Seminary PL28: Zwingli: No Compromise?

This is the fourteenth post on church management in my "Seminary in a Nutshell" series. In this series, I first did a section on the Person and Calling of a Minister. Now this is the twenty-seventh post in a section on the Pastor as a Leader (see at the bottom).

The previous post in this series looked Athanasius as an example of a leader who didn't compromise on an essential matter of dogma. This week continues with a second example from church history: Zwingli, someone who probably should have compromised and didn't.
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1. Athanasius stubbornly held on to the Trinity in the 300s even when it seemed all political power--and perhaps even most popular sentiment--was against him. Jan Hus (1369-1415) and Martin Luther (1483-1546) similarly refused to recant their positions, both against some of the problems in the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) of their day. Luther especially refused to recant his belief in justification by faith unless he could be shown from the Bible.

Both Hus and Luther were willing to be convinced on the basis of Scripture. Although they were persistent, they were perhaps still not quite as unbending as Athanasius. Nor do they seem as dogged as another reformer of Luther's day, Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531). Zwingli became a priest of the cathedral of Zurich in 1518, in the Swiss Confederation of that time. [1] This was the year after Luther nailed his ninety-five theses of protest against the thinking and practices of the RCC of that day.

2. At the same time that Luther's situation was playing itself out in the German states, Zwingli was in Zurich pushing back on various abuses and doctrines of the RCC to which he objected. A defiant soul, one such protest took place in 1522 when he and some others cut up a couple sausages during Lent and distributed them (they were supposed to be fasting). He secretly married a widow in defiance of the requirement for priests to be celibate, and was publicly married in 1524. He was able to get away with these things because of the tide of Swiss independence that had become so strong in the decades before.

Zwingli and others in Zurich increasingly pushed back on the veneration of saints and on the rituals and opulence of the church. There were a number of public debates in which Zwingli took part. In the early 1520s, some in Zurich began to push back on the practice of infant baptism, believing it to be unbiblical.

One wonders if Zwingli was of a certain personality that vigorously wanted the right and freedom to air his grievances and make space for his perspectives but who could not allow for anyone else to disagree with his positions and who would not make space for the right or freedom of others to disagree. It was apparently okay for him to push back on the RCC on the basis of the Bible, but when some in his own church had a crisis of conscience, he did not tolerate it. Conrad Grebel, Felix Manz, and George Blaurock performed the first adult baptisms in 1525. They refused to leave Zurich. The next year a penalty of death was attached to anyone who would rebaptize.

Manz was drowned in the Limmat River for rebaptizing in 1527. More would follow. [2]

3. In 1529, Zwingli met with Luther at what is called the Marburg Colloquy. Zwingli had increasingly come to reject the idea that Jesus was in any way present in the Lord's Supper. [3] Zwingli's view was that the Lord's Supper was merely a remembering of the Last Supper, nothing more. Meanwhile, while Luther had rejected the RCC doctrine of transubstantiation, he still believed that the "real presence" of Jesus was there with the elements. [4]

The two came to a consensus on fourteen of fifteen points, but there was no agreement on communion. Luther had no real expectations of the meeting, although Zwingli thought he could convince Luther of his position. Certain personalities, perhaps like Zwingli's, always think they can convince their opponents if they argue long enough and think you perverse when you remain unconvinced.

What would have happened if Luther and Zwingli had agreed to disagree at Marburg? Might Protestantism have remained a singular alternative to Roman Catholicism? Probably not, for reasons we will explore in the next post.

4. I do not know the heart of Zwingli, nor am I an expert on him. But there is a certain personality that enjoys conflict and is unwilling to compromise on many issues that are neither dogma nor essential. They would rather blow up the world than bend on any point. Conflict obviously follows such individuals everywhere they go unless everyone around them is willing to do what they want.

