The Radical - Ulrich Zwingli

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Hello, welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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This is a daily conversation about scripture, culture and media from a Reformed perspective.
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Get your Bible and coffee ready and prepare to engage today's topic.
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Here's your host, Pastor Keith Foskey.
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Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist, my name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
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It's Reformation week here at Coffee with a Calvinist.
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We're looking forward to this coming Saturday, October 31st, 2020, where we're going to be celebrating Reformation Day at Sovereign Grace Family Church.
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And I want to invite you if you're in the Jacksonville area and you'd like to be with us at noon on Saturday, we're going to begin our Reformation celebration with a German feast followed by a short retelling of the life of Martin Luther.
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And then we're all going to go outside where Brother Mike Collier is going to be leading us in an open air message from our pulpit, which we have built, which is a replica of the mobile pulpit, which was used by George Whitfield.
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So if you're in the Jacksonville area this coming Saturday and you'd like to join us, please send me a message so that I know that you're coming and we'll make sure that we have a place for you.
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We would love to have you.
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So again, it's Reformation Week, and each day this week I'm going to be talking about a different reformer, someone who was important during the time of the Reformation.
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On Monday, we looked at John Wycliffe.
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On Tuesday, we looked at Jan Hus.
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And today, we're going to look at one who is sometimes referred to as the radical or the more radical among the reformers, the one that many people have heard of but few know much about.
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His name is Ulrich Zwingli.
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Some would say that Luther was the heart of the Reformation and Calvin was the mind of the Reformation.
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And if these are so, then it could be said that Ulrich Zwingli was the feet of the Reformation because he was always ready to make great strides and even sometimes leap forward in the changes that he believed were necessary in regard to the Reformation of the Church.
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Again, as I said, Zwingli was thought to be, by some of his contemporaries, to be the most radical.
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But my hope is that as I go through his short biography today, that we'll see that his contributions were no less worthy of attention and admiration of those of other men like Martin Luther and John Calvin.
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In fact, I would say among the three notable reformers, Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli, Zwingli has had a lot more impact on my ministry in many ways than some of the others, especially in regard to some of his views of things like the Lord's Supper and the way in which that he went about doing his ministry.
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So we'll see that as we go.
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Zwingli was born less than two months after Martin Luther on January 1st, 1484, about 40 miles outside of Zurich, Switzerland.
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His father was a businessman, and he had the means to provide him with an excellent education.
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Like Luther and Calvin, Zwingli was a brilliant student, and he went on to graduate with a master's degree in 1506.
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While enrolled at the University of Basel, he was influenced by a professor of theology, and that professor taught about the abuses which were being perpetrated in the Roman Catholic Church.
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And even though Zwingli had the knowledge of the abuses that were going on, he still continued on with the desire to become a priest in the church.
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And as a priest, he made it his mission to preach, to teach, and to pastor well.
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And he also studied scripture, along with the writings of the early fathers and even some of the modern humanist scholars which were rising to popularity in his day, such as Desiderius Erasmus.
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Many of us are familiar with Erasmus because of his interactions with Martin Luther.
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If you've ever read Luther's work on the bondage of the will, that is his debate with Desiderius Erasmus.
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By the time Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg, Zwingli had already been openly opposing the false teachings of Rome.
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He was preaching a very evangelical, or what we might call gospel-centered, message.
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In 1519, he came to Zurich and began to preach, and instead of preaching out of the assigned church lessons handed down by Rome, Zwingli began to preach verse by verse through the New Testament.
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He began in the Gospel of Matthew and preached an entire overview of the New Testament, a project which took him six years.
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He relied not on commentaries or other men's ideas, but he preached from the Greek and he learned large portions of scripture which he retained to memory.
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He was truly, as 2 Timothy tells us, a man of God equipped for every good work, because he was a man of the scriptures.
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In autumn of that same year, Zurich experienced an outbreak of the plague, and 2,000 of its 7,000 citizens died.
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Zwingli did not flee Zurich, but he stayed and provided care and ministry for the sick and the dying.
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And in doing so, he also contracted the plague, but by God's grace he did not die of it, though he was sick for several months.
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This demonstration of love and pastoral care endured Zwingli to his people, and as a result, a way was made for his preaching to have an even greater impact.
