6. ‘We wish to learn out His own mouth who God is’: True and False Religion
SIX ‘WE WISH TO LEARN OUT HIS OWN MOUTH WHO GOD IS’
TRUE AND FALSE RELIGION
During the months leading up to the introduction of the Reformation in Zurich at Easter 1525, Zwingli prepared what would be his most comprehensive statement of his theological convictions. Addressed to French King Francis I, Commentary on True and False Religion was directed beyond Zurich to the wider European evangelical cause. By this point, Zwingli spoke not only to the Swiss; his writings were widely available in the German Empire, in France to the west, and south of the Alps in Italy. Circulated by traders and colporteurs who travelled into Catholic lands, his texts were read eagerly, alongside those of Luther and Erasmus.1 It was in response to evangelical sympathizers in France and Italy, Zwingli claimed, that he had written a work in Latin that would provide a coherent account of the faith for a broader, international readership. His purpose, however, was also political: Zwingli increasingly looked to the old enemy France for support for the Reformation in the Swiss Confederation. He had high hopes of reports of Francis I’s reforming sympathies as a counterweight to Habsburg hostility. Zwingli drew on his years of preaching, debating and writing, but the resulting work was strikingly original. Written in clear, elegant Latin, the Commentary on True and False Religion appeared off Froschauer’s press in March 1525 as a relatively non-polemical work that moved systematically across the whole range of theology, from God to the Christian magistrates.
The volume was also a critical intervention in the most controversial debate of the day, which stemmed from the fierce disagreement between Erasmus and Martin Luther over freedom of the will.2 Erasmus was clear that, although the Bible was often difficult to discern on the question of whether humans possess free will, he believed men and women were affirmed by scripture and the Church. Luther was unequivocal that fallen humanity is wholly enslaved to sin. The two titans were locked in combat, but Zwingli was also eager to enter the lists. The nature of the divine–human relationship was a dominant theme of his Commentary on True and False Religion.
Although the text is measured, didactic and pastoral, Zwingli wrote as ever at a frantic pace, deep in the maelstrom that was Zurich. The early months of 1525 was a troubled time. Above all, attempts to resolve the split with the Anabaptists – mainly by forcing them to accept Zwingli’s theology and the will of the Council – failed entirely. The radicals could not acknowledge the Zurich magistrates as Christian and regarded Zwingli as lost.
THE MOST CHRISTIAN KING
As Zwingli composed his Commentary on True and False Religion, all was far from well for its dedicatee, who was taken prisoner by his archenemy Emperor Charles V in February 1525, after the debacle of the battle of Pavia. Francis had known success in Italy, when he had captured Milan in 1515, after Marignano; and in 1516, he had made an ‘eternal agreement’ with the Swiss, by which they would provide him with soldiers. That same year, he had concluded with Pope Leo X the ‘Bologna Concordat’, which gave him his long-sought control over the appointment of bishops in the French Church. But having lost out in the imperial election of 1519, Francis engaged in a series of indecisive wars against Charles V, before his humiliating defeat at Pavia.
Zwingli’s attitudes towards France and its king were not particularly consistent. He had been forced out of Glarus on account of his pro-papal sympathies and he had been called to Zurich by the anti-French party in the city. In 1521, he had supported the divided Zurich Council in rejecting the new military alliance with the kingdom. Yet, four years later, he optimistically dedicated his most significant theological work to the king. An expanding web of contacts had left Zwingli much more knowledgeable about France by 1525, and he was aware, through Heinrich Glarean, his mentor and friend, and others, of the humanist reformers favoured by Marguerite of Navarre, the king’s sister. Zwingli was not looking for a military alliance, and he certainly did not wish to see Swiss soldiers fighting for the king. The sermon he preached on 5 March 1525 was fiercely critical of the mercenary service, and his finger pointed clearly at the French. When he climbed into the pulpit that day, he may well have known of Francis’ fate as prisoner of the emperor.3 Zwingli was hoping for diplomatic and religious support.
