The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli's Theology

Vol. 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024), 44–75

© The Reformed Theological Review 2024 https://doi.org/10.53521/a388

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

K. J. DRAKE Assistant Professor of Historical Theology Indianapolis Theological Seminary, Indiana

Citation : K. J. Drake, ‘The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology’, RTR 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024), 44–75. https://rtrjournal.org/ index.php/RTR/article/view/388.

Keywords: Ulrich Zwingli, humanity of Jesus Christ, Reformation Christology, hypostatic union, Christ as example

Abstract: Scholarship on Zwingli is divided regarding the prominence of Christ’s humanity in the Swiss reformer, with scholars like W. P. Stephens arguing that Christ’s divinity overshadows his human nature and others like Gottfried Locher contending that the human nature of Christ holds a critical place in Zwingli’s thought. This article, building upon Locher, argues that the humanity of Christ serves a unifying function in Zwingli’s theology to preserve both the exclusivity of Christ’s mediation and a theocentric religion. According to Zwingli, Jesus Christ is the elect Mediator who, in his true humanity, defines the human relationship to the Triune God and brings coherence to Zwingli’s theology. As the seed of the woman, suffering sacrifice, ethical exemplar, and exalted representative, Christ qua man ensures that salvation is a divine work from creation through the eschaton to the glory of the Triune God.

Thepersonand work ofJesus Christarethecenter of Ulrich Zwingli’s understanding of true Christian religion and the motivation for his activity as a reformer. In Short Christian Instruction, published after the Second Zurich Disputation as a model for reformational preaching, Zwingli summarised his gospel: Here we have in short the entire foundation of the gospel, namely, that since it was impossible for us poor people to come to God on our merit,

God ordained his son to take human nature and to be given for us unto death. He who was perfect in every way and without blemish was able to take away all our blemishes. Whoever firmly believes in this activity and trusts the precious fruitfulness of the suffering of Christ has already believed the gospel and will be saved. 1

Zwingli’s gospel hinges upon the humanity of Christ as this sinless nature is the predestined means of salvation via suffering. Scholarship on Zwingli, however, offers conflicting accounts of the importance and function of Christ’s human nature within his theology. One group of scholars, led by W. P. Stephens, argues that the humanity of Christ was overshadowed in Zwingli’s theology by his emphasis on the divine person and nature. Following Gottfried Locher, others argue that Zwingli’s treatment of Christ’s humanity is not only central to his theology but that the concrete, incarnate life of Christ as an exemplar and the exalted Christ are significant features that set him apart from other reformers. This essay argues that Locher’s position prevails but should be expanded regarding how Zwingli envisions the role of Christ’s humanity in the Christian faith. For Zwingli, Jesus Christ is the elect Mediator who, in his true humanity, defines the human relationship to the Triune God and brings coherence to Zwingli’s theocentric view of the Christian religion. As the seed of the woman, suffering sacrifice, ethical exemplar, and exalted representative, Christ qua man ensures that salvation is a divine work from creation to eschaton to the glory of the Triune God. To cover new ground and illuminate areas often overlooked in Zwingli’s thought, the essay offers a synthetic analysis of the function of Christ’s humanity across Zwingli’s writings. However, questions of the humanity of Christ in the Eucharistic debate, the intricacies of the hypostatic union itself, and the communicatio idiomatum will be bracketed since these topics have been recently addressed elsewhere. 2 Thisapproach addresses Zwingli’s theologyonits

1 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘Short Christian Instruction’, Reformed Confessions of the 16 th and 17 th Centuries in English Translation , 4 vols, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Grand Rapids: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 10–39.

2 K. J. Drake, The Flesh of the Word: The Extra Calvinisticum from Zwingli to Early Orthodoxy , Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford, New York:

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

own terms and proportions with some distance from the polemical context of much of Zwingli’s writings between 1525 and 1530. After setting out the status quaestionis regarding the place of this doctrine in Zwingli, the function of Christ’s human nature is expounded in his theology from the Old Testament promise across the whole incarnate life through humiliation to his exaltation.

1. The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology: State of the Scholarship Assessments of Zwingli’s understanding of Christ’s humanity differ markedly in the technical and general scholarly treatments. Leading Anglophone Zwingli scholar W. P. Stephens contends that while Christology is essential for Zwingli’s understanding of the faith, ultimately, Christ’s humanity is overshadowed by his divinity and, therefore, is less ‘vital’ when compared to Martin Luther’s Christocentrism. ‘The humanity of Christ does not have the vital place in Zwingli’s theology that it has in Luther’s, even though it is indispensable for our salvation, for the stress is on the divinity which saves us and in which we are to put our trust. At points a sense of the genuine humanity of Christ is missing.’ 3 Zwingli’s Christ is more God than man, Stephen claims, not in that Zwingli has a deficient view of the incarnation per se but that the soteriological stress and core of devotion to Christ is imbalanced. ‘Yet in spite of the indispensable, and in many ways central, place Christ had for Zwingli, he was not the beginning, middle, and end of Zwingli’s theology as he was of Luther’s. Moreover, the Christ on whom Zwingli concentrated was Christ as God rather than as man.’ 4 This criticism has precedence in previous scholarship. Isaac Dorner concludes, ‘The deity of Christ, then, and not His humanity, is, in the view of Zwingli, the creative principle of salvation: the humanity OUP, 2021), chs 1–2; K. J. Drake, ‘Zwingli’s Christology Reconsidered: Spirit/Flesh Dualisms and the Charge of Nestorianism’, WTJ 83, no. 1 (2021), 153–173; Richard Cross, Communicatio Idiomatum: Reformation Christological Debates (Oxford: OUP, 2019), 39–85.

3 W. Peter Stephens, Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 60.

4 W. Peter Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 121.

is not a part of the blessing of salvation, but the means by which redemption was historically effected.’ 5

Both popular assessments and specialised studies perpetuate this negative assessment of Zwingli’s use and understanding of Christ’s humanity. In The Great Theologians Series , Gregory Miller asserts, ‘The humanity of Christ is essential, but Zwingli’s emphasis is clearly on the divinity which saves us and in which we are to put our trust.’ 6 Ronald Rittigers, citing Stephens in support, negatively compares Zwingli’s understanding of the humanity of Christ with Luther’s, specifically regarding the relation of the two natures and impassibility: ‘Zwingli neither allowed nor wanted God to participate in suffering in the way that Luther taught…Christ’s humanity, especially his suffering humanity, does not play the kind of central role in Zwingli’s theology that it does in Luther’s.’ 7 This general appraisal that Christ’s humanity in Zwingli was soteriologically overshadowed by his divinity partially stems from a standard trope in Reformation studies that sees Luther’s theology as the measuring rod that others must meet. 8 This framing, however, obscures the particularity of the humanity of Christ in Zwingli’s thought. 9

5 Isaak August Dorner, History of the Development of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ , vol. 4, trans. D.W. Simon (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1890), 118.

6 Gregory J. Miller, ‘Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531)’, The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period , ed. Carter Lindberg (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), 160.

7 Ronald K. Rittgers, The Reformation of Suffering: Pastoral Theology and Lay Piety in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Oxford; New York: OUP, 2012), 118.

8 For a plea to understand Zwingli on his own terms, see Robert C. Walton, ‘Let Zwingli Be Zwingli’, Prophet, Pastor, Protestant: The Work of Huldrych Zwingli after Five Hundred Years , eds E.J. Furcha and H. Wayne Pipkin (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 171–190.

9 For instance, Bromiley discusses various aspects of the reformers’ views on Christ’s human nature; however, while citing him a half-dozen times, Bromiley notes nothing distinctive about Zwingli’s contribution. Geoffrey William Bromiley, ‘The Reformers and the Humanity of Christ’, Perspectives on Christology: Essays in Honor of Paul K. Jewett , ed. Marguerite Shuster and Richard A Muller (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991), 79–104.

