EP 46 The 1526 Revolution: William Tyndale and His English New Testament - Ft. Stephane Simonnin

In this episode, we're joined by Stephane Simonnin and Oliver Allmand-Smith to explore the extraordinary story of William Tyndale and his groundbreaking English translation of the New Testament. Published in 1526, Tyndale's work defied the religious authorities of his day and forever changed the course of the English language, the Christian faith, and Western civilization.

Topics covered:

Who was William Tyndale and what drove him?
Learning Greek and Hebrew in 16th-century England
Fleeing to Germany to translate and print the New Testament
The role of English merchants in smuggling Bibles
Why the Church feared the Bible in English
Tyndale's translation choices: "congregation" vs. "church"
The lasting legacy of 1526 for Protestantism and Bible translation

Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction & Welcome
1:00 - Meet Stephane Simonnin
4:12 - Tyndale's Life & Biographical Background
8:29 - What Prepared Tyndale for His Great Work?
13:00 - The Impact of Tyndale's English New Testament
14:26 - Why Translating the Bible into English Was So Dangerous
18:22 - Why Were Authorities So Opposed to the Bible in English?
19:58 - What People Discovered (and Didn't Find) in the New Testament
20:49 - Parallels Between Tyndale's Era and Christ's Ministry
22:11 - Reformation, Not Revolution: Going Back to the Bible
26:00 - Was Tyndale a Separatist? His Translation Choices
28:30 - The Tension Between Personal Bible Reading & Preaching
32:32 - The Logistics: Merchants, Printers & Smuggling Bibles
36:47 - Tyndale's Romantic Zeal & the Plowboy Quote
40:52 - Tyndale's Legacy 500 Years On
41:08 - The 1689 Confession on Scripture in the Vulgar Tongue
44:14 - A Catholic Cardinal's View of the Reformation
45:49 - Closing Thoughts & Farewell

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Transcript

John-Mark: Well, hello and welcome to the Broken Wharf Podcast. My name's John Mark, and I'm joined by my father Oliver Allmand-Smith. He's familiar with many of you and a special guest, Mr. Stephane Simmonin. We had the privilege of meeting Stephane in January of this year as he gave an address at the Carey Conference in Northampton, the UK on William Tyndale. As this year marks 500 years since that wonderful blessing to the church, Tyndale brought with his English New Testament. Stephane, welcome to the show. Why don't you introduce yourself to the listeners. Maybe say something about your past work in Italy and maybe something about your work with London Seminary and the church there in London.

Stephane: Yeah, of course. Yes. Thank you John Mark. Thank you, Oliver. It's great to be here. Very pleased to be with you. Yes, my name is Stephane Simmonin. As you can probably hear from my accent, I'm not from here. I'm a Frenchman, although living in England for many years. I'm the pastor of a Baptist church in Brentford, west London, Road Baptist Church, part of the Carey Baptist Association. And I teach at the London Seminary in London — New Testament and Greek, church history, in particular patristics and the Reformation, which is my favorite subject.

And I think you alluded to before, for a number of years, about seven years, I was in Italy where I taught in a Reformed Baptist Bible college in Padova. Some people may have heard of it. And I was the elder of a Reformed Baptist church up in northeast Italy. It was a Reformed Baptist church in Trent of all places. If you've heard of the Council of Trent, which was the symbol of Roman Catholicism. I always thought that a Reformed Baptist Church of Trent was quite a great name. And so that's where I served for a few years.

I came back to England just before COVID. And here I am now, dividing my time between my ministry in the church in West London and teaching at the London Seminary.

Oliver: I don't think Ignatius Loyola would be terribly pleased to hear about a Reformed Baptist church in Trent, Stephane.

Stephane: No, I don't think it was the plan at all. No. So things did not go according to plan, which is good.

John-Mark: Yes. Not according to Ignatius's plan, but according to God's providence, what a wonderful thing that there is a Reformed Baptist church there holding to the word of God. Amazing.

Stephane: And there are several in Rome itself, so thank God for that.

John-Mark: The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our Lord endures forever. Even in the places where forces against it seem to rail so hard. Yeah, it's a wonderful thing. Let's move into Tyndale. Tyndale was an amazing character. And would you be able, Stephane, to just introduce Tyndale to us, give us some biographical details and give us some of the context of his life, particularly leading up to 1526.

