Luther on Zwingli

Status
Not open for further replies.
arapahoepark

arapahoepark

Puritan Board Professor
I recently read that Luther did not regard Zwingli as saved or a true brother in Christ. I had heard similar things previously. I am not well read on Zwingli so I am wondering
What caused Luther to come to that conclusion?
 
arapahoepark said:
I recently read that Luther did not regard Zwingli as saved or a true brother in Christ. I had heard similar things previously. I am not well read on Zwingli so I am wondering
What caused Luther to come to that conclusion?
Click to expand...
Maybe his symbolic Baptist like view on the Sacraments?
 
arapahoepark said:
I recently read that Luther did not regard Zwingli as saved or a true brother in Christ. I had heard similar things previously. I am not well read on Zwingli so I am wondering
What caused Luther to come to that conclusion?
Click to expand...
We'd need to see the quotation. Luther is very often taken out of context.
 
Dachaser said:
Sounds like he despised his non physical views on Communion.
Click to expand...
Well we know that is true. But whether that is the reason he believed Zwingli lost we cannot be sure. He compares Zwingli to Absalom in armed rebellion. That may be taken as a reference to the manner in which Zwingli died, in armed conflict.
 
On the Lord's supper Luther and Zwingli agreed on a number of points but could not agree on our Lord's words "this *is* my body." Luther was a hot head and some suggest he had a mental illness. But it seems to me this was a key point on which they broke fellowship.

Before Luther died, he read a treatise of Calvin on the Lord's supper, and said to his friend Melanchthon "in the matter of the sacrament we have gone too far. Pray do something about this after my death". Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in one of his lectures on the Puritans, describes it as a pathetic situation.
 
On a recent episode of The Thinking Fellows, a Confessional Lutheran podcast (members are all MLS, I believe) they addressed the issue of Zwingli and his salvation and strongly answered it in the affirmative, in spite of their disagreements with him.

They didn't mention Luther's opinion on the matter.
 
Stephen L Smith said:
On the Lord's supper Luther and Zwingli agreed on a number of points but could not agree on our Lord's words "this *is* my body." Luther was a hot head and some suggest he had a mental illness. But it seems to me this was a key point on which they broke fellowship.

Before Luther died, he read a treatise of Calvin on the Lord's supper, and said to his friend Melanchthon "in the matter of the sacrament we have gone too far. Pray do something about this after my death". Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in one of his lectures on the Puritans, describes it as a pathetic situation.
Click to expand...
Saw a movie on Luther in which it said that Luther, and those who followed Calvin and Zwingli got together and tried to unify themselves, but Luther left really upset at those who denied a physical reality of Jesus in Communion.
 
Dachaser said:
Saw a movie on Luther in which it said that Luther, and those who followed Calvin and Zwingli got together and tried to unify themselves, but Luther left really upset at those who denied a physical reality of Jesus in Communion.
Click to expand...
The Marburg Colloquy.
 
Maybe his symbolic Baptist like view on the Sacraments?
Click to expand...
Zwingli's view of the sacraments was very close, if not identical, to the confessional view.
"I believe that in the holy Supper of thanksgiving, the very body of Christ is present at the eyes and contemplation of our faith. That is to wit, that they which give thanks unto the Lorde for that benefit given us in his son, acknowlege him to have had taken unto him very manhood, in it verily to have suffered, and verily to have had washen away our sinnes in his blood, and so every thing done by Christ to be as it were present unto them at the eye and contemplation of their faith."
(From Zwingli's confession)
 
C. M. Sheffield said:
That may be taken as a reference to the manner in which Zwingli died, in armed conflict.
Click to expand...
If that were the case it would seem rather hypocritical, given Luther's provocative plea for the German princes to slaughter virtually any who rebelled against their authority (Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants). In addition, Zwingli's military service was limited to twice serving as a chaplain to Swiss mercenaries, albeit he supported their political aims as well.
 
Phil D. said:
If that were the case it would seem rather hypocritical, given Luther's provocative plea for the German princes to slaughter virtually any who rebelled against their authority (Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants). In addition, Zwingli's military service was limited to twice serving as a chaplain to Swiss mercenaries, albeit he supported their political aims as well.
Click to expand...
Is it not possible that Luther saw a difference between princes bearing the sword and a minister of the church doing so?
 
C. M. Sheffield said:
Is it not possible that Luther saw a difference between princes bearing the sword and a minister of the church doing so?
Click to expand...
Perhaps. But is serving as a chaplain the same as bearing the sword?

I suppose it's also possible that Luther may have been ignorant of or misunderstood the nature of Zwingli's service.
 
Last edited:
Phil D. said:
If that were the case it would seem rather hypocritical, given Luther's provocative plea for the German princes to slaughter virtually any who rebelled against their authority (Against the Murderous, Thieving Hordes of Peasants). In addition, Zwingli's military service was limited to twice serving as a chaplain to Swiss mercenaries, albeit he supported their political aims as well.
Click to expand...
Luther also advocated for the state to burn down Jewish synagogues didn't he?
 
C. M. Sheffield said:
It is my understanding that Zwingli commanded the forces of Zurich and lead them in the battle of Kappel in 1531.
Click to expand...

I suppose one might have to inquire further into this to really know (if possible). Until it could be shown otherwise, I do have some difficulty seeing Luther objecting to a battle against the papists, regardless of its individual participants.

