1.5 Conclusion

1.5 Conclusion

Despite the doctrine’s name, Ulrich Zwingli was the first theologian in the Reformation to articulate the extra Calvinisticum. Motivated by his emphasis on Christ as the sole mediator of salvation and rejection of a corporeal presence in the Eucharist, Zwingli contended that the body of Christ has ascended beyond the earthly sphere and resides in heaven, while Christ is divinely present everywhere. For Zwingli this doctrine secures the integrity of Christ’s human nature, which he understood as the only hope of Christian access to God and provided support for his understanding of the Eucharist. After Luther’s direct engagement in the eucharistic controversy, Zwingli utilized the extra as an argument against and an alternative to Luther’s doctrine of the ubiquity of Christ’s human nature. Scholarship on Zwingli and on the extra Calvinisticum touch lightly on the extra within his work, but no scholar has recounted the doctrine’s origination within the eucharistic controversy or Zwingli’s motivation for this theological position.

Zwingli is considered the third man of the Reformation. Because he was overshadowed by such monumental figures as Luther and Calvin, Zwingli has never received the broad scholarly attention that his position at the headwaters of the Reformation may warrant. He is often presented as the antithesis to Luther’s thesis or to Calvin’s synthesis. According to a typical narrative, Luther represents the paradigmatic reformer, Erasmus the paradigmatic humanist, and Calvin the paradigmatic Reformed theologian. When compared to these, Zwingli comes up short: not humanist enough for the likes of Erasmus, with his style and rhetoric not warranting the full title, nor systematic, theological, or pastoral enough for the likes of Calvin and The Institutes of the Christian Religion, and lacking the prophetic punch and radical christocentrism of Luther’s excoriations of ecclesial abuse and theologia crucis. Owing to this secondary status, Zwingli has rarely been studied in his own right as a theologian of particular interest or power. His place, however, as a founder of the Reformed tradition and his combination of humanist, theological, and philosophical thought calls for study on his own terms to ascertain his contributions to the Reformation.

Zwingli’s reforming career spanned only eight years before his battlefield death in 1531, but in this time he brought the Reformation to Zürich, laid the foundations for what would become the Reformed tradition, and left a body of writing that would influence the Reformation’s second generation. Zwingli was born in Wildhaus, Switzerland, on January 1, 1484, less than two months after Luther. Recognized as a gifted student, Zwingli matriculated at Vienna in the fall of 1498. Here he was exposed to the new humanist learning and “the scholasticism of the ‘via antiqua,’ the ‘realism’ of Aquinas and Duns Scotus.” His education in both the humanist and via antiqua traditions continued at the University of Basel, where he studied from 1502 to 1506, attaining the level of master of arts. Humanism and the via antiqua exercised a deep influence on Zwingli’s later thought and set him apart from Luther, who was trained in the via moderna, the nominalist tradition, and was ambivalent toward humanism.

After leaving Basel, Zwingli began a career as a parish priest, first in Glarus and then in Einsiedeln, where he would serve for the next decade, until 1518. Besides his clerical duties, he spent much of his time in humanistic study, reading classical authors and church fathers, most significantly Augustine, and learning Greek and Hebrew. The greatest influence on Zwingli in this period was Erasmus’s Greek New Testament of 1516, which he acquired immediately after its publication. Zwingli would credit his reading of the New Testament in the original language for his conversion to the evangelical cause, which he stressed was independent from Luther, although scholars emphasize a more gradual development from 1516 to 1522. Erasmus’s writing also deepened Zwingli’s understanding of humanism, discipleship to Christ, and an emphasis on the internal over the external, although Zwingli later broke with Erasmus over free will, the Lord’s Supper, and the extent of ecclesial reform.

On December 27, 1518, Zwingli was appointed preacher at the Grössmunster in Zürich, where he would serve until his death on the fields of Kappel. He preached a sweeping reform, based only on Scripture, that cast out everything that, in his estimation, moved away from pure religion. This broader emphasis distinguishes Zwingli’s project of reform from Luther’s more focused emphasis on justification. Eminent Zwingli scholar Gottfried Wilhelm Locher helpfully characterizes this difference: “Luther’s Reformation was directed against the Judaistic heresy. For him, the alternative to faith is works. Zwingli’s Reformation was directed against the false doctrine of pagans. For him, the alternative to faith is every kind of idolatry, ceremony or traditio humana (man-made tradition).” With gradual gains from 1519 to 1522, Zwingli secured his reform agenda for Zürich at the First Zürich Disputation on January 29, 1523. At this public debate, helped by friends and council members, he secured the right for evangelical preaching in the city. The First Zürich Disputation marked a decisive moment both in the Swiss Reformation, as Zürich took a major step down the path of reform, and in Zwingli’s career, as he became the leading public figure of this project in the city and the broader Swiss lands, a position of both privilege and peril. Zwingli emerged as the leading Swiss representative of the Reformation’s first generation among many gifted and skilled leaders, such as Johannes Oecolampadius, Leo Jud, and William Farel. The most significant of these figures for the present study is Oecolampadius, the reformer of Basel. Trained in both scholastic theology and humanism, Oecolampadius rose to prominence by assisting Erasmus in editing the Greek New Testament and stumping for reform as a professor at the University of Basel from 1522. Oecolampadius would be Zwingli’s friend, compatriot, and collaborator in reforming the Swiss church and in debates with Luther, serving alongside Zwingli as representative of the Swiss party at Marburg.

More reformist than Erasmus and more humanist than Luther, Zwingli offered a different and more far-reaching program of reform. In some ways Zwingli was much more radical than Luther and more restrained than the Anabaptist movement. He would set the tone for what would become the Reformed tradition, especially through his influence on Bullinger, Vermigli, and to a lesser degree Calvin. Zwingli’s formulations regarding the Eucharist, worship, images, sanctification, law, and the relationship of faith and reason would also lay a foundation for Christian living and theology distinct from both Lutherans and Roman Catholics. Perhaps Zwingli’s most overlooked contribution to the later Reformed distinctiveness was his christology. In this chapter I will narrate how Zwingli’s christology took the first step in the formation of the full doctrine of the so-called extra Calvinisticum, leading up to his showdown with Luther at Marburg.

Scholars often assert that the early expression of the extra Calvinisticum has its roots in the eucharistic controversy between Luther and Zwingli in the 1520s; however, they offer little to no analysis of the rationale for or development of Zwingli’s articulation of the doctrine. In The Son of God Beyond the Flesh, Andrew McGinnis presents a brief analysis of the conflict over ideas connected to the extra between Luther and Zwingli at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. According to McGinnis, Zwingli responds to Luther’s claims of a bodily presence in the Eucharist “on the basis of texts that speak of Christ’s true humanity, that Christ ‘possesses a finite humanity’ and so his body must be in only one place.” Beyond this McGinnis offers no insight into how the extra relates to Zwingli’s project as a reformer, in what work it first emerged, what arguments were proposed to support it, and how it developed over the course of Zwingli’s career. This paucity of reflection is present throughout scholarship on the extra itself. Scholars acknowledge the concept in Zwingli’s thought but quickly move on to other concerns, most often the place of the extra in Calvin.

While Zwingli has been a background player in scholarship on the extra, the doctrine has received only minor attention within Zwingli scholarship itself. Locher, for instance, offhandedly notes the full formation of the extra in Zwingli’s thought but does not discuss its larger place in Zwingli’s theology. In his discussion of the person of Christ in The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli, W. P. Stephens likewise notes no connection between Zwingli and the concept of the extra. In addition, Locher and Stephens offer conflicting understandings of the motivation behind Zwingli’s christology. Locher argues for the controlling importance of Christ’s human nature, and Stephens stresses the divine. I contend that Zwingli privileges neither the human nor the divine nature in his doctrine of Christ or the extra, but the mediatorial office of Christ worked out through the logic of satisfaction. Zwingli’s key concern in both christology and the doctrine of the extra is to do justice to the integrity of both natures, which he sees as essential to the gospel itself.

In addition to filling out the story of the extra’s emergence in Zwingli’s thought, I will address a recurrent criticism of Zwingli’s theology that is then genetically or genealogically applied to the extra. Historical theological study of the doctrine of the extra has not always been sufficiently disentangled from the polemics of the sixteenth-century debate, at times clouding the historical account of Zwingli’s theology. In seeking to clarify Zwingli’s theological rationale for the extra, I will attend to a common assessment of his understanding of Christ and the extra—namely, that he offers a christology that is fundamentally Nestorian.

This critique emerges primarily from Lutheran opponents of either the doctrine of the extra specifically or of Reformed theology more generally. The Nestorian criticism is part of a common scholarly trope that sets Zwingli’s christology in an inferior relation to the teaching of Luther. These charges, however, are rarely worked out in detail or with substantial engagement with either Zwingli’s own texts or secondary scholarship on him. The work of Joar Haga is the sole exception to this tendency. For instance, Haga summarizes the Lutheran critique well:

[Zwingli’s] inability to keep spirit and flesh in an intimate union makes him a threat towards the Christology of Luther. . . . The spiritualism of Zwingli downgrades the external element in the experience of faith, and places the risen Christ in heaven. By the figure alleosis, Zwingli restricts the divine properties as applied to the human nature; particularly the death of Christ is restricted to the human nature. In Luther’s view, these premises lead Zwingli to destroy the union of the natures.

Brian Lugioyo makes a similar connection in his treatment of Luther’s sacramentology:

When Zwingli appealed to John 6:63 as an argument against the benefits of Christ’s bodily presence in the bread and the wine, he highlighted the degree to which he was willing to distinguish the two natures of Christ. . . . Zwingli emphasized the divine nature of the Christ over his human nature, and in so doing, Luther saw Zwingli as dividing the person of Christ.

A common outline of this criticism can be observed in these two texts, which represent a more general criticism of Zwingli’s theology. Zwingli’s understanding of the Eucharist demonstrates a dualistic ontology between physical and nonphysical reality. This dualistic ontology has caused Zwingli to emphasize the distinctiveness of Christ’s two natures to the extent that they are separated and the person divided. His use of alloiosis in particular, his understanding of how properties of Christ’s natures are predicated of the person, is said to perpetuate this error.

The criticism charges Zwingli with the ancient heresy of Nestorianism, such that he emphasizes the distinction between the two natures of Christ so much that their unity is negated. One might summarize the Nestorian error as failing to maintain the Chalcedonian “without separation . . . without division.” Zwingli is not the only Reformed figure to be accused of Nestorianism; the whole of the Reformed tradition, and especially the extra Calvinisticum, is frequently branded with this epitaph. The seventeenth-century Lutheran theologian Johann Quenstedt simply labeled the doctrine the extra Nestorianum. The concern seems to be that by distinguishing the natures of Christ too strongly, the reality of their union is overcome. The prime evidence for this in Zwingli’s thought is often given as the doctrine of alloiosis, which, according to David Luy, “eschews the unity of Christ and speaks as if divinity and humanity act as their own discrete subjects.” While my chronological presentation of Zwingli’s thought validates this criticism for his early christology, demonstrated in both The Commentary on True and False Religion and On the Lord’s Supper, it also shows that, through more explicit reflection on the hypostatic union and christological predication in Friendly Exegesis, he corrects this pressure toward separating Christ’s natures.

To expound Zwingli’s developing understanding of christology and the articulation of the extra I will engage three stages of his thought. The first two of these stages will be covered in this chapter up to the Marburg Colloquy in 1529. The third stage, covering the Marburg Colloquy until Zwingli’s death, will be addressed in . Our discussion begins with Zwingli’s christology before the eucharistic debate during the period of the early reform movement in Zürich (1523–25) to understand the motivating principle of his christology. During the second stage, the eucharistic debate between 1525 and 1529, Zwingli was forced to clarify and advance his view of Christ to support his eucharistic doctrine, and the extra emerged as one of his key arguments. This period is crowded with text and countertexts and is one of the most studied periods in Christian history. Because of this, I will focus on the christological underpinnings of Zwingli’s argument, especially how he understood Christ’s human nature, and how this led to his understanding of the extra. Luther’s position will be discussed only from the perspective of Zwingli, for the sake of presenting a clear and concise picture of Zwingli’s own thought. Zwingli’s eucharistic view, likewise, will be touched on only insofar as it is necessary for the reader to understand his argument for and use of the extra Calvinisticum.

In each stage of Zwingli’s christological development particular attention will be paid to the four constitutive propositions of the extra set forth in the introduction and repeated here: (1) Jesus Christ, the God-man, maintained an existence extra carnem during his earthly ministry; (2) after the ascension and session the human body of Christ exists, in some sense, locally in heaven; (3) the presence of Christ to the Christian in the time between his first and second comings is according to his divinity, power, and the Holy Spirit; (4) the communicatio idiomatum within the hypostatic union terminates on the person of Christ, and therefore excludes a sharing of properties between the divine and human natures themselves. By the time the eucharistic controversy came to a head at Marburg, Zwingli had articulated each element and defended them through biblical and theological arguments.

Zwingli entered the debate with Luther over the Lord’s Supper with an already established view of the relationship between the person and work of Christ, which he worked out within the context of his attempt to reform the Zürich church. Zwingli’s early programmatic text The Commentary on True and False Religion offers a window into his theology before the crucible of the eucharistic controversy. In this work, he presents his understanding of Christ in relation to the gospel, the raison d’être of the reforming movement. The Commentary provides the first step in fleshing out the theological motivations that propelled Zwingli’s christology leading to the extra. If sinful, dead humanity is to be brought to life and to the knowledge of God, a mediator is needed with the salvific power of the divine and a stake in Adam’s seed. While Zwingli’s argument for the extra develops later in his career, the soteriological necessity of Christ’s full participation in humanity expressed in this early stage lays the foundation for the later christology that stresses the full integrity of Christ’s human nature. This investigation resolves the conflicting positions of Locher and Stephens over the foundational theological impetus of Zwingli’s christology. Rather than deriving from an emphasis on the divine or human natures singularly, Christ as the human and divine mediator drives Zwingli’s early christology. Further, The Commentary offers evidence of a Nestorian tendency in Zwingli’s early theology, which emphasizes the distinctiveness of Christ’s two natures with an underdeveloped sense of their union.

Throughout the summer of 1523 evangelical preaching and theology advanced in Zürich as calls for reform led to action. After hearing the preaching of Zwingli’s compatriot Leo Jud, the nuns of the local convent at Oetenbach requested release from their religious vows. High-profile religious leaders defected to the evangelical camp, such as Wilhelm Reublin, parish priest of Witikon near Zürich, who openly married in violation of ecclesiastical law. Citing the supremacy of Scripture, the Zürich Council refused to enforce the Edict of Worms condemning Luther, his teachings, and his writings. Given these rapid changes within the Zürich church and community, the local clergy and magistrates required guidance and a pathway for further reform.

The Zürich Council and the population sought clarity on two pressing issues: the Mass and religious images, especially after unsanctioned iconoclasm in several churches. To address these concerns, the Council called a disputation, held from October 26 to October 28, 1523, and commissioned Zwingli to write a short work as a model for the new evangelical preaching. Zwingli offered this direction concisely in Short Christian Instruction, which presented the essence of the new evangelical theology and preaching. After the publication of his Short Christian Instruction, Zwingli and his compatriots steadily implemented reform in Zürich. From the Second Zürich Disputation in October 1523 through the spring of the following year, religious imagery was removed from Zürich, first by unofficial, mob-induced frenzy, and then through official and orderly direction of the clergy and Council. By removing the icons Zürich’s life was brought one step closer to wholesale reordering according to the Scripture, as Zwingli and his fellows saw it. The far-ranging agenda overran Catholic opposition by closing the religious houses in December 1524 and substituting them with those dedicated to poor relief and hospitals. The most drastic triumph of reform came on April 11, 1525, with the abolishment of the Mass, which represented the definitive break with the Roman Church.

As Zwingli oversaw the reforming cause in the spring of 1524, William Farel and Antoine du Blet, French travelers from the circle of the great humanist Lefèvre d’Étaples, visited Zürich and provided the impetus for Zwingli’s most extensive work from this period. Farel and du Blet sought connections with like-minded humanists and evangelicals. Initially intending to meet with Luther in Wittenberg, they shifted plans and went to investigate the Reformation in Zürich. Jean Rilliet, in his characteristically free style, paraphrases Farel’s message to Zwingli as, “You ought to write a work that will propagate in my country, which at the present moment is in the full swing of development, those ideas which we have in common.” Zwingli took up this charge the following winter as he hastily, in less than three and a half months, wrote the Commentary on True and False Religion and dedicated the work to the French king Francis I. The work spelled out the evangelical faith for the king, hoping to sway him to the cause of reform or at least to its toleration.