The theological architecture of the Commentary on True and False Religion took shape around Zwingli’s doctrines of God, humanity and sacred history. History was crucial, for the urgency of the present moment could only be comprehended in terms of God’s interaction with humanity from its creation. As for the ancient Israelites, so for contemporaries, the wheel of history was turning: God repeatedly enjoins to repentance men and women, who again and again have shown themselves deaf to his words. Insolence has incurred punishment and suffering, with three periods of imprisonment: first in Egypt, then in Babylon and now under the Roman Church. Repentance, however, brings hope, for it is absurd to imagine that God would abandon his own creation, as if a mother would forget her child.4
The world is an unjust place where God is neglected. Zwingli condemned not only princes and rulers, but also every part of the Church – from bishops to monks and nuns, reflecting his hatred of the religious orders. Bishops were ‘wolves’, the mendicants begged without shame, and the nuns had only disdain for the people; meanwhile monasteries, for which he reserved particular contempt, were nothing more than brothels. Yet although the lay people had suffered at the hands of the greedy and predatory clergy, they were not innocent victims. They drank, fornicated and flouted God’s Word no less than the wretched clerics: the whole of society stood under divine judgement. Zwingli addressed the three estates (princes, clergy and the people), but his primary interest lay with the princes and the people. The clerical estate was beyond saving.
Christ will return in judgement, that is certain; but Zwingli’s eyes, unlike Martin Luther’s, were not fixed on that final day. Divine judgement was now. That had been his constant reminder to his fellow Swiss over their loss of virtue: ‘Who can fail to see that the day of the Lord is at hand? Not that day on which the Lord will judge the whole world, but the day on which He is to correct the present condition of things.’5 The prophet Amos had said that the lion will roar and all will be terrified, crying out: ‘I will hear what the Lord God has to say to me.’ The long-neglected gospel has been restored, as Deuteronomy had once been restored to the Jews, ‘to cleanse the foulness of sin’. God has provided for the amendment of life before his rod falls.6
Zwingli established his prophetic calling, and it was personal:
I too saw that the world overflows with the most iniquitous wars and the fiercest battles and is defiled and unsettled with rapine assault, theft and robbery. I too put my hand to the plough [Luke 9:62] and raised my voice so loudly that greedy Rome and the idol worshipped there did hear, even though its hide is very thick.7
The man who had been to northern Italy with troops from Glarus, had tended to the maimed and dying, and had witnessed in Zurich the public wealth of those grown rich on foreign pensions did not seek to conceal his ire. It had been given to him to speak God’s words of repentance and judgement. His prophetic calling had brought him before the French king.
Francis should permit the Word of God to be heard in his lands. A major step in this direction would be to silence his scholastic theologians, who knew nothing of the biblical languages, who ‘prophesy for hire and worship the belly as their only God, which has forced me and not a few others much against our will to maintain our cause with pen as well as tongue’.8 The philo-sophers were even worse, for they had no clue or understanding of what Aristotle had actually written. ‘So barbarous is all that they teach, so lifeless, that you would sooner think they were telling dreams than expounding philosophy.’9 The ancient Greek god of silence, Harpocrates, was to be invoked against those men who ‘blab out against Christ whatever comes into their heads’.
But the king had at his disposal ‘a greater class of men’, learned in languages and possessing ‘simplicity of character and holiness of life’.10 Zwingli was referring to the circle of humanists in Paris, gathered around the king’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre:
This class do you cherish, and hold nothing so valuable as these men. Nor only keep them about yourself, save a few to confer with on sacred things, but assign them posts through the length and breadth of your kingdom in which to fix not upon pillars but in men’s hearts the new commands of Christ.11
Unlike the hated Charles V, the king of France, Zwingli hoped, might raise up true reform.
