WILLIAM TYNDALECovenant Theologian, Christian MartyrPart 1: Background and Early Biography
by Jules Grisham
INTRODUCTION
“But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord. I will put my law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they all shall know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord” (Jer. 31:33-34).
These words from Jeremiah seem most appropriate to recall in any discussion of William Tyndale. His life is a testimony of faithfulness to the gospel truth, even unto death at the hands of those who would gag, muffle, or otherwise silence that saving message. William Tyndale was possessed of one overwhelming passion: to see that God’s words in Scripture be conveyed to the hands and into the ears of the common people, that they might know the freedom of life in Christ and the joy of obeying God’s gospel law of love. The new tools of humanism were showing the way to hear the words of Scripture as they were meant to be heard, in all their freshness and power, stripped of the accumulated dross of centuries of scholastic complication, and the printing press represented the emergence of a new technology which had the power to spread this revitalized message. Following Erasmus’ lead, Tyndale saw the importance of translating God’s Word into the language of common people, in order that both learned and unlearned might enjoy the benefits of this blessed revelation. And he was convinced not just that the people would derive all benefit from such access, but that the Church was perpetrating great evil in keeping them from it.
A.G. Dickens wrote that:
“In England as elsewhere, the Protestant Reformation sought first and foremost to establish a gospel-Christianity, to maintain the authority of the New Testament evidence over mere church traditions and human inventions masquerading as universally approved truths and ‘unwritten verities.’”1
And, in England, it was Tyndale upon whom fell the burden of drawing the academic enterprise of humanism out of its university setting and bringing it to the people in the form of the English Bible. “In giving them the Scripture in the common tongue,” Hughes tells us, “he was giving them power to study and come to know God’s word themselves, that they would no longer need rely on the mediatorial role of a priestly clergy, but would know God’s word as it was written on their hearts.”2 And in his pursuit of this vision, Tyndale would defy the combined powers of emperor, king, pope, and bishops to achieve a tour de force, for though he would be hounded for the last twelve years of his life, finally to be betrayed, imprisoned, and executed for it, he would persevere and publish in the English language a version of the Bible which would have an incalculable effect on English society over the next several centuries, and through the English, upon the entire world.
There is a famous incident, described by the historian John Foxe, in which
“Master Tyndall happened to be in the company of a learned man, and in communing and disputing with him drove him to that issue, that the learned man said: ‘We were better be without God’s law than the Pope’s.’ Master Tyndall, hearing that, answered him: ‘I defy the Pope and all his laws,’ and said, ‘If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plough shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.’”3
What more marvelous testimony to the fulfillment of Tyndale’s hopes, then, can be given than these words by Edward Fox, bishop of Hereford, addressed to an assembly of bishops one year after the translator’s execution as an heretic: “Make not yourselves the laughing-stock of the world; light is sprung up, and is scattering the clouds. The lay people know the Scriptures better than many of us!”4
HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ISSUES
Various theories have been put forward regarding the nature, extent, and progress of the English Reformation which bear directly on our discussion of William Tyndale. The basic question which they seek to answer is whether the English Reformation – that period and process during which England was transformed from a mostly Catholic to a mostly Protestant nation – must be understood as, in essence, an upward-driving popular phenomenon or a downward-pressing imposition by certain segments of the elite. A.G. Dickens advocates a variant of the former view. His “rapid-from-below” model of the Reformation proposes that widespread popular dissatisfaction with the religious establishment powered conversions and represented a groundswell of reforming energy which forced its way to the top. Crucial to his thesis is the persistence of Lollard presence, doctrines, and sympathies among a broad base of the English population throughout the fifteenth and into the sixteenth centuries.5 Opposed to this view is what might be called the “slow-from-the-top” model advocated by Christopher Haigh, who sees the English Reformation as an imposition of state which was only gradually, and even then only reluctantly, accepted by the populous.6
Now, with regard to William Tyndale, the first thing to keep in mind is just how early in the course of the English Reformation his life and work was. His translation of the New Testament was published in 1525, and his martyrdom in Belgium took place eleven years later, in 1536. Tyndale thus stands near the very beginning of the Reformation in England. In terms of attempting to answer the question of his influence in the Reformation, then, we must point to the obvious, which is that in giving the Bible in the common tongue to the people of England, he set in motion a change which would resound across the entire culture, in which the English would become more and more a people of the Book, whose thoughts and expression would come to be shaped to a great extent by the Bible. In this sense, certainly, in translating the Bible into the common tongue, Tyndale gave the people of England that crucial tool and resource without which Reformation – whether from above or below – would have been quite impossible.