In the Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli presents what many scholars have considered the most systematic expression of his theology, or even his magnum opus; however, this assessment is overstated. Walther Köhler considered the Commentary Zwingli’s “most mature and comprehensive work, containing a whole system of doctrine—a dogmatic and an ethic.” Rilliet introduces the work as “the book which, by common consent, contains his thought in a mature form.” The Commentary indeed admirably expresses the contours of Zwingli’s thought that will propel the remainder of this career. Despite the evident sophistication of the work, Köhler’s assessment of a full doctrinal system is anachronistic and distant from Zwingli’s own understanding. Seeing the work as the mature, systematic expression of Zwingli’s theology unduly privileges it and neglects his later development. To understand this text and interpret it correctly, one must attend to Zwingli’s stated intent.

In his opening address to the reader, Zwingli explains the title of the work: “I have chosen to name it ‘Commentary’ for this reason, because commentaries, if I rightly understand the word, are a means of communicating (commentantur) with friends, just as a letter is, except that commentaries are fuller and freer.” Zwingli begs his readers for patience and understanding owing to the hasty composition and offers the genre as an explanation for its preliminary nature: “I have often hardly had a chance to reread what I had written, much less to correct or embellish it. But it doesn’t matter: it is a commentary, not an oration or a book that has been ‘held back eight years.’ ” While one might take Zwingli’s remarks here as affected humility, and to some extent they certainly are, given he sent this work to a reigning European monarch, they do indicate that the Commentary should not be seen as an expression of a “whole system of doctrine,” as Köhler claims. More accurately, the Commentary is the most extensive example of Zwingli’s early stage of theological development. The fiery engagement with Luther, which would force Zwingli to further refine and improve his theology, was still in the future. Understanding Zwingli’s more modest goal for the treatise avoids privileging this work over later works. This point is important with respect to christology and by extension the extra Calvinisticum; if one overly values the Commentary as Zwingli’s mature theology then one is liable to overlook the significant development in his understanding of Christ in later works.

The Commentary is divided into two sections: the first (sections 1–11) dealing with the essential elements of the Christian faith and the second (sections 12–29) with more ad hoc and polemic issues, such as the power of the keys, marriage, and purgatory. Zwingli’s goal in this work is to contrast true religion, which is pleasing to God and the goal of human existence, with false religion, which places trust in anything other than God, idolatry: “I take ‘religion’ in that sense which embraces the whole piety of Christians: namely, faith, life, laws, worship, sacraments.” Zwingli’s mission as a reformer is to preach this true religion against what he sees as the false religion of Rome. True Christian religion has at least two primary features. To be true Christian religion it must trust only in the divine: “It is false religion or piety when trust is put in any other than God. They, then, who trust in any created thing whatsoever are not truly pious.” To be truly Christian religion it must derived from Scripture alone against false religious expressions, which are derived from human traditions. For “they are impious who embrace the word of man as God’s.” True religion is the duty of all humanity as a result of their creatureliness; however, sin has rendered proper devotion impossible. Therefore, humanity must cast off any reliance on self and rest on Christ the mediator by whom and through whom true religion is restored:

The true religion of Christ, then, consists in this: that wretched man despairs of himself and rests all his thought and confidence on God, sure that He can refuse nothing who has given His Son for us; and that the Son, who is equally God with the Father, can refuse nothing, since He is ours. But false religion merely juggles with the name of Christ, having its hope elsewhere.

The gospel, the substance of Zwingli’s evangelical preaching, is the announcement of God’s restoration of true religion through Christ alone.

Transubstantiation is one of the significant features of Roman religion that Zwingli rejected because it fails on both counts: by focusing on the creature rather than the creator and by basing its argument on tradition rather than Scripture. In the Commentary, Zwingli publicly rejects the Roman doctrine of the Eucharist and proposes his own symbolic view for the first time. He had previously argued for this point in his Letter to Alber, which circulated in handwritten form before being published in March 1525, the same month as the Commentary. The Commentary is Zwingli’s first extended proposal on the Supper and will be one of the sparks for the eucharistic debate.

The christology of The Commentary is shaped around the needs of the Christian religion’s proclamation of the gospel of salvation. According to George Richards, Zwingli’s “treatment of Christ [in the Commentary] is wholly controlled by soteriological motives.” For Zwingli, the essence of the Christian religion is the restoration of fellowship between God and humanity. For this relationship to be restored, the distance and destruction of humanity’s relationship to God through Adam and Eve’s first sin and the penalty thereof must be overcome. In and through the primordial sin of humanity’s first parents, a twofold state of death has come upon humankind as punishment from God: the death of the soul and the death of the body. Humans have been darkened by this stain and become unintelligible to themselves because of the corruption of the soul. As Zwingli eloquently states, “To know man is as toilsome as to catch a cuttlefish, for as the latter hides himself in his own blackness in order not to be caught, so does man, as soon as he sees one is after him, stir up such sudden and thick clouds of hypocrisy.” Zwingli argues that it is a mark of false religion to acknowledge this evil and dead state of humanity while maintaining that one can still freely choose God. Signaling his break with Erasmus, Zwingli argues rather that a person is utterly incapable of stretching out his or her hand to God to receive. But God seeks to bring humanity back to himself through his mercy while maintaining the absolute standard of his justice. “Since [God’s] justice, being inviolably sacred, had to remain as intact and unshaken as His mercy, and since man was indeed in need of mercy but wholly amenable to God’s justice, divine goodness found a way to satisfy justice and yet to be allowed to open wide the arms of mercy without detriment to justice.” Thus a mediator was required.

Zwingli expounds Christ’s person through his role as the mediator between humanity and God. The Father sent Christ as the mediator, and his death is how the mercy and justice of God are secured. He is God himself, alone good, just, and holy, while at the same time, he has taken to himself the flesh of Adam’s race. Only through the two natures can Christ save humanity and restore true religion. Echoing the Anselmian logic of satisfaction, Zwingli argues that the ability to save resides with God, and the need resides with humanity. Christ as the God-man possesses the ability and takes to himself humanity’s need:

For, being God and the Son of God, He that was sent as deputy and mediator gives support to hope. For what cannot He do or have who is God? Moreover, being man, He promises friendship and intimacy—aye, the common bond of relationship; what, then, can He refuse who is a brother and sharer of our weakness.

Zwingli also echoes Athanasius, stating, “[Christ] put on flesh that He might become ours. He has no need of it, but we had the greatest need of Him. To become one of us, therefore, He, great God that He is, just, holy, merciful, Creator, became man, that we through His fellowship might be raised to gods.” While the nature of his unity is left underdetermined at this stage, it is clear that by both his divine and human natures Christ can be the great mediator who brings about salvation. If either the divine or the human nature is compromised, salvation, and therefore true religion itself, is lost.

Zwingli assigns Christ’s divine and human natures particular roles in his mediatory work, making this point most clearly in his extended discussion of John 6 in the section on the Eucharist:

We must note in passing that Christ is our salvation by virtue of that part of His nature by which He came down from heaven, not of that by which He was born of an immaculate virgin, though He had to suffer and die by this part; but unless He who died had also been God He could not have been salvation for the whole world.

The function of both natures is expressed clearly if succinctly. The human nature is necessary that Christ may die, but the power of salvation is not in the flesh considered alone. It is according to the divine nature that the power of salvation comes, but as divine alone Christ would have been incapable of the act necessary for salvation, namely, death and suffering. Therefore, Zwingli argues that only the God-man slain brings saving power.

Zwingli’s two points of true religion are further expounded in the Commentary with reference to sacramentology. He marshals his christology to support his new understanding of the Eucharist, especially in the exegesis of John 6, where Christ states, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51). In this section, Zwingli offers an extensive argument that Jesus in John 6 could not be referring to eating his physical flesh and blood at the altar, but faith in the flesh slain for humanity. Zwingli’s argument hinges on his understanding of Christ, namely, that power to save was not properly attributed to his humanity alone, or to his flesh operating in some automatic fashion, but to the whole person of Christ: “For [Christ] is only in so far salvation unto us as He was slain for us; but He could be slain only according to the flesh and could be salvation bringing only according to His divinity.” Here, the first principle of true religion, that trust is to be placed in God alone, is applied to his understanding of Christ’s person. While the human nature is necessary for salvation because of its passibility and stake in humanity’s nature, only the divine nature has the power to save humanity because God alone is the fount of life and source of grace. By this Zwingli is not seeking to denigrate the human nature but to show that taken on its own the flesh has no power to save; this is aimed at any who ascribe salvific merit to the flesh eaten, as if that power was not ultimately from Christ’s action but the bare flesh. For Zwingli the means of salvation is the God-man slain, not the flesh eaten. As he makes clear, “The flesh of Christ profiteth very greatly, aye, immeasurably, in everyway, but, as I have said, by being slain, not eaten. Slain it has saved us from slaughter, but devoured it profiteth absolutely nothing.”

By this critique Zwingli addresses his understanding of the Roman eucharistic position, the accuracy of which does not concern us here, that would ascribe saving power to the flesh considered in itself:

For as Christ is God and man in one, it comes about that, albeit He was slain in the flesh (for who could kill God?) and His death was made life for us, yet on account of the unity and community of His natures that is sometimes attributed to one of the natures which belongs to the whole Christ.

A position that would see the flesh itself as life-giving and saving by being eaten, according to Zwingli, fails to understand the necessity of the two natures, their unity, and the proper predication of properties. The “unity and community” of the natures of the one Christ indicates that both of these properties—the ability to die and the ability to save—are properly considered of the whole Christ. Here we have the attempt both to affirm the unity of the natures and yet clearly to differentiate the nature of predication regarding them. Although it is only proper to ascribe the death of Christ to the human nature—“for who could kill God?”—this death is for us because of the unity of the natures in the “whole Christ.” Zwingli is attempting to hold the natures together as much as possible—“Christ is God and man in one”—while at the same time maintaining the distinctive qualities of each nature.

He makes a similar point about proper predication earlier in the Commentary while discussing how the Old Testament prefigures the coming of Christ and his work. Using an allegorical method, which is uncharacteristic of his general humanistic method at this point in his career, Zwingli interprets the story of Jacob’s sojourn with Laban and his return with two wives and many children (Gen. 28–31). He interprets Jacob as an image of Christ who “came down into this world, God became man, so that in Him you recognise Mesopotamia between its rivers, i.e., the two natures, according to which He wrought and suffered all things, ever keeping the boundaries of each intact, faithfully performed the work of His Father, and at length, victorious over death, brought back the whole race of men to heaven.” While the connection with Genesis might seem tenuous to modern ears, the christological point is clear: both the human and divine natures of Christ remained intact throughout his act of saving humanity. Here Zwingli emphasizes the Creator-creature distinction, which maintains even in the incarnation by “keeping the boundaries of each [nature] intact.” This emphasis could be taken as in keeping with traditional conciliar christology; however, Zwingli’s emphasis is imbalanced such that he does not fully articulate the union of the two natures, which opens his early christology to the charge of Nestorianism. At this stage, he does maintain a “unity and community” of the natures, but without sufficient clarity.

Zwingli’s pastoral circumstances, understanding of true religion, and doctrine of salvation drove his early christology. He envisioned the reform of the Swiss church as driven by the gospel of Jesus Christ, and this gospel demanded the proclamation of the God-man slain as the mediator. Only the God-man could be the mediator between fallen humanity and the Holy God, by bringing the saving power of divinity to the aid of human sin. Christ had to become a human so that what was humanity’s—the penalty for sin—could be his, thus restoring and establishing a relationship to the Father. This act of mediation culminated in the cross; thus for Zwingli, it is the flesh slain that saves rather than the flesh eaten. Christ’s act of atonement secured the justice and mercy of God by the logic of satisfaction and restored true religion to sinful humanity. According to Zwingli, all other human accoutrements seen in the medieval church had to be removed so as not to obscure this fact and set up a temptation for idolatry. The essence of true Christian religion is found in utter reliance on God, Christ the mediator, and the Scriptures that reveal his will and nature. True religion underpinned Zwingli’s emphasis on idolatry and the removal of all human traditions, which in his estimation had marred and obscured the pure gospel from the people. In this period, Zwingli triumphed on both of these accounts with the removal of images from the Zürich churches and the abolition of the Mass.

The unique function of Christ as mediator motivates much of Zwingli’s reforming activity as he rejects any external means as a return to idolatry, the essence of sin. God tolerates no rivals. Therefore, for Zwingli the complete and true humanity of Christ is a constitutive part of the gospel because if he were not truly human, he would not be the mediator between God and humanity. If so, humanity remains in sin. Therefore, Zwingli will come to see whether Christ’s body is in a particular place like other human natures as striking at the integrity of the gospel. In this sense, the deepest theological motivation for the extra is soteriological since it secures the distinctive qualities of both the human and the divine natures of Christ, which Zwingli understands as necessary for human salvation. While conclusions about emphasis are by their nature imprecise, I contend that in the Commentary, rather than privileging either the human or the divine nature singularly in his doctrine of Christ or the extra, as contended by Locher and Stephens, respectively, Zwingli grounds these ideas in the mediatorial office of Christ as the God-man worked out through the logic of satisfaction. His key concern in both his christology and later with the doctrine of the extra is to do justice to the integrity of both natures. The one Christ, who is the only mediator between God and humanity, possesses a divine nature, and therefore is spatially transcendent, and possesses a human nature, and therefore is spatially located. Rather than prioritizing one nature over the other, the extra stems from Zwingli’s emphasis on the mediatorship of the God-man.

In this early period, Zwingli does not seem interested in the metaphysical nuances of Christ’s person, nor does he reflect on the person of Christ in abstraction from his salvific action. Zwingli neither discusses the unity of the natures nor the distinctive properties of each nature, except insofar as they touch on humanity’s salvation. His failure to do so here leaves him open to the charge of Nestorianism, as critics have maintained. Only as the eucharistic controversy erupted was Zwingli forced in his answer to the onslaught of critiques from the Lutheran camp to address christology and its implications for the Lord’s Supper in a more thorough manner. Zwingli entered this debate convinced that the motivating principle of the gospel and the Christian religion were at stake. In Zwingli’s understanding, the doctrine of the real, corporeal presence in the elements, in either a Roman or a Lutheran form, distorted christology by threatening to undermine the integrity of Christ’s human nature, and therefore the gospel itself.

Controversy over Zwingli’s view of the Eucharist forced him to clarify and advance his view of Christ and led to his first use of the extra Calvinisticum. He formulates the extra in his work On the Lord’s Supper, which was his first major foray into the sacramental controversy and illustrates his thought before direct engagement with Luther. In this work, Zwingli argues that the ascended and exalted body of Christ prohibits a corporal presence in the eucharistic elements. In doing so, he presents a germinal expression of the extra. He outlines the essential elements of the doctrine, although with only slight exposition. Christ continues to exist extra carnem during his earthly ministry; after the ascension he is corporally absent as his body resides in heaven, and yet he is still present with the church as the divine Word of the Father. On the Lord’s Supper demonstrates that the extra Calvinisticum is not, as commonly held, a response to Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity but predates it.

The early eucharistic controversy of the 1520s is a dense forest with well-worn paths, which obscure from view many intriguing vistas. The standard, textbook narrative begins with Luther rejecting the transubstantiation view of the Roman Church and presenting his doctrine of “consubstantiation.” Zwingli responds with a “memorialist” view arguing that the words of institution should not be taken literally; the elements are “bare signs” and the meal itself an act of corporate confession and remembrance. At the Colloquy of Marburg, these two giant personalities clashed. Luther even provides the historian with a dramatic climax as he pulls back the tablecloth to reveal hoc est corpus meum scrawled on the table. The colloquy ended in failure, thereby resulting in a persistent schism within the Protestant church. The narrative often concludes with Calvin’s via media of spiritual presence. One is left with a tidy spectrum moving from the high sacramentology of Rome to the low view represented by Zwinglianism. While this story has reasons to commend it, the complex dynamic of the eucharistic controversy with its many twists and turns is obscured. It is not my primary task to amend this story, but it is necessary to have a more detailed working narrative of the controversy as background for Zwingli’s developing christological understanding. His view of the Eucharist developed in stages throughout his career as a result of polemic engagement with Luther, and the extra played a key role in this development.

