is God glorified, that is, when we are zealously devoted to truth and guilelessness and are more ready to expose ourselves for the brethren than to trample upon them in our own interest. This is to worship the Father in spirit and in truth.”
Two abuses of prayer are denounced—prayer as “matter of gain” and prayer as a work of merit. True prayer is “the conversation which as a result of faith you have with God as with a father and a most safe and sure helper.” It is adoration, “the lifting up of the heart to God.” It must be offered in the spirit of the petition, “Thy will be done.” No one can pray for another unless he loves him and seeks his good; not because he is paid for it. “Thus all hired praying—psalms, chants,
masses, vigils—fall to the ground, for what we do without love profiteth nothing.” To the priests, who say they pray for persons who, on account of their work, have no time to pray and who in turn “pay only sufficient for our maintenance,” he replies: “Go ye also, therefore, sometime and till their fields, and let those who have hitherto labored hard while ye were idle refresh themselves in your snug nests.”
The implication of prayers for hire is that they have merit before God for which He will show us His favor. “The devotion of the heart has dared to sell itself as merit.” It is thus brought on a level with other works of merit. He grows impatient with such a prostitution of the most sacred act of the soul. “Who could ever impute it to you as a good work that you often come to Him to ask now for money, now for clothing or food, or counsel or aid? Since, then, our praying to God is nothing but a begging of aid in some matter, why do we impute it to ourselves as a work of merit?”
He eneourages publie and common prayer, such as was held “in the early times.” Each church is “to have its own custom” as far as the form of prayer is concerned. For the same thing is not adapted to all, but everything… should proceed froi the same piety.” Zwingli is especially concerned about having “the collects,” that is, the prayers, “plainly pronounced,” so that they may be understood by the congregation, that “all may pray together following the words of him who is leading.” The language spoken by the people, instead of the Latin in vogue in the services of the Catholic Church, was to be used in public worship.
Zwingli delivers a staggering blow, as it were, between the eyes of the doctrine of Purgatory, in the first sentence: “Holy Scripture knows nothing of the fire of Purgatory in the sense used by the theologians, but the mind of man knows it well, for by means of this false notion of the fire of Purgatory such wealth has been heaped up that the riches of Croesus and the Hyborboreans and the gems of India are cheap in comparison.” A somewhat plausible reason has been given for the invention of this pernicious doctrine. It served to keep those “who go hence” and “who are not utterly bad” from going straight into Hell, and those “who are not wholly good” from going
directly into heaven. Even this argument for Purgatory the author considers a device of the human reason.
In this matter “we should follow what God says within us,” and not the dictates of reason. He shows at length that the doctrine is nowhere affirmed in the Scriptures. “How is it, then, that we believe in such vapid and suspicious nonsense?” Those who have discovered “that they who trust in Christ are the sons of God and do not come into judgment” will not “be held eaptive by such foolish lies.”
He takes up the classic passages in the New Testament (Matt. 5:25; 18:34; 12:32; I Cor. 3:13) upon which the Catholie tradition of Purgatory is based and clearly proves that they have no bearing upon the doctrine. It contravenes the all-sufficient grace of God, by which alone we are saved; for, “if we are compelled to endure the fire of Purgatory to satisfy the righteousness of God, as these people say, the righteousness of Christ will profit nothing.” Furthermore, it denies the assurance that “through Him alone is access to the Father.” In conclusion he admonishes the reader “to give up this most empty fiction,” so to live here “that when death draws nigh we shall rejoice to depart and to be with Christ.”
Zwingli controverts the Anabaptist theory of civil magistracy and the claims to ecclesiastical magistracy of bishops and popes.
The Anabaptists made two denials: 1. Christians have no need of a magistrate; 2. A Christian ought not to serve as a magistrate.
As to the first point, the Anabaptists held that “the church of Christ ought to be so blameless as to have absolutely no need of magistrates; for Christians do not quarrel but yield. They do not carry their wrong to court, but if smitten upon one cheek turn the other also.” What have they who are ruled by love to do with law? They are above law and above politics. Zwingli retorts by saying that it is on account of the behavior of the people who say that we need no magistrate that we must have one. True, while the Anabaptists conceded that “magistrates were necessary under the old law,” they insisted that “these external things do not apply to us.” This the author does not admit; law and magistrates, in his view, are necessary, also, in
the Christian dispensation; if Christians were blameless and perfect, the magistracy would not be necessary: “but that will be in the other world.”
