3 Bullinger’s Model for Collective Episcopacy: Transformational Ministry in a Society Facing Final Judgment

Many of the different, burgeoning confessional churches of sixteenth-century Europe focused new energies at synod gatherings intended to reshape clerical mentality and thereby to help reform society at large. A distinctive aspect of the Zurich synod, however, lies in the innovative concept of collective episcopacy. The ‘censure’ of Zurich synod sessions involved mutual oversight with reference to dynamic teaching duties and lifestyle. Even Bullinger, Zwingli’s recognized successor as leader of the Zurich church, did not retain any privileges when the time came for mutual submission. Each and every parish pastor was to serve as a ‘bishop’, and this episcopacy only existed in the mutuality of a coordinated, collegial ministry.

In the pages of Bullinger’s personal notes for the sessions of the Zurich synod, we may observe a definite and highly influential model of Christian life. This exemplar was never identified with Bullinger himself or with the Bürgermeister or with any other individual leader, and yet Bullinger always pointed to him as the standard-bearer of stewardship in Christ’s name. Each and every Zurich pastor would have known him intimately, although he remains practically unknown among historians today. His persistent role is germane to any discussion of Christian models. He helped to guide life in an urgent era. This exemplary ‘faithful and prudent servant’ emerged in the assembly of ministers themselves. He was what they should be in their very togetherness – the ideal model for Zurich’s collective episcopacy.¹

The Zurich territorial church illustrates another variant amidst late medieval and early modern changes regarding awareness of salvific community. A Zurich Landeskirche began to take shape as ties to distant ecclesiastical courts in Constance and Mainz diminished. During the Reformation, Zurich preserved its traditional system of chapters and parishes, but the magistracy consolidated the church exclusively within their own political borders.³ Such a transformation relied on reformation in religious mentality throughout the Zurich populace. In that, the Zurich synod played a crucial role. Zwingli himself had built on synodal traditions when the first ‘reformed’ synod of Zurich assembled in April 1528,⁴ but when he fell in battle in late 1531, Zurich’s specific reformed characteristics – if not its general evangelical identity – fluttered in a state of volatility. As an illustration of this tension, the Zurich council felt compelled to warn their clergy against interfering henceforth in political matters.⁵ Any abiding significance of the emerging Zwinglian tradition depended on astute leaders who could strengthen the reformed synod, a body conceived to defend the integrity of a theological vision while also guaranteeing a remarkable degree of clerical involvement at the sociopolitical level. Heinrich Bullinger and Leo Jud sketched a draft of a clerical and synodal constitution that the Zurich council approved in November 1532. It was to remain a foundational document of the Zurich church for centuries to come.⁶

As codified in this Prediger- und Synodalordnung, the entire Zurich clergy of city and countryside convened along with eight members of the Large Council and the city clerk twice a year on the Tuesdays after Mayday (1 May) and after St Gall (16 October). Sessions were held behind the closed doors of the town hall, while the chief representative of the clergy (from 1532 to 1575, Bullinger) and the Bürgermeister co-presided. Following a prayer of invocation and a roll call of expected attendees, newly elected clergy took their formal oaths of allegiance to the Zurich council. The magistrates present offered advice and reproof in their role as political guardians of communal salvation. The lengthiest portion of synod sessions then came when each member of Zurich’s clergy submitted to mutual, episcopal discipline (censura). The assembled clergy functioned as a collective bishop overseeing and, where necessary, correcting all ministers and teachers with respect to teaching and lifestyle (doctrina et vita).⁷ These closed-door sessions functioned as an accepted venue for coordinating Zurich’s existence as a Christian society.

