An Introduction To
THE THEOLOGY OF WILLIAM TYNDALE
By Gary Ray Branscome
Although English speaking Christians, and to a certain
extent Christians around the world, owe a great debt of gratitude to William Tyndale, many know little about him. I hope that this essay
will help in some little way to rectify that fact.
While William Tyndale’s
greatest work was, undoubtedly, his translation of the New Testament, the
purpose of this essay is to introduce the reader to what he believed and taught
rather than his translation. Furthermore, because much of what I say was
originally written as an informal letter I may have omitted some references. However,
much of the information I offer comes from the book “Luther’s English
Connection,” by James Edward McGoldrick, and I want
to give him adequate credit for the research he has done.
William Tyndale
While the precise time and place of William Tyndale’s birth is not known, there is some evidence that
he was born near the border of
While William Tyndale was at
the university he came to faith in Christ through reading the Greek New
Testament. At the same time, he was an outspoken critic of clerical ignorance
and corruption, and saw instruction from the Scriptures as the best means to
promote popular piety and church reform. For that reason, while living in the
home of Sir John Walsh, he resolved to translate the Bible into English.
However, finding publication impossible in
Scripture Alone
Although the writings of Tyndale
are far less extensive than those of Luther, there is little disagreement
between Luther and Tyndale. Like Luther, Tyndale believed that the Bible constitutes the only saving
revelation from God, that personal faith in Jesus Christ as one's only Savior
is prerequisite to the proper understanding of the sacred text, and that
Scripture must be allowed to interpret itself. Concerning doctrine, Tyndale wrote:
All doctrine that
builds… upon Christ to put your trust and confidence in His blood, is of God,
and true doctrine; and all doctrine that withdraws your hope from Christ is of
the devil. [Tyndale, Expositions and notes, p. 196]
Luther would have
agreed fully with that statement. And the hermeneutic followed by both Luther
and Tyndale explains the fundamental agreement in
their theology. Both Luther and Tyndale were
committed to the doctrine of “Scripture Alone”, held firmly to the plain,
grammatical, meaning of the words, put Christ in the center of all they
believed and taught, and regarded the proper distinction between Law and Gospel
as utterly indispensable for a correct understanding of the Bible.
Like Luther, Tyndale held that Law and Gospel are found together
throughout the Bible, but that the Old Testament was primarily a book of Law
and the New Testament a book of Gospel. Since man cannot possibly fulfill all
the requirements of the Law, he must turn to the Gospel with its promises of
mercy in Christ. [Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises, pp.
8-11]
However, unlike many, who claim to go by Scripture
alone, but in truth teach their own opinions for doctrine, the hermeneutic
followed by Luther and Tyndale eliminated man made
explanations (which the Bible calls tradition) from the body of doctrine,
insisting that all doctrine must be clearly and explicitly set forth in the
words of Scripture.
One of the points where some try to drive a wedge
between Tyndale and Luther has to do with the role of
the Law in the life of the believer. Martin Luther taught that, insofar as the
Christian man is righteous, he needs no law. His love for God will prompt him
to do God's will with spontaneity. And, that is undoubtedly true in the life of
a mature Christian. Once we come to faith in Christ, the fruit of the Holy
Spirit should be evident in our lives. However, many believers are inconsistent
in their thinking, and hold to views that hinder the work of the Spirit. Some
seek to please God through their works, others are blind to certain sins or
rationalize sin, and some even tread the Gospel underfoot by using God's
goodness as an excuse to sin. For that reason, Luther, like Tyndale,
came to see that the Law still has a role in the life of a believer. The Law
needs to be used to train the conscience, open our eyes to our own sin, convict
us of sin, and point us to Christ as the source of forgiveness. However, unlike
those who err from the truth, Luther and Tyndale both
saw works as the fruit of faith, not a cause of salvation.
While Tyndale emphasized
obedience to the state, we must never read legalistic motives into what he
said. Unlike those who give people the impression that God's grace is
contingent on our obedience to human authority, Tyndale
taught that the only king who possesses absolute authority is God himself.
Earthly princes rule only by authority delegated from heaven. In their standing
before God rulers and subjects are equal. The Word of God is superior to all
temporal kings, and the lowest subject armed with God's Word may admonish a
king who violates God's Word. [Tyndale,
Expositions and notes, pp. 36 & 86.]
Tyndale emphasized obedience to rulers because the king
regarded him as a rebel, and because the followers of John Wycliffe had been
persecuted unmercifully for over a century, simply because some of them had
once joined a revolt. However, the fact that Tyndale
spent much of his life in hiding, and was eventually executed for translating
the Bible into English, makes it clear that he believed we should obey God
rather than men.
Although Luther and Tyndale
both advocated separation of church and state, they most certainly did not
advocate a total removal of all Christian influence from the state. The idea of
a secular society, and rulers who reject the Word of God, refusing to take what
it says into account when framing laws, would be abhorrent to them. What they
objected to were kings who condemned the Gospel, Popes who led armies, bishops who wielded political authority and ecclesiastical
courts with the power to try and sentence to death anyone who disagreed with
the church.