But what of Tyndale himself? There is, or has been, something of a consensus among scholars that he was a theological nonentity, that he was on the one hand merely a translator, and on the other hand an unoriginal conveyor of Lutheran doctrine to the English public. Gordon Rupp summarized his influence as follows: “Tyndale was concerned to make known the teachings of Luther in English dress.”7 And from Philip Hughes, these devastating words: “Tyndale can hardly be reckoned a religious thinker of any real importance. The ideas he puts forth are none of them his own; nor does his development add anything of importance to their content.”8 Note how both these statements fit nicely with Haigh’s “Reformation-from-above” model. Tyndale, surely a member of England’s academic elite, is seen as conveying the teachings of that non-native-to-England system, Lutheranism.
Opposed to these views are those of Smeeton, who argues that Tyndale must be understood less as an elitist Lutheran and more as a populist and sympathizer with England’s native heresy Lollardy. His theology, Smeeton writes,
“can be understood more completely by looking at his English context, which included Lollard dissent, rather than only at contemporary continental events… Tyndale’s works found a warm popular welcome in England partially because they expressed values and opinions which were already cherished by the English dissenters.”9
So, was Tyndale something of a Lollard-sympathizer himself, as Smeeton has suggested, a populist whose crucial service to the English Reformation would be to Protestantize, by means of his translation of the Bible, the long-simmering but low-lying Lollard discontent? Or was he just an humanist-turned-Lutheran, whose translation of Scripture and accompanying margin notes reveal his doctrinal heavy-handedness and theological uncreativity, per the views of Rupp, Hughes, and others? Or, finally, was he neither distinctly Lollard nor fully Lutheran, but an original and creative theologian whose development of a covenantal theology marks him as, in some senses, the first Puritan?10 In short, was Tyndale the theological link between the radical moralism of fifteenth-century Lollardy and the Protestant (that is, emphasizing the priority of faith) moralism of seventeenth-century Puritanism? As I hope we will see, he is in many senses a crucial linking figure, both vertically – linking in his person and work the humanist enterprise of the academic elite to the pastoral needs of England’s common people – and horizontally – linking England’s Lollard past with its Puritan future.
LOLLARD BACKGROUND
“Lollard” is a pejorative word coined by an Irish Cistercian monk for the followers of John Wyclif, a scholar at Oxford during the late fourteenth century who believed that the Bible was the sole sure basis of belief and practice, and that it ought to be placed in the hands of the people. Accordingly, Wyclif, and his followers after him, translated the Scriptures into the common tongue. Copies of these were disseminated throughout England. Grounded thus in a Bible-based theology, Wyclif developed several other views which were revolutionary in the context of late Medieval Catholicism. Among them, he held that the true Church was restricted to those persons whom God had predetermined; he rejected the doctrine of transubstantiation; he cast doubts on papal supremacy; he denounced monasticism and advocated clerical marriage; he was a strong advocate of moral and fiscal reform of the clergy; and he developed an erastian view of authority, according to which the secular ruler was to be obeyed as the servant of God. Indeed, the only major Protestant doctrine which Wyclif did not elaborate clearly was justification by faith alone.11
These themes, highlighting the need of moral and ecclesiastical reform, favoring Scripture, preached to, read by, and empowering the common man, over the excessive ritualism of the late MedievalChurch and the role of the priests as intermediaries, spoke to a widespread hunger for such reforms and to an exhaustion with clerical abuses. They found widespread support among townsmen, merchants, gentry, and some of the lower clergy. According to Christopher Hill, “Bible reading was associated with the rise of an educated urban and rural middling sort: we meet with Lollard merchants and Lollard knights.”12 In short, Lollardy thrived among populations of incipient widespread literacy. But the increasingly revolutionary character of the movement tended to alienate the ruling classes, and it failed to attract the doctrinally conservative mass of peasantry.13
The movement met with catastrophe in 1414 when Sir John Oldcastle led a march of Lollards from all over the realm on London. The rebels were crushed by Henry V at St. Giles’ Fields, and after that the movement lost what influential support it had once had. It was driven underground where, leaderless and armed only with circulating manuscript copies of the Wycliffite Bible, its adherents concentrated among groups of tradesmen and artisans, but also attracting a few priests, merchants, and professional men.14
