Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch Read Free Book Online Page B

all the rest - including the Anglican Communion. Luther produced a formula to convey the usefulness of images: ' zum Ansehen, zum Zeugnis, zum Gedachtnis, zum Zeichen ' ('for recognition, for witness, for commemoration, for a sign'). After 1525, he rarely felt the need to enlarge on these points. 21
    Great principles were at stake. Zwingli did not share Luther's negative conception of law, and because he so strongly identified Church and city in Zurich, he found the image of Zurich as Israel compelling. Israel needed law; law forbade idols. Where Luther had contrasted law (bad) and Gospel (good), Zurich now contrasted law (good) and idolatry (bad). Despite being a talented and enthusiastic musician, Zwingli even banned music in church, because its ability to seduce the senses was likely to prove a form of idolatry and an obstacle to worshipping God. Turned into a point of principle by Zwingli's successor Heinrich Bullinger, this ban lasted until 1598, when bored and frustrated Zurich congregations rose in rebellion against their ministers and successfully demanded the satisfaction of singing hymns or psalms in their services, since by then all other Reformed Churches allowed sacred music. The printers of Zurich had in fact been happily printing hymnals for those other churches for the previous fifty years. 22
    Equally profound was the two men's disagreement about the Eucharist. Zwingli, a thoroughgoing humanist in his education and a deep admirer of Erasmus, emphasized the spirit against the flesh. A favourite biblical proof-text with him was Erasmus's watchword, John 6.63: 'The Spirit gives life, but the flesh is of no use' (see pp. 596-9). Luther, he thought, was being crudely literal-minded to flourish Christ's statement at the Last Supper, 'This is my body . . . this is my blood', as meaning that bread and wine in some sense became the body and blood of Christ. When Luther had jettisoned the idea of the Mass as sacrifice and the doctrine of transubstantiation, why could the obstinate Wittenberger not see that it was illogical to maintain any notion of physical presence in eucharistic bread and wine? Jesus Christ could hardly be on the communion table when Christians know that he is sitting at the right hand of God (this argument pioneered by Karlstadt may seem crass now, but it became a firm favourite with Reformed Christians). In any case, what was a sacrament? Zwingli, as a good humanist, considered the origins of the Latin word sacramentum , and discovered that the Latin Church had borrowed it from everyday life in the Roman army, where it had meant a soldier's oath. That struck a strong chord in Switzerland, where regular swearing of oaths was the foundational to a society whose strength came from mutual interdependence and local loyalty. It also resonated with that ancient Hebrew idea which has repeatedly sounded anew for Christians: covenant.
    So the sacrament of Eucharist was not a magical talisman of Christ's body. It was a community pledge, expressing the believer's faith (and after all, had not Luther said a great deal about faith?). The Eucharist could indeed be a sacrifice, but one of faith and thankfulness by a Christian to God, a way of remembering what Jesus had done for humanity on the Cross, and all the Gospel promises which followed on from it in scripture. And what was true for the Eucharist must be true for the other biblical sacrament, baptism. This was a welcome for children into the Lord's family the Church; it did not involve magical washing away of sin. For Zwingli, therefore, the sacraments shifted in meaning from something which God did for humanity, to something which humanity did for God. Moreover, he saw sacraments as intimately linked with the shared life of a proud city. The Eucharist was the community meeting in love, baptism was the community extending a welcome. This nobly coherent vision of a better Israel, faithful to God's covenant, was a reformed version of Erasmus's ideal of how the