The United Church: How to get there

We need to re-balance ourselves. Balance. It can be done in one year, God willing, or it might take one thousand years.

We have to balance our views of the invisible and visible church. Sectarian Christians need to spend more time reading the scriptures that talk about (1) authority and (2) the universal church. Social-gospel Christians need to spend more time brushing up on exegesis and theology. And evangelical Christians need to hit the books and put their brains to work.

It seems almost too convenient that mainline churches and conservative churches have complementary ministries that would benefit both groups immensely.

Maybe church leaders will conduct interfaith talks for the next ten thousand years. Actual change is made, daily, by fallible believers in an infallible God.

Yes, our thoughts are formed by the churches we've attended. But our churches are closer than they may appear. I've skimmed over (lightly) the confessions of Methodists, Pentecostal, United Churches of Christ, Adventists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Reformed, Lutheran, and Anglicans -- these comprise the bulk of all evangelical churches (plus Anglicans, which are 'extra'). Though some may not pay attention to their own creeds anymore, their written confessions are nearly united in the essentials, and they all are united in the two fundamentals: Sola Fide and Sola Scriptura.

The Church Universal: A Confession Taxonomy

A recent attempt at coming to grips with, or trying to understand, the church is the Confessing Movement.

I'm toying with the idea of a "layered" approach: use confessions (which is a Baptist-friendly way to say "creed") to cast nets of different sizes; to help understand the goal of unity with diversity.

First Net:  Ultimate authority.  Touches on Christology, the Apostles, and the Bible. This probably approximates or encompasses a typical understanding of orthodoxy. Tentatively, my first confessional net is the Chalcedonian Creed (451), Nicene Creed (381), and the Old Roman Symbol (an early version of the Apostles' Creed) or, perhaps, Irenaeus' Rule of Faith, and the infallibility and material sufficiency of the Bible.  I think I can tack on to this the means of grace, by which Christ gives us the benefits of redemption to the believer: the apostles' teachings and fellowship, the breaking of bread (communion), baptism, and prayer.


Second Net: Reformation Soteriology goes here. This is where the solas would go; particularly, justification by faith alone, the primacy of scripture for theological authority, and the fallibility and non-binding nature of other sources of theological authority.  We cannot save ourselves, and God is the prime mover in each believer's salvation.


Third Net: Local church practice goes here.  It's not really congregational, and it's not really evangelical, though it overlaps the two.
(1) A coherent confession is the requirement for membership in the visible church.

The next two items depart from some forms of evangelicalism:
(2) Baptism is the ritual of publicly declaring one's confession, and is a visible symbol of being regenerated. 
(3) Elders of the local church only have delegated power.

The next two items depart from congregationalism.
(4) Local instances of the church are accountable to one another.
(5) The local church is self-correcting (ecclesia semper reformanda) through being accountable to its congregants and its sister churches.

Thought-Bombs of Erasmus

Executive Summary


Erasmus' issues look tied up around a question that perhaps hasn't yet been answered: Without an episcopate, how would the churches of Christ support one another? How would authority between congregations be handled, and how can the interpretation of Scripture be faithfully managed?

Long-Winded Version

Trying to straddle a middle ground during the reformation was the non-confrontational Erasmus. He didn't like abuses by the all-too-human leaders in the Roman church -- something we all dislike in any church, and something all of our churches have had their share of. Erasmus' concern was directed first at the Roman church, but then just as equally to the Protestant churches, which were largely endorsed and supported by secular kings:

You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists [...]

[but] Look around on this ‘Evangelical’ generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it....[...]

They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.

 Make of that what you will, but note that everywhere the Church is, there are tares among the wheat, and false shepherds among the sheep: Erasmus was correct, but his argument is nothing new. If anything, his point was an evasion. Erasmus knew that the major point lay not with behavior, but with authority:

We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now [...]

[Cue footage of Topol as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, pointing with both hands into the sky and declaiming loudly: TRADITION!]

The decisions of the Church are not lightly abandoned. His reference to "you" (Luther) is a diversion at this point: his concern is that in abandoning authority you abandon Christ's church.

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.

Whether or not Luther commanded men to forsake all and follow him is left as an exercise to the reader. It's another diversion from Erasmus' main point. We already know that Luther was a fallible man: a mixed bag like everyone else, saved only by the grace of God.

