11: The Swiss Reformation

INTRODUCTION

One man does not a revolution make, or even a reformation. If the Protestant Reformation had been the product only of Luther’s brilliance and stubbornness, it would have been nothing more than a standoff between a pugnacious monk and a corrupt pope, only remembered as a curious footnote to history.

But the Reformation was much more. It was a movement of the hand of God in history, bringing different Christian leaders in different regions almost simultaneously to similar conclusions. This was God opening the eyes of His church across Europe. And the way he did that was the way he always does that, using his word.

It’s been this way from the beginning.

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Remember during the reign of King Josiah when Hilkiah the High Priest found the Word of God during the renovation of the Temple?

II Kings 22:11 “When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his clothes.”

After that he destroyed the prophets of Baal and restored the observance of the Passover. In other words, they had a reformation.

Notice also how the conversion of the Samaritans and the Gentiles is described by Luke in the Book of Acts:

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Acts 8:14 “Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John,”

Acts 11:1 “Now the apostles and the brothers who were throughout Judea heard that the Gentiles also had received the word of God.”

We’re going to look at two of those leaders this morning as we consider the Swiss Reformation.

Something to remember - while this class will focus on two particularly significant leaders of the Reformation, we should not forget that the Reformation was also a movement in the hearts and minds of countless unnamed people across Europe. And this was because one of the beliefs of the reformers was that people should be able to read the scriptures for themselves in their own languages.

Between 1520 and 1530, the Bible was translated into German, French, and English, and, thanks to the newly invented printing press, put into the hands of people desperate to learn the will of God through the Word of God. So one lesson here is don’t let people tell you technology is the enemy. We can certainly misuse technology or make it an idol but God has used technological advances in every generation to further His kingdom.

ZWINGLI & ZURICH

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We’ll begin with Ulrich Zwingli. Zwingli, even more than Luther, emphasized a high view of the word of God and of making the preaching and teaching of the word, the central activity of the church.

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131 Christians Everyone Should Know Ulrich Zwingli

“For God’s sake, do not put yourself at odds with the Word of God. For truly it will persist as surely as the Rhine follows its course. One can perhaps dam it up for awhile, but it is impossible to stop it.”

Ulrich Zwingli was born in the village of Wildhaus, Switzerland in 1484 about two months after Martin Luther. He studied at Basel and Bern, two places where humanism was thriving, and earned the degree Master of Arts in 1506. And, if you remember from last week, when we talk about “humanism” in the context of this period of history, it is not the elevation of man above God but the elevation of the original sources above what men taught about those sources. In other words, it was about letting the original author of a text determine what it means. As Thomas pointed out last week, the motto of the humanists of this day was the Latin phrase ad fontes, which means “to the fountain” or “to the source.”

After graduating university, he became a priest in the village of Glarus where he continued to study, becoming proficient in Greek. [i]

Having such a learned priest was not common in Switzerland at this time or in much of Europe for that matter. Justo Gonzalez says that many Swiss priests at this time had never even read the entire New Testament.

The Life of Ulric Zwingli Chapter V: From Basel to Glarus

With ever-increasing zeal he endeavored to master the original languages. With his own hand he transcribed the Epistles of St. Paul, and read them so industriously that he knew them literally by heart. He afterward familiarized himself in the same way with the other books of the New Testament.

He’d also read many of the Church Fathers as well as men like Wycliffe and Huss. [a] Combined with his study of scripture, he formed convictions, similar to Luther, that the Roman Catholic Church was not being faithful to the Bible’s teaching.

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In 1518 Zwingli became the priest at Great Minster (Grossmunster) Church in Zurich, the principle church in the city - still a Roman Catholic church and he, still a Roman Catholic priest. His first official action there was to begin preaching through the Gospel of Matthew, verse by verse. Something that was not done at the time. Steve Nichols of “Five Minutes in Church History” points out that you went to church to celebrate the Mass. You may have gotten a short homily of some kind on special days like Christmas and Easter but a full-blown expositional sermon, rooted in scripture, was not on the agenda.

One of Zwingli’s “pet peeves” if you will was the superstition and extra-biblical requirements put on the people by the Catholic Church.

