Tyndale the Outlaw Reformer
William Tyndale was arrested by Roman Catholic authorities in Antwerp May 21, 1535. He was kidnapped and delivered over to English authorities by the rascal Henry Phillips, a secret agent of King Henry VIII. Tyndale had been in exile in Europe with other evangelicals (i.e. Protestants) who feared for their lives in Catholic England. Tyndale was eventually strangled and burned, killed for the crime of translating the Bible into English. Tyndale’s story is the familiar journey from English humanism to settled Lutheran convictions. There is no evidence that Tyndale ever met Luther in his travels through Germany, and Luther never mentions Tyndale in his writings or letters, but Tyndale was clearly influenced by the German reformer. By 1524 Tyndale was articulating the doctrine of justification by faith alone apart from works, and he sided with Luther over Erasmus in his conviction about the bondage of the human will. Tyndale also had a strong Luther-like commitment to the law/gospel distinction - law and gospel have their own distinctive ministries in the human heart. The law explains God’s expectations, reveals our inability to live up to the required standard of perfection, and sends us running with hair-on-fire desperation for a Savior. The gospel announces the life, death and resurrection of our Savior who, out of love for us, fulfilled all the law’s demands as our substitute.
“When a preacher preacheth the Law/he byndeth all consciences/ and when he preacheth the Gospel/ he lowseth them again.”
Tyndale is remembered for translating the Bible into English. His was the first English translation to draw directly from the Greek and Hebrew manuscripts, and the first English Bible that was widely available because it was printed on the newly invented printing press. Why was this so dangerous to the Medieval Catholic church? Because in the Bible is found the promise of another righteousness - a perfect righteousness - that when credited to sinners by faith will save them to the uttermost (Philippians 3:9). The English reformers recognized the supernatural power of the Bible to turn people’s hearts towards God - the words of Scripture “have power to convert through God’s promise, and they be effectual through God’s assistance” (Homily on Scripture).
When the Scriptures are taken from the hands of "professionals" and put into the hands of normal, everyday Christians (the "plowboy," as Tyndale put it), along with it comes the message to convert individuals and whole societies. Tyndale and the reformers knew what many have forgotten today, that Scripture is more than words on a page waiting for an interpreter, they are words coupled with the power of God to effect all that he says. He speaks, and there is transformation. When he said "Let there be light" and "Lazarus come out" it happened!