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One of the great controversies in Zwingli's life happened in 1522.
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Some of his church members ate meat during Lent, which was forbidden by church tradition.
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Zwingli did not chasten them, but rather he supported their decision, as it was in line with what he considered to be Christian liberty, how he understood the Apostle Paul in Romans 14.
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But the real radical move would come in 1524, where under Zwingli's teaching, the city of Zurich chose to remove all religious images from its churches.
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In just 13 days, a committee of a dozen led by Zwingli went through every church in Zurich and stripped away all of the artwork, whitewashed all of the murals, shattered all of the statues, and removed all of the crucifixes.
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Stained glass was the only thing that was allowed to stay, because according to Zwingli, it was not a location of idolatry.
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Now, this was obviously a very serious moment in the life of the city.
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One traveler was noted as having returned to find the churches barren, and he said, quote, there was nothing at all inside, it was hideous, end quote.
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But Zwingli saw the removal of idols as a blessing, not as something that was hideous, and he wrote himself, quote, in Zurich we have churches which are positively luminous, the walls are beautifully white, end quote.
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Now while this architectural change may seem like the most radical of departures from the Roman teaching, the most profound change was yet to come.
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In 1525, Zurich abolished the Mass.
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Now if you remember, the last couple days we've mentioned this.
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The Mass is the Roman Catholic perversion of the Lord's Supper.
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Rome taught and still teaches that the Lord's Supper is a genuine sacrifice.
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The body and blood of Jesus Christ are again presented as a sacrifice by the priest on the altar, thereby the sins of the people are again covered.
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But Zwingli taught that the table was not a place of sacrifice, but rather it was a place of remembrance.
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This he got directly from the words of Christ, who said, quote, do this in remembrance of me, end quote.
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And he served communion from a wooden bowl rather than from the traditional silver chalices which were common in that day.
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Now keep this in mind, this city, Zurich, is not that far from Rome.
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It's only about 500 miles, about as far as from Jacksonville to Nashville.
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Yet the theological chasm which divided the two cities was growing exponentially.
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And this attack on the Mass was by Zwingli a huge swipe at the Church of Rome.
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And of course, it would cause no small stir among the people.
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I will take a moment just to add a side note.
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When we talk about the Lord's Table today among Christians, often there are three views which are held if you're not Roman Catholic.
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If you're a Protestant, some people hold the Lutheran view, which is also known as the Real Presence view, sometimes called consubstantiation rather than transubstantiation, and the Lutheran view is that Jesus Christ's body is physically present in the bread and the cup.
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The Calvinist view tends to be the Spiritual Presence view.
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Christ's body is in heaven next to the Father, right hand of the Father.
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His spirit, though, is present in the bread and the cup.
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But the Zwinglian view, and this is the view that I hold to, and I believe this is the view that all of our elders hold to at Sovereign Grace, we all hold to this view of what we would call Memorial view.
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Now some people call it Just a Memorial, but I hate the word just because when something is important enough to be remembered as is the blood and body of Jesus Christ, we should never relegate it to something that we say it's just this.
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No, it's not just this.
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It is so important, and this memorial is important.
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But I do take the Memorial view.
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So even though I am a Calvinist, I don't hold particularly to the typical Calvinistic view of the Lord's Table.
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I take the Memorial view.
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I don't think the Calvinistic view of spiritual presence is necessarily bad, I just don't think it's necessary.
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And I don't think the Lutheran view is correct, because if anything, I would agree with the Calvinist who would say that the body of Jesus Christ is present with the Father, not universally applied to the bread and the cup.
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So again, within Protestantism, there is a divide here, and this is where I said Zwingli has influenced many, including myself, and some would say this is a radical departure.
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But I think it's a biblical departure, whether it be radical or not.
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Now, so much more could be said about Zwingli and his life, and even ultimately his untimely death.
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He died on the battlefield as a field chaplain in defense of Zurich against the invading Roman Catholic cantons from the South.
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And this is interesting, because earlier in his ministry, Zwingli had preached fervently against Swiss men going to battle as mercenaries on behalf of other nations.
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He believed that no Swiss should be willing to risk his life for mere mercenary pay.
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But he was willing to stand and fight for his nation.
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Clad in armor and armed with a battle axe, Zwingli was wounded on October 11, 1531.