When he began to do things like remove and even destroy relics from churches and tell people it was OK to eat sausages during Lent, he ran afoul of his bishop, who brought him before the Council of Government (of Zurich). However, Zwingli defended his preaching on the basis of scripture :

Zwingli defended his actions using...

(based on I Timothy 4:3 “3 who forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth.” )

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The Life of Ulric Zwingli Chapter XV: Great Discussions at Zürich, and Their Consequences

“God Himself gave the law only that we might thereby learn our sinfulness and seek grace alone in Christ, and after Christ has delivered us from all sin by His death, we are also in baptism delivered from all human institutions. In short, do you wish to fast, do it, but leave Christians free, for the eating of flesh is not forbidden by any Divine law. If, however, your neighbor is injured or offended by your eating, you should not do it, unless compelled, till the weak in the faith are strengthened.”

In other words, he said Christians are free to do or not do things if they are not prescribed by scripture and, and this was the biggie, the church has no authority to require something the scriptures do not.

This, as I said, was a big deal. One of the main differences between Reformation teaching and Roman Catholic teaching is the locus of authority. The reformers said the final arbiter of authority is the word of God (Sola Scriptura) whereas the RCC did, and still does, say the final arbiter of authority is the church.

In the end, he was allowed by the council to continue preaching.[ii]

Now Zwingli turns up the volume. He sets his sights on priestly celibacy calling it unbiblical and pointing out that those who taught it did not practice it in many cases. Zwingli was as concerned about the immorality in the church as he was her doctrine.

(Zwingli secretly married Anna Reinhard in 1522 while still a Catholic priest)

He was again called before the Council of Government. Remember last week when we saw the video clip of Luther at Worms and he as told these matters are not up for debate? Well, the town council of Zurich didn’t take that approach.

They asked that Zwingli debate a representative of the bishop. When he was asked to refute Zwingli’s teachings, the bishop’s representative twice refused to do so. The council decided that since the church was either unable or unwilling to refute Zwingli, he was free to continue preaching. This was unprecedented because you had a group of lay people using the Bible to decide for themselves what was and was not sound doctrine.This was the final break with Rome. Zurich was essentially a Protestant city from this point forward.

Again, this happened because the Word of God was given precedence over the traditions and teachings of the church.

Theological Distinctions

Zwingli affirmed the core doctrines of the Reformation – salvation by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, based on Scripture alone, and to the glory of God alone. However there were some areas where his teaching differed from Luther’s with his view on the Lord’s supper being among the most significant and certainly the most contentious.

One of the German princes who supported Luther was Phillip of Hesse. Philip met Luther at the Diet of Worms and embraces Protestantism in 1524. As a reminder, this was as much a political statement in the 16th century as it was a theological one - perhaps more the former where Philip was concerned but that’s another discussion.

At any rate, Philip was concerned that the Reformation was not as unified as it needed to be to counter the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V and the Catholic Church.

So, in October 1527, he arranged the Marburg Colloquy at Marburg Castle in Hesse to try to unify Luther and Zwingli. From what I’ve read, Luther when reluctantly and Zwingli went willingly.

There were fifteen points of discussion and the two men came to agreement on fourteen of them. The fifteenth one ended this way:

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And although we have not been able to agree at this time, whether the true body and blood of Christ are corporally present in the bread and wine [of communion], each party should display towards the other Christian love, as far as each respective conscience allows, and both should persistently ask God the Almighty for guidance so that through his Spirit he might bring us to a proper understanding.

And it was Luther who refused to concede this point, from what I understand.

The Lord’s Supper

Zwingli and Luther had an ongoing feud about the presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper. Both rejected the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation – that the elements really become the body and blood of Christ. However, Luther held to what is sometimes called consubstantiation but better referred to as “sacramental union,” that Christ was physically present at the supper "in, with, and under the forms." Luther explained it "by the analogy of the iron put into the fire whereby both fire and iron are united in the red-hot iron and yet each continues unchanged.” [iii] Another analogy sometimes used is that of a wet sponge. The water is not the sponge but it is “in, with and under” the sponge.