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

Gottfried Locher offers a more positive evaluation of the place of Christ’s humanity within Zwingli’s theology. 152F 10 He concurs with Stephens that in the atonement, Zwingli emphasised the divinity of Christ more than his humanity. Also comparing him with Luther, Locher concludes, ‘Whereas Luther emphasized the humanity, Zwingli put the divinity in the forefront. Luther stresses the revelation of God, Zwingli, the revelation of God .’ 11 Remarking on the Commentary on True and False Religion , Locher maintains, ‘the saving power of the human nature of Jesus Christ does not lie in itself, but in the fact that it is the organ of his deity. With regard to the human nature of Jesus, there is a definite subordinationism.’ 12 The subordination that Locher speaks of here is not the classical Trinitarian error but Zwingli’s ordering the human nature to the divine Son in the locus of soteriology. However, Locher notes two areas where the purpose of the humanity of Christ in Zwingli stands out from his contemporaries. He stresses Christ’s true humanity as an exemplar and guide for Christian life, following Erasmus modified by the gospel. Locher maintains, ‘Zwingli develops the details of the gospel tradition of Jesus’ earthly life more thoroughly than any other reformer.’ 13 Not only does Zwingli attend to the reality of Christ’s earthly career, but the exalted human nature is critical to assurance. Thus the scope of [Zwingli’s] Christology is the assurance that God is really to be found and received in the man Jesus. In addition, it seeks to protect Christ’s humanity against any decline into Monophysitism or Docetism. It maintains most determinedly that the Lord who is exalted and proclaimed, the object of faith, is completely identical with the historical Jesus. 14

10 For Locher’s major treatments of Zwingli’s Christology proper, see Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Die Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis im Lichte seiner Christologie: Die Gotteslehre , vol. 1 (Zürich: Zwingli-Verlag, 1952), 15–42; Gottfried Wilhelm Locher, Zwingli’s Thought: New Perspectives , trans. Milton Aylor and Stuart Casson, Studies in the History of Christian Thought 25 (Leiden: Brill, 1981), 72–86, 173–178.

11 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 173.

12 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 175.

13 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 174.

14 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 177.

Zwingli maintains the Christ presented in the gospels, even through death and resurrection, is never other than a concrete, human life while remaining inviolably God. Locher offers a more fully orbed picture of Zwingli’s teaching on the humanity of Christ. However, he still judges the place of the human nature in Zwingli’s atonement doctrine as insufficient.

Other Zwingli scholars have picked up this more fulsome interpretation. Citing Locher, Jacques Courvoisier argues that for Zwingli, ‘christocentrism colors all of life, and consequently all reformation of the church.’

15 This is a bold claim, which Courvoisier does not substantiate through his discussion in the essay. In a summary of Christology in his biography of Zwingli, Bruce Gordon maintains: 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. Only Christ could guarantee the gift of God’s mercy and assuage the troubled conscience. 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. 16

The analysis below builds upon Locher’s portrait and briefly addresses some of the critiques levelled by Stephens and company. This reassessment begins with Christ as Mediator, elect from before the foundation of the world, which is the architectonic concept for Zwingli’s view of Christ’s humanity. Then, an overlooked aspect of the redemptive-historical significance of Christ’s humanity as the seed of the woman is investigated and connected to his view of the covenant. The contours of the human nature’s role in Zwingli’s atonement theory are expounded, and the claims of imbalance are engaged. The subsequent sections expand upon aspects of Christ in his humanity as an ethical exemplar and his exalted ministry.

15 Jaques Courvoisier, Zwingli: A Reformed Theologian (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1963), 40.

16 Bruce Gordon, Zwingli: God’s Armed Prophet (New York; London: Yale University Press, 2021), 157.

2. Christ the Elect Mediator

The heart of Zwingli’s proclamation of true Christian religion was the proper worship of the Triune God as the Creator, Redeemer, and Lord, given the infinite qualitative difference between the Creator and creature. In this sense, Zwingli’s theology is thoroughly theocentric, such that the distinction between the infinite Triune God and his finite creation grounds humanity’s exclusive worship of Him. 17 With the fall into sin, humans require a mediator who could forgive sins, bear the demand of worship, and yet maintain the sole worthiness of God to be worshipped. Zwingli set forth this understanding of the faith in his early programmatic text, The Commentary on True and False Religion .

Pious devotion, therefore, or religion, is this: God reveals man to himself, that he may recognize his disobedience, treason, and wretchedness as fully as Adam did. The result is that man utterly despairs of himself, but at the same time God shows the ample store of His own bounty, so that he who had despaired of himself may see that he has with his Creator and Father an abundance of grace so sure and ready that he cannot possibly be torn away from Him on whose grace he leans. This clinging to God, therefore, with an unshaken trust in him as the only good, as the only one who has the knowledge and the power to relieve our troubles and to turn away all evils or to turn them to His own glory and the benefits of His people, and with filial dependence upon Him as a father—this is piety, is religion. 18

Human beings are unable either to initiate or to maintain true religion because of sin’s depredation and because such a reliance on self is the center of false religion ‘when trust is put in any other than God.’ 19 Therefore, from creation, proper religion is divinely instituted and divinely mediated. To maintain this utter theocentrism, salvation must originate from God’s will alone and be accomplished through his power alone, lest any creature be owed allegiance. Therefore, Zwingli bases his understanding of the gospel on divine election and the mediatorship of

17 The author broadly agrees with Daniel Bollinger that Zwingli’s distinction between infinite and finite is clear evidence of Scotian influence. See especially chapter 8 in Daniel Bolliger, Infiniti Contemplatio: Grundzüge der Scotus- und Scotismusrezeption im Werk Huldrych Zwinglis (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 460–493.

18 Ulrich Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , ed. Samuel Jackson and Clarence Heller (Durham, N.C.: Labyrinth, 1981), 91.

19 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 98.

Jesus Christ. These concepts are joined such that Zwingli’s absolute view of election is ordained through Christ as thedivine and human mediator. For this is the one, sole Mediator between God and men, the God-man Christ Jesus. But the election of God remains firm and unchangeable. Those whom He elected before the foundation of the world He elected in such a manner as to make them His own through His Son…Hence His election also justly savors of both. It is goodness to elect whom He will; it is justice to make the elect His own and to unite them to Himself through His son, who for us has become the victim to satisfy divine justice. 20

For Christ to be this ordained mediator, he assumed a genuine human nature to secure justice and mercy. The incarnation is the predestined means in the eternal plan of God to redeem humanity and give glory to God alone. As Zwingli explained in On Providence , [God] determined to redeem him [humanity] through His Son (for as soon as He began to think of fashioning man, He saw how he was going to fall, to speak as we must after the manner of men), they at once understand that it was an inestimable blessing that man was so made that he could fall. Otherwise the Son of God would never have put on human nature. 21

In later terminology, Zwingli argues for an infralapsarian Christology wherein the Son is ordained to take on flesh as the mediator to redeem sinful humanity. 22 The incarnation is ordered to the passion as the unique instrument for God to reveal his nature and glory. ‘He in the

20 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘Fidei Ratio’, Reformed Confessions of the 16 th and 17 th Centuries in English Translation , vol. 1, ed. James T. Jr. Dennison, trans. S. M. Jackson (Grand Rapids: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 117–18. See also, for example, Ulrich Zwingli, ‘On Providence’, On Providence and Other Essays , ed. Willian John Hinke, trans. Henry Preble (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1983), 228.

21 Zwingli, ‘On Providence’, 222.

22 Interestingly, although Scotus influenced Zwingli regarding the concept of the infinite, he preferred Anslem and Aquinas regarding the motivations for the incarnation. Broadly stated, Scotus argued that the incarnation was not necessarily ordered to the passion and would have occurred apart from the fall. See the various options of the medieval schools in Justus H. Hunter, If Adam Had Not Sinned: The Reason for the Incarnation from Anselm to Scotus (Washington D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2020), 197–231.

