Ulrich Zwingli: Preaching and the Romans 10 Mission
Short answer: Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) was the leading reformer of Zurich, and the defining conviction of his ministry was that the church must be governed by the plain teaching of Scripture rather than by human tradition. He began preaching through whole books of the Bible in 1519, and Romans 10:14-17 supplied the logic for that work: faith comes by hearing the word of Christ, and hearing requires a preacher. This article examines Zwingli's life and the scriptural argument he appealed to, showing what his example establishes and what it does not. It also names where faithful Christians still differ about his legacy, especially concerning the sacraments and the extent of reform.
Who Ulrich Zwingli Was and Where He Served
Ulrich Zwingli was born in 1484 in Wildhaus, in the Swiss canton of St. Gallen. He was educated at Basel and Bern, was ordained as a priest, and served congregations before being called in 1518 to the Grossmunster in Zurich, the city's principal church. He arrived as a capable humanist scholar with training in the original languages, and within a year he had begun a different kind of ministry. Rather than following the assigned lectionary readings, he announced he would preach straight through the Gospel of Matthew, and then continue through the rest of the New Testament. That decision shaped everything that followed in Zurich.
The significance of this method is easy to miss in a modern setting where expository preaching is common. In Zwingli's context, the sermon was often a short homily attached to the mass, and the reading of Scripture in Latin was unintelligible to most hearers. By preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible in the language of the people, Zwingli was not merely changing a style. He was relocating the center of gravity in worship from ritual performance to the explained word of God. The congregation was being taught to measure everything, including the church's own customs, against what the text actually said.
Zurich's city council became involved in these reforms, and the pace and shape of change were decided in public disputations rather than by a single bishop or pope. In 1523 Zwingli presented sixty-seven theses, or conclusions, and defended them before the council, arguing that Scripture alone is the rule of faith and practice. The council sided with him. Over the following years, images were removed from the churches, the mass was replaced with a simpler service of word and table, and monastic houses were dissolved. Zwingli was not a solitary radical but the leader of a widening civic reformation.
He also married in 1524, publicly acknowledging what had sometimes been hidden among the clergy, and he wrote extensively on doctrine, education, and pastoral care. He died in 1531 at the battle of Kappel, where Zurich's forces met the Catholic cantons. He was forty-seven. His ministry in Zurich lasted only about twelve years, yet the pattern he set, of a city church ordered around the preaching of Scripture, influenced the wider Reformed tradition and left a durable mark on Protestant worship and catechesis.
Zwingli's Preaching and the Logic of Romans 10:14-17
The apostolic argument in Romans 10 moves in a chain of questions. Romans 10:14 asks, "How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in him whom they have not heard? How will they hear without a preacher?" Paul is not theorizing about communication in general. He is explaining why Israel's unbelief does not cancel God's promise, and why the message must be sent and spoken. The chain runs from sending, to hearing, to believing, to calling on the name of the Lord. Remove any link and the whole sequence collapses.
Zwingli's program rested on exactly this sequence. If believing depends on hearing, then the church's first duty is to make the message heard, clearly and in the language of the hearers. That conviction explains his insistence on preaching through books rather than selecting favorite texts. The whole counsel of God must be heard, not only the passages a preacher finds congenial. Zwingli also insisted that Scripture interprets itself, that difficult passages are to be understood in light of clearer ones, and that the church's teachers are servants of the text rather than its masters.
This is a doctrinal claim, not merely a practical one. It treats the sermon as a means appointed by God, not as a performance that earns anything. Faith is not produced by the eloquence of the speaker or the sincerity of the listener considered in themselves. Before the chain in Romans 10:14-17 stands verse 17, which explains the mechanism of the whole sequence. The preacher is the instrument, but the word preached is the power. Zwingli's confidence was not in his own ability but in the text he read aloud and explained.
There is a pastoral edge to this that Zwingli's city could feel. If faith comes by hearing, then a church that stops reading and explaining Scripture to its people is starving them, however ornate its services become. Conversely, a plain and patient sermon is not a lesser act of worship than liturgy or music. In Zwingli's ordering of the service, the sermon was central, and the Lord's Supper was observed with a seriousness that reflected his reading of Scripture. The sermon was the ordinary means by which God gathered and fed his people.
Faith Comes by Hearing in Romans 10:17
The explanation Paul gives is compact. Romans 10:17 states that faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the word of God, or more literally the word of Christ. Note the double use of hearing. The first describes the believer's act; the second describes the message that is heard. Paul is not praising a general attitude of listening, as if any attentive posture produced faith. He is identifying the object of that hearing: the message about Christ, sent by Christ, and proclaimed on his authority.
This distinction matters because it rules out two errors at once. The first error is to treat faith as a private intuition that needs no external word. The second is to treat the sermon as a human persuasion that must manufacture its own results. Both mistakes move the center away from the word of Christ. Paul's wording keeps the preacher in the chain, but it does not make the preacher the source. The power belongs to the message, and the message is not ours to invent or improve.