Alexander Barclay, who has written the most extensive diachronic study of Zwingli’s eucharistic theology, divides Zwingli’s developing view on the Lord’s Supper into three periods. This periodization has become standard within scholarship on Zwingli’s eucharistic doctrine. Barclay delineates each period by both Zwingli’s opponents and whether he offers a more constructive or polemic presentation. In the first period, 1522–24, Zwingli seeks to overthrow the Roman doctrine of the Mass in Zürich. The second period stretches from 1524 to 1528, which I divide into two stages: (1) 1524–25, before direct conflict with Luther, and (2) 1526–28, in open conflict with Luther. The third period covers from the Marburg Colloquy in 1529 to Zwingli’s death in 1531. Barclay considers the first and final of these periods to be a time when Zwingli presents a more positive doctrine of the Lord’s Supper with an emphasis on the objective effect of the meal.

In the first stage of Zwingli’s engagement on the Eucharist, 1522 to 1524, he rejected the Mass in opposition to Roman theologians both inside and outside Zürich. Barclay notes five significant texts from this period: Apologeticus Archteles (1522), The Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), The Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), The Letter to Wyttenbach (June 1523), and De Canone Missae (August 1523). In these writings, Zwingli breaks with the Roman Church by rejecting transubstantiation and formulates his own conception of the Lord’s Supper. He makes several moves that will be essential to his later thought. He rejects that the Mass is a sacrifice of Christ and presents the Supper as a commemoration of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice. Through this emphasis, faith takes on a central role in Zwingli’s understanding of the Eucharist and untethers it from direct control of the clergy. Barclay states that in The Exposition on the Sixty-Seven Articles Zwingli “distinctly represents the Supper as a commemoration and more. It is in some sense an eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ. It is not only a commemoration of the sacrifice of Christ, but a renewal of the benefits of the sacrifice.”

In the second period of his development on the Lord’s Supper, 1524–28, Zwingli articulates more fully his symbolic interpretation of the sacrament. His most significant and important discussions of the Eucharist fall in this period, as do all of his significant polemic works on the matter. The controversy with Luther and his followers leading to Marburg defines this period; however, I divide it into two stages, unlike Barclay: before and after direct confrontation with Luther. The first stage of this middle period covers 1524 through 1525. Important works from this period include Letter to Alber (November 1524), Commentary on True and False Religion (March 1525), The Subsidiary Essay on the Eucharist (August 1525), and Responsio ad Bugenhaii (October 1525).

In the first stage of the middle period, two lines of influence contribute to Zwingli’s developing doctrine of the Supper. First, he becomes acquainted with a letter from the Dutch humanist Cornelis Hoen that provided him with the exegetical support for reading est as significat. Zwingli comes to see the words of institution as utilizing a linguistic trope. He defines a trope as “a discourse, which does not present to us its meaning, which the words first promise by appearance.” If a trope is in play in the words of institution, then one’s understanding of the Supper must not be drawn primarily from these words but from other sections of Scripture that provide meaning for the trope. Zwingli also comes into contact with Hussite thought, the remnant of the followers of Jan Hus, through Oecolampadius and perhaps Bullinger. By way of Oecolampadius’s On the Genuine Exposition of the Lord’s Words, This Is My Body (September 1525), Zwingli was exposed to the argument rejecting the corporal presence in the Mass based on the ascension of Christ. This argument would be definitive and formative for his polemic against Luther and in his positive formulation of the extra Calvinisticum.

In this first stage of the middle period, Zwingli still primarily argues against Roman authors, until the fall of 1525. Several supporters of Luther took notice of and engaged with Zwingli’s position. Barclay makes this clear, stating that “even the Letter to Alber, although written in relation to Luther and Karlstadt, was only a development of his [Zwingli’s] own thesis, and not an attack on another. He says nothing about Luther’s teaching. He only refers to it negatively and indirectly. Not by the Swiss, but by the Germans, was the glove thrown.” As 1525 progressed, however, the initial attacks on Zwingli and Oecolampadius’s position(s) on the Lord’s Supper began. The first challenge came from Johan Bugenhagen, also known as Pomeranus, which Zwingli countered with the brief work Responsio ad Bugenhaii (October 1525). Another challenge came from a collection of Swabian pastors hostile to Oecolampadius’s view, led by Johannes Brenz, who will factor prominently in the later story of the extra. Brenz, on behalf of the Swabian pastors, produced the Syngramma Suevicum (October 1525). This work rejected Oecolampadius’s position on the Supper set forth in On the Genuine Exposition. The Syngramma would set the stage for the coming conflict between Luther and Zwingli.

As late as December 1525, Luther had yet to write any public attacks on Zwingli or the Swiss regarding the Lord’s Supper. Luther’s first salvo against them comes in the open letter to the Reutlingen congregation, which labels Zwingli’s positions as the “work of Satan.” Although as yet unaware of Luther’s disapprobation, Zwingli published his most thorough work on the Eucharist in February 1526, On the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli moves well beyond his previous discussion by building off his earlier works while also introducing many of his most important arguments. He grounds his rejection of Christ’s corporal presence on an appeal to the locality of Christ’s human body after the ascension. As we will see, On the Lord’s Supper presents the first substantial employment of the extra Calvinisticum.

Luther’s Letter to the Reutingers and bring us to the second stage of Zwingli’s middle period, which covers from 1526 up to the Colloquy of Marburg. This stage is marked by open polemical writings between Zwingli and Luther. Other significant works of Luther for this period include a preface to the second printing of the Syngramma (June 1526), The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics (late September or early October 1526), Dass diese Wort Christi (April 1527), and Confession concerning Christ’s Supper (March 1528). On the Zwinglian side the following works present his ongoing development: On the Lord’s Supper (February 1526), Letter to Haner (December 1526), Friendly Exegesis (finished February 1527, published March 1527), Dass diese Worte (June 1527), and Two Replies to Luther’s Book (written with Oecolampadius, August 1528). Barclay argues that in this second period “the negative element [of Zwingli’s position] was predominant.” While this may be the case regarding eucharistic theology, in this period Zwingli deploys his most constructive arguments from christology to support his position. Alongside the extra, Zwingli also develops his understanding of alloiosis in Friendly Exegesis, his attempt to express the doctrine of the communication of attributes. His argument against Luther’s position in this text prepared the ground for the Swiss opposition to Luther at Marburg in October 1529.

The final period of Zwingli’s eucharistic thought, in which, according to Barclay, he “returned to the more positive views he held at the outset,” covers from Marburg to his death in 1531. For this period, the significant works include the account of the Colloquy and his final two works, which are an attempt at a summary of his theology. The first, Fidei Ratio (July 1530), offers Zwingli’s theology to the Diet of Augsburg and Emperor Charles V in response to the Augsburg Confession. The second work, and last of Zwingli’s life, the Fidei Expositio (July 1531, although not published until 1536), was written for Francis I of France in the hope of an alliance.

The preceding sketch of the eucharistic controversy of the 1520s, though far from complete, presents a rough outline of Zwingli’s emerging thought and the various texts that make up the controversy. More important, it demonstrates that the simple, textbook narrative of Zwingli’s views on the Eucharist is lacking. Zwingli did not express a final position on the Eucharist before the controversy, and his position continued to change after the Marburg Colloquy. The chief theological driver of this development was Zwingli’s continued reflection on the incarnation and the relationship between the two natures in Christ.

In On the Lord’s Supper, Zwingli uses the concept of the extra Calvinisticum to account for Christ’s person in support of his rejection of the corporeal presence in the Eucharist. Zwingli argues that because of Christ’s ascension, which properly refers to his human body, he cannot then be corporeally present in the bread or wine on the altar. Zwingli reasons from his understanding of Christ as the perfectly human and perfectly divine mediator, that only the human nature can ascend; because of divine omnipresence, the divine Logos is already present with the Father and need not ascend. He builds this argument on the soteriologically determined christology of the Commentary, which emphasized the uniqueness of both natures in Christ for human salvation. From this reflection on Christ’s absence and presence after the ascension, Zwingli articulated the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum for the first time in his writing. His argument for the extra is part of his larger case toward understanding the correct interpretation of the words of institution. Because the physical or corporeal presence of Christ in these elements is an impossibility, when one understands the proper relationship of Christ’s two natures, Zwingli concludes that “This is my body” must be understood as a linguistic trope: “this bread symbolizes my body.”

On the Lord’s Supper, written in German in February 1526, attempted to spread the Zwinglian interpretation of the Supper beyond the confines of the academic debate in Latin and addressed the competing interpretations of the words of institution and the Supper more generally. According to Geoffrey Bromiley, On the Lord’s Supper played little role in the volleys of polemics that made up the eucharistic controversy, receiving only a single explicit response. Nevertheless, it offers ample evidence to help us understand Zwingli’s developing christology and the extra Calvinisticum.

On the Lord’s Supper begins by setting forth the central question under dispute: “The whole question has its source in the misunderstanding of the text: ‘This is my body.’ Therefore our first task will be to consider these words in the light of the various misinterpretations and to see what errors result.” Zwingli enumerates the misinterpretations of Christ’s words, as he sees them, and seeks to demonstrate the faulty nature of each interpretation, before offering his own view of the contentious statement. He identifies three positions regarding Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist, which he will argue against: the standard Roman position, the emerging Lutheran position, and the humanist position attributable to Erasmus:

Amongst those who believe that in this sacrament we partake of the literal body and blood of Christ there are three groups. First there are those [Romanists] who say that we partake of his body and blood as they hung on the cross, the corporal substance of the bread and wine being transubstantiated into that of the corporal body and blood. Then there are those [Lutherans] who say that we eat the body of Christ under the bread. All the time the bread remains bread, and we are not to ask how we eat Christ’s body, but simply to confess the fact and rejoice that we eat: for Christ said: “This is my body,” and therefore it must be so. Finally, there are those [Erasmians] who say that we eat of the body of Christ as it was in the resurrection when he came to his disciples through closed doors, etc.

Zwingli presents and contests these positions throughout his text. Chief among his arguments is his claim that Christ’s bodily presence in the Eucharist is impossible, either in his pre- or post-resurrection body, because Christ has ascended bodily into heaven.

As Zwingli reflected on the interrelation of Christ’s presence and absence that results from his ascension, he articulated the nature of Christ’s presence not only in the Eucharist but also during his earthly ministry and in the present age apart from the Lord’s Table. Zwingli’s key move in his eucharistic polemics was to argue that Christ’s words “This is my body” need not be taken as literal or substantial but are instead a trope. To prove this, he sets aside interpreting the words of institution for the moment and seeks other scriptural arguments, which would indicate how to understand the verse under consideration. Zwingli reasons that est in this verse may or may not indicate a trope; therefore, if he can establish that a literal reading conflicts with other parts of Scripture, his interpretation will prevail. He appeals to the analogy of Scripture to clarify the ambiguity of the words of institution with clear or plain texts. To show this, he offers up and expounds three “plain Scripture[s]” that demonstrate a literal understanding of Christ’s words is mistaken: John 6, 1 Corinthians 10, and a section of the Apostles’ Creed. I will focus on the last of these because it is here that Zwingli deploys his argument for the extra Calvinisticum.

Zwingli argues that the three articles of the Apostles’ Creed—“he ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the father Almighty, from thence he shall come to judge the living and dead”—represent “plain Scripture” against the literal understanding of “This is my body.” The articles of the creed function, for Zwingli, as a sort of summary of Scripture’s teaching on this point because they are “based upon the word of God.” He supports the two articles regarding the ascension and session with a citation of the brief ascension account in the long ending to Mark’s Gospel (16:19) and a reference to Stephen’s vision of the ascended Christ in Acts 7.

To substantiate that the ascension precludes corporeal presence at the Lord’s Table, Zwingli must first address an objection that, according to him, makes the ascension “a subject of jest.” These opponents appeal to passages such as Matthew 20:28—“Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”—as referring to the body of Christ and therefore conclude that Christ’s ascension indicates not an absence of Christ’s body but its invisibility. In this objection, Zwingli addresses what he understands to be an Erasmian or humanist position: “It is the nature and property of the resurrection body to be present at one and the same time both in heaven and also in the sacrament, and indeed everywhere.” In order to demonstrate why this is mistaken Zwingli launches into a discussion of the two natures of Christ. The question is how to reconcile the two sets of texts—those that speak of Christ ascending into heaven and leaving the earthly realm, and those that speak of his continued presence with his church. Zwingli resolves this question by reflecting on the proper understanding of the relationship of Christ’s two natures.

Zwingli begins his exposition with a firm declaration regarding Christ’s person, which he will unpack: “that in Christ there are two different natures, the divine and human: and yet the two are only the one Christ.” He argues that the difference in these natures is expressed in their distinctive qualities. According to Christ’s divine nature, he neither left the Father in any way nor needed to return to the Father by way of ascension. Zwingli defends this with two claims further supported with scriptural citations. First, because of the incarnation the Son does not abdicate his ontological relationship with the Father for “he is one God with the Father.” Zwingli supports this claim with citations of John 10:30 (“I and the Father are one”) and John 3:13 (“No man hath ascended up to heaven: but the Son of man which is in heaven”). Second, a corollary of the first, after coming in the flesh Christ did not need to ascend to heaven according to his divine nature because he was already present there by dint of the omnipresence of his divine nature (citing Matthew 18:20). Christ’s position with the Father is not substantially changed even with the incarnation, for “according to this nature [the divine] he is always at the right hand of the Father, for he says that he is in heaven even when in the body upon earth.” Therefore, these considerations demonstrate that Christ, with respect to his divine nature, never left heaven or the presence of the Father upon his incarnation but remained continually with the Father even while in the flesh, owing to their shared divinity and the divine quality of omnipresence.

The humanity of Christ must also be considered according to its particular integrity and qualities. Zwingli gives the résumé, if you will, of Christ’s humanity:

For our sakes he took this [humanity] upon him in the pure body of Mary by the receiving and fructifying of the Holy Spirit, and he carried it truly in this present time. According to this nature he increased and grew both in wisdom and stature. According to it he suffered hunger and thirst and cold and heat and all other infirmities, sin only excepted. According to it he was lifted up on the cross, and with it he ascended up into heaven.

Zwingli goes to great lengths to emphasize the veracity of Christ’s humanity. This human nature was true human substance, as it was taken from the Virgin Mary, from her very body. Christ’s humanity was like that of all other humans, including the normal development of human existence. Christ grew, matured, and changed according to both body and mind. He experienced all the weaknesses of his assumed nature, “only sin excepted.” Christ never puts off this nature, but rather he “carrie[s] it truly in this present time.”

Zwingli uses this analysis of Christ considered according to each nature to further specify the relationship of the ascension and Christ’s continued presence with his church. Christ does not transition out of the incarnate state into some other state, but the glorified body continues to be a human body. Even with his exaltation to the right hand of the Father, the flesh of Christ remains like all other humans, although this nature is now a “guest in heaven, for no flesh had ever previously ascended up into it.” In addition, it is according to this nature he suffered on the cross and ultimately ascended to heaven. Here we see the indication of the soteriological significance of the flesh. The only way that the impassibly divine Son could suffer, and therefore atone for sin, was by taking to himself humanity’s passible state. Therefore, for Zwingli, when one reads texts speaking of ascension, one must read them as properly referring to the human nature, because the omnipresent divine nature need not ascend. Likewise, scriptural promises of Christ’s continued presence with humanity in the time between his ascension and second coming refer not to his body but properly to his divinity, i.e., “according to that nature that he is everywhere present to believers with his special gifts and comforts.”

From this, we see the earliest sketch of what will become the extra Calvinisticum. Zwingli sets forth three of the four propositions of the extra. First, with the discussion of Christ’s natures, Zwingli states that Christ continues to exist extra carnem according to the divine quality of omnipresence even while he is incarnate. Second, this incarnate state is perpetual after the ascension, which is only properly applied to the human nature. Zwingli argues in response to claims that Christ can be anywhere because he is in fact God: “It is the property of God to be everywhere. But it is not the property of the body.” And because the body of Christ is present at the right hand of the Father in heaven, he cannot be at the Table. This argument will be a main point of contention throughout the eucharistic controversy and a main feature of the debate with Luther at Marburg. Zwingli expresses the relationship of the church to Christ between the time of his ascension and second coming as fellowship with his divinity that gives the special gift of comfort.