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beginning formed man who should fall, but at the same time determined to clothe in human nature His Son, who should restore him when fallen. For by this means His goodness was in every way manifested.’ 23 The humanity of Christ is the elect means of salvation and the full revelation of God’s nature to his glory. Therefore, Zwingli views the humanity of Christ as always ordered to this higher end of the divine plan. The hypostatic union is the foundation for Christ’s mediation, as both the means of reconciling God and humanity and the site of their communion. From the beginning of his career as a reformer, Zwingli stressed that only Christ as true God and true man could be mediator. Our Creator sent one to satisfy His justice by offering Himself for us— not an angel, nor a man, but His own Son, and clothed in flesh, in order that neither His majesty might deter us from intercourse with Him, nor His lowliness deprive us of hope. For, being God and the Son of God, He that was sent as deputy and mediator gives support to hope. For what cannot He do or have who is God? Moreover, being man, He promises friendship and intimacy—aye, the common bond of relationship. 24

In his early writings, Zwingli eschewed the conciliar Christological terminology of persona or hypostasis , which caused an underdeveloped sense of the unity of the two natures in Christ. For instance, in On the Lord’s Supper, the union is described as ‘in Christ there are two different natures, the divine and human: and yet the two are only the one Christ.’ 25 However, in the mature theology of his later career, Zwingli solidifies his view of Christ’s mediation by articulating the hypostatic union in more thorough, conciliar categories. He especially emphasises the hypostasis of the eternal Son as the unifying subject of the incarnation. 26 This is amply evidenced in his final confessional works of Fidei Ratio and Fidei Expositio : The whole man was so assumed into the unity of the hypostasis or person of the Son of God, that the man did not constitute a separate

23 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Ratio’, 116.

24 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 106.

25 Ulrich Zwingli, ‘On the Lord’s Supper’, Zwingli and Bullinger , ed. Geoffrey William Bromiley, The Library of Christian Classics (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2006), 212.

26 For the development of Zwingli’s understanding of the hypostatic union, see Drake, ‘Zwingli’s Christology Reconsidered’; Drake, Flesh of the Word , 27–117.

person, but was assumed into the inseparable, indivisible and indissoluble person of the Son of God. 27

God and man are one Christ, just as one man consists of a soul endowed with reason and a dull body, as Saint Athanasius has taught. He took up human nature into the unity of the hypostasis or person of the Son of God, not as if the humanity taken on were a separate person, and the eternal divinity were also a separate person. The person of the eternal son of God assumed humanity into and by virtue of its own power, as holy men of God have truly and clearly shown. 28

Zwingli exhibits here an enhypostatic view of Christ’s human nature, which considered in itself is impersonal yet has concrete personification only in the pre-existent hypostasis of the Son. 29 The mediatorship of Christ is not a function of either nature alone, but the person of the Son is the mediator according to both his divinity and humanity. For Zwingli, there is never an independent significance to the human nature itself, but this particular human nature has been elected for the purposes of salvation and exists only enhypostatically in the eternal person of the Son.

Election, Christ’s mediatorship, and the enhypostatic human nature let Zwingli wed his theocentrism and faith in Christ incarnate. Invoking Augustine’s use/enjoyment distinction, Zwingli maintains, ‘For if God alone is to be enjoyed, he alone also is to be trusted, for that is to be trusted which is to be enjoyed, not that which is to be employed.’ 30 Does this not create a tension between trust in God and trust in the incarnate Christ, since his humanity is a created thing? Is Christ’s humanity to be enjoyed? Zwingli addresses this criticism in the Commentary on True and

27 Zwingli, ‘ Fidei Ratio ’, 114.

28 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, Reformed Confessions of the 16 th and 17 th Centuries in English Translation , vol. 1, ed. James T. Jr. Dennison, trans. S. M. Jackson (Grand Rapids: Reformed Heritage Books, 2008), 183.

29 For a discussion of this Christological formulation, see Matthias Göckel, ‘A Dubious Christological Formula?: Leontius of Byzantium and the Anhypostasis-Enhypostasis Theory’, JTS 51, no. 2 (October 2000), 515–532; Ivor Davidson, ‘Theologizing the Human Jesus: An Ancient (and Modern) Approach to Christology Reassessed’, IJST 3, no. 2 (July 2001), 129–153; Oliver D. Crisp, Divinity and Humanity: The Incarnation Reconsidered , Current Issues in Theology (Cambridge; New York: CUP, 2007), 72–89.

30 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 179.

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False Religion , arguing that this is a false choice since Christ is God and man. ‘When I attribute all things to the Son, I attribute them to Him who is what the Father is, what the Holy Spirit is, and whose are the kingdom and the power just as truly as they are the Father’s and the Holy Spirit’s.’ 31 To trust the man Jesus Christ is to trust the eternal son of God and the very act of the Triune God to save since ‘Christ, who is the pledge of grace, nay, is grace itself,’ 32 Locher helpfully summarises Zwingli’s position: ‘When we speak of Christ, we refer to none other than the eternal Son of God, who can never be abstracted from Father and Spirit in our thinking and faith; only in our speech can this become necessary.’ 33 Therefore, properly theocentric religion is only mediated by Christ’s humanity. ‘The Christian religion is nothing else than a firm hope in God through Christ Jesus and a blameless life wrought after the pattern of Christ as far as He giveth us.’ 34 Upon this basis of predestined mediation, Zwingli’s whole doctrine of the humanity of Christ rests.

3. Christ the Seed of the Woman and Testament

God’s ordained mediator and his plan of salvation do not begin with the incarnation itself but are promised and prepared in God’s relationship with Israel via covenant. Before the coming of Christ, this divine act was mediated through a prophesied seed. After 1525, Zwingli saw the promised humanity of Christ as one of the throughlines of God’s engagement with his people across the testaments. By the incarnation, Christ fulfilled both aspects of true religion, being the God who saves and the perfect human response to the divine. Therefore, in the Son and particularly in his human nature, creation and redemption are united. ‘For as God created man through His Son, so He determined through Him to restore man when he had fallen into death, that the Son might be

31 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 99.

32 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 99.

33 Wo wir von Christus reden, wir an keinen andern denken, als den ewigen Gottessohn, welcher von Vater und Geist in unserm Denken und Glauben nie zu abstrahieren ist; nur in unserer Rede kann dies notwendig warden . [Translation mine] Locher, Die Theologie Huldrych Zwinglis im Lichte seiner Christologie: Die Gotteslehre , 115.

34 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 135.

The Reformed Theological Review 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024)

at once his creator and his restorer.’ 35 The foundation of this connection begins immediately after the fall in Gen 3:15 with the protoevangelium and culminates with the seed and heir of Abraham, as Paul called Christ in Galatians.

Therefore he made his Son mediator who accepted human nature, not that he should be mediator by the sole strength of human weakness, but by the power of the divine nature which is united with the human strength so that, just as human weakness was joined to God through Christ and united with him, we too may be reconciled to God through the suffering and sacrifice of Christ. Such reconciliation is not proper and cannot be attributed to any creature except to the one heir to whom such was promised, Gal 3:19. 36

The mediatorship of Jesus Christ could not be satisfied with a generic human nature but must come along the line of heirs stretching from Adam through Abraham and David, prepared by the providence and promise of God.

God’s redemptive-historical plan to free humanity from the folly, sin, and guilt of Adam comes through the woman’s offspring; the protoevangelium ‘points to Christ who in his human nature has shown that he shall trample underfoot the head of the worm.’ 37 In this promise, God sets forth the essence of grace, judgment, and hope for a mediator in the seed.

God, then—to go back to the beginning—took pity upon man right after his fall, and when He promulgated the decision of His just judgment He took off something from the hardness of the sentence, that man might not be in utter misery forever. For when He appointed the punishment of the serpent, He made this qualification, in the interest of man: He foretold that there should sometime be [a] seed of the woman that should bruise the head of the real serpent, the Devil. 38

Zwingli argued that Christ is the proper referent of the protoevangelium by comparing the Hebrew with the LXX and Vulgate

35 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 106.