COMPANIONS IN FAITH
Zwingli claimed that people ‘on the other side of the Alps’ had appealed to him. This casual and rather oblique remark conceals a great deal. By early 1525 he had an extensive network of correspondents and personal connections that extended across France, but that was found particularly in the Dauphiné and Provence and included some of the most prominent humanists of the day.12 These notable figures included those to whom he referred when reminding Francis of ‘a greater class of men’. His mentor and friend Glarean had gone to Paris in 1517 and had moved among the leading lights of the French Renaissance. Teaching in Paris, Glarean was able to provide valuable information on the religious climate in France. In 1520, he reported that Luther’s books were the subject of intense discussion, far more so than any other publications.13
One strange twist to Zwingli’s relations with the French was the rumour that he had actually travelled to the kingdom in 1524.14 A man claimed to have witnessed Zwingli preach about his time in Paris.15 He may, however, simply have misheard or misunderstood, for Heinrich Bullinger, who was well informed about the preacher’s life, denied the suggestion.16
Numerous French clerics and noblemen did visit Zurich as they travelled through Swiss lands. François Lambert, a Franciscan monk who had studied the works of Luther and travelled to Wittenberg, arrived in Zurich in 1522 and debated with Zwingli on religious images.17 The nobleman Antoine du Blet also came to Zurich and carried one of the reformer’s letters to men in Lyon who moved in the innermost court circles and knew both Francis’ mother, Louise of Savoy, and his sister Marguerite.18 These sympathizers had suggested that Zwingli dedicate his Commentary on True and False Religion to Louise of Savoy.19
Perhaps the most notable humanist connection was the great Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1455–1536), renowned for his work on the Psalms and his translation of and commentary on the four Gospels. He had sent greetings to Zwingli via a 1519 letter to Glarean.20 His commentary on the Psalms had influenced Zwingli as a young priest, shaping his approach to interpreting the Bible. From 1521, d’Étaples was a central figure among the circle of reformers in the diocese of Meaux under Bishop Briçonnet. Zwingli had contact with a number of the Meaux circle, including Guillaume Farel and Gérard Roussel, to whom Farel had given some of Zwingli’s works and who openly praised the Zurich reformer.
Guillaume Farel, who would become John Calvin’s friend and colleague in Geneva, had visited Zwingli in early 1524, and the two men discussed the development of the evangelical faith in France.21 Although Zwingli knew no French and Farel no German, they were easily able to communicate in Latin. They struck up an enduring friendship, and Farel was not only an essential source of information, but also did much to spread Zwingli’s ideas in the kingdom, bringing with him Zwingli’s Exposition. Before going to Zurich, Farel had been a guest of Oecolampadius in Basel. He was expelled from that city in 1524 for his vociferous evangelism. Zurich and Basel had a deep influence on his thinking.22
Zwingli’s Italian contacts are somewhat harder to trace, but are equally intriguing. In December 1525, after the appearance of his Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli received a letter from a former Augustinian monk in Como named Aegidius a Porta, in which the sender described his lamentable life in a monastery, where he had preached without ‘knowledge of Christ’.23 God had not allowed him to be lost, however, and spoke to him in a dream, saying ‘go to Huldrych Zwingli and he himself will instruct you as to what you ought to do’. A Porta expressed a desire to go with some brothers to Zurich to learn true doctrine, although he confessed that he knew neither Hebrew nor Greek, and that his Latin was poor. Zwingli evidently replied in a now-lost letter, for a year later the Augustinian wrote once more, expressing his gratitude for the kind words.24
Catholics, including Erasmus, had only disdain for Zwingli’s Commentary on True and False Religion. Writing in May 1525, Glarean – once Zwingli’s mentor and friend, but who had rejected the reforms in Zurich – opined: ‘On all sides the most learned people wish the Swiss the best, while the Swiss themselves gnash their teeth on account of Zwingli.’25 From Luther there was no response. The text, which made no reference to the Wittenberg reformer, appeared as the storm clouds of the Eucharistic debate were gathering. In the autumn of 1524, Luther’s archenemy Karlstadt had published a series of tracts on the Lord’s Supper which Zwingli and Oecolampadius had openly praised, giving Luther good cause to lump the three men together as ‘fanatics’.
