God grant that wherever I am in error I may be taught better; and God grant that you may know what is error and what truth. Amen!
Zurich, August 20, 1524.
Tur Church: A Reply to Jerome Emser
The word “ecclesia” is derived from the Greek for “calling together,” as everyone well knows. Taken over thence into the Latin, the word is used indifferently in Holy Writ, now for “congregation,” now for “assemblage,” for “definite multitude,” for “people of Israel” both according to the flesh and according to the spirit. In the Old Testament one may see everywhere that when the Hebrew has “kahal” [%mp] or “edah” [my] the Septuagint translation has συναγωγή or ἐκκλησία, while the Latin has “coetus, congregatio, multitudo, universus populus Israel,” or uses the word “ecclesia” itself. If I were to show this at length I should be diverted from my resolution to be brief. Hence it will be sufficient to exhibit a few definite passages by which to make this manifest.
Exod. 12:3: “Speak to all the multitude of the children of Israel.” Here for “multitude” the Hebrew has “edah”; the Greek, συναγωγή. Lev. 8:3: “All the congregation (coetus) of the children of Israel Here the Hebrew has “haedah hakahal” [npn ny], é e, “all the congregation of the ecclesia,” just as the Greek has συναγωγὴν ἐκκλησίας. Num. 20: 4: “the assembly (ecclesia) of the Lord.” Here the Hebrew has kahal”; the Greek, συναγωγή. All these instances have as their one object our seeing that by the word “ecclesia” the whole company, congregation, assemblage, army, multitude, of the people of Israel is meant. Hence it is clear that “ecclesia” is used not only for the pious, holy, and faithful, but also for the impious, wicked, and unfaithful, provided only they were of the seed of Abraham according to the flesh and were intermingled with the pious. How often, indeed, it happened that by their open faithlessness certain ones gave plain proof that, though in body and in the opinion of men they were counted as within the church (ecclesia), yet in fact they were anything but within the church that is without spot and without wrinkle! But of this presently.
In like manner in the New Testament also we see that
[“This entire chapter was copied into Zwingli’s True and False]
[Religion. See p. 178.]
“ecclesia” is used for all those who have named the name of Christ and who walk and live within the company of Christians, even though in reality they are not very faithful; as when Paul says that he persecuted the ecclesia of God, I Cor. 15:9. For he persecuted all who were Christians, i. e., who confessed themselves Christians. But among the Christians there are always evil and unfaithful ones, although we do not recognize such unless they betray themselves by their fruits.
Christ Himself has painted this church in the clearest colors in Mat. 13: 24-30, where, by the parable of one sowing good seed in a field and of an enemy, i. e., the devil, secretly mixing in tares, He means nothing else than that all of us who are called Christians receive the word, or at least wish to appear to have received it, yet none the less we admit the devil’s seed also. Yet God allows the erops that grow from both grain and tares to continue until the day of harvest; nay, He even commands us to let both grow, though He keeps account of the noxious, who are destined to rejection, and of the wholesome, for whom favor is meantime in store (about which there is not now room to speak). We are, I say, to let both grow until the day of harvest.
Of the same purport is the parable of the net [Mt. 13: 47-50] spread to catch fish, in which at the same time good and bad are gathered, live, stay, and are mingled together. But finally the angels come and separate the foul from the sound and fresh.
To the same effect is the parable of the ten virgins [ Mt. 25].
Here we learn that the whole multitude of Christians that counts itself faithful is called one faithful people, one church, and also is not yet the church undefiled; for it has many blemishes, at some of which it is not foreign to Christ to wink. You now see that in the Old Testament as well as in the New the church was composed of the faithful and of those who were unfaithful but pretended faith, and therefore was not yet such that neither wrinkle nor spot attached to it. For in time past all either made or worshipped a molten calf [cf. Exod. 32:2-6]; Judas was with Christ; and with the Apostles were Ananias and Sapphira, and Alexander the coppersmith,
and false brethren, and spies who attempted to betray Christian liberty and to join circumcision and Christ. Yet they did not, wherever such persons lived with the Christians, change the name “church,” used in this manner.