Reformation Heritage II: Ulrich Zwingli, The Reforming Patriot

Religious, political and cultural change is necessary; however, we do not always like change. Though God is unchanging the unfolding of His providence brings about change. All that he has created has been subjected to the futility of the fall and is being restored through His work of redemption by the reigning Son. Therefore God’s government and preservation of all creation in the process of restoration necessitates change. Change is something we all experience everyday as the sun rises and sets, the stock market rises and falls, newly elected officials of the civil realm take office, new technology breaks into the marketplace, or Johnny goes off to school. The question is, “How do we handle the unfolding of God’s providence in the context of change?”

Ulrich Zwingli and Martin Luther were contemporaries. Zwingli was born several weeks after Luther on January 1, 1484, and lived in his shadow in the German speaking cantons of Switzerland. While Luther was raised up by God for the reforming of the church in Germany, Zwingli was used of God in Switzerland as a pastor, theologian and patriot in the context of change.

Switzerland was technically a part of the Holy Roman Empire but in the 16^th century had become a confederacy of independent states. These independent states or cantons were continually struggling in the times of the reformation with their identity as Catholics or Protestants. We have a hard time understanding this in our nation of religious pluralism. We have a Catholic church on one corner and a Baptist church on the opposite and neither one of them have seemingly anything to do with the “state”. But in the days of Zwingli the civil and ecclesiastical realms were very closely related. The state was ordered by the Holy Roman Empire and her ecclesiastical officials. Therefore, the “protestors” or those disagreeing with the doctrines of the church were often brought into direct conflict with the leaders of the state as they lead the people of the Empire with their reformed teachings. This was the changing times in which Ulrich Zwingli lived as a reforming pastor, theologian and patriot.

He came to Zurich at the age of 35 and began preaching in the great Grossmunster. There he took up preaching the New Testament in the gospel and it was his practice until he died 12 years later. This was an unusual experience for a preacher to teach the people through the Bible verse by verse. As Zwingli studied and preached Biblical theology it shaped and influenced all of life. He was an accomplished musician but he did not practice music in worship because he believed the Bible did not command music to be used in worship. He was a pastor that remained in Zurich during a plague to shepherd the people of God in death, while all other clergy left the city for health. He wrote an important work concerning the authority of the Scripture. He stood against the Romish teachings of the Mass. But his Biblical reforming principles not only affected his thoughts and practices in regard to preaching, worship, the sacraments, and pastoral ministry they affected his thought and life in the civil realm.

In the 16^th century the Swiss people lost 200,000 men in mercenary service for the sake of the Holy Roman Empire. Zwingli believed in a just war, but he did not believe that the men of Switzerland should have been paid to leave their land and fight in battles in France in the service of the Pope. This brought him in sharp dispute against the empire. The city fathers in the canton of Zurich were pressed whether they would be Catholic or Protestant. The catholic clergy thought this not a matter for the city fathers to decide, but Zwingli thought it was proper. In 1523 Zwingli wrote his 77 articles for a disputation that would lead to their decision. In those articles he clearly articulated the Biblical reformed faith that affected life and clearly renounced Catholic abuses in the church and state. On the day of the disputation no one showed up to debate with Zwingli, and Zurich became a protestant canton. Zwingli said, “Custom must yield to truth”. He was a man reformed in his thought and life by God’s Word and he believed the truth of God revealed in His Word should affect all of life.

Zwingli is remembered in Switzerland by a statue. In that statue he has a Bible under one arm and a sword in his hand. And for this many in the history of the church have been critical of him. Zwingli died at the age of 46 in a battle defending Zurich’s freedom. He went into battle as a chaplain bearing a sword and was killed there. He fought for his country’s freedom for he believed that through that freedom the gospel of Jesus Christ would go freely to reform all of Switzerland. Zwingli believed Christ was the transformer of culture. Therefore he involved himself in political, economic and military affairs in his short tenure as a pastor-teacher-theologian. He was once asked what economics had to do with the gospel, and his reply was, “Much in every way.”. Ulrich Zwingli lived in the midst of change, and he did not respond to that change with indifference, but with faith in an unchanging God whose steadfast truth reformed and directed his thought and life so that he could live responsibly for the glory of God in his several vocations.