Huldrych Zwingli - Legacy

Legacy

Zwingli was a humanist and a scholar with many devoted friends and disciples. He communicated as easily with the ordinary people of his congregation as with rulers such as Philip of Hesse. His reputation as a stern, stolid reformer is counterbalanced by the fact that he had an excellent sense of humour and used satiric fables, spoofing, and puns in his writings. He was more conscious of social obligations than Luther and he genuinely believed that the masses would accept a government guided by God’s word. He tirelessly promoted assistance to the poor, who he believed should be cared for by a truly Christian community.

In December 1531, the Zurich council selected Heinrich Bullinger as his successor. He immediately removed any doubts about Zwingli’s orthodoxy and defended him as a prophet and a martyr. During Bullinger's rule, the confessional divisions of the Confederation were stabilised. He rallied the reformed cities and cantons and helped them to recover from the defeat at Kappel. Zwingli had instituted fundamental reforms, while Bullinger consolidated and refined them.

Scholars have found assessing Zwingli’s historical impact to be difficult, for several reasons. There is no consensus definition of "Zwinglianism"; by any definition, Zwinglianism evolved under his successor, Heinrich Bullinger; and research into Zwingli’s influence on Bullinger and John Calvin is still rudimentary. Bullinger adopted most of Zwingli’s points of doctrine. Like Zwingli, he summarised his theology several times, the best-known being the Second Helvetic Confession of 1566. Meanwhile, Calvin had established the Reformation in Geneva. Calvin differed with Zwingli on the eucharist and criticised him for regarding it as simply a metaphorical event. In 1549, however, Bullinger and Calvin succeeded in overcoming the differences in doctrine and produced the Consensus Tigurinus (Zurich Consensus). They declared that the eucharist was not just symbolic of the meal, but they also rejected the Lutheran position that the body and blood of Christ is in union with the elements. With this rapprochement, Calvin established his role in the Swiss Reformed Churches and eventually in the wider world.

Outside of Switzerland, no church counts Zwingli as its founder. Scholars speculate as to why Zwinglianism has not diffused more widely, even though Zwingli’s theology is considered the first expression of Reformed theology. Although his name is not widely recognised, Zwingli's legacy lives on in the basic confessions of the Reformed churches of today. He is often called, after Martin Luther and John Calvin, the "Third Man of the Reformation".