Zwingli the Zealot

The Hypocrisy of a Reformation Ringleader

The Swiss reformer Huldrych Zwingli, along with Luther and perhaps Calvin, is imbibed into record as one of the most venerable theological critics during the 16th century Reformation. While at the Grossmünster in Zurich, Zwingli cast doubt and condemned Lenten fasts, clerical marriage and celibacy, the veneration of the saints, the ecclesiastical edifice, all while augmenting his claims with the underlying doctrine of sola scripture which he stressed more than his contemporaries.

But while he preached and wrote that the Christian Bible is the sole, infallible authority on faith, life, and practice, he built his theology and legacy on this unsound and untenable philosophical foundation. Zwingli’s glaring intellectual inconsistency and self-defeating logical traps he set for himself are clear throughout his sermons and petitions, even the origins of scripture itself.

By 1522, Zwingli had had argued quite further than Luther for the Bible being not the final authority but the exclusive and singular authority. Within Of the Clarity and Certainty of the Word of God, Zwingli contends that Catholic traditions and dissemination of the text had “subordinated the understanding of God’s word to men.”

And therefore Christians should “drop all that and learn God’s will directly from his own word.” Every promise and prophecy in the Bible evidently is the prime directive of the Mosaic God himself, and more the clergy, and pope, scholastic community, or ecumenical councils bear no wisdom that can be trusted as a standard because they are human, they err where the Bible does not and likewise (to Zwingli) God does not. Of course, the notion that Christian scriptures are the lone cradle of belief is self-contradicting given that it cannot be sustained without extra-scriptural doctrine.

Not to mention that the Bible itself (or rather the loosely adjoined 66 books) reference extrabiblical events and prophecies that must be sought elsewhere, from an external authority. Take in Matthew 2:23, “He shall be called a Nazarene” cannot be found in the Old Testament books, yet it was “spoken by the prophets.” This prophecy, which is considered to be “God’s word” by Zwingli, was oral secondhand tradition rather than through pure scripture. In 1 Corinthians 10:4, Zwingli’s beloved Paul refers to a rock that “followed” the Jews through the Sinai wilderness.

While this Bible nowhere cites or references this event, history holds that rabbinic tradition does. The same can be said of 1 Peter 3:19, where the writer describes Jesus’ descent into Hell, drawing from a non-canonical apocalyptic story from Enoch. What Zwingli and the like accept into canon and what he rejects from Christian practice is unfeasible given the nature of Christian tradition and dogma.

Also, Zwingli proposes theodacti, to be taught only by God and not by men. In his 67 Articles he cries that whoever rearranges, or whoever as an imperfect mortal attempts to confirm or deny scripture “is a murderer of souls and a thief.” Yet he is doing just this, claiming authority to confirm the wisdom and exclusive truth within his Bible. He issues the blame to the Catholics though, the face of Zwingli’s ire is Catholic meddling in the perfect language (Old and New Testaments) of the divine transcribed for mankind.

The problem is that Zwingli nor his successors can divorce canonical scripture from its unnatural beginnings, human interference, nor from its indelible relationship with the Roman Catholic Church. The very Bible Zwingli read in his lectures was a Latin canon translated from Hebrew and Koine Greek and made deliberately unavailable to the laity by the Church, later Luther would provide a translation that would carry into other vernaculars. Still, the Christian Bible was commissioned, arranged, scrutinized and codified by a pagan Roman emperor and a council of 300 or so bishops from the Eastern Orthodox (Catholic) Church.

At the Council of Nicea (and later Laodicea) over three and a half centuries after Christ, who were convened to prepare the creed and doctrine and scripture by which Zwingli would be bounded by? It is also noteworthy that the 39 books within the Old Testament were voted into being by the Pharisees of the Second Temple after the Jews returned from Babylon. The former an ecumenical council of mortal, fallible human beings and the latter a traumatized council of refugees.

It seems understood now that Constantine ordered the original 50 parchment copies of the new “holy scriptures,” motivated by imperial and material demands. It is as if Zwingli and other adherents to his philosophy have cemented the veracity, inerrancy, and self-authenticating reputation of scripture and sola scriptura irrespective of its earthly origins.

Huldrych Zwingli wrote that “Nothing is more displeasing to God than hypocrisy.” So where is Zwingli’s introspection as he preaches that the Bible is unadulterated and whoever dissects its contents is a thief, when his scripture was ordered in a tainted and fallacious vote of yeas and nays? If worldly pastors are insignificant and their interpretation is subversion, then it follows Zwingli should have no adherents to Sola Scriptura.

It was in 1519, Zwingli began the practices of lectio continua giving his own analysis during his sermons which defies his own concept of allowing the human stenographers of God’s will to speak for themselves. He undermined the importance of apostles and saints, but is devoted to their collection of books. In Zurich, Zwingli may have rightfully brought suspicion to procedures like Lenten fasts, priestly marriage and celibacy, the veneration of the saints, the Catholic hierarchy, but nonetheless did this with the failed and untenable new doctrine of sola scripture.

Thus, Zwingli might have preached and wrote that all Christian conviction, life, derive from “God’s word,” yet could not illustrate this without a glaring intellectual inconsistency throughout his works. His hypocritical, unsound theology is ironically self-evident.

Citations:

Hughes Oliphant Old, The Reading and Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1998), 46–47.

Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli: His Life and Work, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986), 47–51.

Denis Janz, A Reformation Reader: Primary Texts with Introductions, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2008), 186–190.

David E. Henderson and Frank Kirkpatrick, Constantine and the Council of Nicaea: Defining Orthodoxy and Heresy in Christianity, 325 CE, (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016), 1–11.