Zwingli on the other hand, was worried about people attaching too much importance to the material forms in worship (which is also why he was an iconoclast) and so insisted that the Lord’s Supper was only a memorial of Christ’s sacrifice. He and Luther never came to agreement on this issue and so for this reason more than any other, their two movements never merged. The German reformation and the Swiss reformation moved forward on two separate tracks really.

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Historically there have been four approaches to the question of Christ’s presence in the supper:

1. Transubstantiation (Primarily Roman Catholic and Orthodox)

This is the Roman Catholic belief, which had been codified in 1215 and fleshed out later by Thomas Aquinas, that at at certain point in the Mass, the elements are miraculously transformed into the actual body and blood of Christ. The appearance of the elements, their accidents, do not change but their substance does.

2. Consubstantiation or Sacramental Union (Lutherans)

Luther’s response to this was, that neither the appearance nor the substance changes but that the elements “contain” the body and blood of Christ in a miraculous way. He described it as with a sponge dipped in water. The sponge is still the sponge but the water is in, with and among the sponge. He clung to the notion of a real, corporeal presence of Christ.

3. Real Presence of Christ (Reformed churches and belief of Calvin) Christ, through the Holy Spirit is present with us in a special way at the supper. I liken it to reading the Bible. When I’m in God’s word, Christ, through the Holy Spirit is sanctifying me in a way that He’s not when I’m not reading my Bible. Calvin compared it to the sun. While the sun is millions of miles away and so not present with us in a physical sense, through the mediation of the sun’s rays we enjoy real communion with the sun, without which there would be no life (John 6:55-56)

4. Memorial Only (Zwingli and many protestant denominations today)[*]

Essentially, Jesus is with us always, as the scriptures remind us and so is not with us more or less during the Supper than any other time.

[*] Out of a zeal to avoid the conception that Jesus is present in some magical way, certain Baptists among others have sometimes gone to such extremes as to give the impression that the one place where Jesus most assuredly is not to be found is the Lord’s Supper. – Christian Theology by Millard Erikson, p. 1123

So what happened to Zwingli?

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Switzerland at this time was a confederation of independently governed cantons, some of which had become Protestant and some of which remained Roman Catholic. As Phillip of Hesse had feared, the Roman Catholic cantons took advantage of the disunity among the Protestants.

In October of 1531 five Roman Catholic cantons initiated a surprise attack on Zurich. In a battle for the city of Kappel, Zwingli, serving as a chaplain for Zurich’s forces, was killed and the Roman Catholic armies were triumphant. However, about a month later when a peace treaty was signed, it was agreed that each canton had the freedom to make its own decision with regard to religion. This firmly established some cantons as protestant and others as Roman Catholic with people moving from one to the other in order to pursue the religion of their choice.[iv]. We’re still a ways off from individual religious freedom within the same culture but regional religious freedom is moving us that way.

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CALVIN & GENEVA

Justo Gonzalez calls Calvin the most important systematizer of Protestant theology in the sixteenth century – and I would add he’s one of the most important theologians in church history.

Luther and Zwingli helped recover the gospel but Calvin, as a second-generation reformer, laid out what that recovery meant for all of life for Christians. It’s one thing to say the Roman Catholic Church is wrong; it’s another to say what “right” looks like with regard to faith and practice. How should we now live as Francis Schaffer would say. Calvin was the one God used to do that in the early days of Protestantism.

Calvin was born north of Paris in the town of Noyon on July 10, 1509. He was born Jehan Cauvin which he later latinized to Calvinus in the style of university students of the day. This later just became “Calvin.” His father was a lawyer and like so many sons in that day, Calvin followed the career of his father. In 1529 Calvin enrolled at the University of Bourges where, among other things, he learned Koine Greek which allowed him to read the New Testament in the original language.

Interestingly, it was during this time or thereabouts that Calvin was converted, most people say around 1533, perhaps under the influence of his Greek teacher Melchior Wolmar, a German Lutheran.

