Calling and resistance: Huldrych Zwingli’s (1484-1531) political theology and his legacy of resistance to tyranny

Abstract

Huldrych Zwingli’s ground-breaking contribution to Reformational political theory has not been accorded the necessary exposure that it deserves. Zurich and Genevan Reformational thought during the fifteenth century owed much of its political insight to Zwingli’s expositions pertaining to the functions of the offices of magistracy and ministry, as well as on resistance theory. Zwingli also heralded the idea of the Christian community, in which church and society are not to be viewed as two separate entities – the view that the Christian nation is both church and political community under the rule of God. Not only was this inheritance of Zwingli’s thought limited to the continent but it also manifested itself in the English and Scottish Reformational worlds. Consequently, this article serves as a reminder that the more familiar proponents of early Reformational thought (in the context of Reformational political expositions) such as Heinrich Bullinger, and to a lesser degree John Calvin, were preceded and influenced by the legacy of Huldrych Zwingli’s Reformational political theology.

Keywords

• Calvin
• Covenant
• Federalism
• Zwingli