Introducing the Reformation
While Zwinglio preached through the Bible, he expounded the truths he found in the text, even though they differed from the historical tradition of the church. This kind of direct preaching was not without difficulties. In 1522, some of his parishioners challenged the principles of the church. Zwinglio supported his practice based on the biblical truths of Christian freedom. He saw such man-imposed restrictions. In the same year, he composed the first of his many writings on the Reformation, which disseminated his ideas throughout Switzerland.
- In November 1522 Zwingli began working with other religious leaders and the town hall to carry out major reforms in the Church and the state.
- In January 1523 he wrote sixty-seven thesis.
- In which he rejected many medieval beliefs.
- Such as forced fasting.
- Clerical celibacy.
- Purgatory.
- Mass and priestly mediation.
- In addition.
- He began to question the use of images in the church.
- In June 1524.
- The city of Zurich.
- Following his example.
- Decided that all religious images should be removed from the churches.
- In 1524.
- Zwinglio took a new stage of reform: he married Anna Reinhard.
- A widow.
- All this seems to have happened before Zwinglio found out about Luther.
- It was really an obvious divine work.
In 1525, the Reform movement in Zurich gained strength. On April 14, 1525, the Mass was officially abolished and Protestant services began in and around Zurich. Zwingli decided to implement only what was taught in the scriptures. The Scriptures were rejected; the words of the Scriptures were read and preached in the language of the people; the entire congregation, not just the clergy, received bread and wine in a simple communion service; the minister wore dresses like those found in classrooms and not on Catholic altars. Veneration of Mary and the saints was forbidden, indulgences were forbidden, and prayer for the dead was stopped. The break with Rome was total.
Zwingli also entered into controversy with a new group known as the Anabaptists or Renamers, a more radical reform movement that began in Zurich in 1523. Although Zwinglio made major changes, he had not gone far enough. far away for these believers. For anabaptists, the question of baptism was only secondary to the separation of the Roman Catholic Church. The Anabaptists sought a complete reconstruction of the church that looked like a revolution.
Zwinglio regarded the Anabaptist proposals as a radical excess. In response to the demands of the Anabaptists for the immediate reform of the Church and society, he called for restraint and patience in the transition to Rome. He advised the Anabaptists to support the weaker brothers who gradually accepted the teaching of the Reformation, however, this approach has only led to an increase in the conflict between Zwinglio and the radicals.
An order from the magistrates of Zurich to baptize all the babies in the city proved very explosive. The Anabaptists responded by marching through the streets of Zurich during intense demonstrations. Instead of baptizing their babies, they were baptized with each other, by spraying or immersion, in 1525. They also rejected Zwinglio’s assertion of the authority of the city council on church affairs and advocated the total separation of church and state.
Anabaptist leaders were arrested and accused of revolutionary teaching; some drowned. It is not known whether Zwingli conseded in death sentences, but he did not object.
Meanwhile, a controversy began to brew between Zwinglio and Luther over the Lord’s food. Luther affirmed the consubstantiation, the belief that the body and blood of Christ were present in, through or below the elements. He claimed that there was a real presence of Christ, in the elements, although this differs from the Roman Catholic teaching of transubstantiation, which holds that the elements become the body and blood of Christ when they are blessed by the priest during Mass. Zwinglio assumed the position that the Lord’s Supper is first and foremost a memorial to the death of Christ, a symbolic memory.
In an attempt to unite the reformed movement, in October 1529 the Marburg Symposium was convened, in which the two reformers stood opposite each other, along with Martin Bucer, Filipe Mel’nchthon, Johannes Oecolampadius and other Protestant leaders. fourteen of the fifteen elements submitted to them: the church-state relationship, the baptism of children, the historical continuity of the church and much more. However, no agreement has been reached regarding the Lord’s food. Luther said that “Zwingli was a “very good man”, but with a “different spirit”, and therefore refused to accept the hand of communion offered with tears?(Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. VIII: Modern Christianity: the Swiss Reformation [1919; rep. . , Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1984], 87). Luther told his colleagues about Zwinglio and his followers: “Do I suppose God blinded them?(Luther, quoted in Heiko Oberman, Luther: A Man Between God and the Devil, Trans. Eileen Walliser-Sch arzbart [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 120).
In one of the strange ironies of history, Zwinglio, who previously opposed the use of mercenaries in the war, died on the battlefield in 1531. A growing conflict between Protestants and Catholics led the cantons to arm thee and war soon broke out. Zurich went into battle to fend off five invading Catholic cantons in the south. Zwingli accompanied the Zurich army to battle as a field chaplain. Dressed in armor and armed with an axe of war, he was seriously wounded on 11 October 1531. The soldiers found him wounded, killed him; Southern forces subjected his body to shameful treatment; They cut him into rooms, cut his remains to pieces and burned them, then mixed his ashes with manure and threw them away.
Today, in a prominent place in the water church of Zurich, there is a statue of Zwinglio, standing with a Bible in one hand and a sword in the other, representing Zwonglio in his influence on the strong and resolute Swiss Reformation. The ministry in Zurich was relatively short, it achieved great things. With his heroic defense of truth, Zwingli reformed the Zurich Church and paved the way for other reformers to follow him.