Stephane: Yeah, Tyndale is an amazing character. He's quite unique in the Reformation for many things that we know about — his genius with languages, his ability to write. We know very little about Tyndale really. Most of what we know is what we get from John Foxe's Book of Martyrs and what Tyndale wrote about himself. We know he was born in the early 1490s, probably in Gloucestershire. The first piece of information that we have which is absolutely sure is that he registers for a BA at Oxford in 1512. Then after that, we know he did an MA in Cambridge in 1517. He was trained as a theologian. He never had a ministry as a pastor, but he studied theology. He studied the biblical languages and for some time he went back to Gloucestershire. He was a chaplain. And it is there that he developed that great idea which would be the idea of his whole life — translating the Bible into English.

He initially hoped to be able to do that in London. And because he soon realized it was not possible, he decided to leave England in 1524. He never came back. Tyndale died in 1536, so he died very young. He died in his early forties. So his life was a full life. But the Lord knows what he would've been able to do if he had lived for longer.

And he lived in a context where people were starting to seriously criticize the church in various ways. Humanists like Erasmus and others denouncing various things about the church — abuse of authority, absent bishops, corruption. But what's interesting with Tyndale, just like with Luther, is that these are men who saw beyond that. They saw that beyond what people may think about the corruption of the church or things not going well, what people really needed was to have the word of God, to be able to read the word of God in their own language. So I think just like Luther, he understood the theological dimension of the problem. The problem with the church was not just a human problem, a financial problem, a problem of corruption. But it went deeper. There were some doctrinal assumptions that had to be challenged. And in Tyndale's case, very quickly, very early on, he had this conviction — people should be able to read the word of God in their own language.

Which is interesting. Luther came to the same conviction, but a bit later. Luther was a reformer. He wrote his great treatises in 1517, 1520. And then in 1522, while he was locked up in the castle, he started translating the New Testament into German. Whereas Tyndale came to that idea immediately. That was really his big idea.

Oliver: In terms of Tyndale's own life experience, what was happening, Stephane, in his early life which prepared him for this great work? In both ways. Firstly, in terms of competence — what was going on to equip him to do something which was really quite phenomenal in terms of difficulty level? But also in terms of conviction. He would spend his life doing this in both senses of the word "spend" — spend his life in the sense that he gave his time to it, but spend his life in the sense that he actually delivered up his life. So in terms of both of those, what's going on in his early life, in God's providence, to prepare him for that?

Stephane: So in terms of conviction, quite clearly he came into contact with Luther's ideas and writings, and he was convinced, probably during his time in Cambridge. We don't know exactly when he was converted to the new faith, to Luther's ideas. But his conviction by reading Luther was that Luther was right. He had seen something that people could not see — that the church was not teaching the word of God rightly. Many things that were taught by the church were not actually biblical and it had to be challenged.

In terms of competence, well, this is the big question that everybody has — where on earth did Tyndale learn Greek and Hebrew? Well, for Greek, the answer is in England. Obviously he already knew Greek when he left England, so he must have learned it in Cambridge, which was probably the best place in England for Greek. This is where Greek had been taught a few years before. Erasmus lectured there. So he acquired a competence in Greek which is quite amazing given the time when he lived. There were very, very few places where you could study Greek. It was difficult even to get a Greek grammar. So we don't know all the ins and outs, but surely Tyndale learned Greek very well while in Cambridge and managed to get hold of various books. We're not quite sure how, but he became very fluent. All the testimonies that we have are unanimous to say that he was very gifted for languages.

So that's another reason why I find him very interesting. He also learned living languages. He learned French. He learned some German, probably. As for Hebrew, he would learn Hebrew later, probably when he was in Worms, getting into contact with the Jewish community there. But that would be a later part of his life.

So yes, you're right. In his life there is this incredible conjunction between a conviction — he discovers Luther's ideas, like others, like Thomas Bilney who was converted by reading the New Testament in Greek — other people came to be convinced by Luther's ideas. But in Tyndale's case, there is something else. Not only did he become a Lutheran, as you would call it, but he develops that conviction that we English people need to have the Bible in our own language and somehow I am able, with God's help, to do that and able to translate the New Testament. He had already translated a few pieces of classical Greek. He went to London to meet the Bishop of London, Cuthbert Tunstall, hoping that he would help him and support him in his translation. He showed him a few pieces of classical Greek that he had already translated, just to show Tunstall how competent he was. So yes, it is quite amazing, this conjunction of conviction and abilities that the Lord gave him.

