6 October 1536 A.D. Tyndale martyred for the Gospel
Clark, R. Scott.
“On This Date: Tyndale Martyred For The Gospel.” Heidelbog. 6 Oct 2015. http://heidelblog.net/2015/10/on-this-date-tyndale-martyred-for-the-gospel/.
Accessed 7 Oct 2015.
On
This Date: Tyndale Martyred For The Gospel
William Tyndale (c.1494–1536) was
one of the most important figures in the English Reformation. He not only
helped to transmit to the English-speaking world Luther’s rediscovery of the
gospel of free acceptance with God for the sake of the imputed righteousness of
Christ alone received through faith alone but he also gave us the first ever
translation of God’s Word, from the original languages, into English. Yet he is
relatively little-known and often overlooked today. We know little of early
life but we know that he earned his BA in Magdalen Hall, Oxford in 1512. He
proceeded MA in 1515. We know that he studied in Cambridge where he was most
likely exposed to the new learning (Renaissance Humanism) there. As a Christian
humanist he was interested not only in “good letters” (bonae litterae) but
also in good morals and he was appalled at the immorality among the clergy. In
1522 he was denied permission by the church to translate God’s Word into
English and 1524 finds him in Wittenberg learning evangelical Protestant
theology. Two years later he would succeed finally in publishing the first-ever
English translation of the Greek New Testament. His introduction to that work
was pure Reformation theology.
Like a lot of other Reformed writers after him, Tyndale began with
Luther but he did not end there. One of his great breakthrough’s, for which he
receives more criticism than credit, was his turn to covenant theology. As he
began translating the Hebrew Scriptures he was confronted with the question of
what to make of covenant theology. Though his initial attempts to explain the
covenant theology he found in Scripture have been criticized by some as a
betrayal of the Reformation a better explanation is that he was learning to
express his newfound evangelical theology of salvation (justification and
salvation) sola gratia,
sola fide
and the Protestant doctrine of the consequent necessity of good works as fruit
and evidence in covenantal terms. So, Tyndale pioneered not only the English
translation of Scripture but he helped to lay the foundations of Reformed
covenant or federal theology.
Tyndale’s evangelical theology was not welcome in England nor was
his translation of Scripture well received by the ecclesiastical and civil
authorities. Thus, he spent the rest of his life in Europe. Finally he was
betrayed by a false friend and imprisoned in Antwerp. His last writing was a
Latin letter to a friend asking for Bible and a cloak. It is with the 1st
edition of his English New Testament in the British Library in London. His
death sentence for daring to teach and preach the gospel was executed on this
day, 6 October, 1536. He was strangled to death and his remains burned.
A year later Henry would approve an English translation of Scripture that
relied heavily on Tyndale’s work.
Works:
·
Pathway into Holy Scripture (introduction to the
New Testament; 1525). Here is an introduction to this work by
my friend Tom Wenger.
·
Parable of the Wicked Mammon
(1528)
·
The Obedience of a Christian Man
(1528)
·
Practice of Prelates (1530)
·
Here is a site devoted to Tyndale with
some of his works.
David Daniell’s is an
excellent biography of and introduction to Tyndale’s life and work.
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