Reformation History Session 2: Ulrich Zwingli

So, everyone got a handout, right? So, hopefully that'll be helpful as we talk through the class.! Just as a kind of a warning, I don't know if that's the right word, but we're going to talk definitely more about theology, particular theological topics, and getting into the weeds of them. And so, a little less history, a little bit more theology, but I think you'll see why we need to talk about these things.

Are you referring? I am. Thanks for asking. So, Zwingli, he was born on New Year's Day in 1484, just a couple months before Luther, actually.

And he's born in a village in the Swiss Alps, so he's from Switzerland. He comes from a peasant family that actually clawed their way out of poverty.

So, with Ehrlich Sr., he's his dad, he becomes a respective village leader. Come on in. Take a handout. Take a handout. Come on in, guys.

Come on in. Find a seat. There's some over here. Just sit this way. Please. Tyler, right? Yeah.

Good seeing you. Thanks for coming. We're just getting started, so you don't miss anything. So, Ehrlich Sr., he becomes a respected village leader and a magistrate.

And if you were here last week, you remember how Luther's parents wanted him to become a secular lawyer so that he can come back to the family business and serve that business and help his family.

But Zwingli's parents actually aren't like that at all. They actually wanted Zwingli to become a priest from the get-go. And so, with their status, with their money, they arranged for Zwingli to receive a really good education.

They sent him to the best of schools. And almost immediately as he's studying from a young age, it becomes very quickly apparent that he's exceptionally bright. He's a really good student.

While at the University of Vienna for his bachelor's degree, he was specifically trained to become a humanist. So, Sean actually talked about the word humanist, and I'm using that word differently, right?

So, does anyone know what humanism is in the Renaissance? Do you know, Julia? I feel like you would probably know. Do you know? Is it, like, kind of based off utilitarianism, but in a way, like, for human force?

That's one aspect that Sean just talked about today. Yeah. I think in the medieval times, they used it a little bit differently. Okay. Yeah. Do you know? Yeah? It was, like, emphasizing people and, like, turning to individual intelligence, rather than seeing, like, from the lens of, like, Christianity or faith.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And especially turning inward and emphasizing learning, their particular thing was emphasizing their motto in Latin called ad fontes, which was just in English, back to the sources.

So, a humanist was someone who was keen on always turning back to the original source. So, they were keen on studying classical literature, studying the languages. And so, you can kind of see how the Reformation is influenced a little bit by Christian humanism because of their one, their main tenet, sola scriptura.

It takes on a humanist feel, like, let's get back to the original source. Let's study the original Hebrew. Let's study the original Greek. And so, in Vienna, he becomes deeply influenced by this tradition.

And he studies very, very extensively the original languages, the Latin, the Greek, the Hebrew. Zwingli actually becomes so good at Greek, and he teaches himself Greek, actually, because he copies all of the New Testament by hand in Greek.

So, he forces himself to do that. And so, that's how he learns the language. It's himself. And you're going to see how becoming proficient in the ancient languages actually influences him and his preaching in the future.

So, we'll take a look at that. After he's done with these studies, he becomes a Catholic priest in Glarus, Switzerland. And he takes up, for the first time in his life, the mantle of pastor, and he shepherds his flock.

He serves that post for 10 years, from 1506 to 1516. And it's actually in this period of his life that he commits some of the worst sins, the gravest moral failures of his life.

We talked about last week how priests in the Catholic Church, they were called to lifelong celibacy. But the not-so-secret secret of the time was that, basically, many of the priests didn't hold to that.

Instead, they would go around sleeping around with other women. And Zwingli, one of the greatest figures of the Protestant Reformation, wasn't any different from the priests at that time.

And he actually ends up fathering an illegitimate child with the daughter of a local barber in those years. I think, again, it's a stark reminder that no one who is worth mentioning in church history, like a Luther, like a Zwingli, is spotless.

Everyone is sinless. Everyone has dirt on their face. They commit some grievous sexual sins. And in the kindness of God, he uses people like them, too. Hey, there's a handout right there for you.

That'll be helpful. How do we know that Zwingli actually committed the sin? It's actually an interesting story. Zwingli himself confesses to this sin, this sexual sin, by his own pen, by a letter he writes.

And then some 300 years later, a renowned Zwingli scholar, Johannes Skoltes, that's his name, he discovers this letter in which Zwingli confesses his sin.

He repents with great godly sorrow, and he recommits himself to live a holy life. But personally, for Skoltes, this is a really hard moment for him.

Why? Because Zwingli was his spiritual hero. He loved and respected Zwingli so much. And so how could someone so influential, so godly, commit a grievous sin?

And so after much wrestling, he actually decides to burn this letter. To burn this letter with a candle sitting on his desk so that he could cover up the sin, so that no one else could hear about Zwingli's moral failures.

No one else could possibly be disillusioned by Zwingli. And I think we can understand that kind of response too, right? I don't know, maybe you've personally experienced this or know somebody where you have a beloved pastor.

You have a woman that you love and respect, who discipled you for years and years, and you end up finding that they commit serious moral sins, grievous sins.

