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Works of William Tyndale (2 vols.)

Theology and freedom

WORKS OF WILLIAM TYNDALE
Banner of Truth. 1,325 pages in two volumes. £33.00
ISBN 978 1 84871 074 0

Move over Bill Bryson... I can’t pretend these volumes would normally be on my summer reading list. However, I felt encouraged by the comment I read on the back of the book by F.F. Bruce: ‘A reprint of this kind is no mere archaeological curiosity; one who was so intensely a man of the Bible as Tyndale speaks to more ages than his own, and in the following pages we shall find that he has much to say to us, if we pay heed to what we read.’

The contents are diverse: expositions, prologues, notes, tables on biblical books and topics (like the Lord’s Supper and prayer) and religio-political issues (like the rule of kings and popes).

As we might expect, massive Reformation themes surface again and again:

1. Salvation by grace (Ephesians 2.8,9) — the grace of the Holy Spirit that comes before we are even interested in Jesus and that alone can bring us to him and save us from damnation.
2. Justification by faith and not by works or deeds, moral or religious.
3. Faith, however, in keeping with James or indeed with Paul (e.g. Galatians 5.6), that naturally produces good fruit, good deeds in the believer’s life — because driven by the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit; helpfully, Tyndale compares faith and good deeds to marriage and having children — being ‘married to’ God by faith, we naturally become fruitful in good deeds.
4. No transubstantiation (change of substance) in the bread and wine in the Lord’s Supper; Jesus’s words, ‘This is my body’, mean ‘This signifies or represents my body’; our focus in the Lord’s Supper is to be on Jesus not on the elements of bread and wine.
5. A kingdom that is not of this world, whether based in Rome or in England.

Would I recommend these volumes to the ‘average’ Christian? Not really. I’d rather recommend the likes of Grudem’s Systematic Theology or Packer’s Knowing God. The language of Tyndale is, of course, antiquated to us — not impossible to read but certainly difficult. The style is wordy — again, this is no criticism of Tyndale but a marked difference of his culture to our own. The subject matter is often (necessarily) attuned to its own time, despite the repetition of timeless truths. The presentation is not appealing. And at £33.00, it’s not exactly a steal.

But, yes, of course this is ‘good stuff’; right from the earliest days of the Reformation and right at its coal-face, this is living theology, liberating thousands from religious slavery. In its day, doubtless, it was mind-blowing and even now, so many centuries later, the more I read it the more I am reminded of the words of Luther, who said that his discovery of justification by faith was like walking through an open door into paradise — and that has to be a good thing.

Oliver Rice,
Bow Baptist Church, London