36 Huldrych Zwingli, The Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , trans. E. J. Furcha, Huldrych Zwingli Writings (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 129.

37 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 37.

38 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 107.

56 The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology translations. He interpreted the seed, singular and masculine in Hebrew, prophetically as referring to the man Jesus Christ, who will culminate this promise rather than the woman. 39 With this exegesis, Zwingli cut off a standard medieval interpretation that the Virgin Mary fulfilled this promise. 40 He did not intend to denigrate the Virgin, since Zwingli maintains one of the highest views of Mary among Protestants, 41 but to highlight the significance of the humanity of the Son being of divine appointment from the beginning of God’s redemptive acts as a new seed of humanity. Ultimately, the mediator must be of the flesh of Adam so that he comes from the promised seed and bears the judgment due for Adam’s sin. In The Commentary on True and False Religion , Zwingli buttresses this using the two Adam typology of Romans 5 and 1 Corinthians 15 and draws out a ten-point comparison between Adam and Christ, ‘that it may become clearly apparent how Christ by means of the proper antidotes restored man by satisfying the divine justice.’ 42 This enhances the traditional account of Christ’s humanity by tying the role of the mediator to the seed of the woman in Gen 3:15 and linking this further to the promises to Abraham and the line of David. 43 Zwingli traced the development of the seed through four passages to establish a line from Adam to Christ. Zwingli identified Christ in the promised seed of the woman in Gen 3:15, in the seed of Abraham who shall bless all the families of the earth in Gen 22:18 (although wrongly cited in the text as Genesis 15), and in the righteous branch of David promised in Jer 23:5. 44 The key to this series of seed/branch imagery is

39 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 107–108.

40 Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture (Yale University Press, 1996), 91–92.

41 For Zwingli’s doctrine of the Virgin Mary, see Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 87–94; Rebecca A. Giselbrecht, ‘Reforming a Model: Zwingli, Bullinger, and the Virgin Mary in Sixteenth-Century Zurich’, Following Zwingli: Applying the Past in Reformation Zurich , eds Luca Baschera, Bruce Gordon, and Christian Moser (London; New York: Routledge, 2016), 137–174.

42 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 109.

43 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 37–38.

44 See Hildebrand’s exposition of this theme in Zwingli’s commentary on Genesis, in the ensuing article issue this issue: Pierrick Hildebrand, ‘Laying the Exegetical Foundations of the Reformed Tradition: Zwingli’s Covenantal Reading of the Book of Genesis’, RTR 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024), 84–86.

Paul’s statement in Gal 3:16, ‘the seed which is Christ.’ This passage fills out the promise-fulfillment dynamic of redemptive-history in the incarnation, ‘bearing witness that the seed of which so much is said throughout the Old Testament is Christ.’ 45 The humanity of Christ holds salvific power because, in this prophesied and prepared nature, a new humanity is created by God alone and not by human effort or work. Christ could not have taken to himself any human nature, but only one tied with the precedent promises to Israel. Being a human was insufficient for the redemptive promise. The mediator must be this particular human—the seed of Adam, the seed of Abraham, and the shoot of Jesse—because this is what God has promised via covenant. No abstract humanity will fulfil the promises; instead, Zwingli stresses the particularity of Jesus’s human nature and its situatedness within salvation history.

Because of this redemptive-historical framing of Christ’s human nature, Zwingli can describe Christ himself as the testamentum of God. ‘What other testimony shall I bring forward than Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Virgin, who is himself the Testament?’ 46 Zwingli introduces Christ here as the testimony to the sole worthiness of the Triune God. In the humanity of the Son, God is declared the metaphysical supreme fountain of all being and good and the gracious and merciful Redeemer in his providence and blessing to Israel. Christ is the testament, here intentionally identified as both the Son of God and of Mary, indicating his role as mediator in his two natures. Zwingli is using two senses of ‘ testamentum ’ in this statement. Christ is the substance of the new administration of God’s redemptive presence with his people and ‘the behest’ or blessing of an inheritance. 47 This role of Christ as the substance of the Old Testament is connected ultimately to his sacrifice. ‘[Christ] is our propitiation, therefore also our covenant

45 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 108.

46 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 72. Novi testamenti, quae alia testimonia proferemus, quam eum ipsum, qui testamentum est, Iesum Christum, dei virginisque filium? Emil Egli (ed.), Huldreich Zwinglis sämtliche Werke: Corpus Reformatorum 90 (Leipzig: Heinsius, 1914), III: 652.6–7, hereafter Z .

47 Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms: Drawn Principally from Protestant Scholastic Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1985), 297.

58

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology and testament [ pactum nostrum testamentumque ], which God has made with us. He is Himself the propitiator also, for through Him we have access to God.’ 48 Christ as testament and pactum is accomplished by his propitiation. The concept of Christ as pactum and testamentum ties together the fulfilment of Christ as both promiser and the behest or inheritance of the redeemed, who is the presence of and access to God byhis humanityintheirmidst,establishing truereligionbyhis mediation and propitiation.

This framing of Christ as testamentum and pactum in the Commentary inveighs against the standard narrative for the development of Zwingli’s covenantal theology, which typically dates the covenantal shift from opposing the testaments to continuity in the debate with the Anabaptists over infant baptism. 49 However, Hildebrand shows this is not the case by identifying the definitive shift in the Subsidiary Essay in August 1525. The main contention for this is the difference in treatment of Genesis 17, such that the Abrahamic Covenant is fulfilled in Christ and not seen as a distinct covenant. 50 This is then fleshed out by seeing Gen 3:15 also in a covenantal context fulfilled in Christ, which then is rolled out through the rest of the Old Testament. 51 Zwingli will use this theme of Christ as covenant to argue for his view of infant baptism against the Anabaptists in 1527. 52

In this debate, Zwingli ties together election by Christ and inclusion in the covenant through Christ. As Hildebrand notes, ‘Zwingli made

48 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 72–73.

49 For the development of Zwingli’s covenant theology, see Scott A Gillies, ‘Zwingli and the Origin of the Reformed Covenant 1524–1527’, SJT 54, no. 1 (2001), 21–50; Joe Mock, ‘To What Extent Did Bullinger Influence Zwingli with Respect to His Understanding of the Covenant and of the Eucharist?’, Colloquium 49, no. 1 (2017), 89–108; Pierrick Hildebrand, ‘Zwingli’s Covenantal Turn’, From Zwingli to Amyraut: Exploring the Growth of European Reformed Traditions , eds Jon Balserak and Jim West (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017), 23–35.

50 Hildebrand, ‘Zwingli’s Covenantal Turn’, 29.

51 Hildebrand, ‘Zwingli’s Covenantal Turn’, 29–30.

52 Ulrich Zwingli, ‘Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists’, Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli , ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson, trans. Henry Preble and George W. Gillmore (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901), 123–258.

divine election the efficient cause of covenantal membership.’ 53 Therefore, by God’s eternal plan, Christ, as the elect mediator, secured the unity of the testaments and access to God via one covenant. ‘[God] had prepared the healing by Jesus, that is, the Saviour, before man gave himself the self-inflicted wound. Therefore, God made no other covenant with the miserable race of man than that he had already conceived before man was formed. One and the same testament has always been in force.’ 54 This is accomplished through the incarnation of the Son of God, who yet mediated even the relationship of the Old Testament saints.

There is ever one and the same unchangeable God, one only Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God not by adoption, but by nature, God eternal and blessed forever. So there could be no other testament than that which furnishes salvation through Jesus Christ. By him alone is access to the Father, so Abraham even came to God by no other way than by him who was promised. One way, one truth, one life, one mediator between God and man, Christ. Through him alone is access to God. Therefore, there is one only testament, for the covenant with God tends only that we may have eternal peace and joy. 55

The humanity of Christ is the means by which the ordained plan of election interfaces with thecovenantal promise of the Old Testament via the promised seed of the woman. Only through incarnation does the promised salvation become effective for the elect since, in his human nature, Christ can be the true mediator, who will suffer for Adam’s sin.