Bullinger jotted down preparatory synodal speeches, prayers, keywords and diagrams between 1535 and his death in 1575.⁸ It is an indication of the relatively late flowering of Bullinger scholarship that these manuscripts are only now receiving more than passing attention. Related documents such as Bullinger’s officially sanctioned case-by-case arguments before the council (the Fürträge)⁹ and his minutes of the synod sessions themselves (the Synodalakten)¹⁰ have already received thorough attention. Such secondary works, however, have barely had occasion to do more than acknowledge the existence of this other source material. Besides my own transcription of the Sermones completed in Zurich during the year 2005–06, there exists no edited or otherwise printed version of the text.

The Sermones Synodales are catalogued as Manuscript D 220 in the Handschriftenabteilung of the Zurich Zentralbibliothek. This bound collection contains Bullinger’s notes on almost all of the 81 semi-annual synod sessions from 1535 to his death. To be sure, the eighteenth-century title ‘Sermones Synodales’ is misleading. This volume consists not so much of sermons proper as of Bullinger’s personal, often fragmentary notes. What we do possess in the Sermones, however, are written thoughts not contained elsewhere. As prescribed by the Synodalordnung, Bullinger prepared exhortations in order to introduce and then to execute the clerical exercise of censura. He consistently reminded the assembled pastors of their duty to interpret Scripture in their capacity as a unified corps of clerical leaders with special reference to their contemporary circumstances. Great significance for the historiography of sixteenth-century Zurich derives from the way that Bullinger’s Sermones Synodales reveal the reformer ‘reading’ his contemporary context through an eschatological lens that focused on the perspective of a collective episcopacy. Through this lens, Bullinger hoped that he and all his colleagues would together envision themselves in the form of a ‘faithful and prudent servant’ ministering within the Zurich household of faith.

Zurichers had grown familiar with Catholic polemics that defended mass priests on the basis of Old Testament descriptions of the sacrificial duties of Levitical priesthood. Consonant with much of Peter Blickle’s thesis concerning communalization and the ways in which it led certain parishes into anticlericalism, Zurich evangelicals typically preferred terms like ‘pastor’ (Pfarrer).¹² They had especially embraced the word-oriented ministry of the ‘preacher’ (praedicant) as the reformed alternative to a sacramental ‘priesthood’ that they perceived as having failed them. Early evangelicals were deeply suspicious of ecclesiastical pretension to private dignities, legal immunities and the much-touted indelible character. The word ‘priest’ indicated in the minds of many at the time precisely the sort of churchly representative whose part in the papal monarchy stood opposed to the office of proclamation within a local Christian community. The very constitution of the Zurich synod had relied exclusively on the word ‘preacher’, and it had drawn mostly on New Testament passages when making positive assertions for clerical office, reserving the term ‘priest’ for the general identity of all believers (that is, not just ministers) participating in the life of Christ. Mention of Old Testament verses using the term ‘priest’ such as Jeremiah 2 and 23 and Ezekiel 13 served the strictly negative function of condemning priestly corruption.¹³

Zurich reformers did not, of course, intend to dissolve specialized ministry altogether into the generalized priesthood of the baptized. Much of the earliest Reformation use of Old Testament precedents for evangelical ministry had centred on the office of ‘prophet’. Bullinger himself had succinctly repeated this position in a celebrated oration at the Grossmünsterstift in January 1532.¹⁴ The ‘prophet’ must be able to proclaim the word in an essentially unified office whether derived from the Old or the New Testaments.¹⁵ Bullinger’s oration of January 1532 had concluded with a defense of the recently deceased Zwingli as an exemplary ‘prophet’. Early evangelical precedent notwithstanding, Bullinger soon set about subtly yet significantly expanding the field of imagery. From the beginning of the Sermones Synodales, he isolated and developed a fragment of Zwinglian tradition involving the term ‘bishop’ that possibly braced his hearers for an even more striking new direction in constructive imagery.¹⁶

New emphasis on ordained ministers nevertheless maintained organic connection with the Reformation’s beginnings. Appreciation for the priesthood of all believers was fertile ground on which the particularized ministry emerged. Elaboration and development better characterize the path than any supposed rejection of earlier evangelical impulses. Bullinger vehemently opposed any return to a caste of self-referent sacramental guarantors. The Zurich ‘priesthood’ must be established for the protection and nurture of their parishioners through oversight of the moral attributes of humility, truth, equity and wisdom. Zwingli and other evangelical path-finders had already effectively consolidated Zurich opinion against the priesthood of old by insisting on the priesthood of all. Bullinger now saw the positive potential of a re-formed priesthood as a special corps of mentality-shapers, turning people of every parish from iniquity by word and example in their office as God’s messengers.

