Martin Luther’s weren’t the only reforms that swept Europe in the early 1500s. He had come to his conclusions a tortured soul, desperately searching for a way to be redeemed in the eyes of God. But those same conclusions were reached by another, and not from the perspective of a tortured soul, but from the scholarly pursuit of truth. The teachings of Ulrich Zwingli affected Switzerland much the same as Luther’s affected Germany, but not even these great reformers were prepared for the Anabaptist movement. In this paper I will summarize chapters 5-6 in Justo Gonzalez’s The Story of Christianity. Ulrich Zwingli was born in Switzerland in January 1484, very soon after Martin Luther. He studied in Basel and Bern, where he developed a
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He grew into a popular respected teacher and preacher and spoke out against the injustices he saw all around him. When the pope strong-armed his canton into sending its mercenaries against Spain against his will and preaching, he began to focus his efforts against the abuses he saw in the papacy. This was swiftly rewarded his branding by the Catholic Church as a heretic and his association with Martin Luther. This also caused a complete formal break with the church and while Luther would have been initially somewhat concerned with this, Zwingli welcomed it. This allowed him to restructure the church as he saw the Bible modeling, forming Zurich into a functioning Bibliocracy. He died in battle with the Catholic Swiss Cantons in …show more content…
Although that opposition was usually couched in theological considerations, in fact they were persecuted because they were considered subversive. In spite of their radical views on other matters, both Luther and Zwingli accepted the notion that church and state must live side by side, supporting each other, and both refrained from any interpretation of the gospel that would make it a threat to the established social order. The Anabaptists, without seeking to do so, did threaten the social order. Their extreme pacifism was unacceptable to those in charge of maintaining social and political order, particularly amid the upheavals of the sixteenth
He grew into a popular respected teacher and preacher and spoke out against the injustices he saw all around him. When the pope strong-armed his canton into sending its mercenaries against Spain against his will and preaching, he began to focus his efforts against the abuses he saw in the papacy. This was swiftly rewarded his branding by the Catholic Church as a heretic and his association with Martin Luther. This also caused a complete formal break with the church and while Luther would have been initially somewhat concerned with this, Zwingli welcomed it. This allowed him to restructure the church as he saw the Bible modeling, forming Zurich into a functioning Bibliocracy. He died in battle with the Catholic Swiss Cantons in …show more content…
Although that opposition was usually couched in theological considerations, in fact they were persecuted because they were considered subversive. In spite of their radical views on other matters, both Luther and Zwingli accepted the notion that church and state must live side by side, supporting each other, and both refrained from any interpretation of the gospel that would make it a threat to the established social order. The Anabaptists, without seeking to do so, did threaten the social order. Their extreme pacifism was unacceptable to those in charge of maintaining social and political order, particularly amid the upheavals of the sixteenth