Image Repair Analysis, Case Study

Huldrych Zwingli

In this installment of Image Repair Analysis, we’ll take a look at the statements of a very prominent figure in Church history: Huldrych Zwingli. Where I am going with this: Image Repair is not new. I would argue that you can find it as early as Genesis 3; I’ll provide an analysis of that passage one day. But Zwingli gives us a poignant example as well.

Zwingli was one of the movers and shakers of the Protestant Reformation: arguably #3 behind Martin Luther and John Calvin. Even today, there are churches that align themselves with Zwingli.

But the Reformers were not without profound faults. Calvin had a man burned at the stake; Luther was an anti-Semite, supported the putdown of the peasant’s rebellion, and supported drowning the mentally handicapped.

And Zwingli was sexually immoral.

I didn’t know this until a friend of mine tipped me off to this thread on Twitter/X.

Let’s give Zwingli (I’m going to abbreviate and refer to him as Z) a look here.

A friend of Z’s reached out to him. He had heard from some “critical fault-finders” who were accusing Z of having seduced “a daughter of an official”. That friend reached out to Z for his own official word “from the horse’s mouth” that the story was bovine ejectus.

Except Z could not credibly deny what he had done.

Here is a copy of Z’s response. It is incomplete because Johannes Schulthess burned part of the letter. (Mr. Hann’s thread gives that story, too.)

So let’s look at Z’s letter.

Usually, when a religious leader addresses a scandal, he leads off with BOLSTERING or TRANSCENDENCE. But Z doesn’t do that here: he addresses the issue matter-of-factly: a friend has written to him concerning a rumor of his having “seduced the daughter of an influential citizen here.” So far, so good.

The next sentence is BOLSTERING via TRIANGULATION. He appeals to his friends who are offended; this gives him an elevated status coming out of the gate. When people do this, it usually is a telltale sign that a DARVO—Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender—is coming. So with that in mind, be on the lookout for what follows.

Now this is a full-on attack: he refers to the “rumor” as “slander”, and a “false rumour”. This is both a DENIAL and an ATTACK.

If the rumor were indeed false, he could have ended the letter right there: a simple statement that “This is completely false; I did no such thing, and I am prepared to defend my good name in a court of law” would have been sufficient, if he were innocent.

But, as we’re going to see, Z is not innocent. What he follows with here is BOLSTERING via TRANSCENDENCE. He refers to a vow he made “not to touch any woman”, and referring to Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 7. It is transcendence because he is framing his status by citing an oath that is based on the words of a great Apostle. Get ready for what follows.

What have we here? “I succeeded poorly”. This is MINIMIZATION. Why? He is now framing this in terms of success (“I succeeded poorly”) rather than failure (“I failed with great enthusiasm.”)

And while I suggest “I failed with great enthusiasm” tongue-in-cheek, it would have been closer to the facts of the case, which we learn as we read: “In Glarus I kept my resolution about six months, in Einsiedeln about a year, not longer…there were many seducers…I fell and became like the dog who, according to the Apostle Peter, turned back to his own vomit.”

Sadly, he is confessing to multiple failures, but even as he does that, he is starting to complete the DARVO, as he is REVERSING VICTIM AND OFFENDER when he says, “There were many seducers”. Remember: the charge was that HE had seduced a woman. And now he is saying that “there were many seducers”, suggesting that he would have kept his vow except for all those seductive women.

Here he continues the DARVO via TRIANGULATION. He starts out by attacking the father of the woman he seduced (“[he] frequently accuses his wife…a faithful and modest woman…of adultery). He is very creative here: he is using the good character of his mistress’s mom to attack her father—who is accusing him of adultery—in order to BOLSTER his own character and MINIMIZE the perceived severity of his own offense. The implication: “the father is a known liar, so not everything he says is completely true.” It’s pure DARVO.

Now he starts directing the DARVO at his mistress. But he begins with a sympathetic posture while still attacking her father: pointing out how he kicked her out of his house and didn’t provide anything for her—effectively banishing her to poverty, as employment prospects for women were not high back then. “She is the daughter of this kind of man.” But he’s about to turn the guns on her.

Here he begins with BOLSTERING via TRIANGULATION, CLAIMING GOOD INTENTIONS, and MINIMIZATION. Look at it: “I…state briefly my principles [BOLSTERING]…I resolved not to destroy a marriage [CLAIMING GOOD INTENTIONS]…did not want to seduce a virgin [CLAIMING GOOD INTENTIONS, also an ATTACK against the woman]…did not mean to defile a nun [CLAIMING GOOD INTENTIONS, also an ATTACK against the woman]…I call as witnesses all with whom I have lived [BOLSTERING via TRIANGULATION]…I do not now act so abominably [BOLSTERING via MINIMIZATION].