4. Christ the Suffering Sacrifice

The mediatorship of Christ, prepared for through covenantal promise, reaches its culmination at the crucifixion, where the impassible God suffers in his humanity to pay the debt of sin and satisfy divine justice and mercy, according to the eternal divine plan. Zwingli operates within a broadly Anselmic logic that because of God’s nature, the salvation of humanity could only occur via the incarnation of the God-

53 Pierrick Hildebrand, ‘Calvin and the Covenant: The Reception of Zurich Theology’, The Oxford Handbook of Calvin and Calvinism , eds Bruce Gordon and Carl R. Trueman (Oxford: OUP, 2021), 60.

54 Zwingli, ‘Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists’, 236.

55 Zwingli, ‘Refutation of the Tricks of the Catabaptists’, 236.

60 The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology man. 56 In faithfulness to his merciful promise through the seed, God provides a mediator as a pledge of his grace, who could fulfil justice’s demand.

But God was better, and pitied His work, and devised a plan to repair so serious a misfortune. Since His justice, being inviolably sacred, had to remain as intact and unshaken as His mercy, and since man was indeed in need of mercy but wholly amenable to God’s justice, divine goodness found a way to satisfy justice and yet to be allowed to open wide the arms of mercy without detriment to justice. 57

Sin rejects the very purpose of human teleology as false religion, turning to the creature rather than the Creator, which deserves punishment for violating God’s holy nature and law. ‘His justice has to be satisfied that His wrath may be appeased.’ 58 This satisfaction of God takes the form of propitiatory suffering: ‘Christ has paid by His suffering that penalty which we owed for our sins.’ 59 Therefore, Zwingli holds something like a penal substitutionary atonement, which modifies the traditional Anselmic doctrine and will be carried forward by Calvin and others in the Reformed tradition. 60 Therefore, God is both merciful and just in Christ. Locher connects Zwingli’s view of atonement to his election doctrine:

Justice is set in the context of election…It consists in the application to the elect of the salvation which Christ has won for them. It is ‘just’ that God deals with us according to what Christ has done for us. So it is mercy, which corresponds to justice, which takes the lead. 61

56 Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli , 118–119.

57 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 100. For a thorough discussion of the justice and mercy theme in Zwingli, see Christoph Burger, ‘Die Entwicklung von Zwinglis Reden über Gottes Güte, Barmherzigkeit und Gerechtigkeit’, Zwingliana 19, no. 1 (1992), 71–76.

58 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 100.

59 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 142.

60 For a survey of penal substitution in the Reformation and Reformed tradition, both of which unfortunately overlook Zwingli, see Adonis Vidu, Atonement, Law, and Justice: The Cross in Historical and Cultural Contexts (Baker Academic, 2014), 89–132; Steve Jeffery, Michael Ovey, and Andrew Sach, Pierced for Our Transgressions: Rediscovering the Glory of Penal Substitution (Crossway, 2007), 185–204.

61 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 133.

In this way, Christ is both the pledge of divine mercy and the just sacrifice that God required. Zwingli states, ‘Gentleness without righteousness would be no longer gentleness, but carelessness or fear. On the other hand, if you do not temper righteousness with goodness or equity, it becomes the utmost injustice and violence.’ 62

To satisfy both God’s justice and mercy, the eternal Son took upon himself the weakness of human flesh so he could become the spotless sacrifice for sin and a pledge of humansalvation. Neither from the angels, who were not implicated in the fault, nor from humanity, who was disqualified from making atonement by their sin, could the atonement come. What was needed was the God-man. The value of the sacrifice of the eternal Son comes from his divinity, while his humanity contributes the ability, qualification, and fittingness.

That his righteousness might remain inviolable, and that the person who does nothing conformably to that righteousness yet not be forever deprived of God’s companionship, he finds a way by which both his righteousness might be satisfied and miserable humanity restored to the companionship of God. He sent his Son who became our righteousness, sanctification and ransom of redemption, and that to those only who, elected by God and inwardly taught by the Spirit, believe firmly that through the one way of God’s mercy (for the appeasing of his righteousness through the offering of his Son is likewise a work of mercy) is the path open to everlasting happiness. 63

Zwingli, therefore, grounds the incarnation in the soteriological purposes of God. Christ must be both true God and true man to bring about salvation: divine to have the power and the right to save and human to gain the ability to die and pay the penalty of sin.

Zwingli emphasises throughout his writings that Christ shared in all the finitude and weakness of humanity during his earthly ministry. Christ truly experienced human growth and development as befitting of the seed of the woman and the example for humanity. According to the human nature, the incarnate Christ ‘cries in infancy, grows, increases in

62 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 181.

63 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘Friendly Exegesis, That Is, Exposition of the Matter of the Eucharist to Martin Luther’, Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli , vol. 2, eds H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 284.

62

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology wisdom (Luke 2:52), hungers, thirsts, eats, drinks, is warm, is cold, is scourged, sweats, is wounded, is cruelly slain, fears, is sad and endures what else pertains to the penalty and punishment of sin, though from sin itself He is most remote.’ 64 Zwingli presses into the humanity of Christ in all of its earthy emotion and weakness. Christ bears a human nature that is, for Zwingli, precisely as other humans possess it, including temptation and the effects of sin upon human existence, even if Christ himself was always without sin. Zwingli also maintains that Christ’s knowledge during his early ministry was limited. He notes that Matt 24:36—‘about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son’—ought to be taken as an accurate statement of ignorance according to Christ’s human nature, although by his divine nature, he shares all knowledge with the Father and the Holy Spirit. 65 John Eck accuses Zwingli of outright heresy for this statement: Zwingli consents to explicit heresy when he says here of our Lord Jesus Christ that He increased in wisdom, for which he has elsewhere…as the reason that Christ is subject to limitation and measure in His human nature. But this is the heresy of Nestorius…Hence this part of the Confession is to be absolutely rejected, since the whole Church admits that Christ even according to His human nature is omniscient. 66 Eck here is repeating a widely held position in the Middle Ages that the humanity of Christ was omniscient from the moment of incarnation. 67 Zwingli bucks against this in seeing an authentic development of Christ’s human capacities across his earthly life and a persistent limitation of creaturely finitude even glorified after the resurrection. He is exempt from this charge of Nestorianism, however, because the single person of the Son is the subject of both divine

64 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Ratio’, 115.

65 See Zwingli, ‘Friendly Exegesis’, 314, 318, 336. See also Ulrich Zwingli and Johannes Oecolampadius, ‘Über D. Martin Luthers Buch, Bekenntnis Genannt, Zwei Antworten von Johannes Oekolampad und Huldrych Zwingli’, Z , VI.2, 174.

66 John Eck, ‘Refutation of the Articles of Zwingli’, On Providence and Other Essays , ed. Willian John Hinke, trans. Henry Preble (Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 1983), 71.

67 See the discussion in Marilyn McCord Adams, What Sort of Human Nature?: Medieval Philosophy and the Systematics of Christology (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1999), esp. Anselm 13–17; Bonaventure 34–37.

68

omniscience and human ignorance by the enhypostatic humanity discussed above.

Hence it is that both natures so reflect their own character in all their words and deeds that the religious mind sees without trouble what is to be credited to either nature, however rightly the whole is said to belong to the one Christ. ‘Christ hungered,’ is said rightly, since he is God and man; yet he did not suffer hunger according to his divine nature. ‘Christ cured diseases and ailments,’ is said rightly; yet these things belong to divine power, not to human, if you weigh them properly. And yet no division of person follows on account of the difference of natures, any more than when we say a man thinks and sleeps. 69

Christ’s full experience of human weakness, while retaining divine power and prerogatives, is essential to Zwingli’s understanding of the mediatorship of Christ. The human life the Son of God lived must be authentic in every way to qualify him as our representative, the new Adam, and the exemplar.

