Zwingli vs Calvin

Zurich, 1523 · Geneva, 1536 · Agreement, 1549

Two cities, two generations

Zwingli led the Reformation in Zurich. He was appointed people’s priest at the Grossmünster in 1518, published his 67 Articles for a public disputation in January 1523, and died in battle at Kappel on October 11, 1531.²

Calvin was French. He published the first edition of his Institutes in 1536 and was persuaded by Guillaume Farel to stay in Geneva late that year. He spent 1538 to 1541 in Strasbourg learning from Martin Bucer, then led Geneva’s church from 1541 until his death in 1564.³

So the two never met. By the time Calvin’s work began, Zwingli had been dead 5 years, and Zurich was in the hands of Heinrich Bullinger.⁴

The Lord’s Supper: where they differed

Both men rejected the Mass as a sacrifice, and both rejected the medieval teaching that the bread and wine change their substance. The question that divided the Reformation was what the bread and wine are, and what happens when a believer receives them.⁵

Zwingli: a remembrance and a sign

Zwingli’s 18th article puts his view in one sentence:

That Christ, having sacrificed himself once, is to eternity a certain and valid sacrifice for the sins of all faithful, wherefrom it follows that the mass is not a sacrifice, but is a remembrance of the sacrifice and assurance of the salvation which Christ has given us.

Sixty-seven Articles (1523), article 18⁶

Against Luther, Zwingli read “This is my body” as “This signifies my body.” Britannica summarizes his teaching this way: Christ is present to the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit, as the bread and wine signify. Whether Zwingli held a bare “memorial” view is debated. W. P. Stephens and others argue that in his last writings, from 1530, Zwingli affirmed a true and sacramental presence of Christ in the Supper. Other scholars read him more simply.⁷

Calvin: a true feeding on Christ

Calvin wrote that the Supper is no mere picture. In the Institutes he grants that Christ’s flesh is “at such a distance from us in respect of place,” then insists that distance is no barrier:

Therefore, what our mind does not comprehend let faith conceive, viz. that the Spirit truly unites things separated by space. That sacred communion of flesh and blood by which Christ transfuses his life into us, just as if it penetrated our bones and marrow, he testifies and seals in the Supper, and that not by presenting a vain or empty sign, but by there exerting an efficacy of the Spirit by which he fulfils what he promises.

Institutes 4.17.10⁸

Calvin also said plainly where he thought Zwingli fell short. In his Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper (1541) he credits Zwingli and Oecolampadius with exposing “an execrable idolatry,” then adds:

Meantime, while engrossed with this point, they forgot to show what presence of Jesus Christ ought to be believed in the Supper, and what communion of his body and blood is there received.

Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, section 56⁹

In the same treatise he faulted Luther on the other side, for “hyperbolical forms of speech very difficult to be borne.” Calvin saw himself standing between them.¹⁰

What they shared

Scripture over the church’s approval. Zwingli’s first article says that all who claim the Gospel needs the church’s confirmation “err and slander God.” Calvin wrote that Scripture works like glasses for weak eyes: it “dissipates the darkness, and shows us the true God clearly.”¹¹

Christ alone. “Christ is the only way to salvation for all who ever were, are and shall be,” reads Zwingli’s third article. Calvin’s Institutes makes justification by faith “the principal ground on which religion must be supported.”¹²

The Mass is not a sacrifice. Article 18, above, is Zwingli’s statement. Calvin’s Short Treatise opens its account of the controversy by praising Zwingli for attacking the same error.¹³

God’s sovereignty. Britannica notes that Zwingli stressed the sovereignty of God, balanced by a milder view of original sin. Calvin defined predestination as “the eternal decree of God, by which he determined with himself whatever he wished to happen with regard to every man.”¹⁴

How Zurich and Geneva came together

In 1549, Bullinger and Calvin signed the Consensus Tigurinus, an agreement on the sacraments between the churches of Zurich and Geneva. Britannica dates the beginning of the Reformed tradition, “the fusion of Zwinglian and Calvinist thought,” to that agreement and to Bullinger’s Second Helvetic Confession of 1566.¹⁵

When a Lutheran critic later attacked the agreement, Calvin answered that Zwingli and Oecolampadius, “who were known to be faithful servants of Jesus Christ,” would not, if they were still alive, “change one word in our doctrine.”¹⁶

Questions people ask

Did Zwingli and Calvin ever meet?