Zwingli died in battle against five states in the Swiss Confederacy who wanted to remain Roman Catholic and believed that Zurich and the other states were in a process of forcing Protestantism on them. Luther is said to have believed God had a part in the death of Zwingli, saying, "All who take the sword will die by the sword."

Next Week: Pastor as Leader 29: Tillich's Protestant Principle

[1] These thirteen Swiss states were part of a sprawling collection of hundreds of county-sized states that made up the "Holy Roman Empire." These states covered territories that today are part of Austria, Germany, Czech Republic, Belgium, Netherlands, and more.

[2] Zwingli was not on the council that enacted these things, but we have every reason to believe that he fully supported and would have promoted this course of action. These "Anabaptists" or rebaptizers were a branch of the Reformation known as the "Radical Reformation."

[3] An influence on Zwingli here was Andreas Karlstadt, who had been a colleague of Luther's at Wittenberg and who, like Zwingli, was more militant in pushing his views than Luther.

[4] Luther's view is called "consubstantiation." Transubstantiation is the belief that the elements literally become the actual body and blood of Jesus in their underlying substance. This view drew heavily on the philosophy of the Greek Aristotle (384-22BC) as passed on through Thomas Aquinas (1225-74) in the Middle Ages.

Leadership in General

• Categories of Leadership
• Styles and Traits of Leaders
• How does God lead
• Leadership Pitfalls

Strategic Planning

• The Mission, Great and Small
• Identifying Mission
• Casting Vision
• Vision Statements
• Thinking Missionally
• Evaluating Strengths
• Identifying Core Values
• Setting Goals
• Leading Change
• Evaluating Progress/Resetting Goals

Church Management

• Managing the Church
• Leadership in the Early Church
• Leadership Structures in Church History
• Church Position Descriptions
• Leading Healthy Teams
• Good Communication
• Hiring, Recruiting, and Firing

Conflict Management

• Causes of Conflict
• The Third Mark of the Church
• Basic Conflict Resolution
• Leadership and the Gentile Mission
• Navigating Disputable Issues
• Athanasius: No Compromise!

Leadership Lessons from Wycliffe to Zwingli

I personally love the Wesley Seminary foundations side of the leadership course (the students may not be as excited). Here's a snapshot of today's discussions of leadership lessons from some of the key figures in the lead up to the Reformation:

Wycliffe

• Ideas rarely appear out of the blue but are usually a function of concrete contexts with concrete issues.
• It sure helps to have friends in positions of power. Be careful about biting the hand that feeds you. "Prophets" who just shoot their mouths off aren't as effective as those who are aware of their surroundings.
• It's best to be burned at the stake posthumously.

Pope Urban VI

• Don't tell your enemies what you're going to do before you do it. Don't shoot yourself in the foot.
• You can be right and completely fail because you're stupid.
• Small changes can have big consequences. (Butterfly Effect)
• You don't have to say everything you know.

John Huss

• There is a kairos moment for reform and for a movement--and there's a time and place where you get burned at the stake.
• Trust but verify.

Erasmus

• What you can get away with today, you might not get away with tomorrow, when the situation has changed.
• The perfect is the enemy of the good.
• Accessibility, affordability, early to the game tends to win over quality, complexity and bureaucracy (within certain limits).
• Sometimes if you try to stay in the middle, you tick everyone off.

Luther

• You can never completely tell what the consequences of events will be.
• Don't confuse tradition with the truth.

William Tyndale

• Those who seem important now may not be those remembered by history.
• Fighting against a movement can empower it.
• Sometimes you win in the long term by losing in the short term.

Council of Trent

• Leaders often give their opponents the long term victory by refusing to admit faults and make adjustments in the short term. Leaders tend to get stubborn when confronted and become self-defeating.

Zwingli

• Practice what you preach.
• My way or the highway is usually a losing strategy.
• Demonstrated that sola scriptura doesn't work practically

There's almost always something good in every side.