TRUE RELIGION
In his Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli followed Erasmus in baptizing religio in antiquity as the ‘whole piety of Christians’, encompassing faith, life, laws, worship and the sacraments. ‘Religion’ concerns not only a cultic function, but also the nature of God’s relationship to humanity and the proper response.26 God alone is the initiator. After the fall, there would have been no religion if God had not reached out to humanity. Adam, who had fled from God’s presence, would never have become ‘religious’ had it not been for God’s summons, ‘Adam, where are you?’ ‘Here,’ wrote Zwingli, ‘we see more clearly than day the origin of religion. It took its rise when God called a runaway man back to Himself, when otherwise he would have been a deserter forever.’27 Religion did not spring from any natural act of humanity: God in his pleasure granted knowledge of his love and desire for relationship.
The key was ‘piety’, a term Zwingli took from Cicero and made synonymous with true religion. Our sense of the word retains little of its potent classical meaning. Piety was not mere sentiment, but the fullness of the Christian life, a disposition of the whole self towards God.28 Erasmus had declared piety the goal of Christian education, but it was neither mere knowledge nor a manner of behaviour. Zwingli concurred: beyond intellectual assent, piety does more than assert the existence of one God, for even the pagans did that. It is a persuasion by which a person ‘holds’ to God with the gift of faith. In the world, the pious and impious cannot be easily distinguished, because that faith is an invisible matter of the heart. The righteous and reprobate are separated by the wisdom granted the elect before the moment of creation. All men and women can hear the Word proclaimed, but only those with faith respond:
It is manifest that the faithful believe that God exists, and that the world is His work, etc., just because they are taught this by God. It is from God alone, therefore, that you believe that God exists and that you have faith in him.29
In contrast to what he saw as the error of his radical opponents, Zwingli rejected the interpretation of piety as moral perfection. Although they respond in faith, the elect remain fallen, fully aware of their ‘sinfulness, disobedience, treason and wretchedness’. Without grace, such awareness would lead only to despair; but God, as creator and father, in his goodness and bounty, rescues his chosen from this wretched state. The life of the faithful, therefore, is a continuous struggle, in which one must ‘cling to God’ as a drowning man holds to a plank of wood.
Zwingli associated piety with hearing and holding, and throughout the Commentary on True and False Religion sought to convey the ‘unshaken truth’ that God alone can turn the believer from destruction to service and joy. Piety is religion. It is ‘an eagerness to live according to the will of God, just as, likewise, perfect devotion between parents and children requires that the son shall study to obey the father as much as the father seeks to benefit the son’.30 True religion of Christ consists in despairing of self and in resting in the confidence of God. The pious sing out that God denies them nothing, for ‘the Lord is mercy in exceeding abundance’.31
GOD
Zwingli offered a succinct statement of his theological vision:
From the foundation of the world God has manifested Himself in various ways to the human race that we might recognize Him as Father and Dispenser of all things. The first thing, therefore, in piety is that we should firmly believe that He whom we confess as our God is God, the Source and Father of all things; for unless we do so, we shall never obey His laws. The next thing is that we should know ourselves, for when we have not knowledge of ourselves also, we accept no law.32
But who is that God? And what can be known of him? In a sense, both very little and a great deal. God is inscrutable, in that nothing can be known of his decrees. He has revealed himself through his benevolent providence, and that, through faith, is knowable. Zwingli followed Erasmus’ distaste for scholastic explorations of God’s being or essence, although Duns Scotus’ conception of the majesty and power of God remained imprinted on the Zurich reformer.33 Human knowledge has been strictly circumscribed. What one is able to know is limited to what God has chosen to reveal, and that is in scripture. Employing Paul’s words from Romans, knowledge of the divine ‘depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who shows mercy’ (9:16).