And here's Erasmus' main point: the Roman church taught that the Church (big C) was only an established, visible institution; the Roman church was the entire Church of Christ. Leave the institution and you've left the Church. The Church is visible, and its functions are essentially magical. There is no invisible church. Of course Erasmus believes this; this was the teaching of the churches at that time -- Roman, Greek, et cetera -- and of many churches today. Many reformers believed it, too, to some degree... or at least their patrons did. States used this to their benefit - Geneva, the Netherlands, and England for example. If the government owns a state church then you have a bit more protection from foreign influence. Leave the state church and you've left the protection of the church, physically as well as spiritually. This particular error is taking a long time to work out, even though the corrective is ancient: the church is invisible and visible.

C.S. Lewis and the missing Duet

Others figured this out before me, but some time ago I realized that C.S. Lewis produced "duets" of books: for the sake of one type of reader, he would write a nonfiction book; for the sake of another type, he would demonstrate the topics with a fiction novel.

Example 1. The Abolition of Man was accompanied by That Hideous Strength.
Example 2. The Four Loves was accompanied by Till We Have Faces.

Those are the two I know of.  There are others (see here for examples).

Now for a puzzler that I've wondered about for years. When he died he was working on After Ten Years, which was more or less a reworking of the Iliad + Odyssey.  I haven't read it for maybe 15 years, so it's not fresh in my mind, and yet I can't help but wonder: what was its nonfiction dual? Does it exist?

The Undivided Church and Authority - Congregationalism

When you detect heresy, who do you blame?  The people, or the leaders, or both?

Congregationalists, i.e. American churches such as most Baptist churches, have a serious problem: each congregation either works from complete autonomy, or else is a slave to a governing body. You either cook up your own heresy, or else you swallow some remote authority's pronouncements. Yes, I'm including the Southern Baptist Convention in this, because they make pronouncements that they expect churches to fall in line over, and play power politics just like our Congress.

As Americans, we believe that individual rights are supreme. Yet this is not how a Christian should look at himself, nor his local church. We are all part of the invisible church, and body of Christ, each a building block that makes up the temple of God, corporately the kingdom of God. We are accountable to Christ and to one another.

Not that congregational polity is in error. We have plenty of examples of what happens when a non-accountable church government is established. Rome. Antioch. Canterbury. Geneva. The Synod. The General Assembly. And yet, congregations do not operate in isolation from one another. Why do they act as if they do?

Perhaps it has to do with fear. Fear of wasting time, working through doctrine, sharing power with other pastors, fear of compromising The Faith, fear of losing that rugged, God-given freedom from being accountable to each other of Christ. Fear that our differences are not resolvable. And blinders over our eyes that our traditions are often the traditions of men, and not Christ.

At the end of the day, it is the local congregation's responsibility to be accountable to each other and to neighbor congregations, regardless of denomination, and regardless of what sort of power structure you've been placed into by humans. Are you part of the bride of Christ or not?  And just as important: aren't your sister churches part of the bride of Christ, or not?

The Undivided Church and Authority - United Church of Christ

The United Church of Christ seems to represent a good effort for an undivided church.

Warning - Unfiltered, Non-Politically Correct Opinion Follows

It appears that the only problem - a major one - is that the General Synod doesn't acknowledge its congregational roots: their pronouncements are regularly broader and more liberal than the beliefs of those in the pews. That spells slow demolition on one hand, accompanied by a gradual slide into heresy on the other, of churches who remain members of the synod.

The Undivided Church and Authority - Wesley

Summary

Wesleyan theology has two issues to think about:

(1) The transforming role of the Holy Spirit in the believer's life.
(2) The source and nature of man's resistance against Christ.

Carefully applying Wesley's own Four Sources of Authority in their proper order will resolve both of these issues. That's an exercise to better informed people than I.


Wesley's Four Sources of Authority

Wesley, channeling the Church of England, has a decent handle on authority: Scripture first, reason next, tradition (and those two must be interpreted as part of a community rather than any one person in an isolated, insulated vacuum), and experience.

Regarding experience, Wesley thought the believer's life should provide internal proof to each believer of God's promises being shared with him. Absolutely, God works in the lives of believers, and the believer's purpose is tied up in God's purpose, and the Fruits of the Spirit will manifest themselves (love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control). So it seemd to me that Wesley's articulations are best understood as part of the transformation of the believer's life.