Book Review 2: "Relativizing Doctrines" 1

Last week I posted on the introduction and chapter 1 of Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation, which the Monday reading group is working through. His basic thrust, as I see it, is that one of the unintended consequences of the Reformation was the secularization of society.

Today I'm posting on the first half of his second chapter, "Relativizing Doctrines."  His underlying thesis in this chapter, as I see it at this point, is that the Reformation doctrine of sola scriptura (Scripture alone) is directly responsible for an unintended pluralism of answers to Life Questions in contemporary times.

First, there is some of what I consider recycled stale stuff in here:

• Back in his introduction (19), he tried to recycle the old, "the denial of all truths is to make at least one truth claim." I think he messes it up (common) because he's talking about a denial of all norms and values (ethics) not a denial of all truth claims (epistemology). Denying all norms and values is not the same as denying all truth claims. Similarly, you can deny universal norms without considering such a denial a value.
• On the other hand, he probably is making a fair observation that most scientific types are not particularly good philosophers of science. To describe the big bang, at least at this point, does not seem to answer questions about what is behind the big bang. He is probably right that Occam's Razor can be used to exclude a spiritual dimension to things that might very well be present--secular approaches tend to seek minimalist explanations.
• I couldn't help but think he was a hypocrite when he criticized social scientists for using metaphorical language of humans being "constructions."  This line especially stood out to me: "they should adopt a clearer idiom to make their unobjectionable points" (79).  I wrote in the margin, "verbose physician, heal thyself."  Communication does beg for simplified language.  But, really, if you can't understand the profundities of someone else's discipline, then butt out of it!

Second, we get to the stuff:

• Before the Reformation, there was an institutionalized worldview, a combination of sharp limits to orthodoxy combined with a wide diversity of local traditions and practices.  Gregory believes that, on a lay level, the 1400s were more devout than any preceding century in Christianity (84-85).
• He argues that the Protestant Reformation was not about reforming the church but a rejection of Roman Catholicism period, even at its best (86).  I personally don't think this is true of Luther. I do not feel ready to argue back, but I believe Gregory is drawing too stark a line, one that evolved and was far more concrete than ideological.
• Nevertheless, he does demonstrate by a pastiche of quotes from Reformers like Luther, Melanchthon, and Zwingli that the Reformers did use the rhetoric of sola scriptura as a weapon to try to undo the parts of the Roman Catholic church to which they protested. And once an idea gets in a certain type of person's head, s/he will follow the idea through. 
• I suspect he is right, however, when he says that there was never a point in the Reformation when anti-Roman Christians agreed among themselves about what scripture said and God taught (91). Whether we like it or not, any objective observer can see that the idea of sola scriptura has never worked, not even from day 1 of the Reformation. 
• The closest "sola scriptura" came to reality was the Marburg Colloquy of 1529, when Luther and Zwingli agreed on 14 out of 15 points.  The scoundrel Zwingli, whom I don't expect to be in heaven, couldn't live with that much disagreement.
• Zwingli is an excellent case in point. He was happy to split vehemently with the RCC--and to die  going to war against them. And he was happy to drown Anabaptists in the river, who thought they were following the Bible alone in teaching believer's baptism.
• He is right in zinging the high Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists in their attempts to make out Anabaptists and pietists as departures from their "true" idea.  No, he rightly strikes.  The Anabaptists were following the same non-functional principle of sola scripture that they were.  It never worked, the Protestant principle is simply that group after group, thinking they are simply following the Bible alone, will endlessly multiply as they follow the whims of their own interpretations. The pluralism of Protestant belief is a natural by-product of sola scriptura.

At this point I usually express thanks that the Methodist and Anglican traditions came from a different line than the high Protestant Lutherans and Calvinists. There was always more of the small "c" catholic left in the Anglican tradition than in the high Protestants.

Bence on Zwingli

Thought you might enjoy this vidcast Bud Bence did for the seminary on Zwingli:

http://interactive.ihets.org/p28875624/