A Hookerian and Burkean appreciation of the Swiss Reformation
Should an Old High Churchman have such an interest in Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation? My interest is partly it is a result of the now well-established historical understanding of the influence of the Swiss Reformed theologies on Cranmer and on the Elizabethan Settlement. Ben Crosby on Draw Near With Faith has an excellent article on how recognising the Swiss Reformed influence on the Elizabethan Church of England leads us to see an attractive "a capacious and Reformed - and indeed capacious in part because it is Reformed - Protestant Augustinianism". Something of how capacious this could be in its early iteration is perhaps indicated by Jeremy Taylor's declaration "I am ready to subscribe to the first Helvetian confession". He admittedly went on to say that he dissented from the Second Helvetic Confession because of its more expansive definition of original sin - but, we might note, this is a rather specific criticism.
I have also been drawn to Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation outside Geneva (more about this qualification momentarily) by reflecting on Hooker's defence of Zwingli's eucharistic theology and - perhaps surprisingly - Jeremy Taylor's praise for Oecolampadius' sacramental understanding. Similarly, John Cosin quoted approvingly from the account given by the Second Helvetic Confession - that of "the reformed Switzers" - of our partaking of Christ in the Sacrament. This points to how the much maligned Swiss eucharistic theologies can be considerably more compelling than alternatives.
That said, I have been wondering why I am attracted to the Swiss Reformation - again, outside Geneva. This post is an attempt to articulate something of an explanation of this attraction. Let us begin with that qualification, outside Geneva. Something of the reason for this is indicated in MacCulloch emphasising the similarities between Hooker and Bullinger:
Hooker's emphatic affirmation of the place of the civil magistrate in the Church, his relativistic discussion of episcopacy and his maintenance of a Reformed view of the Eucharist, still firmly distanced from Lutherans - even his turning away from Calvinistic harshness on predestination would not raise eyebrows in Bullinger's Zurich. The Ecclesiastical Polity was much more in the spirit of the Decades than has often been realized.
We might suggest, only partly mischievously, that the Swiss Reformation outside the orb of Geneva were a Hookerian vision in Helvetic city-states and Alpine villages. As for a particular expression of that Hookerian vision, we can turn to Reformed Bern and its differences with Geneva (recounted by Gordon in The Swiss Reformation). Unlike Geneva, Bern observed "certain of the old feast day (Christmas, the Annunciation, the Ascension, and the Circumcision of Christ)"; unlike Geneva, it retained the old fonts for Baptism in parish churches; after the Sunday sermon, Bernese congregations heard read out the names of those who had died - a practice Calvin rejected as too close to prayers for the departed; Bern, with Zurich and Basle, allowed traditional saints' names to be baptismal names, contrary to Geneva; unlike Geneva and its consistory, in Bern "the matter of discipline and excommunication lay in the hands of the magistrates", prudently recognising the impact such matters had on communal peace; and, in a manner very similar to Elizabeth and James VI/I as Supreme Governors of the Church of England, when predestination became a matter of controversy in Bern, the magistrates forbade any discussion of the doctrine amongst clergy or laity on pain of banishment.
Gordon also draws attention to the Erasmian character of the Swiss Reformation:
The goal was in many ways Erasmus's vision of the harmony of the human and the divine ... The debt to Erasmus was enormous, even if he had repudiated the movement. One can hardly find a figure of the Swiss Reformation who did not credit the Dutch humanist as his inspiration for religious reform and intellectual endeavour ... The spiritual and intellectual ethos of the Swiss Reformation was created by the powerful mixture of Erasmian humanism [and] vernacular cultures.
What makes this Erasmian character even more attractive is one of Zwingli's chief critics in later times. In his biography of Zwingli, Gordon notes:
What did not appeal to Barth, however, was Zwingli's emphasis on the role of reason - found, for example, in his argument that Luther's teaching on real presence contradicted what was reasonable ... Barth's assessment of Zwingli was one of disappointment. He had hoped to find in the reformer an inspiration for his own own Christian ethical thought; but in the end, he encountered a humanist rationalist whom he regarded as a secondary figure of the Reformation, far behind Luther and Calvin.
I have it as a rule of thumb that being disliked by Barth is usually (while admittedly not always) a recommendation. In this case, and in light of the Erasmian character of the Swiss Reformation, it only adds to the Hookerian nature of that Reformation and the churches which emerged from them. If, therefore, in the character of the Reformation which took root in Helevetic cities and Alpine villages there is seen "Erasmus's vision of the harmony of the human and the divine", we might then also apply C.S. Lewis' famous summary of Hooker's vision:
Few model universes are more filled–one might say, more drenched–with Deity than his. 'All things that are of God' (and only sin is not) 'have God in them and he them in himself likewise', yet 'their substance and his wholly differeth' (V.56.5). God is unspeakably transcendent; but also unspeakably immanent. It is this conviction which enables Hooker, with no anxiety, to resist any inaccurate claim that is made for revelation against reason, Grace against Nature, the spiritual against the secular ... All kinds of knowledge, all good arts, sciences, and disciplines come from the Father of lights and are 'as so many sparkles resembling the bright fountain from which they rise' (III.8.9). We must not think that we glorify God only in our specifically religious actions ... We meet on all levels the divine wisdom shining through 'the beautiful variety of all things' in their 'manifold and yet harmonious dissimilitude'.
