Selections from the writings of Ulrich Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger, two lesser-known church reformers, are contained in this volume. Also included is an account of the life, work, and theology of each of these Swiss reformers of the sixteenth century. Long recognized for the quality of its translations, introductions, explanatory notes, and indexes, the Library of Christian Classics provides scholars and students with modern English translations of some of the most significant Christian theological texts in history. Through these works--each written prior to the end of the sixteenth century--contemporary readers are able to engage the ideas that have shaped Christian theology and the church through the centuries.

Next to Luther himself, Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was probably the most important and certainly the most influential of the early Protestant reformers. His Commentary on True and False Religion, addressed to King Francis I of France and published by the printer Froschauer in Zurich in 1525, contrasted what Zwingli regarded as the true religion of the Protestants, grounded in Scripture, with the false religion of tradition and reason advocated by the opponents of the Reformation. In twenty-nine chapters Zwingli discussed all of the principal topics of Christian theology, from the meaning of the word "religion" itself to the role and place of images in Christian worship. All the disputed issues of the early Reformation--the doctrine of Church and ministry, baptism, penance, eucharist, the nature of civil authority--are explained lucidly and concisely. The Commentary makes clear not only the grounds for Zwingli's break with the medieval Catholic tradition in which he had been raised but also the nature of his disagreements with Erasmus, Luther, and the Swiss Anabaptists. The result is the most significant dogmatic work which Zwingli ever wrote and the most important systematic statement of Reformed theology before Calvin's Institutes.

A major new biography of Huldrych Zwingli—the warrior preacher who shaped the early Reformation Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531) was the most significant early reformer after Martin Luther. As the architect of the Reformation in Switzerland, he created the Reformed tradition later inherited by John Calvin. His movement ultimately became a global religion. A visionary of a new society, Zwingli was also a divisive and fiercely radical figure. Bruce Gordon presents a fresh interpretation of the early Reformation and the key role played by Zwingli. A charismatic preacher and politician, Zwingli transformed church and society in Zurich and inspired supporters throughout Europe. Yet, Gordon shows, he was seen as an agitator and heretic by many and his bellicose, unyielding efforts to realize his vision would prove his undoing. Unable to control the movement he had launched, Zwingli died on the battlefield fighting his Catholic opponents.

Heinrich Bullinger, the friend and successor of Huldrych Zwingli, led the Zurich church for almost fifty years after Zwingli's death and was largely responsible for the construction of the Reformed church in the sixteenth century. Nevertheless, Bullinger has often been called the forgotten Reformer of the sixteenth century. Architect of Reformation is the first broad introduction to Bullinger's life and theology available in English. The book features an international collection of the world's leading Bullinger and Reformation scholars addressing such categories as theology, spirituality, ecclesiology, humanism, politics, and family. At the five-hundred-year anniversary of Bullinger's birth, Architect of Reformation gives the often-overlooked Swiss Reformer his long-overdue and much-deserved recognition as a leading figure among second generation Reformers.

Following Zwingli explores history, scholarship, and memory in Reformation Zurich. The humanist culture of this city was shaped by a remarkable sodality of scholars, many of whom had been associated with Erasmus. In creating a new Christian order, Zwingli and his colleagues sought biblical, historical, literary, and political models to shape and defend their radical reforms. After Zwingli’s sudden death, the next generation was committed to the institutional and intellectual establishment of the Reformation through ongoing dialogue with the past. The essays of this volume examine the immediacy of antiquity, early Christianity, and the Middle Ages for the Zurich reformers. Their reading and appropriation of history was no mere rhetorical exercise or polemical defence. The Bible, theology, church institutions, pedagogy, and humanist scholarship were the lifeblood of the Reformation. But their appropriation depended on the interplay of past ideals with the pressing demands of a sixteenth-century reform movement troubled by internal dissention and constantly under attack. This book focuses on Zwingli’s successors and on their interpretations of the recent and distant past: the choices they made, and why. How those pasts spoke to the present and how they were heard tell us a great deal not only about the distinctive nature of Zurich and Zwinglianism, but also about locality, history, and religious change in the European Reformation.

* Including an annotation about the history of the Reformed Churches Helvetic Confessions, the name of two documents expressing the common belief of the Reformed churches of Switzerland. The Second Helvetic Confession (Latin: Confessio Helvetica posterior) was written by Bullinger in 1562 and revised in 1564 as a private exercise. It came to the notice of Elector Palatine Frederick III, who had it translated into German and published. It gained a favorable hold on the Swiss churches, who had found the First Confession too short and too Lutheran. It was adopted by the Reformed Church not only throughout Switzerland but in Scotland (1566), Hungary (1567), France (1571), Poland (1578), and next to the Heidelberg Catechism is the most generally recognized confession of the Reformed Church. (courtesy of wikipedia.com)

Illuminates the church's Reformed heritage by examining a frequently overlooked figure and his doctrine of predestination.