Third, while Zwingli does not articulate a doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum in this text, he builds a foundation for it, with his care to express what is properly attributable to each nature. “I know that by virtue of the fact that the two natures are one Christ, things which are said of only the one nature are often ascribed to the other. Nevertheless, the proper character of each nature must be left intact, and we ought to refer to it only those things which are proper to it.” In this Zwingli falls short of articulating the traditional doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, which relies on the hypostatic union. Yet he grounds statements regarding “proper character of each nature” on the idea that the “two natures are one Christ.” Zwingli will further specify this understanding in Friendly Exegesis by incorporating the language of hypostasis.

In On the Lord’s Supper, Zwingli exhibits the earliest sketch of the extra Calvinisticum, as expressed though the propositions I have outlined, though still in a nascent form. He couches the extra within a christology that lacks refinement and is still open to the charge of Nestorian tendencies. Bromiley speaks for many critics when he notes there is still a christological deficit in the work:

Against Zwingli’s view of the presence the Lutherans could argue that it rested upon a faulty christology. The divine nature of Christ cannot be present apart from the human—otherwise the unity of the person of Christ is negated. Now it must be admitted that Zwingli did tend towards that isolation of the distinctive natures or aspects both of Christ himself and also the Word and sacraments.

Bromiley correctly argues that Zwingli does not account for the unity of the natures with nearly the same rigor as he does their distinction in On the Lord’s Supper. However, Bromiley’s claim that the unity of person is “negated” is overstated. Zwingli explicitly asserts that “the two natures are one Christ,” but the nature of this unity is underspecified. The greatest flaw in Zwingli’s christology at this stage, viewed from the perspective of classical christology, is that he neglects the use of “person” or “hypostasis” to signify and explain the unity. Zwingli worked from an understanding of oneness of the natures, but one might rightly ask him to account for this unity. In later works, he will be forced to refine his understanding of the unity as he encounters Lutheran objections to his doctrine.

Zwingli’s use of the extra at this point in the debate clarifies its relationship to Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity, which is left unexplored in literature on the history of the extra. Zwingli’s employment of the extra in On the Lord’s Supper in February 1526 predates Luther’s first public espousal of the doctrine of ubiquity. In The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics, published in the fall of 1526, Luther first employs his doctrine of ubiquity in a substantial way in the eucharistic controversy. Luther states:

Moreover, we believe that Christ, according to his human nature, is put over all creatures [Eph. 1:22] and fills all things, as Paul says in Eph. 4 [10]. Not only according to his divine nature, but also according to his human nature, he is a lord of all things, has all things in his hand, and is present everywhere. If I am to follow the fanatics who say that this is not fitting, then I must deny Christ.

In his diachronic study of Luther’s christology, Marc Lienhard argues that in Against the Fanatics Luther deploys a doctrine of ubiquity to answer Zwingli’s critique that it was unfitting that the body be present in the Eucharist. Luther, however, asserts more than explains the doctrine in this work, Lienhard says: “For all his attempts to make intelligible the real presence of Christ on the basis of certain comparisons or from the glorified existence of the body of Christ present everywhere, Luther does not explain it. There is ultimately no other foundation than the Word of God.” In Against the Fanatics, Luther displays this tendency to ground ubiquity in a bold assertion of the word of God. He chides his opponents—Zwingli, Karlstadt, and Oecolampadius—for making the word of God subservient to reason. Luther utterly rejects such a move: “For God is too far beyond all reason. Hence, to sum it all up, what those people keep saying—that because it is not in accord with reason it is not true—we shall simply turn about and say the opposite: God’s Word is true, therefore your notions must be false.” Luther’s broader case against Zwingli in Against the Fanatics will be detailed later.

The place of reason in theology will be a recurring issue throughout the debate on the Eucharist and in Lutheran-Reformed polemics. For the present, it is sufficient to note that, rather than being a response to ubiquity, Zwingli formulated a version of the extra Calvinisticum as a constructive element in his rejection of corporeal presence in the Eucharist before Luther asserted the ubiquity of Christ’s body. Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity was therefore a response to Zwingli’s inchoate extra, not vice versa. Zwingli will turn to directly engage Luther’s positions on these themes in Friendly Exegesis.

After first deploying the extra Calvinisticum in On the Lord’s Supper, Zwingli further utilized the concept to support his position against Luther’s argument for a corporeal presence in the Eucharist, after Luther himself entered into the broader controversy. In Friendly Exegesis, Zwingli offers a dense and multifaceted series of counterarguments against Luther’s position on the Lord’s Supper and his attacks on Zwingli’s own doctrine. In this work, Zwingli presents the extra Calvinisticum as the proper alternative to ubiquity and supports it through reflection on christological predication and the hypostatic union. He rejects Luther’s key prooftext for ubiquity, Ephesians 4:10, arguing that elsewhere in Scripture the body of Christ is always presented as localized both before and after glorification. He reinforces this contention by appealing to the finitude of the human nature, which requires spatial locality, and rejecting Luther’s appeal to divine omnipotence to counter this point.

Zwingli sees the fundamental issue with Luther’s argument both for corporeal presence and ubiquity as a failure to understand christological predication. Therefore, Zwingli, in developing his doctrine of the proper attribution of properties to Christ’s person, enlists the rhetorical concept of alloiosis, a shift in grammatical form for stylistic effect, to correct Luther’s mistaken exegesis that supports ubiquity. With alloiosis Zwingli attempts to articulate the traditional doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum and argue that all the properties of Christ’s natures are united in the person but not ontologically shared between the natures. Through this reflection, Zwingli corrects the Nestorian tendency exhibited in his earlier christology by incorporating the concept of hypostasis.

In the year of the publication of On the Lord’s Supper, several factors compelled Zwingli to continue his debate with the German reformers over Christ’s eucharistic presence. In 1526, the success of the Reformation in Zürich, and Switzerland more broadly, was still far from assured. Catholic opponents in Zürich were continuing to challenge Zwingli’s position. Furthermore, the larger Swiss evangelical movement was dealt a severe blow when John Eck publicly bested Oecolampadius, Zwingli’s main compatriot in the reforming of the Swiss church, at the Baden Disputation. Because of these setbacks, Zwingli and his fellow Swiss reformers turned their eyes east in hope of support from and alliance with the German evangelicals; however, the question of the Lord’s Supper stood in the way of concord.

In the intervening time, Luther had waded into the fray over the Supper by approving of Brenz’s attack on Zwingli and Oecolampadius and publishing his first substantial work of the eucharistic controversy. In March 1526, Stephen Agricola reissued the Swabian Syngramma with a commendatory preface by Luther. More significantly in the fall of the same year, Luther’s second major salvo against Karlstadt was published in late September or early October 1526. The Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ—Against the Fanatics broadened Luther’s attack to others who rejected the bodily presence in the Eucharist, including Zwingli and Oecolampadius. This work was a collection of three sermons preached in Wittenberg in preparation for Easter 1526. The first part of the work specifically addresses Zwingli’s and Oecolampadius’s positions. Luther rejects their claims that the bodily presence of Christ in the Supper is neither necessary for Christians nor fitting of Christ. His argument hinges on three points: the plain sense of “This is my body,” a rejection of reason as determinative for this question, and the doctrine of ubiquity. Luther’s main concern is to follow the Word of God and therefore to subordinate reason to it. For a striking example: “If he [Christ] handed me a mere straw and spoke these words [‘Take, eat, this is my body’], I should believe it. Therefore one must close mouth, eyes, and all the senses and say: ‘Lord, you know better than I.’ ” Zwingli and the other Schwärmer, according to Luther, have rejected the call of obedience to Christ through his word and have been swayed away by the devil. In his concluding reflection of Part 1, Luther states:

Let this then be the sum of it: See only that you pay heed to God’s Word and remain in it, like a child in the cradle. If you let go of it for a moment, then you fall out of it. This is the devil’s sole aim, to tear people out of it and to cause them to measure God’s will and work by human reason.

In response to the many challenges facing the Swiss evangelical cause, Zwingli’s compatriots—Bucer, Oecolampadius, and Wolfgang Capito—urged him to respond to Luther in a cordial yet firm tone, hoping to lay the groundwork for a pan-evangelical alliance. These pressures ultimately led Zwingli to write Friendly Exegesis. Like many of Zwingli’s works, Friendly Exegesis was written at a frantic pace, from mid-December 1526 to the end of February 1527, in time for the famed Frankfurt Book Fair. A copy of the work was subsequently sent to Luther in April and Philip of Hesse in June. In the treatise, Zwingli reiterates many of his points raised on the Eucharist thus far, responds to the new arguments presented by Luther, and elaborates on his argument against a corporeal presence in the elements.

Zwingli opens Friendly Exegesis with an attempted cordial letter to Luther explaining his purpose for writing and what he sees at stake in this discussion. In this missive, Zwingli focuses not on the Lord’s Supper but on the centerpiece of the evangelical movement, sola fide, and its connection to Christ’s person. “For if faith alone be not sufficient to make blessed without the power of externals, then we fall back upon works.” In Zwingli’s eyes, requiring faith not only in Christ’s flesh slain but also in his flesh on the Table and its necessity for salvation compromises sola fide. He immediately connects this concern over sola fide with a proper understanding of Christ’s person and natures. As we have seen in the Commentary, Zwingli bases his understanding of the true Christian religion on the sole mediatorial role of Christ, which he can fulfill only because he is fully God and fully man without confusion. Not only does Luther’s position compromise the sole reliance on Christ as the object of faith, but by supporting it with ubiquity he violates the integrity of the human nature that makes Christ’s mediation possible:

Moreover those who confuse the two natures in Christ, truly desiring to proclaim of the human what belongs only to the divine, and of the divine what belongs merely to the human, though not as a matter of change of attributes and exchange [alloiosis] of natures, such persons not only obscure and defile the Gospel of John but trample it underfoot, as I shall show in due course.

Luther’s ubiquity doctrine obscures the biblical account of the two natures, and especially the arguments based in John’s Gospel, and by so doing destroys the scriptural witness to Christ as true God and man. From Zwingli’s opening appeal, he grounds the question of the Supper on previous commitments to sola fide and a soteriologically determined christology, which he sees Luther’s position as challenging. According to Zwingli, confusing the natures of Christ compromises his unique place as mediator and overthrows not simply the Gospel of John but all of Scripture. Zwingli sees ubiquity as the height of such a confusion because it compromises the integrity of Christ’s humanity and, therefore, humanity’s stake in his death. Therefore, for Zwingli, nothing less than the essence of the Christian faith is at stake in this debate. He hopes to convince Luther with his arguments and to bring greater unity to the cause of reform.

Zwingli’s arguments against Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity are present throughout Friendly Exegesis as he addresses several of Luther’s writings and the Syngramma. Zwingli argues that Luther’s doctrine is based on a faulty exegetical basis, that he fails to understand the relationship of locality with respect to finite and infinite natures, and that an appeal to divine omnipotence cannot overcome these problems. Zwingli represents Luther’s understanding of ubiquity with several statements from Against the Fanatics. Chief among these claims are “Heaven and earth are his sack; as wheat fills the sack, so he fills all things,” as well as “[Christ] is everywhere present, namely, as to his humanity.” According to Zwingli, rather than being ubiquitously present according to his human nature, Christ’s body has been removed from the earthly sphere, yet he continues to be personally present with the church by his divine nature. Zwingli seeks to defeat Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity to overcome his understanding of the corporeal presence in the Supper and therefore to pave the path of evangelical union.

Zwingli addresses Luther’s doctrine, first, by undercutting its exegetical basis. Exegesis is a paramount concern for Zwingli since Luther accused him of deriving his position from reason rather than Scripture. Zwingli directly inveighs against Luther’s use of Ephesians 4:10. Luther argues from this verse and other similar passages, “[W]e believe that Christ Jesus is in his humanity constituted in a way superior to all things and fills all things.” Zwingli considers such an idea absurd, as we have seen in On the Lord’s Supper, but because of his respect for Luther, he treats it kat’ anthypophoran, or as an objection raised to be answered. Zwingli responds by an appeal to Matthew 28:6, where the angel at Christ’s tomb comforts those seeking him and announces that their Lord has risen and is “no longer here.” Zwingli discusses this text in several sections throughout Friendly Exegesis. When presenting it in response to an argument in the Syngramma, he asserts this text proves what could be seen as the most condensed form of the extra, that “the body of Christ is not everywhere, even if his divinity does fill all things.”

Zwingli’s underlying reasoning here comes from the attributes of each nature. “It is characteristic of human nature to be limited, to be tied to one place . . . while it is characteristic of the divine to extend, permeate, be present everywhere, to hold, know, and dispose all things.” Given these characteristics, the angel cannot be referring to Christ’s divinity. What the angel declared to be “not here” is precisely Christ’s body. Zwingli contends that the context of the passage shows this, since the women were seeking the body of Christ, which can be reasonably concluded from the other Gospel accounts’ mention of bringing spices to anoint Jesus’s body (Luke 24:1; Mark 16:1). It is according to this referent, Christ’s body, that one should understand the angel’s declaration of absence.

Zwingli then heads off the objection that Christ is still present but not in a “crude style,” but rather “His body had taken on another state.” According to such a view, Christ’s glorified and risen body has undergone fundamental changes to its nature and therefore can be present invisibly, unlike before the resurrection. In this objection, Zwingli addresses what he understood in On the Lord’s Supper to be an Erasmian or humanist position, but he sees Luther making the same claim. In Against the Fanatics, Luther makes a similar point regarding Christ’s body after the ascension. Referring to Stephen’s sight of Christ in Acts 7:56, Luther states, “He need not raise his eyes on high. Christ is around us and in us in all places. . . . [The ascension] means rather that he is above all creatures and in all and beyond all creatures. That he was taken up bodily, however, occurred as a sign of this.” To this change-of-state objection, Zwingli retorts that the angel is explicitly referring to the glorified and resurrected body because he states, “He has risen; he is not here.” He takes this to mean that it is exactly the resurrected body of Christ being declared absent to the women in the garden. Although Zwingli’s point is weakened if Luther claimed this change in state occurred at the ascension and not the resurrection, it is unclear from Against the Fanatics whether he makes such a distinction. If we understand the angel to be declaring the absence of Christ’s resurrected body, Zwingli argues, Luther’s interpretation of Ephesians 4:10 is overturned; for if Christ was not in the garden bodily he is not everywhere bodily. By Zwingli’s own method it is not enough to cite another passage to refute Luther’s use of Ephesians 4:10; he must also properly explain it.

Zwingli sets forth his own interpretation of Ephesians 4:10, “ascended above the heavens in order to fill [πληρώσῃ] all things,” in a later section of the work where he explains his method of “collating Scripture.” According to Zwingli, the concept of filling here should not be taken in a literal sense relating to quantity but rather in a sense of accomplishment or fulfillment. Christ at his ascension is said to accomplish all things said of him in the Scriptures. He supports this contention with the citations of Matthew 3:15, as an equivalent use of πληρόω for “fulfill,” “accomplish,” or “correspond to.” According to Zwingli, this verse has roughly the same force regarding the ascension as 1 Corinthians 15:4 does regarding the resurrection, which speaks of Christ rising “according to the Scriptures.” Zwingli holds that this interpretation is supported further by the immediate context. The author of Ephesians quotes Psalm 68:18 in verse 8, which promises taking captives and giving gifts. The ascension fulfills both promises. This is seen most clearly in the following verses, Ephesians 4:11–12, which enumerate the gifts given by Christ to the church in fulfillment of the promise of Psalm 68:18. With this exposition, Zwingli considers himself to have defused one of Luther’s chief exegetical arguments for ubiquity.

For Zwingli the doctrine of ubiquity not only is exegetically unsupported but also results in a confusion of the spatial, transcendent nature of God and the spatial nature of a human body. In support he presents a short argument based on the finitude of Christ’s humanity and the infinitude of divinity. Arguing against Luther’s On the Adoration of the Sacraments, Zwingli states:

We say this, also that his divinity is present everywhere where the body of Christ is, and, on the other hand, that the body of Christ is not everywhere where his divinity is, for the one is infinite, the other finite. You do not examine well, my dear Luther, this word “where,” which is not predicated equally of the infinite nature and the finite.