We are not sure of the circumstances of his conversion. Unlike Luther, he wrote little about his personal life and struggles. But he writes this about it in the preface of his commentary on Psalms:

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Christian History Magazine—Issue 12: John Calvin: Reformer, Pastor, Theologian (Conversion)

God drew me from obscure and lowly beginnings and conferred on me that most honorable office of herald and minister of the Gospel … What happened first was that by an unexpected conversion he tamed to teachableness a mind too stubborn for its years—for I was strongly devoted to the superstitions of the Papacy that nothing less could draw me from such depths of mire. And so this mere taste of true godliness that I received set me on fire with such a desire to progress that I pursued the rest of my studies more coolly, although I did not give them up altogether. Before a year had slipped by anybody who longed for a purer doctrine kept on coming to learn from me, still a beginner and a raw recruit.

It was during the persecutions of Francis I that Calvin left France for Basel, Switzerland. We’re not sure the circumstances of his departure but it’s told that when the king’s men arrived at his apartment, he was gone. (c)

It seems Calvin was a bit of an introvert whose longing was for a life of reading, writing and study, but that was not God’s plan for him. Planning to settle in the Protestant city of Strasbourg to pursue this scholarly life, Calvin was force to take a detour on his way to Strasbourg through the city of Geneva. There he met William Farel who was leading the reformation in that city.

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Farel believing they needed a man of Calvin’s intellect (he’d already written the first edition of the Institutes by then) and passion to help the church in Geneva mature, convinced Calvin to remain and become a teacher and pastor there. In fact, “convinced” is perhaps not strong enough a word. Here is Calvin describing it:

“Farel, who burned with an extraordinary zeal to advance the gospel, immediately strained every nerve to detain me. And after he learned that my heart was set upon devoting myself to private studies, and finding that entreaties were in vain, he went on to say that God would curse my retirement and the peace of study that I sought, if I withdrew and refused him my help when the need for it was so urgent. I was so terror-stricken that I abandoned the journey I had planned; but I was so sensible of my natural shyness and timidity that I would not bind myself to accept any particular office.” [b]

This was in 1536. He remained at Geneva, with only a short exile in Strasbourg from 1538 – 41 until his death in 1564, having become a leader of the reformation in Switzerland rather than the reclusive scholar he’d wanted to be. Sometimes God uses us in way we do not anticipate.

Calvin’s Institutes

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Calvin’s most notable contribution to theology is his masterpiece “Institutes of the Christian Religion.” This work is said to have influenced not just theology but “the political and spiritual landscape of the western world.” Some claim that his emphasis on congregational-community leadership fueled the rise of democracy in Europe to say nothing of the American Revolution.”[v]

Rev. Thomas Smyth in his 1856 book “Calvin and His Enemies” says:

“He taught…the spiritual independence of the church, its entire separation from civil government, and the supreme and exclusive headship of its only Lawgiver and Sovereign, the Lord Jesus Christ. These were the grand truths taught and illustrated by Calvin – truths which drew the lovers of freedom to Geneva, which sent them away burning with the thirst for liberty and republicanism which aroused the slumbering people of Europe, which convulsed France, confederated the states of Holland, revolutionized England, Presbyterianized Scotland, colonized New England and founded this great and growing republic.”[vi]

He dedicated the work to King Francis I as a kind of apologetic for French Protestants asking the king to stop persecuting them. In the preface to Francis he says:

Institutes of the Christian Religion Prefatory Address to the King of France

Your duty, most serene Prince, is, not to shut either your ears or mind against a cause involving such mighty interests as these: how the glory of God is to be maintained on the earth inviolate, how the truth of God is to preserve its dignity, how the kingdom of Christ is to continue amongst us compact and secure. The cause is worthy of your ear, worthy of your investigation, worthy of your throne.

The characteristic of a true sovereign is, to acknowledge that, in the administration of his kingdom, he is a minister of God. He who does not make his reign subservient to the divine glory, acts the part not of a king, but a robber. He, moreover, deceives himself who anticipates long prosperity to any kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of God, that is, by his divine word.

I personally think all believers should read it at least once in their lives and to that end; I’m going to provide you with a reading schedule you can use to read it in as little as three months if you’re so inclined. I’ll post it on the class resources page.

Calvin wrote the “Institutes” over many years. It started as a short summary of the Christian faith from a Protestant position and ended up in the final edition of 1559 being around a thousand pages.

In addition to the Institutes, Calvin wrote commentaries on every book of the Bible except Song of Solomon and Revelation.

Servetus

You can’t talk about John Calvin without talking about Michael Servetus. Nothing is used by those who wish to discredit Calvin more than the events around Servetus.