Now, note the Methodist confession.

It seems like the main internal contradiction is over humanity's Free Will versus God's unmerited favor. Which is stronger? In what way is "resistance" to God different from lack of faith, in other words, the natural state of an unsaved person?

The Undivided Church and theology: what everybody believes

Every self-labeled Christian believes that their theology is at least sufficient. In addition, culture, language, and politics are at times hard to disentangle from theology proper.

While it can be entertaining to count the discrete number of denominations out there -- and in theory you could say that each individual could represent a unique denomination -- in reality there are only a few key discriminators by which one might figure out where one sits in the spectrum of faith. To find these discriminators, one need not go any further than to peek at the major inflection points of Christianity itself.

Theology is never in a vacuum; it only gets stirred up when there is a conflict within the church about the practice of faith. As an item of theology is squared away with the Bible, the church encourages practices that support it, and suppresses practices which contrast it. It's not an easy process, and it's definitely a long road with twists and turns. That's because the church in general is not good at staying on the straight and narrow, apparently.



The main issue, always, everywhere, is what the Bible is: i.e. how to interpret it, and how authoritative it is. What you think about it fundamentally shapes what your faith is. From these stem all other considerations. This informs (and is informed by) your view of where the Christian finds his Regula Fidei, his supreme authority for determining faith and practice.

Stepping a bit further, however, we can spot the key issues with which the church has wrestled. These appear to be: Law, Christ, and Faith.

The earliest is the place of the Jewish Law. There were questions from the start over how authoritative Judaism was in the place of believers. This old chestnut still crops up, proving that dying to self is hard indeed. Some sectarian churches define themselves on an intermediate position in this camp.

After the first or second generation of believers died, there came fundamental questions about how Christ's divinity can possibly mix with his human nature, and indeed how it can mix with God's nature as well. This spawned all sorts of heresies -- again, not in a vacuum, but as a consequence of ideas systematized into competing practices of faith. It seems that Christian churches are typically, minimally, defined by the conclusions of Athanasius in the 4th century, which put the term Trinity on the map. It's how we generally might label a church as not-really-Christian.

Fast forward a thousand years. By this time we've ruminated a LOT on the nature of faith. The reformation was not a freak occurrance, nor was it sudden -- there were precedents before it; the history of the church is one of continuous attempts to correct and reform. It was the result of hundreds of years of contemplation and the consideration of the nature of faith versus the slow development of practice, and in fact is just a link in the 2,000-year-long chain. For example, what we think about our faith largely defines what we think the organization of the church should be. If faith is more personal, hierarchy is less useful in matters of faith, and removes itself to specifically a governing mechanism. And one starts to wonder at what point there is too much authority invested in too few men.

There's a false tension between personal and corporate faith. Christians have generally always worshipped corporately; and yet faith is always personal. Confusing the two results in abuses of both.



So, taking those three issues (Law, Christ, and Faith), how many denominations can you come up with?



Anabaptists, Baptists, and Congregationalists are essentially similar: low Law, autonomous, and trinitarian. Only hermeneutics distinguish their dogmas.

Calivinist (Presbyterian and Reformed) and Lutheran churches are more similar than not, low Law and trinitarian, with differing hermeneutics, but synodic governments.

Anglicans, Methodists and Holiness churches are (generally) low Law and trinitarian, differing mainly only in Faith (Anglicanism is episcopal, Methodism is synodic, and Holiness is autonomous). In this respect these related traditions mimic the reformation's slow movement away from episocopal government to congregationalism, or some sort of accountability system that's in between congregation and synod.

Orthodox and Catholic churches are essentially the same: medium Law, trinitarian, and episcopal.

Restorationists and Adventists are essentially similar to each other: high Law and autonomous, but divided by hermeneutics.

The Undivided Church and Authority: what Ignatius believed

I recently read a summary of Ignatius' letters, by H.P.V. Nunn, from 1946. In them there are many things confirming evangelical thought, and one thing that makes me wonder.

Ignatius wrote several letters on the way to his martyrdom in Rome, in a bit of a hurry, sort of as a "thank-you" to churches and people who supported him. With careful attention, one concludes that the text is largely Baptist-friendly: the gospel is preached; passages from Matthew, Paul, and John are clearly in Ignatius' mind; and baptism is not assumed to be salvific (i.e. it's a believer's baptism POV).