He has attacked the woman’s character. The irony: she is of lesser character for presumably not being a virgin, whereas he is of pristine character in spite of multiple sexual offenses. This is total minimization.

Here he brings the attention back to himself and his own struggles, engaging in BOLSTERING—appealing to his study of philosophers and theologians in an attempt to ward off “unchaste desires”—in the process of CASTING HIMSELF AS A VICTIM. In effect, he is suggesting that he tried hard, but his desires overcame him. Then he MINIMIZES by suggesting that when he failed at Glarus—which he is admitting to multiple offenses—he did it “secretly”. Except, in so doing, he speaks volumes against his own character: he is presenting himself as a great man of God but who is secretly a sexual predator.

Now he opens fire on the woman. He refers to her as “That girl”—which should cause the reader to harken back to Bill Clinton, when referred to Monica Lewinsky as “that woman”. This is a full-on ATTACK. He calls her “a ‘virgin’ during the day and a ‘woman’ at night; everyone…knew exactly her role; she had affairs with many men, finally with me; she seduced me with more than flattering words;" When he says “she seduced me”, he is CASTING HIMSELF AS A VICTIM. This is full-on DARVO. And it doesn’t end here.

He continues the DARVO by accusing her of instigating (“..she flirted with me”). And then he addresses her pregnancy, suggesting that he might not be the father (“…she became pregnant on my account, if she can know this definitely”) as he attacks her character via TRIANGULATION (“no one in Einsiedeln accuses me of having deprived her of virginity…all her relatives know that she was no longer a virgin when I came to Einsiedeln…she had relations with several clerical assistants…she herself does not deny it.”)

Again, this is a DARVO that serves to reduce the perception of his own offense and even stoke empathy for him as a victim. This is exactly what politicians and religious leaders—caught with their pants down in scandals—do every day.

Here, he continues the DARVO. Now, with the following sentence, he begins to turn the guns on his accusers: “now these fine moralizers…restore her virginity…to accuse me of a crime which is far from me.”

What he has done here is attack her virginity—to reduce the perception of his offense—and then attack his accusers (he calls them “moralizers”), suggesting that they are lying about her and therefore about him.

In point of fact, he is deflecting from the elephant in the room: he has confessed to several sexual offenses, not just with the woman he is accused of seducing. There is no Biblical justification for any of his offenses, and they are clearly offenses of a nature that disqualify him from church office by even the most charitable reading of 1 Timothy 3.

Now, he continues the DARVO by MINIMIZATION: suggesting that because he slept with less-than-honorable women, that this somehow makes him less culpable. Except that, as a proclaimed man of God, he was responsible for treating women with honor, even as Jesus treated the woman at the well, or how Jesus treated Mary, or how Jesus treated Mary Magdalene…you get the picture. If he encountered a prostitute, then it was his duty to treat her with dignity and not take advantage of her vulnerability.

Here, he continues DARVO by MINIMIZATION (“no virgin has ever been defiled by me”), even as he confesses to having made the woman pregnant.

Notice that he minimizes two ways: he denies having had sexual relations with a virgin; and he does it with passive voice (“no virgin has ever been defiled by me”). He is basically saying, “I am not an adulterer; I am just a whoremonger.”

He is minimizing, all while implicating himself as a moral degenerate straight out of II Peter 2.

Now he switches to DARVO via TRANSCEDENCE. He appeals to his piety (“I have long ago confessed my guilt to my Highest God”), and in the process he is telling on himself: by referring to having confessed to “my highest God”, he is admitting that he is serving other gods.

But by appealing to Solomon—”a just man stumbles seven times”—when referring to “those who wish me evil”, it is ATTACKING via TRANSCENDENCE, as the implication is that he is God’s anointed. He is attacking them by imposing on their duty to forgive him, as if their forgiveness of him qualifies him as a church leader.

Ultimately, Zwingli’s letter is non-stop DARVO that seeks to MINIMIZE the severity of his offenses, cast him as a victim, impugn his accusers, and justify his own continued ministry.

In the process, however, Zwingli made it worse for himself, not better. In his letter, he implicated himself in multiple sexual offenses, causing at least one pregnancy of which he does not appear to have taken material responsibility, and a trail of Image Repair that does not confess or show any empathy for those he harmed, and reflects very little evidence of contrition or repentance.

The implication: Zwingli is someone whose theological takes must be evaluated against the backdrop of what he has revealed about himself.