Human reason might be dismissed as irrelevant in the face of the divine, but Zwingli was not prepared to go down that path, and took particular interest in philosophy, above all the place of the great thinkers of the ancient world:
It will perhaps not be inconsistent with my purpose to introduce here, as a sort of imported embellishment, the opinion of a most learned and eloquent man – I mean Cicero – as given in the oration in defence of Archias, in which the passage showing that man does everything from a desire for glory agrees so completely with the divine teachings that the words seem due to the direct influence of God, rather than to the unconstrained utterance of Cicero, a creature of glory.34
God speaks through the ancient philosophers, and their wisdom was to be heeded, but not uncritically. Zwingli did not refrain from judging harshly Cicero’s call to glory as the supreme example of self-love and lust for personal glory, a folly exemplified by Julius Caesar. In contrast, love of human virtue and honour was to be found in his beloved Plato.35 But among non-Christian authors, by which Zwingli meant the Greek and Roman, a certain God-given sense of purity existed. The philosophers had affirmed God’s existence, while remaining blind to his being and attributes. The ancients knew that God was the greatest good (summum bonum) and that the world was governed by providence.
God alone is being and goodness, a truth revealed to Moses in the words ‘I am who I am.’36 No one has seen God, but what we know of him is no more or less than what he intends us to know. Zwingli was interested not in speculation about the nature of God’s attributes, but in the knowledge that God is good – indeed that he is goodness itself.
The goodness of God informed every aspect of Zwingli’s convictions, leading to his core belief that God governs the world benevolently.37 The Commentary on True and False Religion cast in sharp relief Zwingli’s deep sense of divine providence, that God rules the world without chance or fortune, but through his will, which is good. That is what Christians must know, accept and commit themselves to through the vicissitudes of life. Zwingli told his ‘dear reader’ that the whole business of predestination, free will and merit rests upon this matter of providence, offering a hymn of praise to the God who governed all things:
it must be, therefore, that this supreme good, which is God, is by its nature kind and bountiful . . . with a bounty that causes him to desire the profit of those to whom he gives with only this one thing in view. For he desires to impart himself freely.38
All things have been created to one end: that they might enjoy their creator.
What is given to know should fill humanity with awe and humility, and not idle curiosity that attempts to peer behind the divine curtain.39 Referring to Psalm 104, Zwingli found an image for God’s overwhelming sovereignty in the Alps of his youth:
David portrays both the wisdom and providence of God so that you see God as creator balancing the mountains in his mighty hand, putting each in its place, drawing out the valleys between them and the cool streams in the valleys, spreading out the fields . . . then assigning settlers to each region and adding abundant provisions.40
Knowledge of God is only in and through Christ. We know God as Father through the incarnation of Christ. Zwingli was always at pains to stress the continuity of God throughout the history of his relationship with humanity. Christ’s incarnation was not a second revelation or a jarring new divine initiative, but rather the fulfilment of what God had already revealed. God had entered human history for a period of time during the earthly life of Christ to reveal fully what had been made partially manifest in the Old Testament. The incarnation reveals God and his righteousness more completely, enabling humanity to know God as the merciful creator who cares for his people, and as the source of all trust. Where Luther stressed the difficulty of faith, Zwingli wrote of its lightness and certainty. For those to whom it is granted, faith is a work of the Spirit brought forth in the deeds of God’s people in the world. For Zwingli, nothing could be clearer, nothing more fully evident.41
Following Erasmus, Zwingli understood reformation as the rebirth of Christianity, or, more directly, as the rebirth of Christ. Christ himself has led the restoration of the Word as the ‘captain’ or ‘leader’. The title of ‘captain’ was central to Zwingli’s Christology.42 The Zurich reformer was speaking a language of Christ that the people in a militarized Swiss culture could readily grasp. This emphasis on Christ as leader was an excellent rhetorical move, rendering Christ as the man who had come to change the world, to reorder it according to God’s will.43 The authority of the son extended to all areas of human life, not just to the Church. The Son was the fearless leader who sacrificed himself for his followers. He was a hero. Zwingli gave Christ the title of Jupiter as ‘optimus maximus’,44 the greatest leader the world had known. In pathetic contrast, the pope did not die for humanity.