Here we see not only a concise statement of the extra Calvinisticum but also an appeal to the concept of infinity, which will play an important role at Marburg and in later thinkers. It should be observed, however, that this is not an appeal to the concept of the finitum non capax infiniti, as some absolute philosophical dictum, which is cited by some scholars to disqualify the extra as properly theological and will be discussed more fully in later chapters. Zwingli presents a linguistic concern regarding the adverb ubi, which as a qualifier of space cannot apply to things with a spatial dimension in the same manner as the infinite nature of God. Christ’s divine nature is everywhere present, but not as “to tie God to the narrow limits of places.” The “where” of Christ’s divine presence is found in transcendence of place and locality. The humanity of Christ, however, being finite and limited to one place, must have a definite “where,” which after the ascension is in heaven. Zwingli implies that by applying “everywhere” equally of the divine and human natures, as the doctrine of ubiquity seems to, Luther attributed to Christ’s body spatial transcendence, which would render it no longer a body. Zwingli does not elaborate on this argument further in Friendly Exegesis. Yet, this is the first appearance in the debate of the concepts of infinitude and finitude, which become prominent as the Lutheran-Reformed debate develops throughout the sixteenth century.

Zwingli also briefly addresses Luther’s objection that by divine omnipotence the body of Christ can be in more than one place, which would overcome Zwingli’s argument from the locality of a body. Zwingli, rather uncharacteristically, utilizes the concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata taken from the medieval via moderna, although inexpertly. He agrees that, according to his omnipotence considered in an absolute sense, God could do anything. “Who denies that Christ, speaking absolutely, can do this or anything else?” One must consider what Christ, however, has actually claimed to do or be able to do in his own word, which Zwingli calls the potentia ordinata; otherwise one is arguing from possibility to actuality, which is fallacious. From his many other arguments, Zwingli has shown that he understands Christ as claiming to be bodily at the right hand of the Father in heaven and nowhere else. Therefore, one cannot overcome the spatial locatability of Christ’s body by appeal to omnipotence. Almost as if he were nervous about utilizing the scholastic concepts of potentia absoluta and potentia ordinata, Zwingli immediately quotes Augustine in support: “ ‘He can be in only one place’ as far as his human nature is concerned.” Both the argument from the nature of infinitude and that against the omnipotence objection will be of greater significance in the debate at Marburg.

In Friendly Exegesis, Zwingli uses the concept of alloiosis to offer an account of christological predication, to demonstrate the error of ubiquity, and to support the extra. First introduced in his Letter to Haner, Zwingli defines alloiosis with reference to christology as a “leap or transition or, if you prefer, interchange, by which when, speaking of one of Christ’s natures we use the terms that apply to the other.” This technical christological meaning of alloiosis is built on a more general rhetorical concept he takes from classical rhetorical texts. Alloiosis in this sense refers to a figure of speech in which a whole of a thing is referred to by a part or vice versa. For Zwingli, alloiosis is an exegetical tool that allows greater clarity in understanding the christological meaning of various types of scriptural passages where actions or qualities are applied to Jesus. He argues that the root error of the doctrine of ubiquity flows from Luther’s misunderstanding of how the biblical authors refer to Christ with respect to his two natures:

For you [Luther] jump craftily from one nature to the other, as when you say that Christ is in us and around us everywhere (a competence only of his divine nature), and at the same time wish to insinuate to minds of the untutored that his natural body is everywhere filling and surrounding all things.

In order to counter Luther’s position, Zwingli lays out his understanding of christological predication and utilizes it to support the extra by offering a means to interpret passages that speak of Christ being everywhere alongside those that speak of his absence. Zwingli’s greater care for christological predication leads him to offer a more robust doctrine of the hypostatic union than previously evident. By so doing, he corrects the Nestorian tendency in his early christology by incorporating the language of hypostasis and persona to express this union. Therefore, rather than being evidence of Nestorianism, as asserted by David Luy and others, reflection on alloiosis propels Zwingli to correct this deficiency found in his earlier thought.

By alloiosis Zwingli applies the fruits of his humanist learning to the question of proper attribution of properties to Christ. Each nature has its own set of qualities, but often biblical texts will predicate what is proper of one nature to the other, a classic example being “[T]hey would not have crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor. 2:8). Zwingli accounts for such texts by qualifying Christ’s acts as performed according to one nature or the other, while the act itself is attributable to Christ’s person. The most pertinent aspect for my purposes is how to interpret biblical statements that speak of Christ being both present with the church and filling creation, while also being absent, in some sense. Zwingli does not intend to introduce novelty with alloiosis but to counter Luther’s confusion of the natures in his exegesis that leads to ubiquity. For Zwingli, alloiosis is nothing more than the medieval doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum updated with rhetorical terminology. “Such interchanges or exchanges or leaps, which the holy men [biblical authors] used freely in regard to Christ in view of the union of the two natures in him, nay, Christ himself used for agreeable variety to regard himself (the theologians used not long ago to call it exchange of attributes, that is special properties).” He claims to use the term alloiosis only “in order to make grammarians more friendly.” Stephens summarizes Zwingli’s christological use of alloiosis well: “[Zwingli] uses the idea of the sharing of properties or alloiosis to bring out the distinction of the natures within the unity of the person rather than the interpenetration of the two natures.”

Because Zwingli employed this concept against ubiquity, alloiosis has been a major point of critique by Lutheran theologians. First, according to Lutheran critics, alloiosis devolves into a Nestorian christology because it creates two active agents within Christ: the human, who acts in a certain way, and the divine, who acts in another. Luy is representative in his claim that Zwingli’s doctrine of alloiosis “eschews the unity of Christ and speaks as if divinity and humanity act as their own discrete subjects.” Alloiosis, according to this critique, is therefore evidence for Zwingli’s Nestorianism. Second, Lutheran scholars have critiqued alloiosis for failing to account for the communicatio idiomatum. Herman Sasse states this charge in no uncertain terms: “Zwingli did not recognize what the Lutherans call the ‘communicatio idiomatum,’ a doctrine of the ancient Greek Church, that even medieval scholastics did not understand.” These critiques are then leveled equally against the extra Calvinisticum. Let us take a closer look at Zwingli’s definition and use of alloiosis to support the extra, and then we will be in a better position address these two charges.

Zwingli uses the term alloiosis in both a general sense, to refer to a rhetorical concept, and in a christological sense. He defines the specific rhetorical concept of alloiosis as follows: “Alloiosis, which I have interpreted as an expression involving a leap, is, according to Plutarch, a trope by which an interchange takes place between members of a category or scheme of things where, namely, on account of some affinity in the grammatical phenomena, a leap or interchange is made from one to the other.” According to Fritz Blanke, the work of Plutarch Zwingli is drawing from is The Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer, which scholars attribute to a grammarian writing after the death of Plutarch (c. 120) but before 200. According to Pseudo-Plutarch, the figure of alloiosis occurs “where the normal syntax is changed and varied for the sake of adding grace and ornament to the discourse. The usual syntax appears not to follow, but rather there is a change with regard to some peculiar characteristic [idion].” Examples of this trope include shifts in case, number, or other parts of normal syntax.

Zwingli can use the term in the more general rhetorical sense. Commenting on Isaiah 1:29, which reads, vos pudeat (you will be ashamed), Zwingli argues that this should be interpreted as “they will be ashamed.” He states that a “learned man will easily understand [this] through alloiosis.” This demonstrates that the concept of alloiosis in Zwingli should not be understood solely as a feature of his christology but rather as a general rhetorical tool he finds particularly useful for sorting out the predication of the two natures of Christ. Locher also notes that the concept is used in his discussion of the doctrine of the Trinity. Zwingli offers this in passing at the end of his treatment in Friendly Exegesis: “[A]lloiosis occurs not only between the two natures of Christ, but also between the persons of the divine essence, so that sometimes the person is put for the essence, or, again, the essence is put for the person.” That for Zwingli alloiosis applies beyond the realm of christology indicates a greater ambiguity in its use than has often been appreciated. Alloiosis functions for Zwingli first as a broader rhetorical concept. This figure of speech has particular usefulness for understanding how properly to predicate attributes of the incarnate Christ. Zwingli therefore uses the name of the trope to refer more technically to the whole interplay of christological predication.

While Zwingli understands alloiosis as foundationally a figure of speech, such locutions are allowed and true of Christ because of the unique ontology of the hypostatic union. Zwingli justifies the use of the trope with regard to the incarnation because of the hypostatic union:

The reason why they [the biblical authors] were all so much given to the use of this exchange or alloiosis of attributes is this: when he who is from all eternity Son of God put on humanity, he was made Son of Man also, not the sense that he who was Son of God lost the lot or condition of being divine, or was transmuted into the position of man, not in the sense that he turned human into divine nature, but in the sense that God and a human being became one Christ, who, in that he is the Son of God, is the life of all (for all things were made by him [John 1:3]) and in that he is a human being, is the offering through which the eternal righteousness, which also is his righteousness, is reconciled.

Alloiosis with respect to Christ is possible because the two natures have become the one Christ. And this is done in such a manner that “the lot or condition of being divine” is not abandoned by the act of the eternal Son but rather by the assumption of the flesh into a unity.

So far this is similar to the understanding of Christ’s person expressed in On the Lord’s Supper; however, Zwingli specifies this unity by incorporating the language of person or hypostasis: “These two natures, however, he joined and united into one substance [hypostasim] or person in such a way that they still always retain each its own character, with the one exception that the tendency to sin is utterly foreign to his humanity.” The hypostatic union grounds and authorizes alloiosis, which is allowed only when referring to “members of a category or scheme of things.” Regarding Christ, the hypostatic union is the ontological relation, the shared membership of the divine and human in the person of Christ, that allows for the linguistic leaps from one to the other. The union ensures that one can speak meaningfully about Christ as acting or being both human and divine simultaneously, yet not in such a way that either nature is changed. Upon this ground Zwingli critiques ubiquity, which would constitute a change in the human nature from spatially located to spatially transcendent.

Zwingli argues that one must interpret passages of Scripture that speak of Christ acting in any way that is proper to one nature—suffering, hungering, dying or conversely creating, performing miracles, or being equal to the Father—in light of the personal union without change. For example, in interpreting John 16:15—“All things the Father has are mine”—Zwingli states:

Here “mine” indicates his divinity as rightful possessor. For though Christ reigns, and lives, and enriches all things with the Father and the Holy Spirit, yet this is wholly because of his superior nature. It belongs, therefore, of right to him that all that is the Father’s is also his, and when we attribute what we do to his humanity, we are not out of the way, for he who shares these things with the Father shares the nature of a human being with us also.

The referent of “mine” in this text is the person of Christ, the “who” of the action, for it is this person who “reigns, lives, and enriches all things.” Given the complex nature of this referent, i.e., possessing two natures, the “how” of this act must be investigated. How can it be said of Christ that he shares all things with the Father and the Spirit? According to the divine nature, the referent of “mine” is the person, yet it “indicates his divinity as rightful possessor.” But then is it inappropriate to say, “The man Jesus possesses all things of the eternal Father”? No, according to Zwingli, since he, the person, shares both in the common Triune divinity and in human nature. Such a statement is by alloiosis, such that one’s thought must leap from the name given of his humanity by means of the hypostatic union to the divine nature to which this attribute is proper. One may rightly object that Zwingli is mistaken in his interpretation of this verse, especially the meaning of “all things,” but this passage effectively illustrates Zwingli’s procedure of reckoning with christological predication with the tool of alloiosis.

Having set forth Zwingli’s understanding of the meaning and function of alloiosis, we now turn to his use of the idea to counter ubiquity and support the extra. Of particular importance for his debate with Luther are those passages that speak of Christ ascending and the nature of his body after the resurrection. Zwingli appeals to passages that speak of Christ’s absence, “going away,” or “leaving the world.” In what sense are such passages predicated of Christ’s person? Citing John 13:33— “Little children, yet a little while I am with you”—Zwingli explains, “Here ‘I am’ is said of his human nature, for we cannot say of his divine nature that it is not everywhere. And do you venture to say that his body is everywhere when he himself says that he will be with us but a little while?” According to alloiosis, this text is referring to his humanity, since Christ’s divine presence is never removed from his people. Zwingli further supports this point with John 14:25—“These things I have spoken to you, being yet present with you.” Christ’s words indicate there will come a time when he is not present with them: “Therefore, he went away. But he who is by nature everywhere present cannot go away, therefore the humanity went away.” Here the reasoning of alloiosis is evident in condensed form. “He went away”: the person of Christ is the subject of this action. How, though, did he do so? Not by his divinity since what is present everywhere cannot “go away,” lest it cease to be everywhere. Therefore, it is the humanity of Christ by which this absence ought to be understood. Zwingli declares that the purpose of this absence was the sending of the Holy Spirit, citing John 14:26, 16:4–7 in support. By alloiosis, texts that speak of “going away” are applying an activity appropriate to human nature to the whole person, while more properly it is only according to the human nature that Christ has gone, while according to his divinity he is everywhere. Therefore, the person of Christ is both everywhere and corporeally absent, the simplest expression of the extra Calvinisticum, and therefore not corporeally ubiquitous.

If the Scriptures indicate that Christ has “gone away” according to the human nature, which is fulfilled at his ascension, other passages indicate where he now resides and how he resides there. Zwingli multiplies his appeals to the ascension with citations of the account in Mark (16:19), Luke (24:51), and Acts (1:9–11), thereby “proving the ascension of the body of Christ and its sitting at the right hand.” The place at the right hand of the Father is not a state to which Christ as the divine Son needed to ascend, being always and eternally one with God; therefore this act, by alloiosis, is properly reckoned of Christ’s humanity: “He sat there not only before his sitting there as a human being but before his human birth also. As a human being, therefore, Christ was received up into heaven, who as God had never gone away from there.” While Christ as divine from eternity is omnipresent, his humanity is absent after the ascension and dwells bodily in heaven.

Zwingli acknowledges that the right hand of the Father is not strictly speaking circumscribed; however, this claim is not sufficient to posit that the human body lacks circumscription. Since Christ’s body is a true body, it must be localized. Zwingli again cites Augustine’s Tractates on John to support the notion that Christ’s body “must be in one place only.” Therefore the theologian can only ascribe to him the place he has revealed himself to be: “[H]ence we deny that he can be anywhere else than where the Lord’s word shows that he is.” One cannot appeal to a change of the spatially local nature of the body of Christ after the ascension, as already seen in the angelic testimony in Matthew 28:6—“He is risen; he is not here”—which Zwingli reiterates. He also draws attention to the passages referring to post-resurrection appearances. After the resurrection we see that Christ appears to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, the crowds, the apostles in the upper room, and so on (Luke 24:13–35; John 20; 1 Cor. 15): “Raised from the dead, he determined to present himself in visible tangible shape to his disciples, but never appeared thus in different places at once.” Thus Scripture offers no evidence, according to Zwingli, that Christ is bodily everywhere, since no transition in this quality is spoken of after the resurrection or ascension.

Zwingli enhances the case for Christ’s circumscribed body with an argument from the nature of created intelligences, i.e., angels and human beings, who by dint of their created status are circumscribed:

Although the divine nature is itself infinite, and certainly cannot be circumscribed in any way, yet all created beings having intelligence are in him just as we are, and are circumscribed. . . . We recognize that Christ, by virtue of his humanity, sits at the right hand of the Father, circumscribed just as the angels and people are circumscribed.

Therefore, while the right hand of the Father is not itself circumscribed, Christ, according to his humanity, is there circumscribedly because his humanity is created. But this also meets the needs of created intelligences, who, being finite, must encounter God in Christ’s finite, circumscribed humanity after death: “If they are where he is, in virtue of his humanity, namely then, as they are circumscribed, so must he also be circumscribed.” This fulfills the promises of Scripture wherein the elect are said to be with Christ after death, such as John 12:26 and 14:2–3. These passages cannot refer to Christ according to his divinity or to a ubiquitous humanity because then there would be no meaningful transition from being away from him to being with him. Christ will remain circumscribed in heaven, yet “in his divine nature he is still with us secretly and unseen,” until he returns with a true, visible, and circumscribed body, as he left: “You have here [Acts 1:11] the circumscribed and visible going away of the body, nor is any return anywhere promised other than one circumscribed and visible.”

