Memorialism (Zwinglianism)

The Story

In October 1529, at the Marburg Colloquy in Germany, the two great engines of the Protestant Reformation met face to face and discovered they could not agree on the single most important ritual in Christian worship. Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli sat across from each other in the castle of Landgrave Philip of Hesse, with the fate of a united Protestant movement hanging on one question: What happens when Christians eat bread and drink wine at the Lord’s Table?

Luther had broken with Rome on many points, but on this question he held firm: Christ is truly, really, and bodily present in the bread and wine. He reportedly wrote “Hoc est corpus meum” (“This is my body”) on the table in chalk and kept pointing to it whenever Zwingli tried to argue otherwise. Luther could not accept that Jesus’ words at the Last Supper were merely figurative.

Zwingli, the reformer of Zurich, had arrived at a different conclusion. For Zwingli, the bread and wine are symbols. They represent Christ’s body and blood; they remind believers of Christ’s sacrifice; they are powerful occasions for communal memory and gratitude. But Christ is not physically present in the elements. The ascended Christ is at the right hand of the Father — he cannot be simultaneously located in thousands of pieces of bread across Christendom. When Jesus said “This is my body,” he meant “This signifies my body,” just as he meant “I am the door” figuratively.

The Marburg Colloquy agreed on fourteen out of fifteen articles. The fifteenth — on the Lord’s Supper — broke them. Luther reportedly refused to shake Zwingli’s hand, and the Protestant movement was divided on this point from that day forward.

Zwingli’s memorialist position was subsequently condemned by the Catholic Council of Trent (1545-1563), which anathematized anyone who denied that the bread and wine are truly, really, and substantially transformed into the body and blood of Christ. But Trent was merely formalizing what the entire Catholic, Lutheran, and much of the Reformed tradition had always maintained: that the Eucharist is more than a memorial.

Despite being rejected by nearly every major institutional body at the time, Zwingli’s view quietly won the popular argument in much of Protestantism. Today, most Baptist, evangelical, and nondenominational churches practice something very close to memorialism — a crackers-and-grape-juice remembrance that would be entirely recognizable to Zwingli, even if many of the people participating have never heard his name.

What the Council Actually Said

The Council of Trent, Session XIII (1551), declared:

“If anyone denies that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ and, therefore, the whole Christ is truly, really, and substantially contained — and says that He is in it only as in a sign, or in figure, or in virtue — let him be anathema.”

Luther, for his part, wrote at Marburg:

“I cannot regard Zwingli and his followers as Christians, for they deny the plain words of Christ.”

Calvin would later attempt a middle position — affirming a real spiritual presence that was neither Zwingli’s bare memorialism nor Luther’s physical presence — but Zwingli’s simpler view proved more durable among ordinary Protestants.

Why You Might Accidentally Believe This

If you have ever taken communion and experienced it primarily as a moment of quiet personal reflection on Jesus’ death — if the bread and juice function for you as memory aids rather than as encounters with Christ’s presence — then you hold Zwingli’s position. If your church uses the language “do this in remembrance of me” as a complete description of what is happening rather than as one aspect of a richer reality, you are a memorialist.

This is the default position in much of American evangelicalism. Many believers have never heard any other view. The idea that Christ might be genuinely present in the bread and wine strikes many Protestants as either Catholic superstition or magical thinking. Zwingli’s victory in popular piety is so complete that most of his heirs do not know they are his heirs.

The Strongest Case For This View

Jesus said “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24-25). The word anamnesis (remembrance) is central to the institution narrative. If Jesus wanted to communicate that the bread would literally become his body, why would he frame the command in terms of memory?

The ascension provides a Christological argument. If Jesus’ physical body ascended to the right hand of the Father, it is located in heaven. A human body — even a resurrected and glorified one — is by nature located. It cannot be ubiquitous. Zwingli argued that affirming Christ’s bodily presence in the bread required either denying the ascension or abandoning the basic meaning of “body.”

The simplicity argument carries weight. Transubstantiation requires Aristotelian metaphysics (substance and accidents). Luther’s view requires a novel doctrine of Christ’s ubiquity. Zwingli’s view requires only a straightforward reading of figurative language — the same kind of reading we apply when Jesus says “I am the vine” without concluding he is a plant.

The Strongest Case Against

The nearly universal witness of the early church is against memorialism. Justin Martyr (c. 150 AD) wrote that the bread and wine are not common food and drink but the flesh and blood of the incarnate Jesus. Ignatius of Antioch (c. 110 AD) described the Eucharist as “the flesh of our Savior Jesus Christ.” Irenaeus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, Augustine — with varying degrees of precision, they all affirmed that something real happens to the elements. Memorialism is essentially absent from the first fifteen centuries of Christian theology.

Paul’s warning in 1 Corinthians 11:27-30 is difficult to explain on memorialist terms. He says that whoever eats and drinks “without discerning the body” eats and drinks judgment on themselves, and that this is why some among them are sick and have died. If the bread is merely a symbol, why would failing to “discern the body” carry such grave physical consequences?

Jesus’ bread of life discourse in John 6 pushes in the same direction. “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53). Many of his disciples found this saying hard and left him (John 6:60, 66). If Jesus merely meant “remember me,” the scandal of the teaching evaporates.

What the New Testament Actually Says

The institution narratives (Matthew 26:26-28, Mark 14:22-24, Luke 22:19-20, 1 Corinthians 11:23-26) are spare and direct: “This is my body.” “This is my blood.” The question is whether “is” means “is literally” or “represents,” and the text does not resolve this by adding a philosophical gloss.

Paul’s treatment in 1 Corinthians 10:16 uses participatory language: “The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a sharing (koinonia) in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a sharing in the body of Christ?” The word koinonia implies real participation, not merely symbolic recall.

John 6 presents the most provocative language, with Jesus insisting that his followers must eat his flesh and drink his blood, using the graphic Greek verb trogo (to gnaw or chew) rather than a more delicate alternative. Whether this passage refers to the Eucharist specifically or to faith in Christ more broadly is debated, but the visceral language resists purely symbolic readings.

The New Testament does not offer a metaphysical theory of the Eucharist. What it offers is language of real presence, real participation, and real consequence — language that most Christian traditions have found too weighty for memorialism to carry.

Further Reading

• Huldrych Zwingli, On the Lord’s Supper (1526)
• Martin Luther, That These Words of Christ… Still Stand Firm (1527)
• John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.17 (1559)
• Council of Trent, Session XIII, Decree on the Eucharist (1551)
• Brian Gerrish, Grace and Gratitude: The Eucharistic Theology of John Calvin (1993)