Vol. 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024), 44–75 © The Reformed Theological Review 2024 https://doi.org/10.53521/a388
The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology K. J. DRAKE Assistant Professor of Historical Theology Indianapolis Theological Seminary, Indiana Citation: K. J. Drake, ‘The Humanity of Jesus Christ in Zwingli’s Theology’, RTR 83, no. 1 (Apr 2024), 44–75. https://rtrjournal.org/ index.php/RTR/article/view/388. Keywords: Ulrich Zwingli, humanity of Jesus Christ, Reformation Christology, hypostatic union, Christ as example Abstract: Scholarship on Zwingli is divided regarding the prominence of Christ’s humanity in the Swiss reformer, with scholars like W. P. Stephens arguing that Christ’s divinity overshadows his human nature and others like Gottfried Locher contending that the human nature of Christ holds a critical place in Zwingli’s thought. This article, building upon Locher, argues that the humanity of Christ serves a unifying function in Zwingli’s theology to preserve both the exclusivity of Christ’s mediation and a theocentric religion. According to Zwingli, Jesus Christ is the elect Mediator who, in his true humanity, defines the human relationship to the Triune God and brings coherence to Zwingli’s theology. As the seed of the woman, suffering sacrifice, ethical exemplar, and exalted representative, Christ qua man ensures that salvation is a divine work from creation through the eschaton to the glory of the Triune God.
The person and work of Jesus Christ are the center of Ulrich Zwingli’s understanding of true Christian religion and the motivation for his activity as a reformer. In Short Christian Instruction, published after the Second Zurich Disputation as a model for reformational preaching, Zwingli summarised his gospel: Here we have in short the entire foundation of the gospel, namely, that since it was impossible for us poor people to come to God on our merit,