“Christ is with us until the world’s end. Let his little flock be bold therefore. For if God be on our side, what matter maketh it who be against us, be they bishops, cardinals, popes, or whatsoever names they will?”
The Obedience of the Christian Man
William Tyndale is justly best remembered as a Bible translator. During the last eleven years of his short life he published three editions of the complete New Testament, the Pentateuch, the book of Jonah, and a few other parts of the Old Testament. He may well have left behind him in manuscript form a translation of the Old Testament’s historical books from Joshua to 2 Chronicles, which was published as part of ‘Matthew’s Bible’ in the year following his martyrdom. In the last letter from his pen, we see him zealous to make progress with the translation of the Old Testament, as languishing in his final imprisonment he requests that his ‘Hebrew Bible, Hebrew grammar, and Hebrew dictionary’ be granted to him.
There is little doubt that Tyndale could have translated the whole of the Bible into English if he had given himself exclusively to that work. But alongside the work of translation he felt it was necessary to contend earnestly for the Reformed faith and so he threw himself into several of the key theological controversies of the times. For this ‘Apostle of England’ the Bible must not only be translated, its teachings also must be expounded and applied in a practical way. To such work of exposition and application Tyndale gave himself with a passion, and in so doing not only proved himself a master of true biblical interpretation, but has left to posterity works of lasting value. As F.F. Bruce wrote in another context: A reprint of this kind is no mere archaeological curiosity; one who was so intensely a man of the Bible as Tyndale was 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.
Recommended Resources
- William Tyndale: Works of William Tyndale (2 Volumes)
- David Daniell: William Tyndale: A Biography
- Iain Murray – Life of Tyndale and the Reformation (audio)
- Iain Murray – Life of William Tyndale (audio)
These two lectures on William Tyndale by Iain Murray are powerful and cause the listener to pray that God would move in like manner!
- John Piper: William Tyndale and the Vernacular Bible (audio)
- John Piper: Always Singing One Note: William Tyndale and the Vernacular Bible (audio)
“This massive dose of bondage to sin and deliverance by blood-bought sovereign grace is missing in Erasmus. This is why there is an elitist lightness to his religion–just like there is to so much of evangelicalism today. Hell and sin and atonement and sovereign grace were not weighty realities for him. But for Tyndale they were everything. And in the middle of these great realities was the doctrine of justification by faith alone. This is why the Bible had to be translated, and ultimately this is why Tyndale was martyred.”
John Piper, Always Singing One Note: William Tyndale and the Vernacular Bible
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