There is this tantalizing clue from Wikepedia:

"Zwingli had considered himself first and foremost a soldier of Christ; second a defender of his country, the Confederation; and third a leader of his city, Zürich, where he had lived for the previous twelve years. ...In Tabletalk, Luther is recorded saying: 'They say that Zwingli recently died thus; if his error [pretty clearly meaning his theological views regarding the Eucharist] had prevailed, we would have perished, and our church with us. It was a judgment of God. That was always a proud people [a cultural slur against the Swiss? - or a theological slur against the Zwinglian Reformed church?]. The others, the papists, will probably also be dealt with by our Lord God.'"

In any event, it does all serve to highlight the inherent quandary and problems created by the mixing of church and state in the late-medieval sense.
 
Stephen L Smith said:
On the Lord's supper Luther and Zwingli agreed on a number of points but could not agree on our Lord's words "this *is* my body." Luther was a hot head and some suggest he had a mental illness. But it seems to me this was a key point on which they broke fellowship.

Before Luther died, he read a treatise of Calvin on the Lord's supper, and said to his friend Melanchthon "in the matter of the sacrament we have gone too far. Pray do something about this after my death". Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in one of his lectures on the Puritans, describes it as a pathetic situation.
Click to expand...
In the quote, "in the matter of the sacrament we have gone too far," is the "we" here referring to "we Protestants in general (especially Calvin)” or "we Lutheran's"?
 
I've heard, and read, that Zwingli didn't actually hold a memorial view of the supper but haven't read it myself. Anyone know if that's true?
 
Dachaser said:
Luther also advocated for the state to burn down Jewish synagogues didn't he?
Click to expand...

Yes, Martin Luther argued for this very thing in On the Jews and their lies. Here is the relevant extract:

In Deuteronomy 13 [:12 ff.] Moses writes that any city that is given to idolatry shall be totally destroyed by fire, and nothing of it shall be preserved. If he were alive today, he would be the first to set fire to the synagogues and houses of the Jews. For in Deuteronomy 4 [:2] and 12 [:32] he commanded very explicitly that nothing is to be added to or subtracted from his law. And Samuel says in 1 Samuel 15 [:23] that disobedience to God is idolatry. Now the Jews’ doctrine at present is nothing but additions of the rabbis and the idolatry of disobedience, so that Moses has become entirely unknown among them (as we said before), just as the Bible became unknown under the papacy in our day. So also, for Moses’ sake, their schools cannot be tolerated; they defame him just as much as they do us. It is not necessary that they have their own free churches for such idolatry.

Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. For they pursue in them the same aims as in their synagogues. Instead they might be lodged under a roof or in a barn, like the gypsies. This will bring them home to them the fact that they are not masters in our country, as they boast, but that they are living in exile and in captivity, as they incessantly rail and lament about us before God.

Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.

Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. For they have justly forfeited the right to such an office by holding the poor Jews captive with the saying of Moses (Deuteronomy 17 [:10 ff]) in which he commands them to obey their teachers on penalty of death, although Moses clearly adds: “what they teach you in accord with the Law of the Lord.” Those villains ignore that. They wantonly employ the poor people’s obedience contrary to the Law of the Lord and infuse them with this poison cursing and blasphemy.

Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies in Franklin Sherman (ed.), Luther’s Works: The Christian in Society IV (55 vols, Philadelphia, 1971), xlvii, 269.
 
In a letter to Heinrich Bullinger, Zwingli's successor in Zurich, dated November 25, 1544, Calvin wrote of Luther:

I hear that Luther assails not only you, but all of us, with horrible abuse. Now I can scarcely ask you to be silent, since it is not right to allow ourselves to be so undeservedly abused, without attempting some defence. It is difficult moreover to believe that such forbearance could do any good. I wish however that the following may be clearly understood:—in the first place, how great a man Luther is; by what extraordinary gifts he is distinguished; and with what energy of soul, with what perseverance, with what ability and success he has continued up to the present day to overthrow the kingdom of antichrist, and to extend at the same time the doctrine of salvation.

I have already often said, that were he to call me a devil, I should still continue to venerate him as a chosen servant of God, uniting with extraordinary virtues some great failings. Would to heaven that he had striven more to subdue those tempests of feeling which he has so continually allowed to break forth! Would that he had only employed that violence, so natural to him, against the enemies of the truth, and not against the servants of God! Would that he had exercised more care to discover his own defects!

Unhappily there was too great a crowd of flatterers about him, who added still more to the self-confidence peculiar to his nature. It is even our duty to view his failings in such a light, that we may the more properly estimate his extraordinary gifts.

I beg you therefore to bear in mind, that we have to do with one of the first servants of Christ; with one to whom we all owe much. I would also have you consider, that you could not possibly gain any advantage by entering into a struggle with him. You would only, by such a course, afford pleasure to the enemy, who would delight not so much in our defeat as in that of the Gospel.

People will everywhere willingly believe what is said, when we vilify and condemn each other. You must consider this, rather than what Luther may have deserved on account of his violence; lest that should happen to us of which Paul speaks, namely, that while we bite and devour one another, all may go to the ground. Nay, even should he challenge us to the contest, we must rather turn away than hazard by our twofold fall the injury of the church.​
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top