Bullinger was to cite the prophetic conclusion of the Old Testament canon 12 times throughout his Sermones.²¹ One notices immediately that all synodal references to Malachi are drawn exclusively from the second chapter, and often they include verbatim quotation of all or part of verses one through nine. This passage begins with God’s direct address to the ‘priests’ and goes on to outline their duties with reference to the ideal example of Levi juxtaposed with the offenses of a priesthood that has corrupted its covenant responsibility. The appropriateness for Bullinger’s purposes in the synod is apparent. In Malachi, the divine command holds ceremonial rites in opprobrium. Levi, by contrast, is not presented as a sacramental guarantor, but as a model of upright conduct. The proper priest is commended for studying the Word of the Lord and for turning his people away from iniquity by example of life and instruction. This is a near perfect parallel with Bullinger’s frequently repeated outlines of ‘episcopal’ criteria for doctrina et vita.

In some ways even more surprising were Bullinger’s synodal references to Hosea 6: ‘Wicked priests are a snare for the ruin of the people’.²² On closer inspection, one notices that this slight paraphrase is actually not from Hosea 6, as Bullinger consistently asserts in the Sermones, but rather from Hosea 9:8.²³ Bullinger has also added the phrase ‘wicked priests’ (mali sacerdotes) to clarify the identity of the principal evildoers who persecute the prophet at the time of imminent Judgment. This is consistent with the message of Hosea and again serves the typical reformed polemic of pitting prophet against priest. The surprise consists in the fact that Bullinger nearly always deliberately links his references to Hosea with Malachi. Unwilling to give a simple negative condemnation of corruption, Bullinger adds positive alternatives, even for the priestly model.

The ‘nations’ (gentes) in question plainly saw the systematic need for a priesthood. There were Egyptian priests, Babylonian Chaldeans, Persian magi, Indian gymnosophists and Gallic druids. It bears repeating here that Bullinger is not speaking negatively. It is not a case of saying something like, ‘look at all these superstitious priesthoods and how Roman priesthood is just another version of that same evil’. On the contrary, Bullinger suggests that these pagan societies actually provided a social model that surpassed the Roman church in a positive way. At least the pagan ‘priests’ preserved diligent study of special knowledge in and for their people. Bullinger claims that Roman Catholic priests had long since ceased to fulfill this necessary office in Christian communities.

Bullinger certainly does not in any way posit that the pagan priesthoods functioned with soteriological efficacy, but he does point to the social necessity of priesthood per se. This illustrates an important early modern trend of consolidating political groups through their particular religious social structures. Just as a Gallic druid would make no sense in the Persian civilization, so also the reformed ‘priesthood’ of Zurich must exercise their office among their own people as defined by the state of Zurich. The assembled parish preachers of the Zurich synod must function as stewards of the sacred knowledge that should shape the lives of every Zuricher. In a critical way, this defines the Zuricher as such. The collective priesthood not only operates within new political contexts, but in exercising the office of proclamation in various capacities within the parishes, such a priesthood ensures the self-awareness of Zurich as a distinctive Christian society.

