This chapter deals with Zurich and the Swiss confederation, in the context of Zwingli's life and work.

After
providing a brief background of Zurich and Swiss confederation, it situates him at Switzerland at the end
of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century. Zwingli's reforming ministry was primarily in
Zurich, but his sense of being Swiss meant that he had an eye on wining the whole confederation to the
gospel of Christ. The difficulties and opportunities he faced were related in part to the civil and religious
character of the city and its surrounding territory. It was in a republican setting, with power exercised by a
council rather than by a single ruler, that Zwingli lived and worked.

Zwingli’s Life and Ministry

W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0003
This chapter presents a biography in which Zwingli's thought is set in the context of his life and work and
in the context of his development in the time both before and after he became a reformer. It illustrates
that his thought is not separated from his life and work, but is his response both to the word of God on the
one hand and to the events and people he was dealing on the other. In subjects such as baptism, his
theology was developed only because he faced challenges to which he had to respond and without it, it is
likely that he would have written little or nothing on certain subjects. Three important influences on his
later work as a reformer were apparent: patriotism, scholasticism, and humanism.

The Bible
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0004
This chapter deals with the Bible, the basis of Zwingli's reforming ministry and his theology. The Bible
was at the heart of Zwingli's reformation. His preaching was practical and topical, tackling not only
religious issues, but social and political ones as well. The centrality of the Bible for Zwingli can be seen in
the three vital institutions of the Zurich Reformation: preaching, the disputations, and the prophecy. Each
of them is an assertion of the Bible against every other authority. Each of them also affirms the
sovereignty of God, underlying the whole of Zwingli's thought.

God: The Sovereignty of God

W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0005
This chapter explores the sovereignty of God, a fundamental element in Zwingli's thought that affects all
aspects of his theology. For Zwingli, the life of the church and the teaching of the church had lost their
centre in God. He was concerned to see that both theology and the Christian life recover that centre. This
challenge is characteristic of Zwingli's writings from the start. His conviction of God's sovereignty can be
seen in his understanding of providence and predestination. The sense of God's providence is also
apparent with Zwingli, which suggests a personal experience and an intellectual conviction. Both A
Commentary and The Providence of God show that Zwingli's method is sometimes as much logical as
theological.

Christ: Salvation in Christ

W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0006
This chapter examines the place of Christ in salvation. It is in the way reformers understood and preached
Christ, particularly salvation in Christ, that they differed from their opponents in the medieval church.
Some of these differences account for the disagreement between Luther and Zwingli. One aspect that is
stronger in Zwingli than in Luther is the stress on Christ as teacher and example. There are differences
between Zwingli and Luther not only in their understanding of the person of Christ but also on their
understanding of his place. For instance, Zwingli stresses the distinctiveness of the natures while Luther
emphasizes the unity of the person.
The Holy Spirit: The Spirit and the Word
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0007
The emphasis on the Spirit in Zwingli corresponds in part to the stress on Christ's divinity rather than his
humanity. It reflects the emphasis on the centrality and sovereignty of God and the contrast between God
and man in Zwingli's theology. The central role of the Spirit is apparent in descriptions of his theology as
spiritualist or pneumatological. His insistence on the divine origin and the authority of scripture can be
seen in his controversies with Catholics and Anabaptists. It is in the relation of the Spirit to word and
sacrament that Zwingli is often thought as a spiritualist, for dissociating Spirit from the word. Two
elements are thought to contribute to this: the freedom of the Spirit, and a Platonist opposition of spirit
and flesh in his understanding of man.

Salvation
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0008
This chapter addresses the question of salvation at the heart of the Reformation. For Zwingli, the roles of
Erasmus and humanism were important factors both in his path to faith and in his theological
development. The strong emphasis on God in Zwingli's theology is characteristic of his view of salvation
which he saw as from god an in God. This also affected his understanding of man and sin. Zwingli
affirmed man's corruption and his incapacity to contribute to his own salvation. His attack on idolatry
focused the attention in trust in God against everything else.

This chapter examines Zwingli's view of the word and the sacraments. Zwingli attacked the way that word
and sacrament had become a source of false confidence, replacing faith in God with faith in the outward
word or the outward sacrament. He rejected the idea that they could be effective, for such a view denied
the sovereignty of God. If God was bound byword and sacrament, then salvation would be put at man's
disposal. In 1525, there was an important change in Zwingli's view of sacraments as signs of the covenant,
deriving from his changed understanding of the covenant. Under the heading of ‘The Power of the
Sacraments’, he listed seven powers or virtues of the sacraments.

Baptism
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0010
This chapter explores Zwingli's view of baptism. There were fundamental elements in Zwingli's theology
which made him deny the traditional view that baptism is a means of grace and that it is necessary to
salvation. For him, the traditional view questioned the sovereignty of God, the centrality of Christ, and the
freedom of the Spirit. Zwingli saw baptism as an initiatory sign, a sign of covenant. In his debate with
Anabaptists, he relied in two major propositions for the baptism of infants; that children belong to God
and should therefore be baptized and that baptism replaces circumcision. The most remarkable
development in Zwingli's position came with the changed view of the covenant.

The Eucharist
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0011
Fundamental on Zwingli's understanding of the eucharist is that it is a sign and that its nature is different
from what it signifies. This applies both to the sacrifice of Christ and to the body of Christ. The eucharist is
a memorial of the sacrifice, not the sacrifice itself; it is a sign of the body of Christ, not the body itself.
Zwingli attacked the bodily of eating of the body of Christ on two grounds: faith and scripture. He argued
that salvation was promised to faith and not to bread. For him, the subject of the eucharist is the death of
Christ, and not the eating of the body.

Keywords:   eucharist, bodily eating, Christ' body, Christ' sacrifice, Marburg Colloquy

The Church
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0012
The changed understanding that Zwingli had of Christ led to his changed understanding of the church. At
the first disputation in January 1953, the articles on the church came immediately after those on Christ. It
was described and defined in terms of him. He maintained his view against Catholic opponents. Months
later, he was challenged by some of his more radical supporters in his understanding of the church.
Meanwhile, the development of the prophecy in June 1525 shaped a distinctively Reformed model of
ministry in opposition to that of both Catholic and Anabaptist. It emphasized the preaching of the word
and the scriptures as the criterion of the Spirit.

Keywords:   church, The Petition, excommunication, ministry, prophecy

The State
W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0013
This chapter examines Zwingli's view of the state. It also explores Zwingli’s development up to the
disputation in January 1523, as well as the role of the government and the council. His understanding of
the state was theocratic, in the sense that the whole community is under the rule of god and that the
minister and the magistrate need to seek to establish that rule. For him, matters of social justice were at
the centre of Christian preaching. The closing words of A Commentary describes his concern that the life
of society should be to the glory of God. The discussion notes that his priorities were: God, society, and the
individual.

Keywords:   city council, government, minister, society, God, disputation, individual

Zwingli: Theologian and Reformer

W. P. Stephens
DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198263630.003.0014
This chapter discusses some of the characteristics in Zwingli's work as a reformer and some of the
emphases in his thought. Two of the most notable characteristics of his theology are that it is biblical and
centred in God. The discussion here looks at him as a biblical theologian and social, political, practical,
and pastoral reformer. His theology was biblical, yet open to truth wherever it is found. It was centred in
the God who has revealed himself in Christ and who is active through the Spirit. The chapter concludes
that his theology and ministry embraced society as well as the individual, but its source and goal was the
glory of God.