The two elements which a Texas Baptist may struggle with are: (1) an apparent sacramental value to the Lord's Supper, and (2) a perhaps personal opinion that martyrdom is a required part of his justification.

One element which tends to reassure me, on the other hand, is Ignatius' mentions of the office of Bishop. Ignatius places a very high value on the authority of the "Bishop and presbyters and deacons". This formula shows up more than once. Therefore it is clear in Ignatius' mind that the church has a human monarchical head: one head honcho, one big cheese, practically or potentially acting as a representative of God.

If this makes you think of Rome, the CofE, or the Orthodox churches, don't. While affirming the role of the Bishop in other letters, he yet doesn't name, imply, or address the Bishop of Rome, ever. The implication is crystal clear: he believed in local monarchical administration by a Bishop, with an attending council of Elders (presbyters), and aided by Deacons. Local autonomy.

Well if that part doesn't sound downright evangelical or Baptist, I don't know what does. All the Baptist churches I know of -- and all the evangelical ones as well, and heck, even the Plymouth Brethren ones -- have:

(1) A "lead pastor". Usually (but not always!!) the main preacher.
(2) A presbytery council of sorts. Some call them pastors, or associate pastors. Some call them elders. It sure seems like the New Testament presbuteros. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck...
(3) Deacons.

I've attended two Plymouth Brethren churches here in Dallas. They were very strictly elder-deacon church models, very New Testament. Even so, there was always a chief elder. In both cases, the chief elder was not the preaching elder. So in praxis these churches could easily be fit in the same church model as your typical omnipotent-Pastor Baptist church. They are on opposite ends of the same spectrum. The EFCA church I currently attend (link) is closer to a Baptist model.

OK, the official term is Congregational.

The Lord's Supper issue will require more reading. Baptists think Communion is an ordinance, not a sacrament -- i.e. it's just a remembrance. But that something has sacramental value to a believer isn't the same as saying it has salvific value; i.e. the washing of water doesn't save the unregenerate.  So his belief appears clear, that communion was to him sacramental. So what? Maybe the Baptists should re-evaluate Zwingli on this one, and move closer to Calvin or Luther.

The Undivided Church and Baptism

It appears that, although error seems to have been compounded after Constantine created the State Church, still error began creeping into the church almost from the beginning. Baptism, as practiced in the New Testament, was of course for those who first believed (of course, they were in a unique point in time) -- ambiguous passages notwithstanding, the unambiguous ones are plain.

As understood by the first Christians, baptism was seen as a replacement for circumcision. Jewish Christians would have understood this, and this fits with Christ's words as a teacher of the law, a fulfiller of the law, and a redactor of the law.

Unfortunately, rather than just being seen as an outward profession of inward conversion, it also came to be physically equated with circumcision, to be performed on infants of Christian parents. This dovetails with the establishment of the Christian religion as the state religion of Rome, and the need to record births officially for tax purposes.

The other, more sinister error is in giving baptism a salvific value. This caused bizarre behavior initially, such as holding off on baptism until one is on one's deathbed... Because apparently baptism was seen as a 'free pass' for forgiving your past sins. But once you used your free pass, you couldn't use it again. Constantine did it this way, thinking that his bases would be covered. But his actions do not support those of a living faith in the Son of God, but rather the superstitions of Sol Invictus.

Paleo-Orthodoxy and the Undivided Church

I find great attraction in Paleo-Orthodoxy. It seems to be a way to look for a useful definition of the church; to peel back the layers of accretion disguising the Church, what it means to be a part of the gathering of believers (ekklesia) in Christ.

It also seems more honest than the term "Undivided Church". Even the church fathers were divided on matters, or worse: Athanasius stood alone. So maybe this is an oblique way to speak about, and learn about, schism.

Note that the church was divided before the Great Schism of 1054. It also drifted into heresy before and since then (Athanasius stood alone). The church split after Chalcedon (451 AD). If I recall, that's how we got rid of Nestorius, who was apparently falsely accused of being a dyophysite. In the process of getting rid of him, we also lost Antioch, which seems to have had the most clear-headed exegetes of scripture at the time. (I've heard it said that had we not lost Antioch, we may have avoided the Reformation). So it seems that the term "united" is a loaded one.