That shakes your faith. And I think Skoltes is going through that experience. But after about a quarter of the letter is burned, Skoltes, he changes his mind.

He saves the letter. He extinguishes the flames. And he instead says, no, Protestantism is in the truth of all circumstances. He archives instead the letter.

He gives it to his assistants. And he saves the letter so that everybody can read and know of what happened. And we Christians, we can do this because our hope, again, does not lie in sinful man, but it lies in the perfect man of Jesus Christ, the only man who could bear all the weight of all our hope and expectation.

Then in 1519, Zwingli was appointed the priest at Zurich. Zurich, rather. It's in that nation, one of the most significant ecclesiological positions in the entire country.

It's a position of prominence, of influence, and it's really at this pastorate that the Swiss Reformation starts to kick off.

And how does it kick off? The very first Sunday of his pastorate, he'd go on to shock the entire congregation by his Sunday sermon, his first Sunday sermon.

And what did he do that was so shocking? What he does is that he opens up his Bible, he starts in the book of Matthew, and he preaches Matthew 1, 1.

Chapter 1, verse 1. And then he continues to preach chapter by chapter, verse by verse, line by line. Again, I mean, that sounds normal to us because that's what we do every Sunday, literally.

But back then, this was a revolutionary idea. This was a revolutionary idea back then, right? Because the Catholic churches, what they were expected to do was to follow the lectionary system.

They were hand-picked verses, chapters from the papacy itself to then all these other churches were supposed to follow and preach. Instead of doing that, then he goes preaching through a book of the Bible, and it's called Lectio Continua.

That's Latin, right? And he's actually the first reformer to ever start preaching like this. And I want to talk a little bit about this, right? We at Trinity preach like this too. That's the main diet of how you're going to hear sermons.

Can you think about why? Why is it important that we preach like this? We preach verse by verse, line by line. We go through passage by passage. What do you guys think?

Yeah, for sure. Just can't pick and choose. Yep. Yeah. Exactly. There's so much to that that you could talk about, right? You can't cherry pick your favorite theological topics.

If you just want to talk about one particular thing, then you could just always talk about that. You can skip over the hard passages. Right? There are many passages that when I've been assigned to Falls on My Week, I'm like, man, this is a tough passage to preach.

Like, how am I going to preach this for 40, 50 minutes? And always God gives me stuff to say. And I know, Sean, it feels likewise. But you can't pick and choose.

You can't ride your personal hobby horses. More ideas on why it's important that we preach expositionally, verse by verse. So, Zwingli's preaching is very powerful.

Crowds come in droves to then hear what he has to say as he expounds the scriptural text week by week. And, again, talked about this already, but Zwingli studied the Greek New Testament.

He taught himself Greek. And so, like I just said, his preaching challenges more and more of the established practices of the Catholic Church, promoting things like sola scriptura, the priesthood of all believers, things that we talked about last week, if you were here.

And, particularly, he goes against fasting regulations, clerical celibacy, veneration of the saints, and, particularly, the authority of the Bishop of Rome.

So, we're going to fly over those things. But, in particular, one area of reform for Zwingli is in the worship service. It's kind of one of the big things that he decided to do.

And he comes up with the regulative principle of worship. The regulative principle of worship. Does anyone know what that means or what that is? Has anyone heard of that? So, this really becomes one of the hallmarks of the Reformed tradition.

One of the key ideas of the Reformation, really, is God is concerned with, most concerned with what? Is it humans? Is it us? Is it his church? Is it creation?

He's concerned with all those things, of course. But what he's most concerned with is his glory, his own glory. Right? And so, if God is most concerned with his own glory, then how we worship him, how we glorify him, how we honor him, matters to God.

And so, he sees that God has given instruction in his scriptures on how, guidelines on how we are to worship him. Right? The scriptures should regulate, right?

The regulative principle. The scriptures should regulate how we should worship and what we should do when we gather for Sunday worship. Right? So, on the other hand of this, right, you have the regulative principle of worship on one hand.

On the other hand is something called the normative principle of worship, which holds that whatever scripture doesn't explicitly forbid, then you are allowed to do.

Do you hear the difference? It's quite different, actually. So, one says, I'm only going to do what scripture tells me to do. The other says, whatever scripture doesn't forbid, doesn't tell me to do, I can do.

And so, they would argue, the normative guys, they would argue that as long as our worship is edifying, it doesn't directly contradict a practice that's explicitly forbidden in scripture, it's then acceptable for us.

We could do it. But there are particular problems, I find, with the normative principle, our church would find, it's because there's not a really strong internal filter with the normative principle, right?

If anything not explicitly forbidden is permitted, then where is the line? Where does it stop, right? You could maybe argue for dramas, skits, movie clips, right?

Sunday service. I don't know if you've ever been to a church like that. But if, again, there's no line, then why not a stand-up comedy set? Why not a magic show?

What about a rock concert? Scripture doesn't prohibit any of those things explicitly, so, you know, that's all fair game. But I think there needs to be some kind of line that's drawn, right?