The evangelical re-formation and reclamation of ‘priesthood’ under Bullinger’s guidance was not, of course, a matter of mere political calculation. It was a theological model. We see this in another critical exegetical underpinning that becomes apparent in the Sermones Synodales after Bullinger has begun his sermon series on Jeremiah.²⁵ At the synod in May 1559, Bullinger quotes Jeremiah 23:9–15.²⁶ This passage serves as a concluding exhortation following yet another synodal explication of the proper clerical duties of doctrina et vita. In the passage one hears Bullinger’s condemnation of priest and prophet alike. It is a significant shift to focus excoriation on the prophets – the typical evangelical heroes and models from the Old Testament.²⁷ Here Bullinger explicitly transcends the customary evangelical contrast between the terms priest and prophet: his marginal notes even single out verse 11, with his emphatic reminder that priest and prophet are ‘hypocrites’ when living in sinful ways. They have both failed to live in accord with an office that should provide a light of guidance for their people but which has become darkness.

The pairing, even if negatively, helps to collapse the priest-prophet dichotomy. The prophet thus ceases to present a reformed alternative to the priest; rather, both terms can be viewed as positive or negative reflections of an essentially unified office. Bullinger continues for the remainder of the Sermones to link positively prophetic and priestly attributes. Bullinger’s exegetical foundation has melded Old Testament prophet and priest together in his exhortations regarding the ministers’ duty for life and teaching. Failure to serve uprightly in the office of prophet/priest would bring destruction upon the entire community. In such a case the ‘overseer’ would be guilty of not keeping watch. In his own summary to the passage, Bullinger highlights the divine threat of a ‘day of visitation’ (dies visitationis). Again, at the level of early modern social structure, we see Bullinger’s conscious zeal to form ministers whose roles make or break the common life of Zurichers.

A final structural parallel came to the fore also in the synod session of October 1568.³⁰ The exegetical clarifications beginning with Malachi in 1536 and followed up with connections to Hosea and Jeremiah in the 1550s and 1560s, as well as the social historical turn of the mid- to late 1550s had already demonstrated positive appreciation for the office of priesthood in the structure of society in general.³¹ The people of God as exemplified in Old Testament precedents were locked in a conflict between the few good prophets and priests and the onslaught of corrupt ones. Bullinger was raising the stakes to the furthest degree when he said that these exemplars of wickedness – whether cultic devotees of Baal in the Old Testament or Pharisees in the New – were not simply sporadic agents of error; they were positively ‘priests of Satan’.³²

Bullinger summed up his synodal exhortations to say that Zurich must act through its religious establishment as an instantiation of the only true priesthood, that of Christ. Zurich clergy were to be priests for the priesthood of all believers. Bullinger seems to have settled his terminological progression from prophet-vs-priest, through the joint prophet-priest, to a final emphasis upon something we may view as most fundamentally a priesthood with prophetic qualities. This was not a quasi-Manichean perspective of eternal struggle between forces of good and forces of evil, but Bullinger clearly did believe – and fostered the mentality among his peers – that all of human history until final Judgment consisted in a colossal cosmic conflict with cultic dimensions. Bullinger tirelessly promoted the significance inherent in the social structure of right ministry because the End was near.

Luther’s paucity of commentary on Revelation is well known. Insofar as eschatology played a part in his thinking, it served the largely negative role of anti-papal antichristology. Melanchthon, for his part, did indeed edit a work of world history with eschatological ramifications in 1532, but the treatise served largely astrological purposes. Melanchthon and the related, flourishing Lutheran industry of practica (a sort of almanac) focused attention upon the dialectic of reading through faith the natural signs of imminent cosmic breakdown. This involved a sort of biding of time, rather than any positive, eschatologically motivated reworking of political life.³⁴ Only in the build-up to the Schmalkaldic War did Lutherans begin to write with more reliance on a composite picture drawn from Daniel 7 and Revelation, but even then the political dimension had more to do with temporal conservatism rather than with any vision for a new society in the here and now.³⁵