To be the appropriate sacrifice for sin, Christ’s humanity must be impeccable, which, for Zwingli, requires a virginal conception. He offers two reasons for Christ to be born of a virgin. First, Christ’s mediatorship required a virgin birth because ‘His divine nature could not suffer that any stain of sin attach to it.’ 70 Secondly, by the virginal conception, the humanity could remain untainted and, therefore, acceptable as a sacrifice for sin: ‘he, who from eternity was born Lord and God from a father without mother, might be born into the world as deliverer and healer of souls from a virgin mother, in order that a holy and spotless offering might be made to him.’ 71 These two ends correspond to the two natures. As God, Christ was to remain entirely untouched by sin since only this is befitting of the holy God. As a man, he was to remain holy to be a spotless offering. This view presupposed the position pioneered by Augustine that sex itself conveyed the moral stain of concupiscence. ‘How much more had that victim to be absolutely spotless, which made atonement for the sins not only of all who had been, but of all who were

68 For a more thorough discussion of Zwingli and the charge of Nestorianism, see Drake, ‘Zwingli’s Christology Reconsidered’, 165–172.

69 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 183.

70 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 112.

71 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 183.

64

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology yet to come! And this could not have been unless He had been born of a virgin, and without male intervention.’

72

In the incarnation, the two natures must remain distinct even at the Cross. Otherwise, the essence of religion for Zwingli is overthrown since this would collapse the Creator and creature. Christ unites humanity to divinity in his person, but the divine nature does not take on human properties, nor does the human nature take divine ones. Only the Creator, he who is eternal, infinite, and uncreated, is to be trusted in and worshipped. These qualities cannot be given to or properly ascribed to the creature without elevating it to divine status, which is blasphemous. Zwingli maintains the utter exclusivity of devotion to God even in his later works. ‘This is the fountainhead of my religion, to recognise God as the uncreated Creator of all things, who solely and alone has all things in his power and freely gives us all things. They, therefore, overthrow this first foundation of faith, who attribute to the creature what is the Creator’s alone.’

73 Zwingli understands the purpose of the incarnation as bringing about the salvation of humanity through the sacrifice of the mediator while preserving the nature of the divine, which is immortal and unchanging. The Impassible One must take to himself a nature capable of suffering such that the penalty can be paid and the payment be sufficient for salvation. In line with both medieval and patristic concepts of God, Zwingli affirms that God in himself cannot suffer: ‘As, therefore, even if one says hundreds of times, ‘The Son of God was slain,’ or ‘The Lord of Glory was crucified,’ we never understand that his Godhead suffered anything, only his humanity.’

74 The suffering of Christ on the Cross is correctly attributed to the Son because of the union of the natures in the one Christ. This allows for a proper verbal communicatio idiomatum in Scripture and theology but not metaphysically between the natures themselves.

72 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 112.

73 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 180–81.

74 Zwingli, ‘Friendly Exegesis’, 1984, 324. This sets Zwingli’s doctrine of God and atonement apart from some interpretations of Luther, such as Rittigers’s above. For impassibility in the patristics, see Paul L. Gavrilyuk, The Suffering of the Impassible God: The Dialectics of Patristic Thought (Oxford, New York: OUP, 2004).

For as Christ is God and man in one, it comes about that, albeit He was slain in the flesh (for who could kill God?) and His death was made life for us, yet on account of the unity and community of His natures that is sometimes attributed to one of the natures which belongs to the whole Christ. 75

The eternal Son, qua divine, could never suffer. Therefore, Christ suffers for humanity’s sin in his assumed nature. ‘Christ suffered, being nailed to the cross under Pilate, the governor, but that the man only felt the pangs of the suffering, not the God, who, as he is invisible, so is also subject to no suffering or sensation.’ 76 However, the one who suffered is the person of the Son as the Mediator.

Based on this broadly Anselmic logic, the Eternal Son takes to himself a human nature that is both liable for sin as a man and able to suffer the penalty. Only a man could be slain, and at the Cross, this satisfaction is accomplished.

For He [Christ] is only in so far salvation unto us as He was slain for us; but He could be slain only according to the flesh and could be salvation bringing only according to His divinity…And let no man try to be subtle here because He said His flesh was given for the life of the world, and so venture to argue that Christ is a means of salvation to all according to His human nature only. 77

There are other moments, however, when Zwingli will elevate the divine as the chief means of salvation. For instance, Christ is our salvation by virtue of that part of His nature by which He came down from heaven, not of that by which He was born of an immaculate virgin, though He had to suffer and die by this part; but unless He who died had also been God He could not have been salvation for the whole world. 78

Locher and Stephens both point to statements such as this in claiming that the divinity overcomes the humanity in Zwingli’s atonement. However, these assessments overlook Zwingli’s clear affirmations that the humanity of Christ was necessary for this atonement to be possible at all. Only by this particular nature, according

75 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 205.

76 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 184.

77 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 205.

78 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 204–205.

66

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology to the covenantal promise and united hypostatically with the eternal Son, could this suffering and death merit redemption. The Son of God’s suffering sacrifice in his humanity was not only a necessary condition but the only sufficient means of achieving salvation. Therefore, Zwingli’s atonement doctrine is theocentric and accomplished through the human nature without inherent tension.

5. Christ the Ethical Exemplar

Zwingli’s redemptive-historical schema, inchoate covenantalism, and substitutionary atonement doctrine contextualise the theme of Christ as the example for the Christian life. Christ mediates ethical life for his elect as the exemplar. Only the one Christ, who is both God and man, can function as the pattern of proper human life towards God. As divine, Jesus Christ is the source and fount of righteousness; as the perfect human in the covenantal line, he can exhibit utter obedience and perfect virtue and do so on behalf of others. Adam had set a negative example for human disobedience and rebellion. ‘From his [Adam’s] example, therefore, we can see more clearly than day that the truly pious man ought to shrink away from his own counsels as from sure and immediate destruction. God alone, therefore, is to be listened to, to Him alone is glory to be attributed by all pious souls.’ 79 Christ is sent by the Father both to overcome the sin of Adam and cast a new frame of human existence, a pattern of fellowship with God and righteous action. As shown above, Christ is the seed of the new humanity, so he is the witness to, fulfiller of, and pathway to righteousness, which is wholly directed to the Creator. Christ embodies and teaches the law of God. As God the Son, he is its author, and as the Son of God incarnate its substance. Christ, as God and man, is the only one able to fulfil the will of the Father and to be the true example of human life and holiness. ‘The one Christ alone who is without sin and is equal to God the heavenly Father in goodness, beauty and purity, is able to do his will.’ 80 Through the hypostatic union, the humanity of Christ can both be sinless and have the revelatory quality not of mere human righteousness but that of God.

79 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 97. quod Christiana religio nihil aliud est, quam firma spes in deum per Christum Iesum, et innocens vita, ad exemplum Christi, quoad ipse donat, expressa . Z , III 705.8–10.

80 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 25.

For Zwingli, however, Christ as the example is not in tension with the emphasis on justification by grace through faith or the redemptive significance of the Cross of Christ. 81 Only those previously justified by faith may follow Christ’s path. ‘A Christian, therefore, 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 who daily renounces self; who is intent upon this one thing, not to do anything that can offend his God.’ 82 Zwingli holds these concepts together by understanding a twofold aspect of Christ’s perfect human life: first, as the prerequisite for his sacrifice and secondarily and derivatively, as the perfect pattern of new life towards God.

He was sent, then, for this purpose, that He might altogether take away this despair of the soul that springs from the ungovernableness of the flesh…and that He might also furnish an example of life. For Christ everywhere emphasizes these two things, namely, redemption through Himself, and the obligation of those redeemed through Him to live according to His example. 83

Zwingli extends the image of Christ as the exemplar over all aspects of human life but also particularises it to the Swiss situation with the theme of Christ as a military captain, as Locher has shown. 84 Christ leads and guides his church in the fight against the world, the flesh, and the devil. He braved the same perils and temptations of this world and was victorious. The sources of Zwingli’s image of a captain comes from his reflection on Heb 12:2. He interprets the Greek term generally translated ‘author’ as ‘military captain,’ a possible Greek understanding of the term. Zwingli’s experience as a mercenary chaplain undoubtedly informed this image.