And especially because the normative principle doesn't have a strong internal filter, I think it tends to import whatever the surrounding culture finds attractive at that time. All right, so let's say comedy, just harping on that, is a big thing, I don't know.

So then we find, okay, that could work. So let's use a comedy set. Let's do this new innovative thing in our church service. And likewise, I think it's ultimately promoting this idea of pragmatism.

We'll just do what works. That's what ultimately will govern what we do in Sunday service. What works, what gets people in the door, what gets money in our pockets, right?

I think there could be issues with the normative principle. So, looking at the regulative principle, do you guys have, I don't have your Bibles out. You have your Bible.

Could you read Leviticus 10, 1-2 for us? Just two verses. Thanks, Daniel.

Yep. Now, Nadav and Abihu, the sons of Naren, each took his censure and put fire in it and laid into the son of the unauthorized fire to the Lord, which he had not come in.

And the fire came out from before the Lord, and they died before the Lord. Yeah. So, I think this is like a classic example of why people should hold to the regulative principle of worship.

Right? They offer, Nadav and Abihu, they offer unauthorized strange fire. But I think the key, the phrasing of what Daniel just read is important, right?

It doesn't say that God commanded them not to do that. But it says that God had not commanded them to do so. So, there's a difference there. It's not that they're explicitly rejecting an explicit command, but it says that God had not commanded them to do this.

So, hopefully you guys hear the difference there. So, Zwingli searches the scriptures, and he finds that, in his view, that in the New Testament, there is no instances of instruments that are being used during worship.

And so, because he holds to this regulative principle so strictly, he actually strips his church entirely of any instruments. He rips out the organ, right, from the building, which is actually a shame because apparently he was quite the organist.

He was very talented. And they keep their worship strictly a cappella, and they only sing through the psalms. And there are churches today that will do the same. I don't know if you guys have heard of that.

I think the OPC will do that as well. So, then the question comes, why do we have instruments? Why don't we just sing through the psalms? Sure.

Yeah, sure. Why is, was there a reason why we said New Testament, like, obviously, examples in the Old Testament of instruments? Yeah. Why is that not to answer?

Yeah. Zwingli, in general, he kind of has this hermeneutic that I think is flawed too, where he tends to lift up the New Testament more than the Old Testament.

He kind of doesn't see the Old Testament as important. And so, he gives much more weight to the New Testament, which is a great question, right? Which is exactly my pushback, right? It is in Scripture, right?

You see lyres and harps and things like that. People playing musical instruments. So, why do we have instruments, right? Why don't we just, why do we sing sovereign grace songs, right?

Assuming we would probably have a heart attack at the idea of singing sovereign grace songs. So, a lot of Protestants would distinguish the elements, what's called the elements, from the circumstances of worship.

There are two different categories. Elements are the what of worship, right? The main building blocks of worship that we should have because it's explicitly prescribed in Scripture. Things like prayer, things like preaching, things like singing.

Those are in Scripture that we're commanded to do. The circumstances are instead the how. How do we do those things? And I think there's a lot more flexibility and freedom in deciding how we do these things, right?

Because Scripture generally doesn't actually teach us exactly how these things need to be done, right? What time should we worship? What time should we gather? How long should our service be?

Should it be two hours or twelve hours? Should we have AC? Right? Thank God for AC, right? Should we have AC? Scripture doesn't exactly say. Should we have pews or chairs or couches?

There are so many different questions that we need to wrestle with. I would consider all those things circumstances, right? Where we're able to use our best judgment, use the God-given wisdom to be able to make the best decision.

And of course still try to be as closely governed and regulated by Scripture for those circumstances too. And so I think specifically with the issue of singing, right?

I think within the element of singing of musical worship to the Lord, I think the circumstance of having instrumental accompaniment is permissible. That's our view.

And so I think we still hold to the regulative principle. Scripture is still regulating, it's outlining how we worship, but especially because Scripture doesn't give the exact details on the circumstances, then I think we can have a little bit more flexibility in that.

The same year he's installed as a priest in Zurich, the entire city is actually struck by a plague, which many historians believe to be the Black Plague, which wiped out tens of millions of people across Europe.

Zurich was no different. It's a terrible, terrible disease, high fevers, boils, severe abdominal pain, blackened extremities like toes and your nose would become black, your fingers.

This plague incapacitated people and often killed people within one week from catching it. But you see Zwingli's pastoral heart when congregants of his very church, they become ill.

They're home bed, they're stuck at home, and while many of Zwingli's loved ones are telling him, don't go to them, don't go, he nonetheless still visits their homes to be able to sing worship, to read scripture, to exhort and encourage them in their faith.

Nothing stops Zwingli from being able to reach out to them. And maybe some of us can relate to a little thing called COVID five, six years ago, right? Especially we didn't really know how everything would shake out.

Would you have gone into the houses of those who were infected of COVID when we didn't know what was going on? if you thought it was a deadly plague, maybe you disagree with whether that would be a wise decision for Zwingli to go.