If Lutherans came somewhat late to the eschatological discussion, the Genevan Calvinists were even later. Calvin, famously, never wrote or preached on Revelation.³⁶ Even when he did write a commentary on Daniel in 1561, he steadfastly refused to advance any connection with Revelation or any eschatological significance whatsoever in Daniel’s vision of beasts. Calvin did not comment here upon papal and/or Islamic Antichrists and end times. He interpreted Daniel’s prophecies as reaching at most to the time of Julius Caesar, and thus not bearing on any discussion of signs of the times of world history after Christ’s first Advent.³⁷ Not that Calvin spurned political ramifications, but these had more to do with humanistic appeals to ancient precedents (which Calvin marshalled in favour of a sort of tempered aristocracy) than with prophecies for a transformed Christendom.³⁸

Zurich occupied a quite different place on the Protestant map. Zwingli’s Erasmian tendencies notwithstanding, Zurich quickly became a known centre of intellectual and pastoral appreciation of the eschatological aspects of Scripture. This trend became most pronounced after Zwingli’s death – itself a nearly apocalyptic shock to many Swiss evangelicals. Already by 1542, for example, Leo Jud had prepared a paraphrase of Revelation. Its publication was widely influential, in part because in some cases Jud’s own paraphrase of Revelation was inserted into editions of Erasmus’ Paraphrases, even though the Dutch humanist himself had deliberately chosen not to render such a paraphrase.³⁹ Jud did not make much of typical identifications of papacy as Antichrist and he avoided millennial speculation. Nevertheless, he cultivated the book’s pastoral potential for fostering a society noted for right worship opposed to idolatry. For Jud, this also entailed praise of the reformed magistracy of Zurich.

The brilliant Zurich scholar Theodore Bibliander lectured on Revelation between 1543 and 1544 and collected his thoughts in a 1545 publication entitled Relatio fidelis. Bibliander’s concerns did not stand opposed to Jud’s pastoral emphasis on spiritual formation, but he focused principally upon what we may call more ‘academic’ issues of canonicity, authorship and clarity. Bibliander also, quite significantly, read Revelation as a source of insight for categorizing world history. There are certain echoes of Franciscan tradition in terms of an explicit perception of Christendom standing in a pivotal, or even final, phase of human history. In a fairly striking interpretation, however, Bibliander identified the angel of Revelation 20 not in the tradition of Franciscan angel-popes, but as the establishment of a literal millennium by the ministry of Paul the apostle.⁴⁰ The papal Antichrist first arose as a usurper in the Carolingian period 666 years after John the Evangelist wrote his Revelation; this Antichrist was unleashed most fully following the literal, post-Pauline millennium, in the era of Gregorian papacy and Crusades;⁴¹ and the papal Antichrist was rebound somewhat in 1429 by the resolution of the Great Schism 666 years after the outbreak of popes in the Carolingian period. Since 1429, Bibliander concluded, humanity had entered its final, if indeterminate, phase before Judgment.

Just as early evangelicals had pitted their notions of ministry against the negative alternative of (Romanist) priesthood, the eschatological profile of evangelical life often relied in contrast with that most antagonistic of models – the Antichrist. For Swiss evangelicals after 1531, however, antichristology had become fraught with political difficulty. The Zurich council was concerned that any publication unambiguously linking Antichrist and the papacy could be construed as a breach of the terms of the binding Peace of Kappel. Bullinger’s Hundred Sermons of 1557, for example, were shunted to Basel and printed in Latin.⁴⁶ Bullinger was capable of political shrewdness in his treatises. The more direct forum of the synod, however, reveals an eschatological model of Christian life that was not restricted to canny theological publications. The Sermones Synodales are particularly helpful in demonstrating the way that an eschatological framework persistently influenced Bullinger’s agenda for reforming Zurich as a Christian society. Romanist priesthood challenged Bullinger to reclaim a model of reformed priesthood, just as a Romanist Antichrist (as priest to Satan) elicited development of the model of the ‘faithful and prudent servant’ (as priest to God in Christ).