Therefore, for Zwingli, Christ’s presence and absence must be understood through the redemptive career of the incarnate Christ. He is divinely and personally present before the incarnation, during his earthly ministry, during the church age, and in glory, yet corporeally he is present during his life, absent after the ascension, and will be present again only in the eschaton. Zwingli uses alloiosis to support this reading from Scripture by discerning in what sense biblical texts are speaking of Christ’s presence. Through his method he finds no support in Scripture for Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity and attempts to answer Luther’s charge that his doctrine is based on reason rather than Scripture.

Having set forth Zwingli’s definition and use of alloiosis to reject ubiquity and support the extra Calvinisticum, it is now possible to address two of the common objections to this understanding: that it precedes from a Nestorian christology and that it fails to account for the communicatio idiomatum. One standard attack on Zwingli’s doctrine, and on his christology more generally, is that, if not overtly Nestorian, it teeters on the brink of it. This is not the case. Zwingli avoids a crass Nestorianism, which would posit two persons, since alloiosis is possible only because the two natures are united in one person. Zwingli also avoids the subtler form of the error of which Luy accuses him: “divinity and humanity act as their own discrete subjects.” For Zwingli, the acting subject is always the one Christ who is God and human, but it is appropriate to speak according to one nature or the other:

For as each nature is in him in its entirety, so each nature preserves its own character (as far as their boundaries are concerned). His humanity can no more reign than his divinity die—even though he who reigns is human, and he who dies is God. We easily admit the expressions, “The son of Man sits at the right hand and reigns” [Matt. 26:64] and “The Son of God died for us” [cf. 1 Cor. 15:3], because of the union of the natures, yet the understanding never confuses the two.

The key phrase here is etiamsi is, qui regnat, homo sit, et is, qui moritur, deus. The subject of both actions, reigning and dying, is the same “is,” the same active subject. This subject is the person or hypostasis of Christ, who is both God and a human. According to Zwingli, Christ does not reign via his humanity, although the one who reigns is a human, and Christ does not die via his divinity, although the one who dies is God. Zwingli’s statement of the unified acting subject renders the first critique above moot, which claims Zwingli creates separate divine and human subjects. Rather than supporting Nestorianism, Zwingli’s reflection on alloiosis and its basis causes him to ground his christology more firmly in the hypostatic union.

Zwingli is working with a firmly Chalcedonian understanding of the hypostatic union in which in the personal union each nature maintains its peculiar properties, and yet there is not separation or division of these natures, as we have seen. The acting subject is always the one person of Christ who is God and man, yet the potentiality of these acts arises from one nature or the other. Zwingli combines this with a classic understanding of the nature of God and a commonsense understanding of the nature of humanity. Divinity is impassible, omnipresent, alone to be worshipped, and so on. Humanity is created, not to be worshipped, spatially located, able to suffer and die, and so on. These qualities are never confused or intermingled between the natures but terminate on the person who is the proper owner of the attributes of each nature.

Lutheran theologians further assert that Zwingli’s use of alloiosis fails to account for the ancient Christian doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, or the exchange of attributes. This charge, however, results from imposing a post-Reformation, Lutheran definition on the expression. Lutheran theologians use the term communicatio idiomatum in such a way that it must include Luther’s position that there is an exchange of properties between the natures themselves. For instance, Haga asks with incredulity, “If Zwingli even accepts the exchange of properties, how can he criticize Luther for blurring the lines between humanity and divinity?” The Lutheran scholars who chastise Zwingli for failing properly to uphold the communicatio idiomatum are importing a post-Reformation meaning of this term determined by Luther’s usage rather than applying the definition of the term from the medieval period, which Zwingli claims alloiosis upholds.

Richard Cross clearly defines the communicatio in the medieval scholastic period: “not the communication of properties understood in any sense as the ascription of the properties of the one nature to the other, but the communication of properties understood as the ascription of divine and human properties to the person of the Word.” Heiko Oberman offers a further feature of the medieval understanding of the communicatio idiomatum that is pertinent here: “[T]he hypostatic union is viewed as the basis of exchange.” This criterion means that the modes of speech explained by the communicatio are grounded in the precedent ontology of the hypostatic union. This must be the case lest “the unity of the two natures is captured only in the communicatio idiomatum, with the result that the mutual predication camouflages an essentially Nestorian Christology.” Zwingli fulfills these criteria by positing the hypostatic union as the basis of alloiosis and rejecting the ontological attribution between natures that ubiquity presupposes.

The medieval definition directly contradicts the understanding of the communicatio by which Lutheran scholars measure Zwingli’s position. For instance, Haga defines the communicatio as “[T]he divine and human nature mutually exchanged or shared their properties.” By this definition, Zwingli’s understanding of alloiosis would conflict with the communicatio. But given that Haga’s definition is derived from Luther’s attacks on Zwingli’s view and the tradition that follows from Luther’s framing of the issue, that Zwingli fails by this criterion is unremarkable. Zwingli’s position on the communication of properties, which he expresses through the rhetorical tool of alloiosis, is largely in line with the medieval understanding.

Cross, however, in his article on alloiosis in Zwingli, rejects the conclusion that Zwingli’s understanding of the communicatio is compatible with the medieval position. Cross concludes, “Zwingli’s theory of alloiosis differs radically from scholastic theories of the communication of properties—even though the Christologies of both Zwingli and the later schoolmen are Chalcedonian in their basic shape.” On what basis does Cross make this claim? He forms his argument by comparing three renderings of Zwingli’s use of alloiosis in the secondary literature: Locher, Blanke, and Stephens. Cross bases his negative conclusion on Stephens’s articulation of Zwingli’s use of alloiosis: “where we name the one nature and understand the other, or name what they both are, and yet understand only the one.” Cross interprets this statement in such a way that Zwingli would agree to the attribution of properties from one nature to the other rather than to the person: “As Stephens describes alloiosis, it seems that what is at issue is not, in fact, our ability to predicate the natures and their properties of the one person. Rather, what is at issue is our ability to predicate the natures and their properties of either the whole God-man (including both natures) or each other.” It is frankly unclear, however, how Cross derives this position from Stephens’s statement. Cross overstates the ambiguity or sloppiness in Stephen’s definition of alloiosis and draws from it a negative assessment of Zwingli’s position with reference to the schoolmen.

On my reading, Stephens intends nothing other than Locher, who states, “It is only with regard to the person of the God-man that one can assert per alloiosim the properties of both natures alike.” If this is the case, then the major difference that Cross sees between Zwingli and the scholastic theologians is overcome, because Cross himself admits that “[Locher’s] view, if correct, would make Zwingli to be in complete accord with the schoolmen who . . . understood the communication of properties in just this sense. Locher’s account of Zwingli would thus agree with Zwingli’s own assessment that his position was in accord with that of the schoolmen.” This discussion of Zwingli’s view indicates that Locher’s position better represents Zwingli’s intention.

Zwingli’s articulation of alloiosis in Friendly Exegesis is an important development within his christology and the articulation of the extra. Not only does it provide further fodder for rejecting Luther’s exegetical arguments for ubiquity and for biblically supporting the extra, but through this argumentation Zwingli corrects the deficiency in his previous articulations of the unity of Christ. The most significant advance in Friendly Exegesis for Zwingli’s christology, which alloiosis produced, was not the proper predication of the natures, which we have seen since the Commentary on True and False Religion, but using “person” language to account for the unity of Christ. As we saw in On the Lord’s Supper, Zwingli only vaguely expressed the unity of Christ’s natures with the phrase “one Christ.” His return to the scholastic concept of the communicatio idiomatum grounded him more firmly in traditional christological language, guarding him from the charge of undue separation of natures, which could be leveled against his earlier formulation. Therefore, in Friendly Exegesis, Zwingli articulates the final feature of the doctrine of the extra, a view of the hypostatic union and communicatio idiomatum whereby the properties terminate on the person of Christ without an ontological transference of properties between the natures.

During the eucharistic controversy in the 1520s, Zwingli offered an early articulation of the doctrine of the extra Calvinisticum. The theological motivations for this idea were already present in his christology before the controversy and helped account for the seriousness with which he engaged in the debate. His doctrine of Christ was determined by his understanding of the Christian gospel, the focal point of which is the sole mediatorial function of Christ for human salvation. To be this mediator, Christ had to be both fully human and fully divine. The impassible God who alone has saving power took to himself a passible human nature to atone for humanity’s sins. Zwingli’s view of satisfaction, appropriated by faith alone, led to his rejection of any external means of attaining forgiveness. Because of this rejection of external means, Zwingli reacted strongly against the doctrine of the corporeal presence of Christ in the Lord’s Supper, which he argued moved one away from God as the only source of salvation into idolatry.

One of Zwingli’s chief arguments against a corporeal presence in the Eucharist and to support his symbolic reading of “This is my body,” relied on christological premises that the bodily presence of Christ was removed from the earthly sphere of existence by the ascension. He first put forth this argument in On the Lord’s Supper, wherein he articulated the first three elements of the extra Calvinisticum. First, Jesus Christ maintained an existence extra carnem during his earthly ministry, through his unity with the Father and the divine attribute of omnipresence. Second, after the ascension, Christ’s human body exists in a spatially limited way in heaven, which Zwingli supports through many passages of Scripture that discuss Christ going away from his disciples and considerations of the two natures. Third, Christ’s presence with his church in the time between the first and second comings is through his divine nature and power, although Zwingli does not demonstrate the pneumatological understanding of Christ’s continued presence emphasized in later Reformed thought. This early articulation of the extra Calvinisticum predates Luther’s argument for the ubiquity of Christ’s human body. Yet, at this stage of Zwingli’s development, he had yet to make full use of the language of “person,” which left him open to criticism for failure to account properly for the unity of Christ.

In Friendly Exegesis, Zwingli completes the exposition of the extra Calvinisticum. Through his attempt to refute Luther’s doctrine of ubiquity and justify his own understanding of the Lord’s Supper, Zwingli makes use of the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum and the rhetorical tools of alloiosis to account more fully for the unity of Christ’s person even while making clear distinctions between the natures. He thereby fulfills the fourth criterion of the extra Calvinisticum: that communicatio idiomatum within the hypostatic union terminates on the person of Christ, therefore excluding a sharing of properties between the divine and human natures themselves.

Having established that Zwingli argues for the extra Calvinisticum within the eucharistic debate itself, in the following chapter I will demonstrate how these doctrinal issues contributed to the parting of ways between the German and Swiss reformers at the Marburg Colloquy, discuss Zwingli’s final works, and present the ongoing development of the doctrine after Zwingli’s death up to the Consensus Tigurinus in 1549.

Zwingli’s first name is variously spelled Ulrich, Huldrych, Huldreich. The Anglicized version Ulrich will be adopted.

The main proliferation of this epitaph comes from Jean Rilliet, Zwingli: Third Man of the Reformation, trans. Harold Knight (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1964). See also Alister E. McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction, 4th ed. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 75. For the current state of research on Zwingli, see W. Peter Stephens, “The Theology of Zwingli,” in The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology, ed. David Bagchi and David C. Steinmetz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 96–98; Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives, trans. Milton Aylor and Stuart Casson, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 42–71.

Zwingli’s Swiss countrymen have been the most attentive to his thought and legacy: Oskar Farner, Huldrych Zwingli: Sein Entwicklung Zum Reformator, 1506–1520 (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1946); Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Die zwinglische Reformation in Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). The relative paucity of scholarship in the English-speaking academy can be seen in the fact that only three significant monographs dedicated to Zwingli have appeared in English since 1980, only a single collection of essays, and one translated biography: ; E. J. Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin, eds., Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years, Pittsburgh Theological Monographs (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984); Ulrich Gäbler, Huldrych Zwingli: His Life and Work, trans. Ruth C. L. Gritsch (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1986); W. Peter Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988); W. P. Stephens, Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).

Robert C. Walton, “Let Zwingli Be Zwingli,” in Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years, ed. E. J. Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984), 171–90.

George Richard Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), 7–11.

, 13.

, 14–20.

“Zwingli, who read and annotated Duns Scotus’ Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard (Quaestiones super quatuor libris sententiarum (Venice, 1503) [sic] very carefully, was a man of the via antiqua, well acquainted with Aquinas. Essentially Aristotelian in outlook, he was later often regarded as a rationalist because he was not prepared, as the ‘modernists’ were, to despise reason and to see the wisdom of God as necessarily incomprehensible to the human intellect. One conviction remained with him as a result of his philosophical training at Basel—a material thing could not have, induce or bring about, an intellectual or spiritual operation. Luther’s different nominalist and ‘modernist’ training at Erfurt accounts in some degree for later differences.” , 16n2. For Luther’s position regarding these schools, see Heiko A. Oberman, “Via Antiqua and Via Moderna: Late Medieval Prolegomena to Early Reformation Thought,” in From Ockham to Wyclif, ed. Anne Hudson and Michael Wilks (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), 445–63; Heiko A. Oberman, “Luther and the Via Moderna: The Philosophical Backdrop of the Reformation Breakthrough,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 54, no. 4 (October 2003): 641–70.

, 25–27, 42–44; Cornelis Augustijn, “Zwingli als Humanist,” Nederlans Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis 67, no. 2 (1987): 120–42.

, 39–40.

The influence of Luther on Zwingli’s conversion to reform is debated, but evidence seems to confirm Zwingli’s assessment. For details on this period and the literature on the relation of Luther and Zwingli, see , 21–28.

, 233–55; Dorothy Clark, “Erasmus and Zwingli’s On the True and False Religion,” in Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years, ed. E. J. Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin, Pittsburgh Theological Monographs (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984), 23–42; , 9–17.

, 14.

For the text of the Zurich Council’s decree, see Ulrich Zwingli, Huldrych Zwingli, ed. G. R. Potter, Documents of Modern History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978), 25–26.

For a brief account of the First Zürich Disputation, see Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, New Frontiers in History (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 57–61; , 97–104.

Ed L. Miller, “Oecolampadius: The Unsung Hero of the Basel Reformation,” Iliff Review 39 (September 1982): 5–25; Diane Poythress, Reformer of Basel: The Life, Thought, and Influence of Johannes Oecolampadius (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2011); Jeff Fisher, A Christoscopic Reading of Scripture: Johannes Oecolampadius on Hebrews (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2016), 14–27.

Andrew M. McGinnis, The Son of God Beyond the Flesh: A Historical and Theological Study of the Extra Calvinisticum, T&T Clark Studies in Systematic Theology 29 (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 76.

E. David Willis, Calvin’s Catholic Christology: The Function of the So-Called Extra Calvinisticum in Calvin’s Theology, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Thought 2 (Leiden: E J Brill, 1966), 4; Heiko A. Oberman, “The ‘Extra’ Dimension in the Theology of Calvin,” in The Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1986), 257; Christina Aus der Au, “Das Extra Calvinisticum: Mehr als ein reformiertes Extra?,” Theologische Zeitschrift 64, no. 4 (2008): 358; Ernst van den Hemel, “Things That Matter: The Extra Calvinisticum, the Eucharist, and John Calvin’s Unstable Materiality,” in Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality, ed. Dick Houtman and Birgit Meyer (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), 63–64.

“This finite nature is always joined to the infinite divine nature, but the divine nature surpasses the human. This is what was later to be called the ‘Extra Calvinisticum’; it is already formulated by Zwingli, clearly and emphatically—and in agreement with Augustine and the older Scholastics, incidentally.” , 176. The preeminence of Locher within the field of Zwingli studies can be seen in his obituary in Zwingliana: Rudolf Dellsperger, “Gottfried Wilhelm Locher: 29 April 1911–11 January 1996,” Zwingliana 23 (1996): 5–9.

, 111–18.

, 176; , 111.

E. M. Henning, “The Architectonics of Faith: Metalogic and Metaphor in Zwingli’s Doctrine of the Eucharist,” Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme 10, no. 4 (1986): 357n80; Jack D. Kilcrease, The Self-Donation of God: A Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Christ and His Benefits (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), 171; David J. Luy, Dominus Mortis: Martin Luther on the Incorruptibility of God in Christ (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg Fortress, 2014), 125. Lutheran critics are not the only ones to level this criticism, which seems to have made its way into theological folk consciousness. See Michael S. Horton, “Theologies of Sacraments in the Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation,” in Christian Theologies of the Sacraments: A Comparative Introduction, ed. Justin S. Holcomb and David A. Johnson (New York: NYU Press, 2017), 125.