I think that's a fair discussion for conversation. But you can't argue that Zwingli wasn't an earnest, sacrificial pastor. He loved his flock and he put his life on the line.

And as a big surprise to no one, he then contracts the disease. He contracts the plague and he becomes quite sick. But his entire church, seeing how Zwingli, he didn't let anything stop him from going out, reaching out, loving on his flock, they all rally.

They all rally behind him in prayer. They pray ceaselessly for their pastor and Zwingli miraculously survives. He heals. It actually takes him three months to recover.

He's just in bed, stuck in bed for three months, but he does eventually fully recover by God's grace. And historians note that this experience really deepened his sense of divine calling and it deepened his theological convictions of God's sovereignty.

We're not going to talk a lot about God's sovereignty, those things in this seminar, but it really influences him in a mighty, mighty way. And it seems to be a key moment in shaping Zwingli, particularly as a reformer.

It all comes to a head, coming back to the Reformation, thinking about the Swiss Reformation, three years later in 1522, an event, what is called the Affair of the Sausages.

It's an affair, it's a sausage fest. As Zwingli is preaching more and more about reformational ideas, he leads his church again to this idea of sola scriptura, that scripture is the ultimate authority in our lives.

Back then, the church only baptized on Easter Sunday, and so in preparation for their baptism, all catechumens, all baptismal candidates, people who are trying to get baptized, they were required to fast for 40 days, which is also what we know as Lent, right?

They were required to fast, and the idea was it was for them to be able to cleanse themselves, to prove themselves in some sense worthy of their baptism, and that over time you see that practice slowly but surely be expanded again to this works righteousness, this Catholic works righteousness idea that it's an expression of penance, it's an expression to earn merit before God, you have to fast for Lent to be able to be worthy for him on Easter Sunday, and so the Catholic Church actually bans the eating of any meat at that time, so during Lent, no meat was allowed to be eaten, and just as a side note, again, if you decide to personally fast for Lent, I think that's great, you're totally free to do so, but I'd warn you not to slip into the Catholic mindset, the works righteousness mindset, that fasting is what's going to make you acceptable before God, only again the imputed righteousness of Christ, the perfect righteousness that was received by faith, that's what makes you acceptable.

So they study the scriptures, they see that Lent is nowhere in scripture, this fasting from meat is nowhere in scripture, scripture, and so basically as a PR stunt, a group of Zwingli's congregants, they come together, and they have this deliberate act of protest by throwing this sausage fest, they come together, and they smoke a bunch of sausages, bunch of links, and they eat publicly.

Zwingli actually doesn't eat with them, but in a sermon later, he defends this act, and he again claims that the Catholic church is in the wrong here.

So it seems like a small trivial act of just getting together with your buds and eating sausages, but this small act carried enormous theological weight, and in many ways the affair of the sausages is kind of like Zwingli's 95 theses, it's like his version of it, where it's the first time he openly challenges the Catholic church in such a way that the church now needs to respond.

So they have to respond. The bishop of Constance's, he condemns this sausage eating event, and so in response, the Zurich city counselors, the actual city government, they step in and they call for public debates in 1523.

In preparation for these debates, Zwingli drafts his version of the theses, he drafts 67 theses, which are again like Luther's theses, but only that Zwingli's is much more broad in theological breadth and much deeper in theological depth as well.

Zwingli debates publicly some Catholic representatives that were sent by the church on these issues like Sola Scriptura, on issues like Lent and fasting, and honestly the contest is a total sham, it's like a total fixed thing.

The city counselors already sided with Zwingli, they were the judges, they already sided with Zwingli before the first words were even spoken. For them personally, they're thinking about money, they're thinking about power, because enormous amounts of money is flowing out of Zurich into Rome at that time through tithes, through fees, through indulgences, ecclesiastical taxes.

So siding with Zwingli, siding with the Reformation meant that they could keep that wealth local, they could keep that power internal. So they declare Zwingli as the leader, and this city, the canton of Zurich, it officially becomes Protestant.

Back then there was no separation of church and state, right? So they made it officially illegal to teach Catholic doctrine in their city. So they remove images of venerated saints, they reject fasting laws, they abolish the mass, you had to become Protestant if you were to live in Zurich.

So we're going to talk much more in depth about some theological topics given Luther's, Zwingli's history. So one of the most consequential theological controversies in the Protestant Reformation is between Zwingli and Luther.

Do you guys know what he argued? Yeah, yeah, please. We're going to talk about Zwingli and Luther. Do you guys know what they fought about? Anyone know? They had a huge major feud.

Something about the communion. Yeah, exactly. All about the Lord's Supper. And it ends up getting super, super messy. Luther says some quite harsh things about Zwingli.

And as we talk about the Lord's Supper, I think it could be helpful to outline the four views of the Lord's Supper. Do you guys happen to know any of them? Oh, okay.

You do know all of them. Great. Well, you know, transubstantiation is the Roman Catholic view. It was and is the Roman Catholic view that what they argue is that during the Lord's Supper, the bread and wine, it actually physically becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

they're influenced by Aristotle and his philosophical pattern of thought. So Roman Catholics, when they talk about transubstantiation, they have two categories about speaking about something, right?