Let everyone look to his captain, Christ Jesus (Heb. 12), who will not lead us astray. Just as he suffered inhuman opposition, and now sits at the right hand of God, so shall no terror or trouble be able to lead the

81 Alister E. McGrath, Iustitia Dei: A History of the Christian Doctrine of Justification , 3 rd edn (Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 248–251.

82 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 341.

83 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 341.

84 For a thorough discussion of this theme, see the essay ‘Christ our Captain’ in Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 72–86.

68 The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

believer to regret his task. It must be suffered and must be endured in suffering to the end. 85

Zwingli calls the Zurich Church onward to follow their mediator in the troubled events that surrounded them.

Zwingli also appeals to Christ as the example in his exhortation to the Zurich pastors to fulfil their duties as shepherds of God’s flock entrusted to their care. The pastor of the Grossmünster presents Jesus Christ in The Shepherd (1524) as the paradigm for faithful Reformation ministry. Therefore, it is also necessary that all those sent among his sheep as shepherds learn to administer their office and commission from no other model than the one true word of God, which has expressed itself visibly, and in the most real sense now in the last times in the Lord Jesus Christ. 86

However, Zwingli qualifies Christ as the exemplar by his unique function as the mediator between God and humanity. Zwingli comments on Matt 1:18, ‘Christ is indeed the pattern of our life, however, there are certain things which are not at all appropriate for us. Virtues, obedience, humility, modesty, patience, meekness, extraordinary love and kindness may be imitated; it is not permitted for mortals to attain to the perfection of divinity.’

87 Even with this critical limitation, the whole ethical life of virtue and action is to imitate Christ’s own life.

Since Christ is the sum of salvation as both the righteous God—the lawgiver—and the righteous man—the law keeper—he unifies law and gospel.

85 Zwingli, ‘Die dritte Schrift wider Johann Faber’ , quoted in Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 78, citing Z, V, 307. Translation from Locher .

86 Huldrych Zwingli, ‘The Shepherd’, Selected Writings of Huldrych Zwingli , vol. 2, eds H. Wayne Pipkin and Edward J. Furcha, trans. H. Wayne Pipkin (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 86.

87 Est quidem Christus exemplar vitae nostrae, in quo tamen quaedam sunt quae nobis minime competunt. Virtutes, obedientiam, humilitatem, modestiam, patientiam, mansuetudinem, eximiam caritatem ac beneficentiam imitari licet; ad perfectionem divinitatis mortalibus protingere non erit fas . Z , V.1, 204. Cited in Herman Bavinck, De Ethiek van Ulrich Zwingli (Kampen: G. ph. Zalsman, 1880), 87–88. [Translation mine]

I call everything ‘gospel’ which God opens to human beings and demands of them…preferring that term to the term ‘law’; for it is more fittingly named to suit the understanding of believers and not of unbelievers; and at the same time we overcome this tension between law and gospel. 88

How is this possible for Zwingli when, for instance, his contemporary Luther sees this law/gospel distinction as essential for believers? 89 Ultimately, Christ’s fulfilment of the law makes it a revelation of God’s grace, ‘Christ is the sum and perfection; he is the certain manifestation of salvation, for he is salvation.’ 90 For the Christian, Christ’s life and faithfulness become the law and the guide to all life. ‘To sum up, Christ becomes his [the Christian’s] full salvation and lives in him. Therefore he is in need of no law, for Christ is his law. Upon him alone does he look.’ 233F 91 The God-man, through his fulfilment of the law in his earthly life, turned even the commands of God into gospel, forged the path for holy living, and supplied the power to walk it. Stephen’s claim seems rather strange then that ‘it should be noted that Christ is said to be our teacher and example as Son of God, and not—as one might expect—as man.’ 92 This does not bear out in Zwingli’s theology. Christ’s mission as the ethical example is only possible because of his true humanity, but the perfection of his life and teaching can be ensured because it is the human life of the Eternal Son.

6. Christ the Exalted Representative

Christ’s crucifixion is not his only saving activity; the rising again of Christ’s true humanity and his ascension into heaven are essential aspects of salvation for his people. Zwingli envisions Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and intercession as bringing the accomplished work of salvation into the present by guaranteeing the elects’

88 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 64.

89 For instance, Bernhard Lohse, Martin Luther’s Theology: Its Historical and Systematic Development , trans. Roy A. Harrisville (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 265–273.

90 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 64.

91 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 67. Cited in Bavinck, De Ethiek van Ulrich Zwingli , 81.

92 Stephens, Zwingli , 53.

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology relationship with God. The exalted ministry of Christ in his humanity is the continuation and culmination of his mediatorship as exalted representative. As he explains in the Commentary on True and False Religion :

But Christ, after His triumphant return from the dead, immediately showed Himself to His disciples and…ascended of His own motion to the Father in sight of the disciples (Acts 1:3)…We are still dealing with the point that Christ is our righteousness, our innocence, and the price of our redemption. For to this end He died for us and rose again, that He might declare the mystery of our deliverance and confirm the hopes which, when men saw that He had died and afterwards by His own power had become alive again, could not but be made sure in regard to life everlasting after this life. 93

By the resurrection and ascension, ‘Christ is our righteousness,’ which overcomes Adam’s unrighteousness. 94 The exaltation of Christ’s humanity is no epilogue but the necessary furtherance of Christ’s work. The resurrection is presented as pro nobis , both a rising from the dead to free humanity from death and a sign of future resurrection. ‘For “in that he died, he died unto sin,” Rom. 6:10; but not unto His sin, for He was absolutely free from sin, but unto ours. And He rose again in order that we may know that we have been made alive through Him.’ 95 In Fidei Expositio , Zwingli further grounds this in Paul’s discussion of Christ’s resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15. ‘Whatever Christ’s body has, as far as nature, endowment and characteristics of body are concerned, it has for us, as our archetype as it were, and it is ours.’ 96 Therefore, as Christ rose from the dead pro nobis , Christians will rise likewise and be as he is. As the risen one, the body of Christ is the archetype and pledge of the elect’s resurrected state.

The ascension serves an essential role throughout Zwingli’s career. He maintains, even in Christ’s glorified state, that the authentic humanity is retained so that his mediatorship does not cease. He forever remains qualified to represent humanity before God as the true seed of Abraham. ‘The flesh of Christ even after the resurrection, though

93 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 118.

94 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 118.

95 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 118.

96 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 187.

glorified, is still true flesh, and it does not lose the nature of flesh, though it is spiritual, it is not converted into spirit, much less into God.’ 97 This is especially true later in his career through his debates with Luther over the presence of Christ in the Eucharist, although the importance of the ascension is evident relatively early in his works against transubstantiation (an argument likely picked up from the Bohemian Brethren). 98

The ascension is a true ‘going away’ of Christ, not according to his divinity, which is everywhere, but of his true human body. There is an absence according to the humanity, and yet a continued presence by the divinity, later called the extra Calvinisticum . 99 [The ascension] equally applies to the humanity, in the main, though the humanity was not carried there without the divinity; indeed the latter carried and the former was carried. This humanity, as has been said, remains circumscribed forever; otherwise it would cease to be true humanity. But the divinity is unlimited and uncircumscribed forever; hence it does not move from place to place, but is everywhere and remains the same forever. 100

Thus, Zwingli’s doctrine of the ascension highlights the Creator/creature distinction essential for true religion. However, Christ’s body is glorified by his exaltation from its weakness and mortality while remaining finite and creaturely. His presence persists with his people by his divinity, power, and Spirit, but his physical presence is withdrawn so that salvation is entirely by faith and not sight. Therefore, he removed from the disciples everything which was physical and external even as he was in his very self, so that he might bind them wholly to God by the Spirit. It was necessary for them to receive another divine power from above, which Christ had promised to them.

