Jumpstarter 1 of 10

Direct Answer Based on Dean Taylor’s teaching, Zwingli saw God’s severity as righteous and purposeful—God may “make whole or break,” even through death, in order to protect holiness and keep evil from spreading. That challenges the modern instinct to assume God’s main goal is our comfort, health, and a long life.

Support from Transcript:

• During the plague, Zwingli wrote as someone who thought he would die: “Thy purpose fulfill. Nothing can be too severe for me. I am thy vessel. For you to make whole or break to pieces.”
• He interpreted possible death as protective: “if you take hence my spirit from this earth, you do it so that it will not grow evil and will not mar the pious lives of others.”
• Dean notes the plague was viewed as “a curse from God,” so healing or death were interpreted in terms of God’s favor and judgment.
• Zwingli “almost died,” and this “made a profound effect on” him, pushing him toward a sober submission to God’s will.
• The poem is described as “a very pious way”—he “looked to the will of God as being able to take him or leave him.”