Aurelio A. Garcia Archilla has clearly presented Bullinger’s operative parallel between the period of degeneracy of religion just before Christ’s first Advent and the period of human history that would directly precede the second Advent.⁴⁷ The New Testament itself was seen in this light as a sort of quasi- or proto-eschaton, a crystallization of truth following the momentous intercanonical pause between Malachi and Matthew. Bullinger’s critical reliance on those two books in his Sermones Synodales confirms such an observation. Bullinger found insight for the mission of shaping Zurich as a covenant community in the historical parallel of anticipatory interlude (that is, following the Pauline millennium and now at the verge of the definitive eschaton in which the church was to be fully realized).⁴⁸ A second, related observation by Garcia Archilla also concerns the canonical in-between-time, specifically Daniel’s prediction of restoration. Bullinger held this prophecy to have been partially fulfilled when the Maccabees restored proper religious community despite the persecutions by Antiochus. Bullinger insisted that Daniel was to be finally vindicated in the period before Christ’s second Advent in the work of reforming society despite papal persecutions of the worshiping community.⁴⁹

Covenant is one aspect of the broader eschatological framework apparent throughout Bullinger’s synodal preparations. It is precisely in his conviction that world history had entered the final phase of end times that Bullinger found his most urgent hortatory impulse. One could perhaps enter here again into the scholarly dispute concerning Bullinger’s putative ‘central axis’. Mark Burrows has made an important contribution in highlighting the reformer’s link between soteriology and ethics. Burrows argues that Bullinger does not separate justification from sanctification; the former is a status while the latter is an experiential process. Bullinger’s reforming career revolves around praxis pietatis in terms of participation in Christ.⁵³ Burrows thus helps to clarify the celebrated ethical focus of the Zurich Reformation.⁵⁴ I would further suggest that soteriological ethics is not so much a systematic elaboration around the doctrine of sanctification as it is an expression of an eschatological model.

The Sermones emphatically refute any assumption that visions of an imminent consummation of human history on the one hand and ethics in the here and now on the other hand were somehow mutually exclusive. An imminent End did not moot the mission of reforming Christian Zurich any more than justification mooted sanctification. On the contrary, it energized that mission. Bullinger’s treatment of the covenant with Levi in Malachi bears more than a hint of the language of those who are said to have been made ‘priests’ to govern in Christ’s authority in Revelation 1, 5, and especially 20. Bullinger did not, to be sure, make explicit references to Revelation in the Sermones Synodales. But scriptural images anchored to Malachi 2 suggested the eschatological nexus: abomination among God’s people, a heightened emphasis on renewed covenant mediated through priests for a priesthood of all believers and an understanding that the day of the Lord is at hand. Bullinger’s praxis pietatis was an eschatological mentality that directed the energies of a covenanted priesthood to reform Zurich as a Christian society.

The times called forth (excitant) vigilant action rather than any sort of other-worldly fixation that would neglect the nitty-gritty of institutional life together.⁵⁸ Accommodating an evangelical proclamation entailed dynamic response. Building around words such as accommodare, Bullinger consistently underscored his conviction that proclamation of Christ must be fitted to the particular circumstances of contemporary Zurich. Given his eschatologically freighted term tempus, this exhortation was no mere rhetorical strategy, but a reckoning with the momentous stage of salvation history.⁵⁹ The Zurich clergy were to ‘recall the times and therefore their duty as ministers. Such times [had] been predicted by the apostles and prophets, and there [was] no remedy except the Word. Action [was] to be prudent’.⁶⁰ Zurich ministers could – must! – look around and see the predicted times and be all the more motivated to apply the Word to their society.⁶¹