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When the enemy found him lying wounded, they killed him, and they treated his body with tremendous disrespect.
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They quartered him, they burned his pieces to ash, they mixed the ashes with dung, and they scattered them about.
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Now, before I move on from the narrative of Zwingli's life, I want to share one more important moment that I think should not be overlooked.
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It was well known that Zwingli was a tremendous force for Reformation, as was Martin Luther.
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And some have accused Zwingli of copying Luther or being on the coattails of Luther.
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But Zwingli saw himself differently.
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In fact, I want to quote directly from him.
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This is a quote from Zwingli, cited in the European Reformation's sourcebook, and this is what it says, quote, Before anyone in the area had ever heard of Luther, I began to preach the gospel of Christ in 1516.
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And if you remember, that's one year prior to the nailing of the 95 Theses.
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Continuing with the quote, I started preaching the gospel before I had ever heard Luther's name.
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Luther, whose name I did not know for at least another two years, had definitely not instructed me.
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I followed holy scripture alone.
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So that was the way Zwingli saw himself.
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He's not following after Luther.
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It just so happens to be that they were both contemporaries.
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They were both preaching the gospel.
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Zwingli said, I didn't get my gospel from Luther.
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I got it from scripture.
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But it's amazing when we consider how close they were on theology.
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In fact, the two men met together to deal with their theology and to have a gathering of Reformed teaching.
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They met at a gathering called the Marburg Colloquy.
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And when they came together, they were able to agree on 14 out of 15 points of doctrine.
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And it just so happens that the one area that they did not agree on was the area of the Lord's Table.
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And Luther was enraged at Zwingli's position.
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Luther was very upset that anyone would teach that the bread and the cup are not actually the body and blood of Jesus.
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And he would go on to say some very ugly things about Zwingli.
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Luther was known for being quite bombastic with his language.
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And he said, I quote, I would rather drink blood with the Pope than mere wine with the Swiss.
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And of course, that's referring to Ulrich Zwingli.
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And again, this was attempted to be resolved at the Marburg Colloquy.
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But instead of resolution, Luther, from what I understand, pounded the table, hoc est corpus meum, which was Latin for this is my body.
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He was unwilling to even concede the possibility that the bread and the cup was not physically the body and blood of Jesus.
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And therefore, the two men were separated on that point of doctrine.
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And it became a point that they would never be joined again.
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Well, the last thing I want to mention about Ulrich Zwingli before I sign off of today's broadcast is that while many of us are very familiar with the 95 theses that were written by Martin Luther and those 95 theses specifically regarded the selling of indulgences, many of us are familiar with that.
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Many of us are not familiar with the 67 theses.
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The 67 theses were written by Ulrich Zwingli.
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And while I do not have time to outline all of them, I would like to close today's show by just reading a few of his 67 theses.
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In fact, I'll read the opening.
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The articles and opinions below, I, Ulrich Zwingli, confess to have preached in the worthy city of Zurich and based upon the scriptures which are called inspired by God, and I offer to protect and concur with the said articles and where I have not now correctly understood said scriptures, I shall allow myself to be taught better, but only from the scriptures.
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And these are the first five.
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Number one, all who say that the gospel is invalid without the confirmation of the church error and slander God.
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Remember, that's the Roman Catholic Church.
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Number two, the sum and substance of the gospel is that our Lord Jesus Christ, the true Son of God, has made known to us the will of his Heavenly Father and has with his innocence released us from death and reconciled God.
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Number three, hence Christ is the only way to salvation for all who ever were, are, and shall be.
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Number four, who seeks or points out another door errs.
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Yes, he is a murderer of souls and a thief.
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Number five, therefore, all who consider other teachings equal to or higher than the gospel err and do not know what the gospel is.
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Ulrich Zwingli was an evangelical.
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He was a man who loved the gospel of Jesus Christ and he was a man who stood for it and ultimately a man who died for it.
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And Ulrich Zwingli is one of those names that certainly is not known as well as Martin Luther or John Calvin, but is a name that all of us should celebrate this Reformation season.
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Thank you again for listening today to Coffee with a Calvinist.
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My name is Keith Foskey and I have been your Calvinist.
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May God bless you.
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We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
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As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
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All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
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He is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him.
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May God be with you.