Zwingli's practice of expository preaching is a working out of this verse. If hearing through the word of Christ is the appointed channel, then the preacher's task is to put that word in front of the people as fully and faithfully as he can. Anything that obscures the text, whether a foreign language, an elaborate allegory, or a sermon that never reaches the passage, weakens the very means God has chosen. Anything that clarifies the text, including patient explanation and application, serves the chain Paul describes.
There is comfort here for ordinary hearers and ordinary preachers alike. The outcome does not depend on rhetorical brilliance. It depends on the word spoken and on the God who gives it effect. Zwingli himself was a learned man, and he used his learning, but his confidence was not placed in his learning. The same is true for anyone who teaches today: the task is to open the text, and the results belong to the Lord of the harvest, who gathers his people by his own voice.
Scripture Alone and the Sufficiency of the Word
Zwingli's sixty-seven theses argued that the church's doctrines and practices must be tested by Scripture. This principle was not a rejection of all tradition; it was a claim about authority. Where tradition contradicts the plain teaching of the Bible, the Bible governs. Paul's statement in 2 Timothy 3:16-17 provides the foundation: "Every Scripture is God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness." The verse names four uses, and each corresponds to a task of the preacher. Teaching builds up, reproof exposes error, correction sets straight, and instruction trains in righteousness.
A church governed by this conviction will look different from one governed primarily by custom. It will ask, not what has always been done, but what the text requires. In Zurich this led to concrete changes: the removal of images that had become objects of devotion, the simplification of the mass, and the reform of marriage laws and charitable institutions. Some of these decisions were difficult and contested, and not everyone in the city welcomed them. Zwingli's method did not make decisions easy; it made the grounds of decision public and arguable.
The sufficiency of Scripture does not mean that the Bible answers every question in the form we would like. It means that Scripture is adequate for its purpose, which the same passage describes: equipping the people of God for every good work. Zwingli wrote catechisms and encouraged education so that people could read and understand. A church that says Scripture is sufficient must also be a church that teaches Scripture, because sufficiency is of no use to a people who never hear it. The doctrine and the practice belong together.
This is where Zwingli's example remains instructive. He did not merely affirm the authority of the Bible in a statement; he built a ministry on the assumption that God speaks through it. The weekly sermon through a book of Scripture is an enacted doctrine of sufficiency. It says, week after week, that this text is enough to teach, rebuke, correct, and train the congregation. That enacted conviction is arguably his most enduring contribution to the Reformed tradition.
The Sacraments, the Supper, and Zwingli's Controversy
Zwingli's doctrine of the Lord's Supper became one of the most contested points of his career. He rejected the idea that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, and he also rejected Luther's teaching that Christ's body and blood are present in, with, and under the elements. Zwingli emphasized the memorial character of the supper, and the words of institution in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 were central to his reading, where Paul says the Lord took bread on the night he was betrayed and gave it to his disciples with the command to do this in remembrance of him.
The dispute came to a head at the Marburg Colloquy in 1529, where Zwingli and Luther met with other theologians in an attempt to unite the Protestant territories. They reached agreement on many points but could not agree on the supper, and the failure had lasting political and theological consequences. Luther insisted on a literal reading of the words of institution; Zwingli read them in light of passages such as John 6:63, where Jesus says, "It is the spirit who gives life. The flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and are life."
It is important to state honestly that faithful Christians have differed, and still differ, on this question. Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and other traditions read the relevant texts in different ways, and these differences are not trivial. Zwingli's own position has often been caricatured as a bare memorialism, but his writings show a serious concern to honor the work of the Spirit and to prevent a superstitious dependence on outward elements. Whether his position was fully correct is a matter on which readers of Scripture must weigh the texts for themselves.
What is clear is that Zwingli's eucharistic teaching flowed from the same conviction that drove his preaching: Scripture governs, and the Spirit gives life through the word. If the flesh profits nothing, then no external ritual, however administered, can convey what only the Spirit gives. At the same time, the command to receive the supper remains, and Zurich continued to celebrate it, though less frequently than Lutherans did. The question of how word and sacrament relate is one that every tradition must answer, and Zwingli's answer has shaped the Reformed churches.
Zwingli and the Anabaptists: Disagreement in Zurich
The same conviction that Scripture governs also produced a painful conflict within Zurich itself. Some of Zwingli's own students and colleagues concluded that the reform had stopped short. They argued for believers' baptism, refusing to baptize infants, and they separated from the city church. This movement, later called Anabaptist, was seen by the Zurich authorities as a threat to the unity of the city and to the reformation itself. The disagreement escalated into persecution, and some Anabaptists were executed, including by drowning, in Zurich and elsewhere.
This history is sobering and should not be smoothed over. Zwingli's involvement in the coercion of consciences is a genuine blemish, and many Christians today, including those who admire his preaching, believe he was wrong to use civil authority in matters of faith. Others in his era believed that a reformation required public order and that radical separation would destroy the church's ability to teach the whole population. Both sides appealed to Scripture, and the difference involved not only theology but the relation of church and state.