Joar Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics? The Interpretation of Communicatio Idiomatum in Early Modern Lutheranism, REFO500 2 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2012).

Brian Lugioyo, “Martin Luther’s Eucharistic Christology,” in The Oxford Handbook of Christology, ed. Francesca Aran Murphy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 278.

For discussion of the “Nestorian Objection” to the extra in modern christological discussions, see James R. Gordon, The Holy One in Our Midst: An Essay on the Flesh of Christ (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2016), 58–71.

Johann Quenstedt, Theologic Didactica-Polemica, sive Systema Theologicum in duas sectiones (Leipzig: Fritisch, 1715), III.iii.q5, cited in , 8.

, 125. See also , 171.

For the standard treatment of this controversy from either the Reformed or Lutheran perspective, see Walther Köhler, Zwingli und Luther: Ihr Streit über das Abendmahl nach seinen politischen und religiösen Beziehungen, Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, Bd. 6–7 (Gütlersloh: Bertelsmann, 1924); Alexander Barclay, The Protestant Doctrine of the Lord’s Supper: A Study in the Eucharistic Teaching of Luther, Zwingli and Calvin (Glasgow: Jackson, Wylie, 1927); Hermann Sasse, This Is My Body: Luther’s Contention for the Real Presence in the Sacrament of the Altar (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1959). For the most current scholarship on the eucharistic controversy, see Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incarnation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Lee Palmer Wandel, ed., A Companion to the Eucharist in the Reformation, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition (Boston: Brill, 2014); John W. Riggs, The Lord’s Supper in the Reformed Tradition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015); Amy Nelson Burnett, Debating the Sacraments: Print and Authority in the Early Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Ulrich Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion, ed. and trans. Samuel Jackson (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1981). Ulrich Zwingli, “De vera et falsa religione commentarius,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli, Corpus Reformatorum 90 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1914), 3:637.15–18, hereafter Z III.

Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, 61.

Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, 63–64.

, 131–33.

Huldrych Zwingli, “Short Christian Instruction,” in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. H. Wayne Pipkin, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 1:10–39. Ulrich Zwingli, “Eine kurze christliche Einleitung,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli, Corpus Reformatorum 89 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1908), 2:628–63.

For the relation of Zwingli and iconoclasm, see Carlos M. N. Eire, War against the Idols: The Reformation of Worship from Erasmus to Calvin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986); Charles Garside, Zwingli and the Arts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966), 83; Lee Palmer Wandel, Voracious Idols and Violent Hands: Iconoclasm in Reformation Zürich, Strasbourg, and Basel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).

Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, 63–65.

Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, 67.

Farel would become an ally of Zwingli in bringing reform to Switzerland with his activities in Basel, Bern, and ultimately Geneva, where he would cajole a young John Calvin into ministry. See Henri Heyer, Guillaume Farel: An Introduction to His Theology (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990). For a brief biographical sketch of du Blet, see Henry Heller, “Antoine Du Blet,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz and Thomas Brian Deutscher (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003), 407–8.

, 98–99.

It is unknown if this work had any direct effect in France. There was no French translation made. Yet, the Commentary would be read by at least one Frenchman to good effect. Calvin read the work, and its ideas deeply shaped his first edition of the Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536, which was also dedicated to Francis and would go on to eclipse the Commentary in France. , 100.

Cited in George Warren Richards, “Introduction to Commentary on True and False Religion,” in Commentary on True and False Religion, ed. Samuel Jackson and Clarence Heller (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1981), 4.

, 99.

, 54.

, 54. Sic ubique festinatum, ut saepe relegendi vix fuerit data facultas, tam abest, ut ulla castigandi aut ornandi adfuerit. Sed recte habet: Commentarius est, non oratio aut liber nonum depressus in annum (Z III 637.21–23). The reference to a book being “held back eight years” is to Horace’s Ars poetica (54n).

Richards also tempers Köhler’s inflated assessment. 5.

4.

, 57. Quod qui religiosi essent solicite cuncta retractarent, ac velut relegerent, quae ad deorum cultum pertinerent (Z III 639.13–14).

, 97–98. Falsa religio sive pietas est, ubi alio fiditur quam deo. Qui ergo quacunque tandem creatura fidunt, vere pii non sunt (Z III 674.21–23).

For example, see , 98, passim. This is not to say that Zwingli rejects the tradition of the church carte blanche, but only that these traditions cannot be the basis of true religion, which comes from the divine rather than a human source. Zwingli will make use of many traditional sources in his work, but only insofar as he understands them as forwarding scriptural truth. For discussion of Zwingli’s use of the church fathers, see , 17–21; Irena Backus, “Ulrich Zwingli, Martin Bucer and the Church Fathers,” in The Reception of the Church Fathers in the West, ed. Irena Backus (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 2:628–44. For fuller discussion of the purpose and overall theology of the Commentary, see ; Bard Thompson, Humanists and Reformers: A History of the Renaissance and Reformation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 455–59.

, 98. Impii sunt, qui hominis verbum tanquam dei amplectuntur (Z III 674.23).

, 156. Vera ergo Christi religio haec est, qua miser homo de se ipso desperat, et omnem cogitationem fiduciamque in deum iactat, certus, quod is nihil negare possit, qui filium suum pro nobis impendit; et quod filius, qui aeque deus ac pater est, nihil negare potest, qum noster sit. Falsa vero religio inane Christi nomen circumfert, qum spes suas alibi habeat (Z III 723.1–6).

Huldrych Zwingli, “Letter to Matthew Alber concerning the Lord’s Supper,” in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, ed. H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1984), 2:127–45.

12.

, 76–77, 108–9, passim.

Zwingli arrives at this understanding through reflection on Rom 5:12. , 77–78.

, 75. Hominem cognoscere tam est laboriosum, quam sepiam capere. Ut enim ista se in atrorem suum abdit, ne comprehendi possit, ita hic noster tam subitas tamque densas hypocriseos nebulas, quam primum se peti sentit, excitat (Z III 654.28–30).

, 83.

“But God was better, and pitied His work, and devised a plan to repair so serious a misfortune. Since His justice, being inviolably sacred had to remain as intact and unshaken as His mercy, and since man was indeed in need of mercy but wholly amenable to God’s justice, divine goodness found a way to satisfy justice and yet to be allowed to open wide the arms of mercy without detriment to justice.” , 100.

, 100. Cumque ipsius iusticiam, utpote sacrosanctam, non minus illibatam inconcussamque manere oporteat, quam misericordiam, essetque homo misericordiae quidem indigus, sed iusticiae dei totus obnoxius, invenit divina bonitas, quo iusticiae quidem satisfieret, misericordiae vero sinus absque iusticiae detrimento liberaliter pandere liceret (Z III 676.23–28).

, 106. Quod enim deus deique filius est is, qui sequester ac mediator missus est, spem fulcit. Quid enim non potest aut habet, qui deus est? Quod autem homo, familiaritatem, amiciciam, imo necessitudinem et communitatem promittit; quid enim negare potest, qui frater est, qui imbecillitatis consors? (Z III 681.24–28).

, 110–11. Carnem enim induit, ut noster fieret. Ipse ea nihil egebat, sed nos ipso maxime egebamus. Ut ergo noster fieret, quantuscunque est deus, iustus, sanctus, misericors, creator etc. homo factus est, ut nos eius consortio in deos ditaremur (Z III 685.3–7). See also Commentary on True and False Religion, 211–12, passim.

, 200–212.

, 204–5. Videndum est hic obiter, quod Christus nobis ea parte salutaris est, qua de coelo descendit, non qua ex illibatissima quidem virgine natus est, tametsi secundum eam pati ac mori oportuerit; sed nisi deus simul fuisset, qui moriebatur, non potuisset toti mundo salutaris esse (Z III 779.18–22).

, 200–212. For further discussion of Zwingli’s exegesis of this chapter throughout his career, see W. P. Stephens, “Zwingli on John 6:63: ‘Spiritus Est Qui Vivificat, Caro Nihil Prodest,’” in Biblical Interpretation in the Era of the Reformation: Essays Presented to David C Steinmetz in Honor of His Sixtieth Birthday, ed. Richard A. Muller and John L. Thompson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 156–85.

, 205. Nam hactenus tantum est nobis salutaris, quatenus pro nobis mactatus est; at secundum carnem mactari tantum potuit, et secundum divinitatem tantum salutaris esse (Z III 779.34–36).

, 209.

, 205. Nam, ut deus et homo unus est Christus, ita fit, ut, cum iuxta carnem caesus sit (quis enim deum posset occidere?), ac mors eius nobis vita facta sit, ut propter naturarum unitionem et communicationem alteri nonnunquam tribuatur naturae, quod totius Christi est (Z III 779.39–780.7).

, 111. Descenderat Christus in hunc mundum, deus homo factus, ut interfluvialem Mesopotamiam, id est: duas naturas, in eo agnoscas, iuxta quas omnia et operatus et passus, salvis utriusque semper limitibus, opus patris sui fideliter fecit, ac mortis tandem victor ad coelos reduxit omne hominum genus (Z III 685.25–29).

This term is not generally accepted by Lutherans but has become a mainstay in many non-Lutheran descriptions. Lutheran theologians generally prefer the term “real presence” to denote their doctrine. John T Mueller, “The Issue Involved in the Lutheran Rejection of Consubstantiation,” Concordia Theological Monthly 21, no. 8 (August 1950): 602–5.

See for general works on the eucharistic controversy.

, 41–106.

, 58. For the most extensive and up-to-date bibliographic information regarding Zwingli’s eucharistic views, see also 186–87n7.

, 102–4.

For more extended treatment of this period, see , 43–50; , 58–61.

, 44.

, 46, italics in original.

, 52; , 83–84. For an extensive treatment of Cornelis Hoen and his influence, see Bart Jan Spruyt, Cornelius Henrici Hoen (Honius) and His Epistle on the Eucharist (1525): Medieval Heresy, Erasmian Humanism, and Reform in the Early Sixteenth-Century Low Countries, Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions, vol. 119 (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2006).

Tropicus enim sermo is est, qui non ingerit nobis eum sensum, quem verba primo adspectu promittunt. Ulrich Zwingli, “In catabaptistarum strophas elenchus,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Corpus Reformatorum 93.1 (Zürich: Berichthaus, 1961), 6.1:97.15–16. .

For the first presentation of the words of institution as exhibiting a trope, see Ulrich Zwingli, “Subsidiary Essay on the Eucharist,” in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, ed. H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1984), 2:202–3, 206.

Oecolampadius makes explicit use of the Bohemian Brethren’s arguments in his first foray into the eucharistic controversy, On the Genuine Exposition of the Lord’s Words, This Is My Body (1525). “There are three passages in his book, however, that point very specifically to Oecolampadius’s use of the Brethren’s confessions, because in each passage he linked their argument that Christ’s body is in heaven with a rejection of adoration of the sacraments.” , 86. Burnett extensively documents and demonstrates this influence (83–90).

, 86–87.

, 60.

Zwingli and Oecolampadius agree that the words of institution constitute a trope and corporeal presence in the eucharistic elements, therefore ought to be rejected. They differed slightly, however, in how this trope functions. Zwingli identifies the crux of the trope in the word est, which in this context means “signifies.” For Oecolampadius the tropic weight is in the predicate corpus, which means “a sign of my body.” Nicholas Piotrowski, “Johannes Oecolampadius: Christology and the Supper,” Mid-America Journal of Theology 23 (2012): 134.

Ulrich Zwingli, “Responsio ad epistolam Ioannis Bugenhagii,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli, Corpus Reformatorum 91 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1927), 4:558–76.

, 64–66.

For the full text of the letter, see Martin Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. 73 vols. Weimar: Herman Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1883–2009, 19:118–25, hereafter WA.

Barclay discusses Luther’s Preface to the Syngramma, which according to Brecht (II.304) was published along with Agricola’s edition. Barclay errs by claiming that Zwingli “retaliated in defensive writing” to the Preface with On the Lord’s Supper. Zwingli had published his work four months earlier, in February 1526. In this text Zwingli is directly responding to the Syngramma itself as well as Catholic and humanist opponents. At the latest Zwingli was aware of Luther’s Preface to the Syngramma from a letter from Wolfgang Capito on June 11, 1526. , 68; Martin Brecht, Martin Luther 1521–1532: Shaping and Defining the Reformation, trans. James L. Schaaf (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 304; Erika Rummel and Milton Kooistra, eds., The Correspondence of Wolfgang Capito: 1524–1531 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 223.

Ulrich Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius, “Über D. Martin Luthers Buch, Bekenntnis Genannt, Zwei Antworten von Johannes Oekolampad und Huldrych Zwingli,” in Huldreich Zwinglis Sämtliche Werke, Corpus Reformatorum, 93.2 (Zurich: Berichthaus, 1968), 6.2:22–48.

, 43.

, 43.

See discussion of sources for the Marburg Colloquy in .

Ulrich in Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation, edited by James T. Dennison Jr., translated by S. M. Jackson (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 1:113–36.

Geoffrey William Bromiley, “On the Lord’s Supper Introduction,” in Zwingli and Bullinger, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 176–77; Ulrich in Zwingli and Bullinger, ed. and trans. Geoffrey William Bromiley, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 185–86.

177.

187. Sittenmal nun alle sach uß dem mißverstand der worten: “Das ist min lichnam” entsprungen ist, wellend wir zum ersten dieselben wort nach den mißverständen erwegen und anzeigen, was irtumß inen nachvolgt (Z IV, 793.3–6).

188. Dero, die in disem sacrament vermeinend waar fleisch und bluot Christi geessen werden, sind etlich, die redend, man esse sin fleisch und bluot, wie sy am crütz gehanget sind, also, das die lyplich substantz des brots und wyns in die lyplichen substantz des lyplichen fleisch und bluots verkert werde. Etlich aber sprechend, man esse den lychnam Christi in dem brot oder under dem brot, doch daß das brot brot blybe, und sölle nieman fragen, wie man inn esse, sunder allein verjehen und glouben, das man inn esse; dann Christus hab geredt: “Das ist min lychnam”; so muesse es sin. Die letsten sagend, er werde hie geessen, wie er von den todten ufferstanden sye und zuo den jungeren durch bschloßne thüren kumen etc. (Z IV 793.14–24). See also 177–78.

For a fuller exposition of On the Lord’s Supper, see , 236–39.

215.

199–215; Z IV 810–30.

212; Z IV 827.

215, 344n54.

212. In Christo sind zwo urscheiden naturen: die götlich und die menschlich; unnd sind doch bed nun ein Christus (Z IV 827.17–19).

212. Zwingli is here eliding the phrase “but he who descended from heaven.” This seems to be only because this clause is not significant for him in this context. He gives the full quotation in “Friendly Exegesis, That Is, Exposition of the Matter of the Eucharist to Martin Luther,” in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, ed. H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1984), 2:321, 328. In Dass diese Worte, he quotes both the full version (Z V 919.8–10, 937.13–15) and the elided version (Z V 855.10–12). Additionally, the inclusion of the clause “which is in heaven” corresponds to the Vulgate and is followed by Erasmus in his edition of the Greek New Testament; however, many modern versions omit this phrase on text critical grounds. Peter G. Bietenholz, Encounters with a Radical Erasmus: Erasmus’ Work as a Source of Radical Thought in Early Modern Europe (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), 51–52.

“Where one or two are gathered in my name” (Matt. 18:20).

212. Er ist ouch dero halb all weg an der grechten des vatters; denn er seyt, er wär imm himel, do er noch lyplich uff erden (Z IV 828.1–2).

212–13. Die er umb unsertwillen in dem ewig reinen lyb Marie an sich genomen uß empfengnus und fruchtbarung des heligen geists und warlich harumbgetragen und an imm ghebt hatt in disem zyt. Nach der natur hatt er zuogenomen und gwachsen lyplich und in wyßheit [cf. Luc. 2. 52]. In dero hatt er hunger, durst, frost, hitz und andre presten, die nit süntlich sind, erlidten. Nach dero ist er an ‘s crütz gheft und mit dero ist er ze himel gfaren (Z IV 828.4–10).