While Luther and Tyndale
were in agreement as to the nature of the true church, and believed that the
true church has throughout history consisted only of believers, they did differ
in their attitude toward the pomp and ceremony of the Church of Rome. While
Luther saw much in the Church of Rome as beautiful, and was willing to retain
much of the ceremony, and even statues, as long as the papal abuse and idolatry
was removed, Tyndale could see no good whatsoever in
the papal church. To him it was "a terrible chimera, devouring the life of
all religion and all thought; or a huge, pitiless machine, remorselessly
pursuing its own purposes. [Demanus, Tyndale, p. 209]
The difference between the way Luther saw the Church
of Rome, and the way Tyndale saw it, may have stemmed
from the merciless way the followers of Wycliffe were persecuted in
Because Tyndale
regarded the Church of Rome as a perversion of true Christianity, he detested
the claim that the Pope and his agents could actually use the keys to permit or
deny a person access to heaven. Therefore, instead of accepting confession as
it was practiced in the church of Rome, and then attempting to rid it of
abuses, he looked to the New Testament for examples of how the keys are to be
employed properly (Matthew 9:1-6).
Baptism
Like Luther, Tyndale saw
baptism as consisting of two parts. 1- the divine
promise, which says: “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” 2- the outward sign of God’s forgiveness, the immersion in
water from which baptism gets its name. [See Luther’s essay on the Babylonian
Captivity of the church.] Like Luther, he also accepted infant baptism.
However, even though he believed that infants were to be baptized, he did not
assume that those who were baptized automatically received God’s gift of faith.
On the contrary, he held that just as circumcision did not guarantee salvation
to children under the Old Covenant, baptism does not guarantee it under the New
Covenant. “As the circumcised in the flesh, and not in heart, have no part in
God’s good promises; even so they that are baptized in the flesh, and not in
the heart, have no part in Christ’s blood”. [Tyndale,
Doctrinal Treatises, p. 351.]
Baptism is to be viewed as God’s promise of
forgiveness in Christ proclaimed through a ceremony. Just as God uses preaching
to give us His promise of forgiveness in Christ, He uses baptism to give us
that same promise. However, it is only through personal faith in Christ that we
receive what is promised (Romans 5:2, Galatians
Tyndale also stood with Luther in
rejecting the medieval concept of the Lord’s Supper as a re-enactment of
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Because, the Roman doctrine denies the
all-sufficiency of Christ’s atonement, Tyndale
disavowed it vehemently. [Tyndale, Doctrinal
Treatises, pp. 359-362] As with baptism, he saw the Lord’s Supper as a ceremony
that God uses to proclaim the gospel of forgiveness in Christ. And, through
that ceremonial proclamation of the gospel He assures all who partake of His forgiveness.
While
Tyndale clearly rejected any concept of a physical
presence in the Lord’s Supper, he was not a Zwinglian.
Like Luther, he saw the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace, and agreed fully
with the following statement by Luther:
“|In the Lord’s Supper, the word of Christ is the testament, the bread and wine are the sign. And as there is
greater power in the word than in the sign, so is there greater power in the
testament than in the sign. A man can have and use the word or testament
without the sign or sacrament. “Believe,” says Augustine, “and you have eaten;”
but in what do we believe except in the word of Him who promises? Thus I can
have the Lord’s Supper daily, nay hourly; since, as often as I will, I can set
before myself the words of Christ, and nourish and strengthen my faith in them
[i.e. the words, “My body… is given for you” and “My blood… is shed for you”];
and this is in very truth the spiritual eating and drinking.|” [The Babylonian
Captivity of the Church – Martin Luther, 1520.]
Like
Luther, Tyndale taught that because, “the righteous
lives by his faith; ergo, to believe and trust in Christ’s blood is the eating
that there was meant.” [Tyndale, Doctrinal Treatises,
p. 369.] Or as Luther put it, “This treasure is conveyed and communicated to us
in no other way than through the words “given and shed for you for the
forgiveness of sins.”… And inasmuch as he offers and promises forgiveness of
sins, there is no other way of receiving it than by faith.… That which is given
in and with the Sacrament cannot be grasped nor appropriated by our body. It is
accomplished by faith in the heart.” [Large Catechism, pp.
144-145, Lenker edition.]
In
short: when Christ said, “This is my body which is given for you” He was
saying, “I died for your sins”. Likewise, when He said, “This cup is the new
testament [i.e. gospel] in my blood, which is shed for you,” he was saying, “My
blood was shed for your forgiveness” (Luke
It
is God’s promise of forgiveness in Christ that is the means of grace. And, that
doctrine comes straight from the third chapter of Paul’s letter to the
Galatians, and is at the very heart of what Lutherans believe about baptism and
the Lord’s Supper. It is through faith in God’s promise of forgiveness in
Christ, not some power in the ceremony, that we receive Christ’s death on the
cross as the atonement for our sins. As Edward W. A. Koehler put it:
The Sacraments are
means only because of the Gospel promises connected therewith. Therefore we may
say that there is but one means by which the knowledge of grace and salvation,
and grace and salvation itself, are imparted to us; it is the Gospel, the glad
tidings of the grace of God in Christ Jesus. (“A Summary of Christian
Doctrine”, p. 189)
Conclusion
Since the purpose of this essay is to introduce the
reader to what William Tyndale believed and taught, I
have made little mention of his greatest work, the translation of the Greek New
Testament (and much of the Old Testament) into the English language. For those
who would like to examine his New Testament, John Wesley Sawyer republished it
in 1989. The printing was done by “John the Baptist Printing Ministry” in