Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T21:26:43.510Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Historical Faith of William Tyndale: Non-Salvific Reading of Scripture at the Outset of the English Reformation*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

David Weil Baker
David Weil Baker*
Affiliation:
Rutgers University, Newark
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This essay argues that for William Tyndale, not only was scripture not sola, but it did not have to be read solely as scripture, that is, the salvific word of God. It could also be read with historical faith, a term that Tyndale borrowed from the German Reformer Philip Melanchthon and used to signify “believing in scripture as one would a non-scriptural history.” Tyndale did not exactly advocate this approach to scripture, but he recognized it as having at least some validity, given the role of human agency and authority in the transmission of God's word. More broadly, the notion of historical faith in scripture reflects the Reformation elevation of what John Foxe called the “truth of history” along with that of scripture. In the polemical writings of Tyndale and later English Protestant Reformers, scripture served both as a means of personal salvation and as a source of historical evidence against the Catholic Church. As a source for this kind of evidence, scripture was cited in conjunction with non-scriptural histories and in ways not discernibly different from those in which such histories were cited. Tyndale's historical faith is not, then, as his opponent Thomas More dubbed it, an “evasion” borrowed from Melanchthon, but rather a part of the complex and developing relationship between scripture and history during the English Reformation.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 62 , Issue 3 , Fall 2009 , pp. 661 - 692
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Philip Schwyzer and Anne O'Donnell for their insightful comments on this essay. A preliminary version of it was presented at the 2008 conference “Tyndale, More and their Circles: Persecution and Martyrdom under the Tudors” at Liverpool Hope University. All translations are the author's unless otherwise noted.