And one category is the substance and the other category is called the accidents. Accidents not meaning like, oopsie, I messed up. Like, it's completely different.

the substance of things, of something, is the essential reality, the true nature of a thing, whereas the accidents are more the outward properties that could be swapped, could be changed without actually affecting the substance of that thing.

So it's a little confusing, but hopefully this analogy will help. If you look at me, right, what is my substance? I'm a human being. And I have my accidents, right, that I'm Asian, I have black hair, I wear glasses, those are all my outward properties, accidents.

If you were to swap any of those things, right, if I dyed my hair blonde, if I got rid of my glasses, if I got taller, shorter, whatever, I would still, my substance would still be a human being.

So that, I think if I were to dye my hair, that would be something called an accidental change. Not again, like, oops, I changed it, but an accidental change, an outward change, a superficial change in that sense.

But if you had this piece of wood, let's say, and you paint it all red, what would that be? That's still an accidental change, right? It's still a piece of wood, but now let's say you burn it to smithereens.

You have a campfire, you burn it. That would be a substantial change, because it's no longer a piece of wood, but it's now smoke and ash, something like that, right? So, all that background is important, because Catholics believe that when the priest consecrates the bread and wine, both, before they do that, rather, the substance and the accidents, they match of just ordinary bread and wine.

But after he consecrates it, the accidents, the things that don't define a particular thing, it remains of bread and wine. It looks, tastes, smells like bread and wine, but the substance, it's a substantial change.

They argue that the substance of that thing is actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ. Do you guys, are you guys following me? It's kind of confusing, but hopefully that makes sense. So, physically, what you are eating is literally the body of Jesus Christ.

Physically, what you are drinking is the blood of Jesus Christ. It might taste like bread, it might taste like wine, but you're physically eating Jesus' blood, body and blood.

Right? That's what their understanding of the Lord's Supper is. But the reformers, they push back on this doctrine heavily. For one, this is Zwingli's argument, they argue that this really just feels like a philosophical abstraction.

It's way too complicated. I don't know if you guys know the acronym KISS. Do you guys know what that is? Keep it simple stupid? That's essentially Zwingli's point.

Keep it simple. If it tastes like bread, looks like bread, smells like bread, what is it? It's bread. It's bread. That's what he argues.

And then also if you think that it's actually the body and blood of Jesus Christ, I think inevitably there's some consequences to that. if it actually becomes body and blood, then it would only be right and appropriate to then worship this piece of bread, to worship this cup of juice.

Whenever we receive it, we should venerate it with all our hearts and souls and minds, as Sean just talked about. And this is also particularly why the church actually don't allow the laity, the lay people, to drink of the wine back then, because they're kind of condescending.

They thought they were uneducated. They were going to mishandle the wine and just essentially spill it and drop it and treat it with not enough respect. I think oddly enough, we have kind of the opposite problem, because we just have breadcrumbs all over the floor.

A good Catholic would have a total heart attack seeing the way that we do communion. So that's a little bit about transubstantiation. Did I hear a question?

No? Okay. The next position on the Lord's Supper is Luther's and it's called consubstantiation. So consubstantiation or real physical presence.

So Luther rejects transubstantiation, maintaining that the bread and wine do physically remain ordinary bread and wine. But Luther is insistent on interpreting Jesus' words when he says, this is my body.

He insists that it needs to be interpreted literally. And so he rejects the transubstantiation view, but he still thinks it's being literal.

So in order to make sense of all that, he says that Jesus is physically present in, with, under the elements. So con, meaning with, right? With or in this position.

He believes that the bread and wine, they still physically remain bread and wine, but Jesus' body and blood are physically present with and in them. So, again, kind of a confusing position.

Is it like a cow-toe? Is it a piece of Jesus inside it? I'm honestly not sure of the metaphysics behind it, you know.

It could be. I think of it as just that, yeah, Jesus is eaten alongside these elements. Yeah. What do you mean by that?

The spirit, like, when you receive Christ, like, he involves us. Yeah. Yeah, but he's insistent on it being a physical phenomenon, whereas I think that's a spiritual phenomenon.

And so, again, just to explain a little bit of his view, this is going to get technical, hopefully you guys can follow. But Luther and the Lutheran church today, they follow a very unique Christological position in order to justify this view of the Lord's Supper.

And so, do you guys know what is the key tenet in Christology? They're just numbers. Doctrine of Christ. Two natures, one person, right?

That Jesus is what? Fully God, fully man. First time I went to a Bible study in college, a friend of mine said, Jesus is half God, half man.

I think that actually might have been my best friend. And I just remember him getting totally chewed out. Probably shouldn't have gotten chewed out, but he did get chewed out.

And that's the problem, right? He is two natures. He's fully God, fully man, but he is one person. That's like the key tenet of all Christology, and you'll see that throughout church history.

