Protestant Switzerland regarded Zwingli as a martyr for the truth. We can look back on him today as a hero of the faith—flawed, as all heroes are, but a mighty instrument of God who pointed the church of his day to Jesus Christ as the unique Savior of sinners.

Ulrich Zwingli (or Huldrych Zwingli) was the “second man” of the Reformation. While Martin Luther found himself thrust into the role of Germany’s Reformer, Zwingli carried out a gradual, orderly reform of the great Swiss city of Zurich.

In many ways, the paths of these two men ran in the same groove. They were both university-trained academic theologians. They both had pastoral responsibilities (Zwingli in Zurich Cathedral). Both had been exposed to the “new learning” of the Renaissance, especially its watchword, ad fontes, “returning to the sources”—in this case, the New Testament in its original Greek. Both experienced deep spiritual struggles with the mystery of God’s hand upon their lives. Both preached the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith. Neither seriously influenced the other; it was more a case of God working in a parallel way in two different men.

To a modern readership, Zwingli comes across as the more intellectual of the two men. Unlike Luther, he was a self-conscious disciple of the great Renaissance humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam. In fact, Zwingli traced his conversion to a poem by Erasmus about trusting in Christ.

Elected to the pastorate of Zurich Cathedral in 1519, Zwingli immediately adopted an expository method of preaching, working his way through books of the Bible verse by verse. His preaching, we are told, was electrifying; it created a strong basis of popular support for his reforming measures.

Strangely, the papacy did nothing to hinder Zwingli’s increasingly thoroughgoing religious reforms. While Luther was excommunicated, his counterpart in Zurich was left in peace to carry out the Swiss revolt against Rome. This was because the papacy relied on Swiss mercenaries as its military force and thus could not afford to antagonize Zurich by taking a hard line against Zwingli. (To this very day, the papacy has a Swiss bodyguard.)

In some important ways, Zwingli was (along with Martin Bucer) the founder of the Reformed tradition of Protestantism, in distinction from the Lutheran tradition. His two greatest contributions to the distinctively Reformed tradition were in the areas of worship and the sacraments.

Concerning worship, Zwingli took the view that everything a Christian congregation did in its worship of God needed some kind of authorization from the New Testament. This differed from the Lutheran view.

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