Christ's intention was unity. In his Institutes, Calvin argues well that the Bible means unity in the sense of the Church: that the Gospel is preached rightly, that the sacraments are administered rightly, and that doctrine doesn't get in the way of the above.  Other elements are important (appointing elders, what deacons do, how church discipline works, and a seriously healthy desire to stick with the church even when it's as bad as Corinth was in Paul's day), but the Gospel and the Sacraments are the main things.

Does that mean minsters should be recognized from church to church? Yes.

Does that mean not withholding communion from believers from other churches? Yes.

Does that mean agreement on doctrine?  Yes, there's a core confession, probably embodied in the Nicene or Chalcedonian creeds (which I suspect Christians already know of and agree with), with all else being optional and non-binding.

Does that mean adherence to Christ's lordship? Yes.

Biblicism

I'm reading this article:

www.frame-poythress.org/frame_articles/Biblicism.htm

...and I'm finding I agree with a lot of it. One sharp point he draws, more than once, is here:

"...scriptural principles must be applied to situations, and to understand the situation it is legitimate to consider data from history, sociology, and other sciences. But Scripture alone provides the ultimate norms for evaluating these data."

So things like evangelism, church planting, and worship, can take notes from all fields of study, but the norms -- the rules -- the final authority -- the mandate -- comes from Scripture. To do it backwards is to have the tail wag the dog.

But we can't expect cut-and-dried rules. Scripture tends to leave a lot of wiggle-room, a lot more than human rules, and (gasp) even encourage creativity in application. That's why missionaries learn the local languages, wear local clothing, and eat local foods (I make myself a slave to everyone and what God has declared clean etc).

Another example: God chose to use human means to spread the good news. So newer forms of communication can be valid. On the other hand, 'selling' religion is clearly condemned. There's a line drawn between communication and marketing -- though marketing theorists may well have useful information for the preacher. They probably have a lot of good advice, and some of it should be listened to, but it's never on par with God's Word.

Historic Christianity 1: What we've learned in 500 years

I'll list what I think are the important items. Then, I'll list some of the thoughts of the leading reformers, where they contributed, and where they missed the mark.


1. The natural will is in bondage to sin
- Augustine
- Luther
- Calvin

2. Election originates from God
- same crowd as above
- and Aquinas too

3. All believers are priests and sprititual
- Luther

4. Limited Atonement
- In praxis, almost all of Christianity acts in
accordance with this.

5. Irresistible Grace
- Calvin
(tends to follow from #1)

6. Perseverance of the Saints
- Calvin
(tends to follow from #1)

7. 2 Ordinances only
- Zwingli, contra Luther

8. Baptism & Lord's Supper are not Salvific
- Zwingli said they're not Sacramental
- Luther and Calvin
- "Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me"

9. Hymns are good and instructional
- Luther
- contra Zwingli

10. Baptism relates a believer to a local community of believers
- Anabaptists
- contra historical "replacement theology" (i.e. everyone else)

11. Separation of church and state
- Anabaptists
- contra historical "replacement theology" (i.e. everyone else)

12. Freedom of religion
- Anabaptists
- contra historical "replacement theology" (i.e. everyone else)

13. Jesus is not merely a rabbi; he's a Moses
- prophet
- lawgiver
- replaces and updates the decalogue
- authority supersedes Moses'
- The children of Abraham are noted by their belief and trust in Messiah's promises. Just as messiah is the reality where Moses is the type, just so God's fulfillment of his promises is in the church.




Luther
1 - fallen human beings are in willing servitude to sin.
2 - the believer is justified by God's saving righteousness.
3 - the believer is a member of a holy priesthood.

Human beings are prone to legalism.

God's righteousness in Romans 1:17 is not about his judging righteousness,
but rather it is about his saving righteousness.

"Works of the law" (Rom. 3:20, 28; Gal. 2:16; 3:2, 5, 10) refers to the whole law,
both ceremonial and moral. This is the crux of Paul's argument against Judaizers: they trusted in their own works and goodness.

Fallen human beings are in *willing* servitude to sin. By nature we choose to sin,
and by nature we never choose to believe. (This is supported by the opposite promise made in Jeremiah, and Jesus' comment about physicians healing themselves - why promise a new heart if you don't need one?).