Yet Zwingli’s repeated emphasis on the human Christ as the obedient son who offered a model for how the faithful should live was never intended to diminish his salvific role.45 Only Christ could guarantee the gift of God’s mercy and assuage the troubled conscience.46 His life offered humanity three precious gifts: reconciliation, the model of Christian living and the guarantee of God’s mercy. Whereas Luther pointed the faithful to the theology of the cross, Zwingli’s inclination was for the dynamic figure of the living Christ.
Although Zwingli’s early thought was not deeply concerned with the doctrine of election, he was clear that God predestined his chosen in Christ to eternal life.47 According to God’s pleasure and will, hidden from all humans, the election of some and not others was decreed before the moment of creation. Predestination therefore preceded faith, as only those whom God chose would come to believe. Zwingli did not treat election at any length in his Commentary on True and False Religion, paying a great deal more attention to God’s providence, which he called the ‘mother of predestination’. Predestination, he wrote,
which is only another word for foreordination, is born of providence, rather is providence (for even the theologians distinguish providence from wisdom in that the former proceeds to act and to dispose, while the latter simply sees what should be done and how). For it would be incongruous for the Supreme Good to know all things before they took place and not to be able to dispose and to order all things . . . By the providence of God, therefore, are taken away together free will and merit.48
From 1526, largely in response to the Anabaptists, Zwingli began to speak more directly about election, a term he preferred to predestination.49
FAITH
In his Commentary on True and False Religion, Zwingli sought to frame theology in terms of pastoral comfort: ‘Faith leans upon one God, clings to one, trusts in one, flies to one for refuge, knows for certain it will find with that one all that it needs.’50 There is certainty: ‘we know that no one can be saved unless he is in Christ. We judge that no one can be grafted into Christ without faith.’51 That faith is a fruit of divine election. In the Commentary, Zwingli reflected on Paul’s words to the Romans that a remnant would be saved by grace: ‘And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works. If it were, grace would no longer be grace.’
The elect hear the Word of God in preaching that empowers them to trust God and reform their lives. Zwingli made a distinction between forms of faith, identifying that which is possessed by the elect from the moment of creation (a form of prior faith) and that which bears fruit during their regenerate lives in the Spirit. In other words, the elect do not simply receive faith at a particular moment in their lives, transforming them from unbelievers into believers; they have been elected in Christ and possess faith from the very beginning. That faith may not come to fruition until later in life, but it was always present. It precedes any knowledge that the elect will develop of God or of themselves, which follows only once the seed of faith has germinated. Zwingli saw faith in three distinct, but related phases: the inner gift of faith given to the elect; the fruitful knowledge of God and self that faith engenders; and finally, the creation of a new humanity through faith, in which the person lives only for God and neighbour.52
The elect bring into the world an inner faith that will eventually bloom into knowledge and piety. The Spirit is encountered in the outward forms of religion, including scripture and preaching, as well as the sacraments. These external forms cannot provide faith, but are the means by which the Spirit leads God’s chosen. As we shall see in the next chapter, neither baptism nor the Lord’s Supper can generate or convey faith; they are symbols of what God has done in Christ, marks of his eternal promises. In a process of self-realization, the inner and outer are brought into harmony. The preaching of the Word confirms what is already present in the heart. The Christian receives faith as an inner working of God in the person, who knows that external things contribute nothing to salvation.53 External threats, such as persecution, horrific as they are, cannot destroy faith. Faith brings security, certainty and assurance, as it arises from no created thing and cannot find aid or sustenance from the fleshly or material.