213. Die was ein gast im himel; dann dahin was vormal ghein fleisch nie komen (Z IV 828.10–11).

213. Dann nach dero ist er allenthalb und mit besundren gnaden und trost by sinen glöubigen (Z IV 828.17–18).

214. Das es der gotheit eigenschaft ist allenthalb sin; aber des lybs ist es nit allenthalb sin (Z IV 829.25–26).

213. Wiewol ich weiß, das man hierinn umb der beden naturen willen, die aber nun ein Christus sind, offt uff die andren redt, das doch der einen allein ist. Es muoß aber nütz deß minder die eigenschaft yeder natur unversert bliben, und iro allein eigenlich zuogelegt werden, das ir eigen ist (Z IV 828.25–29).

183.

According to Martin Brecht, in his magisterial three-volume biography of the Wittenberg reformer, Luther has already hinted at his doctrine of ubiquity in his writing against Karlstadt in Against the Heavenly Prophets, but no examples or citations are given to this effect. Brecht, Martin Luther, 169. Jörg Baur has also indicated that there are hints at the concept as early as 1525, in Against the Heavenly Prophets; however, he too cites no examples. Rather he indicates that the exegetical foundations for the doctrine, i.e., the use of Ephesians 1:4, is presented in Against the Fanatics: “Jesus Christ, according to his human nature, is put over all creatures [Eph 1:22] and fills all things.” Martin Luther, Luther’s Works, eds. Jaroslav Pelikan, Helmut T. Lehmann, and Christopher Boyd Brown, 75 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press; St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955–), 36.342, hereafter LW. Jörg Baur, “Ubiquität,” in Creator Est Creatura: Luthers Christologie Als Lehre von Der Idiomenkommunikation, ed. Oswald Bayer and Benjamin Gleede, Theologische Bibliothek Töpelmann 138 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2007), 186–301. That Against the Fanatics is the first substantial use of ubiquity by Luther in the eucharistic debate is also supported by Marc Leinhard as well as Bernhard Lohse. Marc Lienhard, Luther: Witness to Jesus Christ: Stages and Themes of the Reformer’s Christology, trans. Edwin H. Robertson (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1982), 203–4; Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development, ed. and trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2011), 173–74. At least one popular history of the Reformation mistakenly attributes the doctrine of ubiquity to later Lutheranism. Euan Cameron, The European Reformation, 2nd ed (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 193.

LW 36.342.

, 203–4.

, 204.

LW 36.343.

H. Wayne Pipkin, “Introduction to Friendly Exegesis,” in Huldrych Zwingli Writings, 2 vols., Huldrych Zwingli Writings (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick, 1984), 2:235–37; Locher, Die zwinglische Reformation in Rahmen der europäischen Kirchengeschichte, 309.

See Irena Backus, “The Disputations of Baden, 1526 and Berne, 1528: Neutralizing the Early Church,” Studies in Reformed Theology and History 1, no. 1 (Winter 1993): 1–61; Gordon, The Swiss Reformation, 69–70.

WA 19: 457–61. For an English translation of the preface, see Ian D. Kingston Siggins, ed., Luther: Evidence and Commentary (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1972), 111–14.

LW 36:331.

LW 36:338.

For Luther on reason in this context, see LW 36:335–36, 339–40, and “For God is too far beyond all reason. Hence, to sum it all up, what those people keep saying—That because it is not in accord with reason it is not true—we shall simply turn about and say the opposite: God’s Word is true, therefore your notions must be false” (LW 36:343).

LW 36:345.

LW 36:345.

236. Letters cited in Z V 548–49. Wolfgang Capito (1478?–1541) was one of the chief reformers of Strasbourg alongside Martin Bucer. He was a significant secondary figure in the eucharistic debate, who carried on correspondence with both the Swiss and the Lutherans. James M. Kittelson, “Capito, Wolfgang,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Reformation, ed. Hans Joachim Hillerbrand (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) 1.259-260.; .

236; , 303–6.

Ulrich in Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli, eds. H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 1984), 2:239.

Zwingli makes his concern more explicit later in the text. “If, moreover, sin is remitted through the eating of his body, the sins of the disciples were remitted when they had supped upon the body. Does his blood purify thus, not only when shed, but when drunk? Why, therefore, was he fastened to the cross? Are there two ways of justification, one by faith, the other by bodily eating?” Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 339–40.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 239. Porro qui naturas in Christo confundunt, non iam per alloeosim naturarumque et idiomatum commutationem, sed vere de humana praedicare volentes, quod divinae modo est, et de divina, quod humanae tantum, hi Ioannis euangelium non iam obscurant et foedant, sed conculcant; quemadmodum processu ostendemus (Z V 564.11–16).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 240.

WA 19:493:9–10; LW 36:343. Zwingli snidely remarks about this phrase that it is “a beautiful comparison truly,” and adds, “I can hardly help laughing, my dear Luther, whenever your sack is mentioned.” Later he states, “I was expecting you to add another [comparison], such as, like a countryman fills his leggins, since you had opened the door to such crudities.” Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 302, 303, 341. Bella plane comparatione! (Z V 653.15). Ferme rideo, mi Luthere, quoties sacci tui mentio incidit (655.3–4). Expectabamus . . . ut aliam quoque adderes, istam: Quemadmodum rusticus ocreas, quum tam rudibus adperuisses ostium, aut similem aliquam (709.3–5).

WA 19:492.17–18; LW 36:342.

“He who descended is the one who also ascended far above all the heavens, that he might fill all things” (Eph. 4:10). All Scripture quotations are from the ESV unless otherwise noted.

WA 19:491.17–18; LW 36:342.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 317.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 251. Christi corpus non ubique esse, etiamsi divinitas omnia impleat (Z V 583.2–3).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 303. Humanae naturę est, uni sive loco sive circumscriptioni . . . alligari; divinae, per omnia tendi, meare, adesse, omnia tenere, nosse, disponere (Z V 654.25, 27–28).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 317. Non erat isthic pristino illo crassoque corporalis pręsentiae more, iam enim corpus alium statum induerat (Z V 676.21–22).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 317.

215, 344n54.

LW 36:342.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 317.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 337–50.

“But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill [πληρωσαι] all righteousness.’ Then he consented” (Matt. 3:15); Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 341.

“That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:4). Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 341.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 341.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 341–42.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 305. Dicimus et hoc: divinitatem ubique esse pręsentem, ubicumque sit corpus Christi. Contra vero: corpus Christi non ubique esse, ubi est divinitas. Hęc enim infinita est, illud finitum. Male expendis, mi Luthere, ipsum ”ubi”, quod non ęque de infinita natura atque finita prędicatur (Z V 657.26–30).

See an example of such a charge in Werner Elert, “Über die Herkunft des Satzes ‘Finitum infiniti non capax,’” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 16 (1939): 500–504; Christian Link, “Extra Calvinisticum,” in Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, ed. Hans Dieter Betz (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 98–99; 261–62.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 305.

Richard Muller offers these brief definitions for the terms: “According to his potentia absoluta, God can effect all possibility, constrained only by his own nature. . . . The term emphasizes the transcendence and omnipotence of God by setting God even above and beyond the laws he has ordained for the operation of his universe. . . . [P]otentia ordinata: ordained power; the power by which God creates and sustains the world according to his pactum with himself and creation. In other words, limited and bounded power that guarantees the stability and consistency of the orders of nature and grace.” Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985), 231, 232. For further discussion of this distinction in the medieval period, see Heiko Augustinus Oberman, The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 30–56.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 314. Quis negat Christum, si absolute loquamur, et hęc et alia posse? (Z V 671.11–12).

“For the body of the Lord, in which he rose again from the dead, can be only in one place, but the truth is everywhere diffused.” Augustine, Tractates on John, NPNF VII:186 (PL 35:1632); cited in Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 314.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 314. “In uno loco esse oportet,” quod ad humanam adtinet (Z V 671.20).

The term is variously spelled “alloiosis,” “alloeosis,” and “alleosis.” The spelling most prevalent in the literature on Zwingli, such as that of Locher and Stephens, “alloiosis,” will be followed.

Ulrich Zwingli, “Letter to Haner,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, ed. Emil Egli, Corpus Reformatorum 95 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1914), 8:791–95, cited in , 73–74.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 320. Desultus aut transitus ille, aut si mavis permutatio, qua de altera in eo natura loquentes, alterius vocibus utimur (Z V.680.2–681.1).

For the most thorough discussion of alloiosis in Zwingli, see , 176; , 112–17; Richard Cross, “Alloiosis in the Christology of Zwingli,” Journal of Theological Studies 46, no. 2 (April 1995): 105–22; Richard Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 39–85.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 319. Vafre enim de natura una ad aliam transilis. Ut cum dicis Christum in nobis esse ac circum nos undique (quod non nisi divinę illius naturę competit), simul tamen rudium animis instillare vis corpus eius naturale ubique esse, omnia implere ac circumdare (Z V 679.1–5).

, 125.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 319–20. Eas itaque permutationes sive commutationes sive desultus, quibus divini homines de Christo pro duarum in illo naturarum unione libere usi sunt, imo Christus ipse de se ipso iucunda variatione usus est. Quas paulo ante theologi idiomatum; hoc est: proprietatum communicationem vocabant (Z V 679.10–14).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 320. Quo grammaticos haberemus magis propicios (Z V 679.15).

, 112. This quote from Stephens further undercuts Cross’s interpretation of Stephens’s definition of alloiosis.

, 125. See also , 171.

, 150.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 319. Alloeosis, quam nos desultoriam locutionem interpretati sumus, Plutarcho autore tropus est, quo consuetus ordo sive ratio commutatur, cum scilicet propter affinitatem aliquam passionum grammaticarum fit de una ad aliam saltus aut permutatio (Z V 679.7–10).

Z V 679–681 n.1; Pseudo-Plutarch, Essay on the Life and Poetry of Homer, ed. John J. Keaney and Robert Lamberton, American Classical Studies, no. 40 (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996), 9.

109.

109–31.

Ulrich Zwingli, “Complanationis Isaiae prophetae,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Corpus Reformatorum 101 (Zürich: Verlag Berichthaus, 1959), 14:127.20–26.; Quo facilius deprehendit eruditus vir per alloeosim discenum esse (Z XIV 127.24–25). See also Zwingli’s comment on Gen. 48:16 in Ulrich Zwingli, “Farrago annotationum in Genesim,” in Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke, Corpus Reformatorum 100 (Zürich: Verlag Berichthaus, 1963), 13:274.30f.

Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Die Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis im Lichte seiner Christologie: Die Gotteslehre (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1952), 1:128–32.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 336. Alloeoses non tantum fieri inter duas in Christo naturas, sed etiam inter personas divinae essentiae, sic, ut persona nonnunquam pro essentia et contra essentia pro persona capiatur (Z V 700.24–26).

This is contrary to the claims of many that Zwingli is operating with a mere figure of speech that lacks any connection to the hypostatic union. For Zwingli, alloiosis is appropriate when speaking of Christ only because of the hypostatic union; pace Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus, God and Man, trans. Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1977), 299.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 320. Hęc autem causa est, quur propensius omnes sint usi hac idiomatum commutatione sive alloeosibus, quod, qui dei filius ab aeterno est, homine adsumpto, hominis quoque filius est factus, non ut qui dei filius esset, sortem aut statum divinitatis vel amitteret, vel in humanam conditionem transmutaret, neque ut humanam naturam in divinam converteret, sed, ut deus et homo unus fieret Christus, qui pro eo, quod dei filius est, omnium vita esset – nam et omnia per ipsum facta sunt [Joh. 1.3] – et pro eo, quod homo est, oblatio esset, qua ęterna, quę et sua est iusticia, placaretur (Z V 681.13–682.6).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 320. Has autem duas naturas sic in unam hypostasim aut personam iunxit et univit, ut tamen utraque ingenium suum perpetuo servet, hoc uno excepto, quod illa ad peccandum propensio longissime ab eius humanitate abfuit (Z V 682.6–9).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 319.

See, for examples, Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 321–25.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 328. Hic “mea” divinitatem proprie possessorem significant. Tametsi enim Christus regnat, vivit, omnia ditat cum patre et spiritu sancto, id tamen omne propter naturam potiorem est. Eius ergo est proprie, quod patris omnia eius quoque sunt, et cum ista humanitati tribuimus, non ineptimus. Is enim, qui haec communia habet cum patre, nobiscum quoque communem habet humanam naturam (Z V 691.13–18).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 324–25. Hic “sum” de humana natura dicitur; de divina enim dici nequit, quod non sit ubique. Et tu audes dicere corpus eius esse ubique, cum ipse dicat se modicum nobiscum futurum? (Z V 687.35–688.2).

My translation. Pipkin’s translation inaccurately breaks up this sentence by inserting a paragraph break after “cannot go away” and combining the final phrase with the following sentence. Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 326. Ergo abibat. Abire autem non potest, qui natura ubique est; abibat ergo humanitas (Z V 388.37–389.1).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 326. Pipkin inaccurately notes the second citation as John 16:44ff.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 331–32. Ut ascensionem corporis Christi adseveremus atque eiusdem ad dexteram sessionem (Z V 695.21–22).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 332. Isthic sedit non tantum ante sessionem humanam, sed ante vagitum quoque. Adsumptus est igitur Christus homo in coelum, qui deus nunquam illinc abierat (Z V 696.14–16).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 333. NPNF VII:186; MPL 35:1632.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 333. Unde negamus aliubi esse posse, quam ubi verbum dominicum esse ostendit (Z V 696.23–24).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 333. Constituit a mortuis excitatus sese visibilem quidem atque contrectabilem prębere discipulis: nunquam tamen istud tali ratione fecit, ut simul in diversis locis adpareret (Z V 697.29–32).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 333. Nam etsi divinitas sit ipsa infinita, quę nimirum nulla circumscribi ratione potest, adhuc tamen circumscriptę sunt omnes intellectuales creaturę, quae apud eum sunt, alio modo quam hic simus in ipso. . . . [A]gnoscimus Christum secundum humanitatem ad dextram patris sedere, circumscriptum perinde atque angeli et homines circumscripti sunt (Z V 697.12–14, 16–18).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 334. Si enim sunt, ubi ipse est, secundum humanitatem scilicet, iam ut isti sunt circumscripti, illum quoque circumscriptum esse oportet (Z V 698.1–2).

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 334.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 334. Divina enim etiamnum tacite atque invisibiliter nobiscum est (Z V 699.1–2). Pipkin’s translation has been modified, substituting “secretly” for “silently” as the translation of tacite. This rendering is a standard secondary meaning of the term, and the context of the statement puts emphasis not on hearing but on sight. Further, this overcomes any impression that for Zwingli Christ no longer speaks. Rather, Zwingli holds one can still hear Christ in his Word and by his Spirit. See Locher’s discussion of Zwingli’s understanding of the Word and Spirit in preaching in Zwingli’s Thought, 12–15.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 334.

, 125.

Zwingli, “Friendly Exegesis,” 324. Ut enim utraque natura in eo de integro est, ita ingenium suum utraque de integro (quod ad definitionem adtinet) servat. Perinde enim nequit humanitas regnare, atque divinitas mori, etiamsi is, qui regnat, homo sit, et is, qui moritur, deus, facileque admittamus. “Filius hominis sedet ad dexteram et regnat” [Matth. 26. 64] ac: “Dei filius est pro nobis mortuus” [1. Cor. 15. 3], propter naturarum unionem; intellectus tamen ista nunquam confundit (Z V 687.13–19).

Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics?, 44.

Richard Cross, The Metaphysics of the Incarnation: Thomas Aquinas to Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 184.

, 263.

, 263.

Haga, Was There a Lutheran Metaphysics?, 12.

After the Reformation the term communicatio idiomatum is used in distinctly different ways according to confessional community. Theologians, however, do not always recognize this equivocal use of the expression. For an explanation of the different confessional uses of the phrase in Protestant Scholasticism, see , 72–73. For a clear distinction between these two forms, in the mode of analytical theology, see Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered, Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 6–27.

122.

105–6. For these accounts, see , 176; , 113. Blanke’s comments can be found in Z V 679–681n.

, 113.

106.

Cross offers a second reason to support his conclusion that Zwingli moves away from the scholastics, which is not particularly important to the discussion here: the question of whether these statements about Christ are literally or figuratively true. 114–15, 118–21. These terms are Cross’s and not Zwingli’s, who does not seem to be concerned with the question of the literal versus figural truth-value of christological statements. Cross is importing a concern from medieval scholastics onto Zwingli and utilizing an analytic theological method that is foreign to both. Cross finds Zwingli wanting for failing to answer a question that he was not asking by a standard of precision that he would/could not aspire to in his period.

, 176.

106.

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