Divine election is closely related to justification. Romans 11:5-6.

Priesthood of the Believer.

Calvin
TULIP

In Calvin's Geneva, the church ran the state, and killed dissidents.

A worthy statement: "man cannot deserve heaven by his actions but rather has to accept salvation as an undeserved gift of God's mercy and love"

Here is the crux of Calvin's argument: "We know that God always acts in justice. How
that justice works is beyond our sight in this life."

In the covenant of grace, the Father chose a people, Christ promised to die for them,
and the Spirit pledged Himself to apply salvation to their hearts.

Limited atonement is a necessary position with full support of the Bible. There are
perceived tension points, but much less so than the opposite position. It is supported by Paul's concept of the Bondage of the Will (Luther) and Election. So "all" refers to "all those the Father has given Me" and also may be a shorthand for the Gentiles. Note that the parable of the Sheep and the Goats appears to also support a Limited Atonement. So thus "world" in John 3:16-17 means unregenerate believers scattered abroad among the Gentile nations as well as among the Jews. John was a Hebrew gospel, and the first Christians were Jews. They knew that "world" meant there was no more "us" vs "them". John 15:18-19. In 2 Peter 3:9, the key word is "wish" [boulomai]. It means God's "desiderative" will, rather than his resolve. Similarly 1 Tim 2:4-5 [yelei].

Zwingli vs Everyone
In Zwingli's Switzerland, the state ran the church, and killed dissidents.

Zwingli ditched the 5 spurious sacraments, stripped the 2 remaining sacraments from any mystical properties, and threw out all hymns.

To Zwingli, all sacraments were merely external signs, attestations by the faithful, but without any sacral or supernatural characteristics.

Zwingli decided that the Lord's Supper was only a commemoration; no other reformer would go that far; not Calvin, and Luther was closest to the Catholic position.

Zwingli figured thst baptism did not wash away sins; rather, it was a community act of accepting someone into the Church. Therefore it didn't matter whether it was done in infancy or adulthood. [Rob-Tyro: He forgot that baptism is the sign of the believer's belief]


...But while Luther accepted everything in church tradition that was not explicitly contrary to the scriptures, Zwingli interpreted Luther's principle sola scriptura
[only the biblical writings (not the tradition of the church)] strictly: Zwingli said that every ritual not explicitly mentioned in the Bible should be abolished, and so he did with five of the seven sacraments - only Baptism and the Lord's Supper were kept up in Switzerland's Reformed Churches. While Luther wrote himself dozens of hymns to transport the protestant convictions into the hearts of believers, the Swiss churches regarded hymns as unscriptural and provided metrical translations of the Psalms instead.

[Rob-Tyro: What is the purpose of a tradition? How do we measure a tradition against the gospel? As a protestant I believe that hymns are powerful teaching tools, especially in our denominations which lack a catechism. But I also believe that there are only two ordinances.]

Still more controversial was the interpretation of the Lord's Supper: Both Luther and
Zwingli agreed that the catholic mass was a source of much popular superstition and both wished to eliminate the notion of sacrifice (as if the church could contribute anything to salvation) as completely contrary to the reformed principle of sola gratia [all salvation due to God's grace alone]. But while Luther, being a pious man aware of his roots on the countryside, still belived in the mysterious real presence of Christ in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper, Zwingli as an intellectual sharply distinguished the material from the spiritual and was horrified of the idea that "physical objects might be the vehicles of spiritual gifts." (Chadwick, Reformation, p. 79).


Anabaptists vs Zwingli
They returned us to believer's baptism. Zwingli didn't buy it.

They also championed the separation of church and state, and the freedom of religion -- both are twined together.  Zwingli didn't buy that, either. Neither did Calvin. They proceeded to set up little theocracies, just like the English. Even the Puritans fell into that trap.

They rejected conventional Christian practices, such as wearing wedding rings, taking oaths, and participating in civil government. They adhered to a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount and Believer's Baptism [credobaptism].

Regarding a literal interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount. Can we all agree that Jesus used hyperbole as a teaching tool? And can we all agree that, after talking about plucking out eyes, that the Bible doesn't mention that people started plucking out their eyes, and in fact they understood perfectly well that He was using a figure of speech to impress a teaching into peoples' minds??