What, then, is the purpose of the life of faith? When God speaks, humans are called out of the ruck of the quotidian to know that their God is holy and demands holiness. A Christian, wrote Zwingli,
is a man who trusts in the one true and only God; who relies upon His mercy through His Son Christ, God of God; who models himself upon His example; who dies daily [cf. I Cor. 15:31]; who daily renounces self; who is intent upon this one thing, not to do anything that can offend his God.54
At the centre of life stands Christ, who freed the elect from sin and provided the model for the redeemed life marked by blameless living. In extolling Christ, Zwingli turned to his favourite bywords: watchfulness, diligence and zeal. Christ’s entry into the world relieved the anxiety of a Christian
by bringing hope and an example of the godly life: when we are so terrified by the righteousness of Him to whom we are hastening and by our consciences that are driving us headlong to despair, Christ, the Son of God, comes to help our distress.55
Zwingli held together the bond of Christ with the Christian life, a relationship that consists of faith, righteousness, blamelessness and mercy.56
This promise was delivered in the keys Christ gave to his disciples, to all who acknowledge Jesus to be the Son of God, and not to Peter alone. The Christian pastor was to proclaim this good news, but first believe it himself. ‘Behold the grandeur of the Christian shepherd!’ Zwingli cried. ‘He feeds the flock with painstaking watchfulness, and does not constrain except as far as the Word itself constrains.’57 The binding and loosing of which Christ spoke to his disciples had nothing to do with ecclesiastical authority: it was about relieving consciences once burdened by condemnation before the law. ‘To loose, therefore, is nothing else than to raise to sure hope the heart that despairs of salvation. To bind is to abandon the obstinate heart.’58
The Church ‘is a congregation, an assembly, the whole people, the whole multitude gathered together’ and, Zwingli insists, ‘nowhere in scripture do we find the Church of Christ or of God to mean a few bishops or rather mumblers’.59 In its visible form, the Church for Zwingli is the local parish or urban church attended by all members of the community; the invisible Church is the gathering of the elect, who in their faith are united with all generations of believers. Zwingli addressed the visible Church in his evocation of the Christian life, marked by true piety in which men and women imitated the example of Christ.
THE FREED CONSCIENCE
The justified Christian possesses a free conscience, brought by Christ and realized through the presence of the Holy Spirit. Referencing the Gospel of John – ‘So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed’ (8:36) – Zwingli wrote that Christian doctrine is nothing other than freedom of the conscience. For the conscience to be imprisoned would mean not simply that it is weighed down by a bad deed or a harmful word, but that the whole person is oppressed and enslaved. Good works cannot in any way assuage the conscience. Freedom comes only in the form of liberation from self-absorption and self-love, an awareness of the brokenness of life and an acceptance of God’s forgiveness and embrace. The bound conscience is the seat of anguish and unbearable anxiety, and the place where God’s saving and transformative action takes effect.60 Right from the beginning and the sausage meal, the conscience lay at the heart of Zwingli’s reformation. It was, in the end, freedom from oppressive rules arbitrarily set by the Roman Church.
The redeemed life has an order. God’s illumination leads to the sinner’s self-awareness of their condition, which engenders doubt, a limbo between despair and God’s fearful righteousness. This path progresses to the vision of Christ and complete trust in Him, and to transformation into a new life marked by repentance and unity in Christ: ‘The whole of the Christian life is penance.’61 Zwingli’s account of the tormented conscience was not far from Martin Luther’s. They are distinguished, however, by Luther’s insistence that what remained for the Christian was a powerful sense of darkness – perhaps accounting for his severe battles with depression – while Zwingli viewed the liberation of the conscience as movement into a wholly changed way of living.62
Trust manifests itself in love and works of love, although Zwingli frequently acknowledged that non-believers could seem to act virtuously, and he was unwilling to identify good works as signs of election. He was not eager to distinguish between Paul’s virtues of faith, hope and love. Rather, he saw them as absolutely interchangeable:
Whoever does not understand that faith, hope and love are the same, that is trust in God, for that person the knots of scripture will never be loosed . . . The whole trust that a human heart has for God is sometimes faith, sometimes hope and sometimes love. Whether you love, hope or believe, it is a pious emotion that is directed to God.63
Because God is love, those who trust in him live in love, for love of God and of neighbour remain inseparable. Liberation of the conscience is the freedom to love one another, echoing Luther’s words in his Freedom of a Christian (1520).