For readers today, the lesson is not that doctrine does not matter. It is that the zeal for a pure church can go wrong when it is enforced by force. The same word of Christ that must be preached is not advanced by the sword. Zwingli died on a battlefield, and the willingness of the era's reformers to resort to arms is part of the story. Honest study of him requires holding together the genuine achievement of his preaching ministry and the real failures that accompanied it.
It also shows that a commitment to Scripture alone does not automatically settle every question. Two parties can both claim the text and reach opposite conclusions, which is why careful interpretation, patience, and humility are needed. The church's history is not a story of heroes without flaws. It is a story of people who saw part of the truth clearly and missed other parts, and it calls us to read the same Scriptures with both gratitude and caution.
What Zwingli's Ministry Teaches the Church Today
The first lesson is about the centrality of explained Scripture in the gathered church. Acts 2:42 describes the earliest congregation: "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and prayer." The apostles' teaching heads the list. A church is not built by programs, personality, or atmosphere, but by the steady teaching of the word of God. Zwingli's twelve years in Zurich were spent largely in that work, and the pattern remains the ordinary way God builds his people over time.
The second lesson concerns confidence in the word rather than in technique. Paul's chain in Romans 10 moves from sending to hearing to believing, and the power is in the message. This does not excuse laziness or carelessness in preaching; it removes the burden of having to produce results by skill. A pastor who has explained the text faithfully and applied it honestly has done the work, and the outcome is in God's hands. That freedom is one of the great gifts of a high view of Scripture.
The third lesson concerns the public character of the church's teaching. Zwingli preached in the language of the people, in the city's principal church, to a whole community. The reformation in Zurich was not a private movement but a public reordering of worship, education, and charity. Churches today serve their communities by forming people who know what the Bible says and why it matters. That work is slow and unspectacular, and it is precisely the work Paul describes when he asks how anyone will hear without a preacher.
The fourth lesson is about the limits of any single reformer. Zwingli was a gifted scholar and a courageous preacher, and he was also a man of his time with serious blind spots. He should be read the way he taught others to read: tested by Scripture. His best contribution is not a set of slogans but a pattern of ministry, opening the text to the congregation week by week. That pattern is worth imitating even where his specific judgments are questioned, and it points beyond the man to the word he served.
Biblical fidelity check
Romans 10:14-17 establishes that God ordinarily gathers his people through the proclaimed word. It does not establish that preaching is the only means God may use, nor does it guarantee that every sermon produces faith. It also does not teach that the preacher's authority is independent of the text; the word he must preach is the word of Christ, not his own. The passage gives no support for the idea that a pastor's office is a personal status, nor for the notion that the church may add to the message anything the apostles did not deliver. Its point is the necessity of hearing the message that God has sent.
A common misreading treats verse 17 as a promise that any moving speech will create faith, and then measures preaching by its emotional effect. That is not what Paul says. The hearing that produces faith is hearing the word of Christ, the apostolic message about a crucified and risen Lord. Another misreading removes the human preacher from the chain altogether, as though God saved people directly without a messenger. Paul's questions rule that out; he asks how they will hear without a preacher, and the expected answer is that preachers must be sent. The passage holds both together: a divine message, delivered by human messengers.
Other passages that speak to Romans 10:14-17
Several connected passages help frame this discussion. The article on What Does 1 Corinthians 1:10 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application shows how the apostolic message produces a united church rather than competing factions. A companion study, What Does 1 Corinthians 1:9 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application, traces the call of God that stands behind the church's fellowship. For a wider survey of the opening letter, see 1 Corinthians 1: Called, United, and Boasting in the Lord. Finally, 1 Corinthians 10: Warnings and Freedom examines the seriousness of hearing and then failing to heed what God has said, a warning that applies directly to anyone who sits under the preaching of the word.
Frequently asked questions
What did Ulrich Zwingli believe about the Bible?
Zwingli held that Scripture alone is the final authority for faith and practice, and he defended this in his 1523 sixty-seven theses before the Zurich city council. He believed the Bible interprets itself, that clearer passages explain difficult ones, and that church customs must be tested by the text. Practically, this meant preaching through whole books of the Bible in the language of the people, so that the congregation could hear and understand God's word directly rather than relying on Latin readings they could not follow.
Why did Zwingli and Luther disagree about the Lord's Supper?
They agreed that the supper is central to Christian worship but disagreed about how Christ is present in it. Luther read the words of institution in a strongly literal way and insisted on the bodily presence of Christ in, with, and under the bread and wine. Zwingli emphasized the work of the Spirit and understood the supper as a remembrance and proclamation, appealing to passages such as John 6:63. They met at Marburg in 1529 but could not reach agreement, and this division shaped later Protestant traditions.
Was Zwingli a good man?
He was a gifted scholar, a courageous preacher, and a man of genuine pastoral concern. He was also a man of his era who approved of using civil authority in religious matters and was involved in the persecution of Anabaptists, some of whom were executed. Christians today differ in how they weigh these things. It is right to honor his contribution to expository preaching while refusing to excuse his participation in coercion, and to test his teaching by the same Scripture he claimed as his authority.
