If Luther hated Hoen’s views then Zwingli loved them. Rode went first to Wittenberg where he was given very short shrift! From there he moved on to Oecolampadius in Basel, to Bucer in Strasbourg and finally to Zwingli in Zurich. Hoen was an elderly man and so gave his writings to a friend named Hinne Rode who took them to various Reformation cities around Europe. Hoen actually wrote his views on the Lord’s Supper before Carlstadt (probably around 1521), but they did not begin to circulate until 1524-25. In 1524 Luther also rejected a much more scholarly view, that of a Dutch lawyer named Cornelius Hoen. Hence his comment addressed to Zwingli in 1527 that he would rather “Drink pure blood with the Pope than mere wine with the fanatics” (the German word here translated fanatics, schwarmer, is a particularly strong term of abuse). This episode is important, however, because thereafter any spiritual interpretation of the Lord’s Supper was associated in Luther’s mind with the fanaticism of Carlstadt. Somewhat amusingly, he says that this is the equivalent of saying “Take eat here sits Hans in the little red jacket” (ie there is no basis for this whatsoever in the text). Luther, never one to suffer a fool gladly, denounced this view as lunacy and as being against the plain text of Scripture. When Christ spoke the words “This is My Body” he was not, according to Carlstadt, actually pointing at the bread but at His own physical body. On the issue of the real presence Carlstadt taught a pretty nonsensical interpretation. He allowed priests to marry and took a lead himself by marrying someone more than 20 years his junior! He encouraged the tearing down of statues and images of the saints in the churches and he initiated the first properly evangelical communion service where “lay persons” were given wine as well as bread, something which Luther had argued for but had yet to carry through. Carlstadt began to move the Lutheran Reformation in an increasingly radical direction. Whilst Luther was removed from the scene, the leadership of the Wittenberg reform movement passed into the hands of Carlstadt. It was during this time that Luther translated the whole of the New Testament into German. After the Diet of Worms (1521) Luther was taken into hiding for his own protection by Duke Frederick the Wise of Saxony. The first spiritual or symbolic rather than literal interpretation of Jesus’ words “This is My Body” in the Reformation came through the teaching of Luther’s colleague and academic superior at the University of Wittenberg, Andreas Carlstadt. As we will see, Zwingli was anything but original on the issue of the Lord’s Supper although it is he who in evangelical circles who is usually regarded as the man who gave us a purely symbolic interpretation of what happens when we break bread. He was always just a little too keen to stress his originality and independence of thought. Ulrich Zwingli, the leader of the Reformation in Zurich, Switzerland, was one of those theologians who strikes me as rather pleased with himself.
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