If you disagree with any of those things, one nature, one person, that's a heresy. If you think of two natures, two persons, that's a heresy. It has to be two natures, one person.

And so, you see this idea, two natures. You have his human nature, his divine nature. Luther thinks that his divine attributes, particularly omnipresence, that God is everywhere all at once, his divine attributes from his divine nature can be communicated to his human nature.

So, it results in this idea that Christ's human nature can be ubiquitous, can be everywhere all at once, omnipresent. So, that's how they justified this idea, right?

Because I think the right idea is that Jesus' human nature is just only singularly located in heaven, right? At the right hand of the Father. But they argue that Jesus' human nature is actually physically everywhere, which is why they can then say that Jesus is physically along with the elements in thousands of churches on Sundays where they're all celebrating the mass, that he could be everywhere all at once.

The problem with that view is that if you impart divine attributes to a human nature, what does that human nature become? No longer human, right?

It loses what makes it distinctly human. So, Calvin, this is his particular arm and he presses this hard. After the resurrection and ascension, Jesus' human nature is only present at the right hand of God and his human presence can be physically everywhere all at once.

So, hopefully that argument made sense. Third, you have Zwingli's position. It is 2 o'clock. You have Zwingli's position, which is called the memorialist view, something that Zwingli, he adopts this position so that he can buck as far as away, he distanced himself away as far as possible from the Roman Catholic view.

So, he lands on this and he argues that the Lord's Supper was primarily and only a memorial. It's just a symbolic act of remembrance.

And Zwingli observes that Jesus himself says, do this in remembrance of me. That's a key fact of whenever we celebrate the Lord's Supper, is that we should be remembering the death, the sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus when we partake of the Lord's Supper, right?

And so Zwingli strongly disagrees that there is any bodily presence with the elements of the table. And so for Zwingli, essentially the elements are functioning merely as visual aids.

They're just visual aids for us to remember. But if remembering is the only point, then I think the pushback would be that a sufficiently devout Christian, someone who's sincerely remembering the Lord Jesus during the Lord's table, it doesn't really matter whether you eat or you drink or not.

As long as you remember. So let's say that you are in Trinity and you don't actually go up to take the elements. Or you take the elements and you remember Lord Jesus, you're so thankful, you're weeping, you remember the death and sacrifice to Jesus, but then you decide not to partake.

Zwingli would just say that that's essentially the same thing. It doesn't really matter where you eat or drink. I'm running short on time, so I'll move on to the fourth position, which is actually our own churches and denominations position, which is a real spiritual presence.

Christ is only physically present in heaven. He's not physically with us when we eat and partake of the supper. Yet against memorialism, Christ does give himself to be eaten, to be drunk, right?

Not physically, but spiritually. So I think that there is an actual impartation of grace on you when you partake of the Lord's supper. So it matters, I think, when you eat and when you drink.

You are called to do so, right? I told this story last week, but just for those of you who guys were new. About two weeks ago, our sister Bailey, she can't eat gluten, so she comes up to the table and the gluten-free crackers, they were all empty.

So I was like, oh shoot, I don't know where they are. And I thought we just didn't have it. So I'm so sorry. I just say, oh, I'm so, so sorry. We don't have anything for you.

And I think just as a means to make me feel better, she just says, oh, it's okay, I'll eat it in spirit. So I was like, okay, I don't know, I don't have the crackers, so what can I do? And then someone else actually comes up and says, oh, actually the crackers are down here.

So I'm like, oh, thank God. So I asked Sean, like, even though it's maybe awkward or out of place, I asked Sean to bring the cracker over to her so that she can partake of the Lord's supper.

And I think we're insistent on doing that because, again, there's an impartation of grace. It actually matters that you physically eat. So, again, Zwingli would say that Christ is just merely remembered during the supper.

Calvin would say that Christ is truly received spiritually through the supper. So hopefully that gives a little bit more color whenever, one last statement, hopefully that gives a little bit more color whenever, you know, whoever's doing the Lord's supper at the time, whether Sean or me or whoever.

We always say, by your word and spirit, consecrate these elements, right, so that while they remain ordinary physical bread and juice, but spiritually to us, they may be the life-giving body and blood of Jesus Christ.

That's Calvin's view. That's this real spiritual presence view kind of summed up in one line. Keep moving. So back to the story, right, Luther and Zwingli, at this point, they're aware of each other.

At the beginning of their relationship, they're actually quite cordial. They treat one another with mutual respect, but once Luther finds out about Zwingli's position on the Lord's Supper, they go back and forth, write letters, and the debate becomes increasingly bitter, public.

Luther thought that Zwingli's view emptied the Lord's Supper of all of its power and grace, and Zwingli thought that Luther didn't break away enough from the sacramentalism from the Catholic Church.

And so the conflict reaches its full conclusion at the colloquy of Marburg in 1529. And it's called by actually a German prince, Philip of Hesse, I'm not exactly sure how to say that, because he wants a Protestant unity to stand against the powerful and rich Catholic Church.