97 Caro Christi etiam post resurrectionem glorificata, vera tamen caro est, nec carnis eruit naturam, licetque spiritualis sit, in spirituin tamen non convertitur . Z , VI.2, 55.22–25. [Translation mine]

98 Drake, Flesh of the Word , 120; Amy Nelson Burnett, Karlstadt and the Origins of the Eucharistic Controversy: A Study in the Circulation of Ideas (New York: OUP, 2011), 85–87.

99 For the extra in Zwingli, see Drake, Flesh of the Word , chs 1–2.

100 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 188–89.

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

Therefore, He now emphasizes the promise and commands them to only depart from Jerusalem once they are endowed with the Spirit. 101

The ascension was necessary for the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost. Seeing Christ’s body was not enough since many saw and disbelieved. Only the sending of the Spirit can regenerate: ‘none but the Holy Spirit gives faith, which is confidence in God, and no external thing gives it.’ 102 This corresponds with Zwingli’s overall rejection of external things tocause faith and fervor to preserve a purely theocentric devotion, such that even the humanity of Christ is insufficient to produce faith as an external object of perception. What is needed is the internal object of faith by the Spirit sent from the ascended Christ. 103

The ascension, however, also serves a positive soteriological role in Zwingli’s theology as the very humanity of Christ is taken into the presence of God. This is clear even early in his reforming career. In The Sixty-Seven Articles (1523), he states, ‘Therefore, Christ is the only way to salvation of all who were, are now, or shall be.’ 104 Zwingli secures the exclusivity of Christ’s mediatorship in the ascension as presented in Heb 10:19–22, which speaks of Christ’s heavenly enthronement. We note here [Heb 10:19–22] the way to salvation established for us through the humanity of Christ, i.e. newly sacrificed (which means, in the last times) through him. Now there is only one Christ, one sacrifice, therefore there must be only one way. 105

The ascension allows Zwingli to conceive of Christ’s continuing mediatorship as he intercedes before the Father. In his explanation of

101 Tollit ergo discipulis quidquid est corporale et externum etiam in se ipso, ut eos totos deo spiritui adfigat. Opus erat alia quapiam virtute e supernis, quam pollicitus erat eis Christus, Iam ergo refricat promissionem et iubet, ne Hierosolymis discedant donec spiritu donentur . Z , VI.2, 74.31–35. [Translation mine]

102 Zwingli, ‘Fidei Expositio’, 192.

103 For context for this idea, see his discussion of the inability of sensible objects to produce faith in themselves in Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 211–214. Zwingli’s opposition between external and internal may arise from his interpretation of Augustine in a similar manner as interpreted in Phillip Cary, Outward Signs: The Powerlessness of External Things in Augustine’s Thought (Oxford; New York: OUP, 2008).

104 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 17.

105 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 17.

article 19of The Sixty-Seven Articles —‘That Christ is the Sole mediator between God and us’ 106 —Zwingli uses the ascended intercession of Christ to cap off his argument that no mediation by the saints is needed or possible. He analyses Heb 7:22, 24; 8:6; 9:15, as well as Rom 8:34, all of which address heavenly intercession. Reflecting on Heb 7:22—'Jesus has become the guarantor [ bürg ] of a better testament’—Zwingli places the exalted ministry in the context of Christ as testator; Christ offers a better covenant since ‘our sponsor [ bürg ] is…the Son of God himself who is our pledge and our guarantor through whom one may come to God.’ 107 Elucidating Heb 9:24 [misidentified as Heb 9:15 in the text], Zwingli explains that Christ’s mediation continues as the source of Christian assurance:

[This text] expresses the kind of work Christ the mediator is doing, as pleading and appearing in the presence of God (i.e. his righteous wrath or anger, which is what the Hebrews often mean when they use the term ‘presence of God’), on our behalf. Behold, Christ is our advocate and ransom for ever and ever.

108

This assurance is based on the continuation of Christ’s role as the penal substitute even as ascended. The ascension of the crucified flesh now glorified before the heavenly mercy seat is the guarantee that God’s wrath is propitiated even now, which for Zwingli rendered the sacrifice of the Mass not only superfluous but idolatrous. Therefore, Christ’s ascension and continued intercession are the firm foundation of Christian assurance. As Zwingli notes, commenting on Rom 8:34— ‘who indeed is interceding for us’—‘the certainty of our salvation depends on the fact that the Son of God, who died for us, represents us miserable sinners for ever.’ 109

Christ’s continued function as the representative of humanity before the Father in heaven in Zwingli’s early work, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , gives context for his later rejection of Luther’s view of the ubiquity of Christ’s humanity. This claim undermines Christ as representative since no other human possesses an uncircumscribed nature, but it also compromises the concrete presence of the mediator in

106 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 128.

107 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 134. Z , II 165.11–13.

108 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 134.

109 Zwingli, Exposition of the Sixty-Seven Articles , 134.

The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology

the heavenly throne room since it would now be everywhere. As Stephens summarises, ‘In his discussion of the ascension…Zwingli referred to the eyes of our mind being fixed on Christ in heaven. He united our nature to the godhead and exalted it so that we should have a certain hope of victory with him, who is flesh of our flesh, our brother, and our head.’ 110 Stephens seems to fail to account for ideas such as this in declaring the humanity ‘not vital’ in Zwingli.

The portrayal of Christ’s exalted humanity supports Zwingli’s view that the Christian religion is theocentric since, through the exaltation, redemption is initiated, accomplished, and applied by God alone via the human nature. Christ’s ascension and intercession are leveraged throughout his career against ecclesiastical or priestly mediation of salvation. The continued sacrifice of the Mass was unnecessary since the slain flesh resurrected was before the Father; the earthly priest’s absolution was unneeded since the glorified wounds spoke above; the saints’ intercession was redundant when the Son himself pleads in our flesh. Zwingli’s emphasis on the continued significance of the exalted humanity of Christ set Zwingli apart from Luther and much of the Christology of both the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period. For this reason, Locher can claim that ‘Luther’s Christology belongs to Christmas, while Zwingli’s belongs to Easter or the Ascension.’ 111

7. Conclusion

The humanity of Christ serves a unifying function in Zwingli’s theology to preserve his view of theocentric religion and the exclusivity of Christ’s mediation. The humanity of Christ is never considered on its own, such that humanity relies on a creature for salvation, but always as the humanity of the Divine Son ordained by the Triune God for his own glory. Christ’s assumption of a complete human nature weaves together God’s work through the Old Testament promises and law, salvation at the Cross, the Christian ethical life, and ongoing assurance and hope in the exalted mediator. Ultimately, the scholarly assessment of Stephens and others that Zwingli’s doctrine of Christ is imbalanced toward his divinity fails to account for the overarching centrality of Christ’s

110 Stephens, The Theology of Huldrych Zwingli , 112.

111 Locher, Zwingli’s Thought , 177–178.

humanity for Zwingli’s view of redemptive-historicalcontinuity, Christ’s earthly and exalted work, and the theme of Christ as exemplar. This school of thought confuses the theocentrism of Zwingli’s theology for a downgrading of Christ’s humanity. However, when understood through his enhypostatic view of the human nature, Zwingli can simultaneously maintain both the reality and importance of Christ’s humanity while also ascribing all glory to God as the source and agent of redemption. This study vindicates Locher’s view of the critical place of the humanity of Christ in Zwingli’s theology and expands upon how Christ’s humanity functions across his writings. As it is hypostatically united to the Eternal Son whom the Father sent for salvation as the elect mediator, the human nature is the substance of Zwingli’s gospel. ‘[Christ], then, is our propitiation, therefore also our covenant and testament, which God has made with us. He is Himself the propitiator also, for through Him we have access to God.’ 112

112 Zwingli, Commentary on True and False Religion , 72–73.