The liberated Christian experiences joy, Zwingli’s most cherished emotion. He once more invoked the spiritual gift of eating. The spiritual and material worlds are enfolded into one another: the faithful are fed and grow; their bodies conforming to the image of Christ:
For as the starving stomach rejoices when food comes into it, wherewith the used-up breath and heat and strength are replenished, so the starving soul, when God discloses Himself to it, leaps for joy and daily grows and increases in strength more and more, being transformed into the likeness of God until it develops into the perfect man. It is, therefore, spiritual food of which I am speaking, for only the Spirit gives it, since the Spirit alone draws the heart to itself and refreshes it.64
No contemporary reformer spoke so frequently and fervently about the joy of a Christian.65 Certainty, a peaceful conscience, and safety from anxiety and doubt – these constituted the freedom sealed by God’s Spirit, a liberation that in Zwingli’s mind was inseparable from joy:
For when our consciences are labouring amid the narrows and cliffs of despair, what tidings more joyful can be brought us than that there is at hand a Redeemer who will ‘bring us forth into a broad place’ [Psalm 18:19] and a deliverer and leader who can do all things, for he is God?66
Joy is first and foremost the work of the Holy Spirit. Zwingli enthused that Christ had said, ‘who trusts in me is already saved, for he felt within himself as soon as he set all his trust on me how joyful his conscience became, how his soul was raised from despair to the sure possession of salvation’.67 The heart becomes a musical instrument, Zwingli wrote in his commentary on Psalm 150, where David sings: ‘Praise him with trumpet sound; praise him with lute and harp! Praise him with timbral and dance; praise him with strings and pipe!’ The joy of the Christian life is a foretaste of heaven.
The freedom of the conscience and the joy of the Christian life were not licence to indulgence or disorder. As Zwingli preached from Jeremiah, ‘Freedom is with virtue and with all righteousness, not that one can do whatever he will. Freedom is that by which one plants virtue in young and old people, uproots vice and punishes it.’68 One is not free to give offence, harm a neighbour or create scandal. Freedom leads to the strengthening of the community, not its undermining. However righteous a cause, hatred can never be the root of religious, social or political action, which must be based instead on love of God and other. That objection to impulsive action was evident in Zwingli’s opposition to violence against priests and monks and iconoclasm. Similarly, freedom is not permission to carry on with gaming, drinking, violence and love of wealth; it is not freedom from the laws, but a joyful fulfilment of them.
In many respects, Zwingli’s thought did not lend itself well to system and organization. Like his beloved Pindar and Homer, he was a poet, a man with a heightened sense of the meeting of the divine and the human. The Commentary on True and False Religion bursts through its intellectual structures as Zwingli weaves back and forth between topics, eager to reinforce his deepest convictions: the providential God is good and seeks the salvation of his people; God governs the world with a benevolent providence; the created world is the manifestation of divine goodness and beauty; and humans are called to lives of piety, the fulfilment of having been created in the image of God. Zwingli was an astute and learned theologian, but at heart he was the preacher seeking to persuade, cajole and comfort. John Calvin would later speak of the created world as the ‘theatre of God’s glory’, but the concept came from Zwingli, who found expression of divine goodness in the mountains, valleys and verdant fields. Zwingli gifted to Reformed Christianity its sense of anticipation, of becoming a new self, a new society. He would continue to preach and write feverishly, and usually in the fires of polemic; but in the spring of 1525, he provided the first full vision of his new form of Christianity.