Even though the days are evil, wrote Bullinger in probable reference to Ephesians 5:16, nevertheless God’s ministers must work to redeem the time.⁶² The final overthrow of Antichrist’s reign will not occur until Christ’s return. Meanwhile, the proclamation of Christ already participates in such a victory.⁶³ Bruce Gordon has rightly highlighted the ‘realized eschatology’ at work in Bullinger’s theology.⁶⁴ Watchfulness was indeed a duty of every faithful Zuricher. Far from passive waiting, this watchfulness involved their Lord’s in-breaking into a transformed lifestyle. Gordon’s analysis must be complemented by recognition of the social dimension. Etymologically and exegetically, Bullinger characterized ‘watchfulness’ as a particular obligation of reformed ‘episcopacy’, and all that culminated in a reclaimed notion of priesthood. Bullinger knew full well that a disciplined corps of ministers was necessary to lead the consolidation of a new mentality regarding the nature of life together in a transformed corpus christianum. ‘Realized’ eschatology of the individual and of the society at large was all a foretaste deriving its flavour from the wafts of eschaton. Zurich itself was to be a proleptic instantiation of the universal reign of God, even as all of Christendom awaited the Second Coming.

A crucial, operative dialectic emerges between evil signs of times on one hand and transformative reformational agenda on the other. Bullinger maintained the following perspective: as evils increase, there is more need to reform. As reform begins, evil steps up its assault, and thus conscientious coordination among institutions of Christian society is all the more important to safeguard that reform. Bullinger placed foundational emphasis upon the notion that the ‘archenemy of our salvation’ seeks to overwhelm ‘true worship’ by instigating social disorder not only ‘in our times’ but also whenever and wherever the world begins to repent, improve and seek God’s will. Ministers of the Christian parishes were urged to cooperate with civil authorities via the synod in order to increase Christian virtues. This could involve, for example, reinforcing parish structures to the exclusion of irregular field churches or chapels. Social disorder was a particular sign of times linked to the Evil One and as such indicated the need for upbuilding the full panoply of Christian society.⁶⁵ In an era well-noted for threats of peasant rebellions and discords that could render a population vulnerable to all sorts of economic and/or military catastrophe, organizing the reformational struggle against fateful Satanic unordnungen (disarray) and uffruoren (tumults) concerned political elites as much as it did the clergy. Historians have long noted that every leader across early modern Europe evinced particular fear of mobs and disorder. Bullinger channelled that fear into an eschatological category that simultaneously fostered positive civic ramifications.

Matthew 24 supplied Bullinger with the basis for his favourite model of Christian life in the context of the Zurich synod.⁶⁶ This chapter features Jesus’ apocalyptic prophesy with explicit reference to Daniel, followed by a series of parabolic vignettes illustrating the sudden in-breaking of the End. Over and over again Bullinger recalled before his fellow clergy the fidelis servus et prudens whom the Lord has placed in oversight over His household so that such a minister may provide nourishment in tempore (in due time). It is this servant whom the Lord deems faithfully diligent in such provision when He quickly returns. Bullinger everywhere sees this text as confirmation for the particular, clerical role in social upbuilding. The cibum or alimentum that a pastor is to provide is nothing short of Christ himself, the bread of life.⁶⁷ The ‘episcopal’ duties for doctrina et vita match perfectly with the two adjectives of the good servant of the end times.⁶⁸ Doctrina involves ‘faithfulness’ far beyond mere propositional content, and vita reflects the ‘prudence’ of a lifestyle of vigilant administration in God’s household.

Since the synod featured the purpose of moral oversight, it would be easy to read in the synod records a fairly prosaic process of attempting to replace tavern-going with study and holy living among the Zurich ministers. Anyone familiar with the Acta Synodi is struck by the repetitiveness and naïveté of the following scenario: a minister stands accused of drunkenness and is told henceforth to avoid such evils by filling his time instead with books. Given the relative novelty of cracking down on (ab-) use of alcohol – even in ritually driven occasions – one may not be wrong to read some overtones of discontent on the part of the assembled ministers between the lines of Bullinger’s repeated elaborations concerning proper clerical sobriety. Bullinger remarked that the Apostle Paul did indeed encourage ministerial hospitality, but, the Zurich reformer dryly added, this does not legitimate the excessive ‘hospitality’ of those who settle into cozy taverns. ‘Quidam nimis hospitales. Kummend nit uß dem wirtzhuß’.⁷² Modern scholars have generally read such statements through the perspective of a dramatic reformation of society’s moral mentality. Through highlighting the significant ramifications for social transformation, they have mitigated the apparent prosaic quality. The Sermones Synodales provide much material for such analysis. Bullinger frequently combated abuse of alcohol with reference to transforming the traditional mentality of holy revelry surrounding feast days and special liturgical events such as baptisms, weddings and church consecrations.