And there the leading reformers like Luther and Zwingli, they come together, they try to rectify and unify their theological views. And remarkably, between the two of them, they actually agree on 14 out of 15 theological articles.

So there is remarkable theological unity, but of course the one point that they disagree is on the Lord's Supper. Luther demanded that they write literally this is my body, and Zwingli insists that he write, that they write, this signifies my body.

That one word change they can't agree upon. And so the feud never resolves. And it actually gets so bitter that Luther goes on to say about Zwingli that he was seven times more dangerous than when he was a papist, when he was a Catholic.

And he famously declared that he would rather share wine with Catholics than to drink it with Zwinglians. So this famously splits the Lutheran tradition from the Reformed tradition.

So again, if you have any questions or curious about why there are so many denominations, what is the Lutheran church about, what is this church, you have to study church history. So this really marks the break of the Lutheran tradition, why we have Lutheran churches today, and why we have churches, Reformed churches like Presbyterians.

Okay, I want to talk about baptism. It's an important part. So on this topic of a sacrament, I want to highlight Zwingli's teaching on baptism.

And I want to highlight it because I think Zwingli's position of baptism actually marks one of the most remarkable moves in church history for doctrine, for theology.

He does essentially something that no one has ever done in the history of the church. Since the early church, baptism has always been tied in with the idea of faith.

Faith is a prerequisite to be baptized. You need to have faith so that you can be properly baptized. That's so integral to the idea of baptism. So then the question comes, what about babies?

What about infants? So following Augustine, the medieval thought actually was that the church essentially provides faith for the baby.

that they believed on behalf of the baby. It's like an alien faith that gets imparted on to the child. So others as the centuries go on, they see that this really doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Faith by its definition is something that you must do on your own for oneself. So this idea of alien faith doesn't stick. So then here comes Luther.

He's also an infant Baptist. He's a paedo-baptist. He also agrees you need to have faith to be baptized. You can't separate the two. So then how can infants then be baptized?

Well, Luther essentially believes that by the mystery of God, the baby actually does believe. The baby believes, has faith, knows Jesus Christ, loves Jesus Christ.

That's why they can get baptized. And you might push him, saying, Luther, how in the world does that work? Baby can't do anything for himself.

He doesn't even know Jesus. And he will push back saying that it is the mystery of God for us not to know. It's only by God's sovereignty, all his wisdom, only God knows, we don't know.

And so when the parents or the godparents of the child are asked, does the infant believe, does he or she want to get baptized? And the parents answer in the affirmative, yes.

By the mystery of God, Luther thinks that it actually is the infant that believes. So there's another group, theological group, called the Anabaptists.

I don't know if you guys have ever heard of them, the Anabaptists. And they take a look at this, and they conclude that this simply does not make any sense. Anabaptists, which also means to re-baptize, they actually emerge from Zwingli's own reform movement in Zurich, but they actually push the ideas further along than Zwingli's comfortable with.

And they also have a lot of theological wacky ideas, and we won't get into them there, but they reject infant baptism in favor of believers' baptism.

And so it's only those who can make a credible profession of faith, only them, that should get baptized. And so they make strong arguments for believers' baptism, which then forces Zwingli to consider new ways to defend infant baptism.

And so in his groundbreaking essay, aptly titled On Baptism, he opens by explaining that for his views of baptism, he's reticent to share them.

But he's essentially being forced by the Anabaptists. And he starts by declaring that all the church fathers, everyone in church, before his time, essentially made a huge error on baptism.

It's an extremely bold claim, saying for 1500 years since Christ, everybody got this wrong, right? I'm the one who's getting this right. Again, very, very bold.

And here's the remarkable change that Zwingli makes, right? So if you have the three, faith, baptism, and infants, they try to keep all those together.

What Zwingli does is he kicks out faith, the need for faith. So you no longer need faith to be baptized. So he severs that link.

It's a non-essential for the sacrament of baptism. baptism. And instead, baptism primarily becomes a covenantal sign or an external marker that you are of the people of God.

So it doesn't depend on your personal faith. right? I'm going to try to diagram really quickly something that my seminary professor did and I thought it was so helpful. So I'll try to do it really quickly.

So these circles, these outer circles, define the people of God, the covenant community of God. So on the right, or on the left, you have the Old Testament community of God. And the New Testament, you have the New Testament community of God, right?

So what, what defines, how do you get into the community of God in the Old Testament? Do you guys know? That's a circumcision, exactly. Right?

So that's what defines, just being defined as the people of God. But this inner ring, it defines those who are of the theological, the spiritual remnant, those who actually have faith.

So you have on the outside, people like Esau, who are still considered people of God, but they don't have genuine faith. But then you have the chosen, the Jacobs inside.

So how do you get in here? Yeah, you need to have genuine faith. And so Zwingli's main argument is that there is a continuity of these covenants.

He sees the same idea. So in the New Testament, what he sees is that this act of getting into the covenant community of God is baptism.

Baptism is that, right? And so following kind of Jesus' languages with the wheats and the tares, you have the wheats on the outside, and you have the tares, sorry, wheats and the tares here, right?