The Anabaptists, in vindication of their own theory and practice, were quick to appeal to the words of Peter: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Zwingli has little confidence in their sincerity and warns them against using this text “as an excuse for irregularity.”
When they were told that in the New Testament Christians are admonished to obey the “powers that be,” they argued that the admonition applied only to the time when the state was pagan and godless and, therefore, it was impossible for Christians to put into practice their ideas of civil magistracy. Now, however, that is, in the sixteenth century, being free from ancient tyranny, they ought to establish a communal order without the coercion of laws and penalties. Only men of the world, not Christians, need civil rulers.
Zwingli’s view of the state contradicted this specious argument of his opponents. He found a basis for it in the word of God, in the character of Christians, and in human experience generally. As long as Christians are not perfect—and perfection is not attainable in this world—the regulations and restraints of law are indispensable. In all circumstances the state and the Christian life are inseparable; instead of excluding each other, they are necessary to each other.
The duties of the citizen and the Christian are largely the same in form, if not in principle and motive. The state requires that “one serve the common weal, not one’s own; that dangers be shared by citizens, and fortunes, also, if necessity arises; that no one exercise a selfish prudence; that no one exalt himself; that no one stir up strife.” All these duties and modes of conduct are included in the law of love which controls the Christian community professing the sovereignty of God through Jesus Christ. Christians are to seek one another’s interests, not their own. They are to be mutually sympathetic and helpful, weeping with them that weep and rejoicing with them that rejoice; they are “to put all their fortunes in their girdles to render aid whenever occasion requires.” The difference between the state and the kingdom of God
is in the motives of conduct. The citizen is coerced by law, the Christian lives and walks in the Spirit, fulfilling the law in love. The spirit of Christ furnishes that which the state most needs. “The state becomes strong and holy only in case good hearts are united with good laws.”
The denial of the right of a Christian to serve as a magistrate, Zwingli calls a “mad theory.” There is nothing in the Bible to forbid it and much reason to prove that only the Christian is fit to be a magistrate. History tells us that “devout men have been magistrates and have ruled so that peace prevailed among men and the righteousness of God was magnified.” It is impious rulers “who will heap up riches by means right or wrong, will climb to renown over the dead bodies of their own; the pious ruler will share all things with those over whom he rules and will prefer the safety and peace of people to renown.”
Incidentally, the author discusses, also, the arrogant claims to magistracy of bishops and popes in the church. They have no authority, as individuals or as officers, to exercise discipline and to excommunicate members of the church. “The power of the church by which the shameless sinner is shut out from communion is not that of magistrates, as the bishops have thus far exercised it; it belongs to the whole church, not to certain persons who have despotically arrogated supreme authority to themselves.” If one says: “Cannot the Pope cast out of the church?” Zwingli without hesitation replies: “I say that he cannot; that belongs to the church alone.” He heartily endorses the exercise of strict discipline in the evangelical way. “We must see to it that the true rod of discipline be restored to the church of Christ.”