If, however, we look closer at the theme of drunkenness in the Sermones Synodales, we also find a persistent, systematic illustration of Bullinger’s thoroughly eschatological framework.⁷³ This source material is useful far beyond the censorial protocols of the Acta Synodi. The Sermones testify to Bullinger’s personal perspective as he prepared exhortations meant to transform his colleagues. In the light of impending Judgment, we see that Bullinger’s model for the ‘good servant’ of Matthew 24:45–51 always had its foil in the ‘bad servant’, just as his reclaimed notion of priesthood stood out in opposition to what he took to be the patent corruption of Romanist priesthood. The fidelis servus et prudens provided the positive ideal for clerical stewardship, while the servus malus ‘drank with the drunkards’.

From the outset of the Sermones Synodales, Bullinger tells his colleagues that the ministerial lifestyle is to be sana non ebria (holy, not drunk).⁷⁴ Inculcating holiness involves specific contrast to a full gamut of spiritual associations with drunkenness. As one may imagine, Bullinger offers no shortage of explicit scriptural references to condemnation of abuse of alcohol – be they in terms of proper ‘priesthood’ (here relying largely on Leviticus 10), or in the related context of discussing Paul’s ‘episcopal’ hallmarks (especially in 1Timothy 3). Daniel, who always provides Bullinger with the example of the Old Testament’s eschatological prophet par excellence, is very pointedly said to have abstained from alcohol.⁷⁵ Bullinger is not focusing on moral reform for its own sake, or even strictly for the sake of improving society in a general sense. He sees a condition of corrupt humanity on the cusp of Judgment. Drunkenness abounds precisely when love has grown cold, just as Christ said it would in the Last Days.⁷⁶ Or again, ‘the ground itself is corrupt and drunk just as in the times of Noah and Lot’.⁷⁷ Or with reference to Jeremiah 23, Bullinger argued that it is drunkenness that marks a time when prophet and priest alike are corrupt, and when society has become like Sodom and Gomorrah facing Judgment (Dies visitationis).⁷⁸

The synodal montage of eschatological images of drunkenness comes back again and again to the parable of servants from Matthew 24. The servus malus, Bullinger reiterates, is noted for his ‘drunkenness’ right when the Lord returns, finds him thus and cuts him to pieces. Bullinger exhorted the Zurich clergy to follow the model of the sober steward of heavenly bread for the sake of Zurich society as an instantiation of the divine economy. The fidelis servus et prudens was a special exemplar of the kind of dynamic ‘watchfulness’ that Bullinger everywhere associated with the collegial office of episcopacy. This kind of collective bishop watches over the Christian community, while also looking out ahead to the future reckoning of that office of stewardship. Bullinger does not sketch elaborate visions of apocalyptic cataclysm in his Sermones Synodales, but the eschatological colouring is unmistakable. ‘Drunkenness’ is, to be sure, a moral fault and even a concomitant of corrupt papal religion (as pinned to ‘superstitious’ revelries). Much more gravely, it is a reflection of spiritual forces that hasten toward Judgment along with Satan, Antichrist, and all iterations of the bad servant.⁷⁹ Bullinger addressed the need for reformation by pointing to an eschatological model of collective episcopacy overseeing Zurich society. This model of Christian faith and lifestyle embodied the message of Zurich’s evangelical transformation. Zwingli’s successor modified the rhetoric of Zurich’s reformed office of ‘prophet’ as a prophetic priesthood, whose sober vigilance formed a collective espiscopacy and whose urgency in the here and now sprang from the imminence of the Second Coming.