laudable Practice

I am coming to the end of reading G.W. Bromiley's Zwingli and Bullinger (1953) in the 'Library of Christian Classics' collection. Over the past months, a few pages have been read each day, with some extracts shared on 'X'. During the past two years, Zwingli has figured quite a bit in my reading. It began with G.R. Potter's Zwingli (1976), followed by Bruce Gordon's Zwingli: God's Armed Prophet (2021). Along the way, I dipped into Gordon's The Swiss Reformation (2002) and the collection of essays edited by Gordon and Emidio Campi, Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger (2004). 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 recognis...

Zwingli failed to work out any fully developed or coherent theology of baptism ... It is easy enough to detect the weaknesses in Zwingli's understanding. He isolates the various aspects of the sacrament. He has not true doctrine of sacramental efficacy. He has little or nothing to say about baptism as a sign of remission and regeneration. G.W. Bromiley's introduction to Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' - in the Zwingli and Bullinger volume (1953) in 'The Library of Christian Classics' series - offers a stark but accurate assessment of the failings of the Zurich reformer's sacramental theology, not least when contrasted with "Luther and the more developed 'sacramentalism' of the later Reformed school". As example of such richer Reformation sacramental theology we might particularly point to the BCP Baptismal rite, Article XXVII, and the Catechism: the Anglican eye will particularly notice how Zwingli's 'Of Baptism' significantly contr...

Today commences a new series on laudable Practice , as we read through Cranmer's Answer to Gardiner (1551). We begin with an extract from Cranmer's 'A Preface to the Reader', in which he addresses the meaning of his affirmation that "Christ is present in them that worthily receive the sacrament" (words which will, of course, be made famous by Hooker: "The real presence of Christ’s most blessed body and blood is not therefore to be sought for in the sacrament, but in the worthy receiver of the sacrament", LEP V.67.6): when I say and repeat many times in my book, that the body of Christ is present in them that worthily receive the sacrament, lest any man should mistake my words, and think that I mean, that although Christ be not corporally in the outward visible signs, yet he is corporally in the persons that duly receive them, this is to advertise the reader, that I mean no such thing, but my meaning is, that the force, the grace, the virtue, and be...

From Richard Field's Of the Church (1606/10), a refutation of the allegation by a Tridentine apologist that the differences "between the followers of Luther and Zuinglius" were in matters of faith, producing a fundamental division between the two traditions. Mindful that Field was a leading divine in the Jacobean Church of England - described by Paul Avis as "one of the most stupendously learned of Anglican theologians in an age when Anglican clerical scholarship was the wonder of the world" - his insistence (following Jewel and Hooker) that the differences between Lutheran and Swiss Reformed eucharistic theologies were not fundamental is a significant insight into an important and influential stream of thought in the Jacobean Church. What is more, note his defence of the 'Zwinglians'. (While Field does also use the term 'Calvinist' for the Swiss, it is clear throughout that he regards Zwingli as the figure who chiefly shaped the Swiss Reformed ...

Perhaps one of the most surprising aspects of Brett Salkeld's excellent Transubstantiation: Theology, History, and Christian Unity (2019) is Zwingli's appearance in the discussion of what is shared in eucharistic theology by Thomas and Calvin: On this, of course, Calvin (and Zwingli too!) follows Aquinas rather precisely ... How ironic, then, Calvin's reputation as a Zwinglian is based largely on his theology of signs and his affirmation of the ascension, two points on which he is in strict agreement with Aquinas! Now, to be clear, Salkeld does not propose a rehabilitation of Zwingli (such as  laudable Practice has previously suggested).  For Salkeld, Zwingli - unlike both Bullinger and (more fully) Calvin - still proposes that the bread and wine in the Supper are "signs of an absent reality".  Leaving aside, for the moment, the fact that Salkfeld does not address those statements by Zwingli which clearly confess a true participation in Christ in the Supper, it ...

From the  1834 Bampton Lectures  of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel), Sermon V, addressing  Articles 10 and 13 in relation to 18, 'Of obtaining eternal Salvation only by the Name of Christ'.  Under the subheading of 'Salvation of Heathens', Laurence insists that these Articles do not exclude those of other faiths from "the uncovenanted mercies of God", again noting (as with Article 9 ) the generous vision of salvation upheld by Zurich: But because our Church ascribes not to human virtue, contemplated as independent of Christianity, the power of conciliating divine approbation, we must not hence conclude, that she restricts the uncovenanted mercies of God, withholding salvation from Heathens, upon whom, walking in darkness and the shadow of death, the light of the blessed Gospel has never arisen. Although persuaded "that there is none other name under heaven given to man, in which, and through which, we can receive health and salvation, but onl...

I turned to the 1834 Bampton Lectures of Richard Laurence (then Archbishop of Cashel) - An Attempt to illustrate those Articles of the Church of England which the Calvinists improperly consider as Calvinistical - to explore his view that the Articles of Religion on original sin, free will, works, and predestination were "in perfect conformity ... with the doctrine of the Lutherans".  This was part of a wider project on laudable Practice on how the broad High Church tradition and its antecedents, from the early 17th to the early 19th centuries, identified with Lutheranism.   Laurence's Bampton Lectures, however, also pointed to another, perhaps surprising source, for a High Church critique of Calvinistic predestinarianism: the theology of Zurich as articulated by Zwingli and Bullinger.  (This was not entirely without precedent, as previously suggested .) This is particularly evident in Laurence's Sermon III, addressing Article 9 'Of Original or Birth-sin', ch...

In his 1807 Bampton Lectures , Le Mesurier interestingly sides with Zwingli and the Swiss Reformation against Luther on the Eucharist: In particular Luther, from a partial adherence to old ideas, came to entertain the notion of what he termed consubstantiation: he held that the body and blood of Christ substantially existed in the sacrament, though not alone, but united with the bread and wine; so that both the one and the other were taken by the communicants. This approached so near to the popish doctrine, it so naturally led to all the same consequences, that we cannot wonder at its being rejected by Zuinglius, and other eminent Reformers (Sermon VII). This is also very evident in his summary of John 6, "the eating of Christ there mentioned, was only spoken in a spiritual and figurative sense", and his declaration that "our church ... believes a real, but a sacramental presence" (note in Sermon V).  While Le Mesurier's rejection of consubstantiation was a sta...