Finally, there is how the Swiss Reformation both reflected the Swiss experience and shaped the character of Protestant Switzerland. As Gordon reminds us, Zwingli cannot be understood apart from his deep reverence for his homeland:
Zwingli and his humanist friends and mentors shared a passion for finding the glorious heritage of the Swiss in antiquity. It was in part from the praise of these Swiss authors for their ancient virtues and fierce resistance to foreign oppression that Zwingli acquired the language of 'fatherland' ... Zwingli's love was not simply for the people of his native Toggenburg, but for the Swiss as a whole, whose mountains and valleys he knew as his fatherland.
This reverence for the land of the Swiss also had profound (and attractive) influence on Zwingli's theology:
John Calvin would later speak of the created world as the 'theatre of God's glory', but the concept came from Zwingli, who found expression of divine goodness in the mountains, valleys and verdant fields.
For Potter, Zwingli's understanding of the vocation of the Reformed Swiss cantons bore fruit in well-ordered, stable Christian commonwealths:
In Switzerland ... men would show by hard work, by contentment with a life of agriculture and cattle rearing, and by lives in which religion was predominant, what Christians could offer the world.
Thus, as Emidio Campi states of Bullinger's political thought:
It was central to Bullinger that the iustitia divina was not a res interna, but rather also a res publica. The Reformation was to serve society; it was to enable the renewal of the civic community.
Part of the attraction for me of the Swiss Reformation are those well-ordered commonwealths whose character was shaped and defined by that Reformation. The views of two Anglican commentators articulate this attraction. Firstly, Richard Field - one of the leading divines in the Jacobean Church of England - praised the manner of Zwingli's controversial death in battle:
That Zuinglius died in the field, with his Countrey-men in defence of their liues, liberties, and Religion, is no certaine note (as I take it) that his Religion was false: but rather an excellent proofe, and demonstration, of the Christian magnanimitie, and resolution, that rested in him.
For Field, Zwingli's patriotism is no cause for embarrassment but, rather, a virtue, revealing his commitment to a Christian commonwealth - in words taken from the Prayer from the Church Militant - "quietly and godly governed", with "true religion".
Secondly, there is Burke. In his Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke turned to one of the Swiss republics threatened by the French revolutionary regime:
The republic of Berne, one of the happiest, the most prosperous, and the best-governed countries upon earth ...
Against the destructive, violent Revolution in France, Burke the great Anglican statesman, a father of post-1789 conservatism, defender of the settled British constitutional order, points to the stolidly Reformed republic of Bern as exemplifying a well-ordered polity, its ordered liberty rooted in and flowering from stable civic institutions and its established Reformed church. He pointed, in other words, to a polity shaped and defined by the Swiss Reformation.
A well-ordered church, sharing practices with the ecclesia Anglicana defended by Hooker; an admirable Erasmian character, with a "vision of the harmony of the human and the divine"; and both embedded in a patriotism and political order praised by Richard Field and Edmund Burke. It is this which explains my Hookerian and Burkean appreciation of the Swiss Reformation. This, of course, differs rather significantly from how the devotees of Geneva (via Scotland) view the Swiss Reformation. To invoke a well-known meme, 'we are not the same'.
Let me end with words from Hooker. In the Preface to the Lawes, he offers a panegyric to a Church outside of Switzerland - in the Palatinate - but in a prosperous city and humanist centre, a church adhering to the ecclesiastical polity of Zurich:
To one of those Churches which lived in a most peaceable sort, and abounded as well with men for their learnings in other professions singular, as also with divines whose equals were not elsewhere to be found, a Church ordered by Gualters [Rudolf Gwalther's] discipline [a reference to Zurich's form of superintendency], and not by that which Geneva adoreth ... the Church of Heidelberge (Preface, 2.9).
The Church of Heidelberg, declares Hooker, was a model of the Swiss Reformation: holding a Swiss eucharistic theology and with Zurich's ecclesiastical regiment (before the agitation commenced by George Withers in 1568, with his exalted claims for Genevan government by presbytery). The description of a "peaceable" Reformed church, amidst a thriving intellectual, humanist culture, is that which, for Hooker, the Elizabethan Settlement, with an episcopally-ordered national Reformed church under the Royal Supremacy, secured for the Kingdom of England.
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