No. Zwingli died in October 1531, when Calvin was a 22-year-old student who had not yet broken with the Roman church. Calvin’s public work began with the Institutes in 1536.¹⁷

Did Calvin agree with Zwingli about the Lord’s Supper?

Partly. He agreed that the Mass is not a sacrifice and that Christ’s body is in heaven, and he said so. He thought Zwingli had stopped short of saying what believers receive in the Supper. See the Short Treatise passage above.¹⁸

Was Zwingli a Calvinist?

No. “Calvinism” names Calvin’s interpretation of Christian teaching, and Calvin’s first Institutes appeared 5 years after Zwingli died. The wider name for the tradition both men belong to is “Reformed.” See the Home page on what “Reformed” means.¹⁹

Who carried on Zwingli’s work?

Heinrich Bullinger, who led Zurich for 44 years after Zwingli’s death and reached the 1549 agreement with Calvin. Read his page.²⁰

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By Casey Case · Sources last checked October 4, 2026

Sources

1. Dates from Britannica, “Huldrych Zwingli,” “John Calvin,” and “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. Quotations are cited below. ↩︎
2. Britannica, “Huldrych Zwingli,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. ↩︎
3. Britannica, “John Calvin,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. ↩︎
4. Britannica, “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. Bullinger succeeded Zwingli in Zurich in 1531. ↩︎
5. Britannica, “Huldrych Zwingli,” section on relations with Luther; John Calvin, Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper (1541), sections 55 to 58, in Tracts Relating to the Reformation, vol. 2, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 1849), pp. 194-196, Internet Archive. ↩︎
6. Zwingli, Sixty-seven Articles (1523), article 18, in Selected Works of Huldreich Zwingli, ed. Samuel Macauley Jackson (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1901), p. 112, Internet Archive. ↩︎
7. Britannica, “Huldrych Zwingli,” section on relations with Luther. On the scholarly debate: W. P. Stephens, Zwingli: An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford University Press, 1992; reissued 2001), as summarized in Michael A. G. Haykin, “Zwingli Against the Zwinglians?,” Andrew Fuller Center, May 2013. ↩︎
8. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Henry Beveridge (1845), book 4, chapter 17, section 10, CCEL. Beveridge’s text has a dash before “viz.”; this page prints a comma. ↩︎
9. Calvin, Short Treatise on the Lord’s Supper, section 56, in Tracts, vol. 2, p. 195. ↩︎
10. Calvin, Short Treatise, section 58, in Tracts, vol. 2, p. 196. ↩︎
11. Zwingli, Sixty-seven Articles, article 1, in Jackson, Selected Works, p. 111; Calvin, Institutes 1.6.1, trans. Beveridge, CCEL. ↩︎
12. Zwingli, Sixty-seven Articles, article 3, in Jackson, Selected Works, p. 111; Calvin, Institutes 3.11.1, trans. Beveridge, CCEL. ↩︎
13. Calvin, Short Treatise, section 56, in Tracts, vol. 2, p. 195. ↩︎
14. Britannica, “Huldrych Zwingli,” closing assessment; Calvin, Institutes 3.21.5, trans. Beveridge, CCEL. ↩︎
15. Britannica, “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. ↩︎
16. Calvin, Mutual Consent in Regard to the Sacraments between the Ministers of the Church of Zurich and John Calvin, with Calvin’s exposition, in Tracts, vol. 2, p. 210. ↩︎
17. Britannica, “John Calvin” and “Huldrych Zwingli,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. Britannica places Calvin’s conversion “sometime between 1532 and 1534.” ↩︎
18. Calvin, Short Treatise, sections 56 and 58, in Tracts, vol. 2, pp. 195-196. ↩︎
19. Britannica, “John Calvin” and “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. ↩︎
20. Britannica, “Heinrich Bullinger,” accessed Oct. 4, 2026. ↩︎