In this section Zwingli explains the principles which con- gggence trolled him in his reform. He tried, as far as possible, in making changes in doctrine, worship, and ways of living, not to give offence either to “the weak” or to “the contumacious.” An offence is “action that combines offence with contempt.” He feels constrained to write on this subject on account of those who were easily offended, even when there was no cause for it, and those who rashly and rudely abolished things that deserved to be set aside, and thus gave unnecessary offence to the weaker
brethren. Zwingli had no sympathy with image-breakers and idol-stormers; nor would he permit himself to be deterred from necessary reforms by the plaintive cries of hypersensitive souls. Offences are given in teaching new doctrine and in putting away “externals” such as ceremonies and rules of conduct. As to teaching, one is to be courageous, true to the word of Godand yet one ought to have “regard to timeliness.” He cites the way of Paul, “who boasts that in the beginning he fed the Corinthians with milk” (I Cor. 3: 2). “Of external things some have to do with eating, some with the regulation of life, and some seem to have to do with salvation, though they really amount to nothing.” As far as eating is concerned, Zwingli claims that the word of God forbids no foods, not even part of the time. Laws in regard to eating “have been made a stumbling-block of offence by the huckster business of the high priest of Rome.” Yet in abrogating these man-made rules one must have regard for one’s neighbor, that is, for the “weak, or the contumacious, or the pious.” You must spare a man as long as he is weak, and extend to him a helping hand and teach him the truth of Seripture, so that he may become enlightened and may eat without distinction of foods or seasons. One should even spare the “contumacious”; for “we should not for the sake of liberty as to foods act so as to render the gospel hateful.” He concedes, however, that there is a limit to the sparing of the “eontumacious.” There “are always wanton persons who have the audacity lightly to misinterpret any act or motive whatsoever.” As for the “pious” brethren, they will never take offence no matter what you eat, so long as you observe moderation.
Probably the primary cause of offence was the marrying of priests and monks, who were bound by vows of celibacy. Zwingli is an ardent advocate of the right of priests to marry; if for no other reason than to prevent fornication and adultery. For few men, even though they have taken vows, have the gift of continence, and therefore they ought to marry. On this matter, however, the people ought to be taught the truth in the word of God, so that they will not be needlessly offended by such marriages. “But until men are enlightened on the subject one must have regard for their conscience and beware of
giving offence.” Zwingli acknowledges that in marrying men have acted rashly and seem to have “demonstrated their Christianity by nothing else than their marriage.” They created disturbance far more than they prevented it.
Zwingli’s way of reforming the church and introducing changes in doctrine and ceremonies is by education. “Let nothing be done in the heat of passion.” Show the people what the practices really mean and what saving value they have, if they have any. Things of this sort are “anointings, sprinkling, benedictions, ete.” When properly taught the people will recognize “these external things as signs with which we do something for our neighbor rather than for ourselves”; and they will discover that they “have been brought in by device of man in the same way as forbidden foods.”
In answer to the question “when these things ought to be abolished,” he presents two tests: 1. When one does these things in fidelity to his Lord and not for his own sake; 2. When one deals in love with his fellow men and is concerned about making righteousness prevail. Let the people be first taught the truth and that “they be upright in things pertaining to God and they will immediately see all these objectionable things fall away.”
Zwingli did not intend to write anything for the Commentary on this subject. He had planned a tract, in German, on Statues and Images to be written as soon as his time permitted. In response to the request of “some of the brethren” he added to the Commentary a brief discussion of the main points at issue.
He makes a sharp distinction between images used as objeets of worship and images as works of art. ‘The former use, or abuse, of them he cannot tolerate. It is contrary to the word of God in the Old and New Testaments. But he goes further and argues that, if the Seriptures were silent about images, the spirit of love would admonish men to apply to the needs of the poor what is spent on the making and worship of images. He finds no ground for the contention that men are taught by images and “influenced to piety.” Christ nowhere “taught this method of teaching, and He certainly would not have omitted it if He had foreseen that it would be profitable.” We
ought rather “to be taught by the word of God and not by sculpture wrought by the artist’s hand.” There are those who avow that “images are not worshipped but those whose images they are.” He replies that “none of the heathen was ever so stupid as to worship their images of stone, bronze, and wood for what they were in themselves; they reverenced in these their Joves and Apollos.”
After all the arguments favorable to images are heard, he concludes that images are not permissible in worship, for two reasons: 1. Worship of idols is expressly forbidden in the Old and New Testaments; 2. No art can or should represent the divine nature.
As works of art images are much to be desired and have great value. “No one is a greater admirer than I of paintings and statuary.” They adorned the mercy seat in the tabernacle and were placed in Solomon’s temple; and there they were inoffensive and harmless. Zwingli did not countenance disturbing painted images in windows of churches provided they were put there for the sake of decoration and not for worship.
