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First Zurich Disputation on Baptism  

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The Reformation at 500

First Zurich Disputation on Baptism  

January 17, 1525

After the December discussions with the leading clergymen of Zurich did not go well, the critics of infant baptism petitioned the Town Council for another chance to make their case.  The Council responded by scheduling a formal doctrinal disputation on the matter of baptism on January 17, inviting clergy and laity alike to the Town Hall where the Councilors would be assembled to hear the arguments and decide on the canton’s policy.1    

At the disputation, Conrad Grebel, Felix Mantz, and Wilhelm Reublin made the case against infant baptism. Heinrich Bullinger, who would later succeed Zwingli as lead pastor for the churches of Zurich, attended the disputation and recorded his impressions, summing up their argument as follows: “Baptism should be given to believers to whom the gospel had previously been preached, who have understood it, and who thereupon requested baptism for themselves, and killing the old Adam, desired to live a new life. Because infants knew nothing of all this, baptism did not apply to them.” They “pointed out that the apostles had not baptized infants but only adult discerning people. Therefore, it should still be done in that manner.”2 As Bullinger’s summary indicates, the critics’ argument showed a literal hermeneutic: they were following the precise order of action that they saw Christ giving to his disciples in the Great Commission, and they were pleading that the Zurich church follow the regulative principle for rituals that they previously thought was guiding Zurich’s reforms under Zwingli’s influence.  

But Zwingli argued that his principles for worship did not rule out infant baptism. He claimed there was ambiguity about apostolic practices of baptism and that people’s baptisms by John the Baptist “preceded acquaintance with Jesus.”3 Without clarity in the New Testament, he argued, the church should look to Old Testament practices, and he considered circumcision of infants to function as a theological precursor of baptism, performed for those who “are still to come to faith.”4   

Zwingli’s arguments were enough for Bullinger, and the Town Council. Bullinger recorded: “At the conclusion of the disputation, the Anabaptists were earnestly admonished by the authorities to forsake their opinion and to be peaceful, since they could not support their cause with God’s Word.” But the admonition “had no effect on them”; the young men responded that “they must obey God more than men.”5

Likely alarmed by this response, the Council published a mandate the next day that declared it an error to hold “that young children should not be baptized before and until they have come to their days [of accountability] and know what faith is” and threatened banishment for those who failed to have their children baptized within eight days.6 

About This Series

This post is part of a series entitled “The Reformation at 500: Timeline of the Free-Church Movement.” Click here for more information on this series.

Featured image courtesy of the Wick’sche Sammlung, ca. 1575, Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Ms. F 23, fol. 294.

Illustration of one of the Zurich Disputations on Baptism (Jan. or Mar. 1525) by Heinrich Thomann (Zürich, 1605-1606), in Heinrich Bullinger, Kopienband zur zürcherischen Kirchen- und Reformationsgeschichte.  Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Ms B 316.   

  1. Notice of a Public Disputation on Baptism (Zurich, Jan. 15, 1525), in The Sources of Swiss Anabaptism: The Grebel Letters and Related Documents, ed. Leland Harder (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1985), 333. ↩︎
  2. Heinrich Bullinger, History of the Reformation, in ibid., 335. ↩︎
  3. Zwingli developed this argument in writing in a letter that he wrote to fellow reformers in Strasbourg the month before: see Zwingli to Lambert and other Brethren in Strasbourg (Zurich, Dec. 16, 1524), in ibid., 305 ↩︎
  4. Ibid., 304, 306. Zwingli elaborated on these rationales in a treatise he wrote later in 1525, titled Concerning Baptism, Re-baptism, and Infant Baptism. That text prompted Balthasar Hubmaier, reformer of Waldshut, to publish a refutation: On the Christian Baptism of Believers (1525). ↩︎
  5. Heinrich Bullinger, History of the Reformation, in ibid., 335. ↩︎
  6. Council Mandate for Infant Baptism (Zurich, Jan. 18, 1525), in ibid., 336. ↩︎

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