Michael Servetus was a heretic – in the technical definition of that word meaning one who denies one or more of the essentials of the faith. Among other things, he denied the Trinity, which places him outside the Christian faith. He...

Encyclopedia of the Reformed Faith Servetus, Michael (1511–1553)

argued that the Holy Spirit was a “power” of God, not a separate person, and that Jesus Christ was not truly divine. Servetus also denied infant baptism

The trouble with heretics, however, is that they want to hold on to their beliefs while being inside the faith. Think about how Mormons lobby to be considered Christians, they want that label but also want to hold on to beliefs incompatible with Christianity.

What happened to those labeled heretics in that time?

We still see some things as serious enough to warrant death as a punishment. The people in this era saw teaching falsely about the God of the universe as in that category. The problem with that is that God has not given the civil government ecclesiastical authority - frankly we don’t want them to have that authority. Their use of the sword, while biblically prescribed, is not intended to be used in matters of church discipline. But, again, this was a different day.

Servetus had been arrested for heresy in France by the Catholic authorities and was in prison awaiting trial. However, he escaped from prison and made his way out of France into Protestant lands. While passing through Geneva, he was recognized and arrested by the authorities there.

Calvin prepared a list of charges against Servetus and the government of Geneva conferred with other Protestant cantons – all of whom agreed that Servetus was a heretic.

The Consistory (city council) of Geneva, with whom Calvin had great influence, ordered that Servetus be burned at the stake, although Calvin argued for beheading as it was a more humane way of execution. It’s also reported that...

Christian History Magazine—Issue 12: John Calvin: Reformer, Pastor, Theologian The Servetus Affair

Calvin visited Servetus in jail and earnestly sought to persuade him of his errors. Servetus dismissed Calvin with a laugh.

Christian History Magazine—Issue 12: John Calvin: Reformer, Pastor, Theologian The Servetus Affair

The confrontation at Servetus’s trial was not the first time the two men had encountered each other. Nearly twenty years earlier, Calvin jeopardized his life by returning to a hostile Paris in order to share the gospel with a young heretic named Michael Servetus. Years later Calvin wrote, “I was even willing to risk my life to win him to our Lord, if possible.” But Servetus’s erratic behavior was evident even then. After arranging this meeting with Calvin, Servetus did not appear.

All this, of course, offends our modern sensibilities which is why many use this in attempts to discredit Calvin. However, as we’ve mentioned before, we cannot judge historical figures by the standards of our own day. The relationship between the church and the state at that time was completely different than it is today.

The state was not the church in Geneva as we saw in the earlier quote but its role was seen as protecting the church – a legitimate role in my opinion. They weren’t the same institution but they had responsibilities toward one another.

In the fourth book of the Institutes Calvin says of the civil magistrates:

“We say, therefore, that they are ordained guardians and vindicators of public innocence, modesty, honor, and tranquility, so that it should be their only study to provide for the common peace and safety.”[vii]

However, in the sixteenth century, the state’s calling to use the “power of the sword” from Romans 13 to punish evil doers was seen to extend not just to thieves and murderers but theological evil doers as well, none of whom was worse than the heretic. Heresy was kind of the theological equivalent of murder.

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In the end, Servetus was burned at the stake on October 27, 1553 atop a pile of his heretical books. His last words were recorded as “Jesus, son of the eternal God, have mercy on me.”

Calvin died in 1564 at the age of 54. His work in Geneva was carried on by Theodore Beza who was a professor of Greek at the University of Geneva but who had co-labored with Calving for several years.

[a] “Sketches from Church History” by S.M. Houghton, p. 99

[b] ibid, pp. 104-105

(c) Sketches from Church History by S.M. Houghton, p. 104

[i]The Story of Christianity (Volume II) by Justo Gonzalez, p. 46 [ii] Gonzalez, p. 49 [iii]http://www.theopedia.com/consubstantiation [iv]Gonzales, p. 50 [v]Institutes of the Christian Religion, Hendrickson Edition, Preface, p. xiv. [vi]Calvin and His Enemies by Rev. Thomas Smyth, D.D., p. 79 [vii]Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin, p. 975

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