References

Baker, David Weil. “Ruin and Utopia.”. Moreana. 40. 2003. : 49–66.10.3366/more.2003.40.3.4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bale, John. The Actes of English Votaries. Antwerp. 1546.Google Scholar
Bale, John. Illustrium maioris Britanniaescriptorum summarium. Antwerp. 1548a.Google Scholar
Bale, John. The Image of Both Churches. London. 1548b.Google Scholar
Barnes, Robert. Vitae Romanorum pontificum. Wittenberg. 1536.Google Scholar
Bede, . The History of the Churchof England. Trans., Stapleton, Thomas. Reprint. Menston. 1973.Google Scholar
Berosus, . De his quae praecesseruntinundationem terrarum. Paris. 1510.Google Scholar
Betteridge, Thomas. Tudor Histories of the EnglishReformations, 1530–1583. Brookfield. 1999.Google Scholar
Bietenholz, Peter G. History and Biography inthe Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam. Geneva. 1966.Google Scholar
Burke, Peter. The Renaissance Sense ofthe Past. New York. 1969.Google Scholar
Chillingworth, William. The Religion of Protestants. London. 1638.Google Scholar
Cummings, Brian. The Literary Culture ofthe Reformation: Grammar and Grace. Oxford. 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniell, David. “Tyndale and Foxe.”. n John Foxe: An Historical Perspective. ed., Loades, David. 15–28. Aldershot. 1999.Google Scholar
Dickens, A. G., an., Tonklin, John. The Revolution in HistoricalThought. Cambridge. 1985.Google Scholar
Elyot, Thomas. The Boke Named the Governor. Ed., Croft, H. H. London. 1880.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia. Amsterdam. 19692013;.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Annotations on the New Testament:Acts-Romans-I and II Corinthians. Ed., Reeve, Anne. n., Screech, M. A. Leiden. 1990.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. The Adages of Erasmus. Ed., Barker, William. Toronto. 2001.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Expositions of the Psalms. Ed., Baker-Smith, Dominic. Toronto. 2005.Google Scholar
Ferguson, Arthur B. Clio Unbound: Perceptionof the Social and Cultural Past in Renaissance England. Durham. 1979.Google Scholar
Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments. London. 1563.Google Scholar
Foxe, John. Acts and Monuments. London. 1570.Google Scholar
Foxe, John. The English Sermons of JohnFoxe. New York. 1978.Google Scholar
Gilmore, Myron. Humanists and Jurists: SixStudies in the Renaissance. Cambridge. 1963.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Defenders of the Text: TheTraditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science. Cambridge. 1991.Google Scholar
Josephus, Flavius. Jewish Antiquities. Trans., Thackeray, H. 8vols. Cambridge, MA. 1968.Google Scholar
Kastan, David Scott. “Little Foxes.”. n John Foxe and his World. ed., King, John. n., Highley, Christopher. 117–32. Burlington. 2002.Google Scholar
Kelley, Donald. Foundations of Modern HistoricalScholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance. Durham. 1979.Google Scholar
King, John. “The Light of Printing:William Tyndale, John Foxe, John Day, and Early Modern Print Culture.”. Renaissance Quarterly. 54, no. 1. 2001. : 52–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, John. Foxe's Book of Martyrs andEarly Modern Print Culture. Cambridge. 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knape, Joachim. “Melanchthon und dieHistorien.”. Archivfur Reformations geschichte. 91. 2000. : 111–26.Google Scholar
Koebner, Richard. “‘The ImperialCrown of this Realm’: Henry VIII, Constantine the Great, andPolydore Vergil.”. Bulletinof the Institute of Historical Research. 26. 1953. : 29–52.10.1111/j.1468-2281.1953.tb02124.xCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leland, John. Assertio inclytissimi Arthurii. London. 1544.Google Scholar
Levine, Joseph. “Matter of Fact inthe English Revolution.”. The Journal of the History of Ideas. 64. 2003. : 317–35.Google Scholar
Luther, Martin. Werke. Weimar. 18832013;.Google Scholar
Marius, Richard. “Thomas More and theEarly Church Fathers.”. Traditio. 24. 1968. : 379–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maurer, Wilhelm. Der Junge Melanchthon. Gottingen. 1967.Google Scholar
McGrath, Alister. Reformation Thought: AnIntroduction. Reprint. Oxford. 1993.Google Scholar
Melanchthon, Philip. Opera Omnia. Halis Saxonum. 1834–60.Google Scholar
Momigliano, Arnaldo. “Ancient History andthe Antiquarian.”. ., Momigliano, . Contributo alla storia deglistudi classici. 67–106. Rome. 1955.Google Scholar
More, Thomas. The Complete Works of St.Thomas More. 15vols. New Haven. 1963–97.Google Scholar
Parker, Matthew. De antiquitate Britannicaeecclesiae. London. 1572.Google Scholar
Parry, Glyn. “Berosus and the Protestants:Reconstructing Protestant Myth.”. Huntington Library Quarterly. 64. 2001. : 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pineas, Rainer. “William Tyndale'sInfluence on John Bale's Polemical Use of History.”. Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte. 53. 1962a. : 79–97.Google Scholar
Pineas, Rainer. “William Tyndale'sUse of History as a Weapon of Religious Controversy.”. Harvard Theological Review. 55. 1962b. : 121–41.Google Scholar
Quintillian, Marcus Fabius. Institutio Oratoria. Trans., Butler, E. 4 vols. Cambridge, MA. 1961.Google Scholar
Rice, Eugene. Saint Jerome in the Renaissance. Baltimore. 1985.Google Scholar
Rummel, Erika. Erasmus’ Annotationson the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian. Toronto. 1986.10.3138/9781442674530CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scheible, Heinz. Die Anfang der ReformatorischenGeschichtsschreibung. Gutersloh. 1966.Google Scholar
Shapiro, Barbara. Probability and Certaintyin Seventeenth-Century England: A Study of the Relationship betweenNatural Science, Religion, History, Law, and Literature. Princeton. 1983.Google Scholar
Shuger, Debora. The Renaissance Bible: Scholarship,Sacrifice, and Subjectivity. Berkeley. 1994.Google Scholar
Stillingfleet, Edward. Origines sacrae. London. 1662.Google Scholar
Stillingfleet, Edward. A Letter to a Deist. London. 1677.Google Scholar
Stillingfleet, Edward. Origines Britannicae. London. 1685.Google Scholar
Tyndale, William. The Whole Workes of W. Tyndale,John Frith, and Doct. Barnes. London. 1573.Google Scholar
Tyndale, William. Expositions and Notes onSundry Portions of the Holy Scriptures Together with the Practiceof Prelates. Ed., Walter, Henry. Cambridge. 1849.Google Scholar
Tyndale, William. An Answer to Sir ThomasMore's Dialogue. Ed., Walter, Henry. Cambridge. 1850.Google Scholar
Tyndale, William. Doctrinal Treatises. New York. 1968.Google Scholar
Tyndale, William. An Answere Unto Sir ThomasMores Dialoge. Ed., O'Donnell, Anne. n., Wicks, Jared. Washington, DC. 2000.Google Scholar
Valla, Lorenzo. Gesta Ferdinandi regis. Ed., Besomi, Ottavio. Padua. 1973.Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Henry G. The Problem of Certaintyin English Thought: 1630–1690. The Hague. 1963.10.1007/978-94-017-5906-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vives, Juan Luis. Opera Omnia. Ed., Majansio, Gregorio. 8 vols. London. 1964.Google Scholar
Williams, Glanmor. Reformation Views of ChurchHistory. Richmond. 1970.Google Scholar