Huldrych Zwingli has long been a problematic character in the history of the early Reformation. Inevitably, endless comparisons with Martin Luther and John Calvin have been drawn, usually leaving Zwingli the lesser figure. But the issues run much deeper. Both Luther and Calvin died in their beds after relatively long and productive careers as preachers, writers, and churchmen. Zwingli died suddenly in a botched military campaign that led to a fierce backlash against the reform movement he had led for less than a decade. The nature of Zwingli's demise, his advocacy of religious coercion of recalcitrant Catholics, the drowning of Anabaptists, and his vituperative dispute with Luther over the sacrament of the Lord's Supper have shaped his contested legacy. Despite the best efforts of his successor, Heinrich Bullinger, to defend Zwingli's memory, the very mention of his name poured oil on confessional hostilities.

Matthias Neugebauer has written a thoughtful and accessible account of Zwingli's ethics, by which he means the Reformer's understanding of the Christian life. The book succeeds on several fronts. The author is clear that ethics in the modern sense would have been incomprehensible to Reformation figures. Zwingli's understanding of what constituted ethical conduct, or morality, was grounded in divine, not human, goodness. The beginning point is God and God's will in creation, and Neugebauer clearly sets out the theological framework for Zwingli's conception of human righteousness. Following Luther, Zwingli argued that human freedom becomes possible only when one recognizes one's complete inability to fulfill God's will. Only the radical gift of grace in Christ enables conformity to the divine image. Without faith, individual men and women are mired in self-love, which Zwingli saw as the root of corruption in this world and of eternal damnation in the next.

Neugebauer is correct that Zwingli's focus was on the life of the Christian. The priest's experiences serving as a military chaplain in the Italian wars, his developing hatred of the mercenary service, and his outrage at the way in which the poor were neglected while the wealthy continued to line their pockets meant that his theology emerged from his complex relationship to the world in which he lived. When he nearly died of the plague, in 1519, he composed a song that gave expression to his utter dependence on the goodness of God and the healing balm of Christ.

The author covers a lot of ground in a relatively short book. Following the opening treatment of Zwingli's doctrine of God and his anthropology, there is a helpful exploration of the language of virtue. One of the most enduring and challenging questions in reading the Reformer's theology lies in his relationship to non-Christian sources. Like his great mentor Erasmus, Zwingli read the ancients with great appreciation, believing that the wisdom of antiquity was reconcilable with Christianity. However, Zwingli parted company with Erasmus and his ethical religiosity through a rigorous adherence to scripture as the only source of true virtue. Insofar as the ancients concurred with the teaching of the Word, it was the Holy Spirit working through them, not their own innate gifts.

The least effective part of the book is the author's commendable effort to trace the realization of Zwingli's ethics in his treatment of family, community, and the state. The reader is briefly taken through important topics such as sacraments, celibacy, and work (including idleness), and helpful quotations are provided from the relevant texts. Yet these summaries lose sight of where the book begins, which was with the integration of Zwingli's life and thought. There is no sense of the complexities and compromises involved in the process of building a new church, nor is much attention given to Zwingli's radical opponents and their competing view of Christian society. Zwingli the embattled Reformer disappears. Perhaps even more concerning are the extremely minimal reflections offered on Zwingli's understanding of the church, the body in which the ethical life is lived and sustained. The questions of coercion and Zwingli's militarism are addressed briefly at the end, and rather uncritically. It is in the theological discussion that this book makes a helpful contribution to the need to reassess this divisive Reformer.