In the removal of images he advocates the same mode of procedure that he proposed in the preceding section on Offence: “Teaching should come first and the abolition of the images follow without disturbance; and love will teach all things in all cases.” ÉPILOQUE Zwingli announces that his purpose in the concluding section is to gather the substance of all that I have said into a short epilogue.” Wernle considers this part of the Commentary one of the author’s “most original contributions.” He combines in brief compass elements of a history and a philosophy of religion. He traces the development of religion from the primitive to the Christian man. In his point of view and method of procedure he is not so far removed from modern historians, which is an evidence both of the breadth and of the maturity of his thinking.
He assumes that man in his earliest stage was on a level with the animal. That which separated him from, and lifted him above, the brute was religion. “There is no difference between the life of man and that of the beasts if you take away the knowledge of God.” That man might rise above his orig-
inal condition, might become more than an animal, God revealed Himself to man. Even when man “had fallen into forgetfulness of God,” He did not permit him “to perish with the beasts,” but He “called him back,” that “he might live forever with Him.” He cites the succeeding crises in the history of man as recorded in the Bible, in each of which God in mercy approached man and gave him promises of redemption.
There were two revelations of God, each with the same end in view, namely, to benefit men. The first is the general revelation through nature to all men, and the second is the special revelation to the Chosen People which is recorded in the Bible. In this way He showed Himself as a loving Father to one race; yet He was nowhere lacking to others, “that the whole world might recognize that He is the one and the only one who can do all things, by whom all things exist, by whom all things are governed.” Zwingli reiterates here his favorite theory of revelation, namely, that the external revelation through nature or through His word cannot be understood “unless God Himself draws the heart to Himself so that it shall recognize that He is its God and shall receive the law as good” (John 6: 44). In view of God’s manifestation of Himself “from the foundation of the world,” we ought to do two things: 1. “Firmly believe that He whom we confess as our God is God, the Source and Father of all things”; 2. “We should know ourselves; for when we have not knowledge of ourselves we accept no law.”
The benefit that comes to men through His providence is twofold: “To live here blamelessly and, when the co:e 5 of this life has been finished, to enjoy eternal bliss with HiF?ns
In revealing Himself to man He kindled aspirati;,;in his heart which reach beyond the animal and beyond his sensuous nature. God precipitated a struggle in the inner life of man. His “soul strives to fashion itself upon the pattern of Him towards whom it is hastening, who is holiness, purity, light, rest, refreshment, and all blessedness together.” In the striving of the soul to rise upward, it is held back by the body, “which by its nature scorns what the soul greatly values.” Hence there is a constant battle between the flesh and the spirit. To save
man from despair, “God so manifests Himself to him that he can safely trust His mercy.” God revealed Himself in Christ “to strengthen the hopes of all that they should see clearly that nothing can be refused, now that the Son is given for mortals.” The Christian life consists in faith in redemption through Christ and the obligation of the redeemed to live according to His example. “We ought, then, to be as eagerly bent upon a change of life as we trust in redemption through Him.” Observe, again, how closely Zwingli relates the religious and the moral life.
His final definition of a Christian is as follows: “A Christian, therefore, is a man who trusts in the one and only God; who relies upon His mercy through His Son Christ, God of God; who models himself upon His example; who dies daily; who daily renounces himself; who is intent upon this one thing, not to do anything that will offend his God.” Luther resolves Christian life into faith and love; Zwingli into “faith and blamelessness”; in this respect the two Reformers are not widely apart.
He takes a last fling at the Roman Catholic system, mostly an invention of men. “We have substituted a vicar for Christ and in our folly have decreed that he is to be listened to in place of God, ete.” And in all these things God takes no delight; “why do we find it so hard to change from useless trifles to those true and solid things, righteousness, faith, mercy, in which Christ comprehended all religion?”
He bids farewell to the reader in these words: “So, then, good reader, receive this Commentary, so hurriedly written and printed ^” three months and a half that, as you see, it stands clumsy Hed but zealous for the truth and holiness; consider it calnP€ and take it in good part.” “All that I have said, I have SH to the glory of God and for the benefit of the Com- - monwealth of Christ and the good of the conscience.”
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