So you still need genuine spiritual faith to be able to be considered the remnant of the faithful, but he makes this connection between circumcision and baptism, right?

That circumcision and who got circumcised? When were you supposed to get circumcised? Yeah, exactly. Babies, male babies specifically, but he makes that connection now that baptism is just the mere New Testament version of circumcision.

You guys, are you guys following? Why we don't baptize babies, why we are believers back to we're a Baptist church, is this question, what is new?

What is new about the New Covenant? There has to be something new about it, right? Can someone open up your Bible again and read Jeremiah 31? Jeremiah 31.

Jeremiah 31. 31. And just read there for a little bit. Ah, the days are coming, when I will make a new covenant with the people of Israel and with the people of Judah.

It will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors when I took them by hand to be the God of Egypt because they broke my covenant though I was a husband to them, declares the Lord. This is a covenant I will make the people of Israel.

After this time, declares the Lord, I will throw my laws in their minds and write it on their hearts. I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer will they teach their neighbor or say to one another, know the Lord, because they will all know me from the list of them to the greatest.

Detail is the Lord. for I will forgive their sins and remember their sins and remember their sins for more. That's a good place to stop. Thanks. Thanks, Zipporah. Do you guys understand the point I'm trying to make by reading that passage?

Is what is new about it? Is that these people, these covenant community, they're marked by genuine faith. They have God's laws written on their hearts, right? And so, we have a problem.

I don't think that there's necessarily this problem. I mean, again, there are wheats and tares, unfortunately, in the church, but I don't think that's by design, right? So, I think to be able to enter into the covenant community of God, you need to still have faith as a prerequisite of baptism.

And so, sometimes you hear Baptists, like, we're the new kids on the block, because for 1,500 years, they always practiced infant baptism, which also might not be exactly true.

There are some church fathers, like Tertullian, who questioned that practice as well. But, I think there needs to be, it needs to be said that even people who baptize babies, they have to make some theological innovations, recent theological innovations, so that they could justify their practice.

They disconnect faith and baptism. Do you guys, hopefully that makes sense, right? Coming up on time, we're at 2.30. So, I'll just fly through the rest of this.

This is another instance that's kind of a smear on Zwingli's campaign, or legacy, rather. Some more about the Anabaptists. So, we already talked about the first disputation in 1523.

But, in the following disputations to come, it's actually Zwingli versus the Anabaptists. And, he feuds with them over issues like infant baptism, and particularly over the separation of church and state.

On the latter issue, over issues like, over issues like religious liberty, and separation of church and state. The Anabaptists are actually a little bit ahead of their time.

They argue for things like separation of church and state. And so, for a couple of these different reasons of these disagreements, Zwingli now considers his former disciples very dangerous radicals.

And so, under the influence of Zwingli, the church council of Zurch, they condemn the Anabaptists, and they condemn, they execute them as heretics. Most notably, famously, drowning Felix Manns in 1517, or 1527, to which Zwingli, he doesn't make any objection at all.

The rest of the Anabaptists scatter, and their movement spreads, it survives, and it eventually goes on to influence the development of other branches of Christianity, like the Amish, or the Mennonites.

So, if you know anything about the Amish Mennonites, this is kind of the root of where they get started. And it remains one of the great ironies of the Reformation that many reformers, they sought freedom from persecution from Rome, but they deny that same kind of treatment to people who reformed further than them.

Finally, getting to his death, back to the life of Zwingli. Now, at that time, Switzerland wasn't a united nation. It's actually a confederation of cantons, a confederation of different cities and towns.

And there was no, as I said, no separation of church and state. And there's a division of cantons. There's kind of a growing tension, a civil war brewing, between the Protestant cantons, like Zurich, and then the Catholic cantons.

And this tension escalates so bad that it amounts to open conflict. And it leads to war, the second war of Kappel in 1531.

And so Zwingli, he's decked in full armor. He actually goes out to battle with his troops, the troops of Zurich, as a chaplain, as a spiritual leader.

Um, but very quickly, Zurich and her forces, uh, they realize they are badly outnumbered, and they are soundly defeated. Um, his body, uh, I think that, I don't know if this is actually true, it could be legend, but, uh, the story goes that he was found wounded, but alive, on the battlefield.

And the Catholics come, and they find him, and ask him, do you want your last rites? Do you, do you want to renounce, uh, all your heresies? And he says no, and they kill him on the spot.

His body is then ritually humiliated, it's reduced to ashes, and, uh, he, he, he's not given a proper burial, proper funeral. Um, Zwingli should have been less concerned to defend the gospel by political and military means, but, I think at the heart of it, the, the heart of Zwingli is captured in one of his last admonitions, is to do something bold for God.

Right? He, that's his heart's desire, to do something bold for God. Um, and he, he goes out with a bang in battle. As I've said, Zwingli is the, the start of the reformed tradition, um, in Switzerland, and he's actually a major influence on John Calvin, who is a second generation reformer.

And, we're gonna take up the mantle, and, and talk about him next week. So, that concludes all the,