The official Church was of course opposed to these Lollard ideas, as they attacked the very basis of episcopal and priestly power and function. They came to regard that the possession of the Bible in the common tongue in the hands of the commonality was a very dangerous thing, arguing that God’s Word would of necessity be disastrously mishandled in the hands of the unwashed and unlearned. For example, they pointed out that those who were untrained in the fullness of Church doctrine might read the Pentateuch and emerge as advocates of polygamy. In response to this burgeoning threat to their power, the English bishops resolved to halt the spread of this “contagion” at its source.15
In 1408 the bishops’ Convocation at Oxford formally forbade possession of any English version of the Bible without a license from a bishop:
“The Holy Scripture is not to be translated into the vulgar tongue, nor a translation to be expounded, until it shall have been duly examined, under pain of excommunication and the stigma of heresy… We therefore enact and ordain that no one henceforth on his own authority translate any text of Holy Scripture into the English or other language, by way of a book, pamphlet, or tract, and that no book, pamphlet, or tract of this kind be read, either recently composed in the time of the said John Wyclif, or since then, or that may in future be composed, in part or in whole, publicly or privily, under pain of greater excommunication, until the translation itself shall have been approved by the diocesan of the place or if need be by a provincial council. Whoever shall do the contrary is to be punished in like manner as a supporter of heresy and error.”16
Thus it stood through the fifteenth century and beyond that reading God’s Word in the English language was banned, and possession of the Scripture in the English tongue was met by “pain of excommunication and the stigma of heresy.” Moreover, “women (except noblewomen and gentlewomen), artisans, husbandmen, laborers or servants were forbidden to read the New Testament, or to discuss it in public.”17
Note that this banning of vernacular Bibles was not reflective of the Church’s practice elsewhere. There were translations of the Scripture in everyday language in several European countries. But the circumstances were such in England, where the Church authorities were seeking to eradicate traces of the Bible-based Lollard heresy, that such a rule was enforced. In fact, the Church was more opposed to vernacular Bibles in England than anywhere else in Europe, except possibly Bohemia, home of the Wyclif-influenced “outbreak” of Hussitism.18
Dickens notes that although the historical evidence for Lollardy gets very thin through the mid-years of the fifteenth century, almost certainly indicating deep decline as a consequence of the combined effects of persecution, the absence of viable leaders, and the passage of time, the movement nevertheless seems to have experienced a revival in the 1490’s, as suddenly we see evidence of Lollards being prosecuted across England. It might well be argued that this revival was sparked, at least in part, by the advent of printing. Copies of the Lollard Scriptures were in manuscript form, and were therefore expensive and increasingly linguistically obsolete. As for expense, printing had resulted in, or at least promised, a dramatic increase in availability and affordability.19 As for the issue of obsolescence, William Tyndale would shortly address this issue by retranslating the Scripture in the ordinary language of sixteenth century Englishmen. In the meantime, printing gave great stimulus to anticlericalism.20 Rather similar to the effects of the Internet today, printing enabled the widespread dissemination of ideas whose prior expression had had more isolated effects. The power structure which had banned God’s Word was fully aware of the dangers proposed by this new medium. In a quote which is remarkable both for its paranoia and it prescience, Rowland Phillips, a Catholic loyalist during the reign of Henry VIII, is said to have spoken these words: “Either we must root out printing, or printing will root out us.”21
It was into this explosive atmosphere of official paranoia and heresy-hunting that Tyndale arrived proclaiming his intention to translate the Bible for use by the common Englishman. Before moving on to the life of Tyndale himself, however, and to the widespread discontent in academic circles found expression in the “New Learning,” or humanism, we ought briefly to mention two events in the year 1511 which provide evidence also for a significant popular discontent with the ecclesiastical establishment on the eve of the Reformation. First, we see in that year the Archbishop of Canterbury convening a council on heresy; clearly the establishment saw itself as facing at least a serious problem, if not a crisis, in its battle against the persistence of Lollard and other heretical elements. Second, and more importantly, was the Richard Hunne affair. Hunne, a Lollard sympathizer, found himself in trouble for refusing to pay burial fees, was dressed down publicly by the priest, and when he turned to the ecclesiastical authorities to complain, he found himself in prison. When they checked his home, they found a Lollard Bible in his possession. Soon after this imprisonment, he was found hanging in his cell. But it was suspected that he had been murdered by clergymen. These suspicions were supported by the findings of a jury investigating the matter, but the evidence was suppressed (until 1550!), and, under the “benefit of the clergy” statute, the guilty parties got off free. After his murder, the Church authorities, relentless in their drive to prosecute heresy, burned his dead body. These events triggered protests across London.