John-Mark: It seems that Tyndale's production of this English New Testament had an amazing impact. And not only was it against the odds, as you've presented with how scarce learning of Greek was and these different things, but it was also just completely revolutionary. Could you explain to us something of the significance at the time of Tyndale's English New Testament? Obviously there were very strong forces against it, and yet out of demand it did in some measure prevail, and obviously we have it to this day. So could you explain something of that?

Stephane: Yes. So of course Tyndale had the example of Luther. Luther had translated the New Testament into German in 1522. So it was the first great translation of the Reformation. And Tyndale was inspired by Luther. The interesting thing is that Luther translated the New Testament at home, if you want. He was in Germany. Yes, he was hiding for a while, but he never had to go anywhere.

Tyndale faced a different situation, which is in England in particular, the translation of the Bible into English was frowned upon because it was associated with the Lollards. The Lollards were this religious reforming movement associated with John Wycliffe. John Wycliffe had translated the Bible into English from the Latin in the 14th century. His followers had made copies. It's a complicated history and we don't know everything about that history. But it's enough to say that by the beginning of the 15th century, the Lollards had gone mainly underground because there were various uprisings and they were persecuted by the authorities.

So the problem that Tyndale faced was that even more than in other European countries, the whole idea of translating the Bible into English was highly suspicious. And then of course when Luther came on the scene with his new ideas, the whole idea of translating the Bible into the vernacular language was regarded as a Lutheran idea. In fact, I mentioned at the conference in January that when Tyndale was busy working on this new translation in Cologne in 1525, he was denounced by a German Catholic humanist who wrote to the King of England. He said, there is an Englishman here who is translating the New Testament — the New Testament in a vernacular language.

So Tyndale is the only one of the great Bible translators in the 16th century who had to flee abroad. Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples, the French humanist, translated the Bible into French from his office in France. Luther was in Germany. Italian humanists would later translate the Bible into Italian in Italy. But Tyndale had to flee his own country. He had to go to Germany. This is what makes the whole story even more amazing, because he had to go first to Cologne and then to Worms. He had to convince German printers and publishers to work on the translation of a book into a language that no one spoke in Europe.

Let's not forget that in the 1500s, no one in Europe would learn English. It sounds very difficult to believe today, but there were only 4 million people speaking English. So why would German printers work on a book like this that they would probably not sell to anyone? Tyndale had to convince not only the printers, but he also had to convince various English merchants influenced by Lollard ideas and probably also Luther's ideas, that it was a good idea to translate the New Testament into English, to have it printed in Germany and to have it brought back to England.

So apart from the intellectual achievement, what's amazing in this story is that there was also a lot of organization, of thinking going on behind this. There was a financial aspect, there was a logistic aspect. This is one thing that I think we don't really realize — how difficult it was. And I find it quite fascinating. So Tyndale faced unique challenges compared to continental European humanists or translators.

Oliver: It's perhaps hard, Stephane, for people to appreciate today just how and why authorities were opposed to having the Bible accessible in the language of the people. I mean, what — why were they so opposed to it that they would, in Tyndale's case, hound him, condemn him, hunt him down, and eventually arrest him and kill him? For the crime, in inverted commas, of translating the Bible into English. Why were religious people — I mean, you can understand why atheists or secularists or people who are opposed to Christianity altogether would do that — but why are self-professed Christians doing that? Can you explain that?

Stephane: Yes, of course. Yes, difficult for us to imagine. Well, there were very few atheists or secularists in the 1500s. I think the easy answer to that question is that they had something to hide. They were teaching things which were not in the Bible. And there were things which were in the Bible that they were keeping hidden from the people.

Tyndale himself answers the question in his answer to Thomas More. I've got it before me, if you don't mind me reading. He says — they, talking about the church authorities — "have destroyed the right sense of it with their leaven, and as they destroyed daily the true creatures of it. And they keep it from the lay people that they should not see how they juggle with it." That's Tyndale's sentence. They keep the Bible from the lay people so that they don't see how they juggle with it.

In fact, when the New Testament in English started arriving in England in 1526, and when people started reading it, what struck them most was not what they read. But what they did not read. They did not find purgatory. They did not find prayers to the saints. They did not find that Mary was so important after all. So there are whole loads of doctrines and practices which were simply not there. And I think the most revolutionary aspect of that is what people could not see in the New Testament — it just wasn't there. And this is why the translation of the New Testament was revolutionary. It changed everything. People could not unknow what they knew and what they had read.

Oliver: So there is a parallel there, isn't there, between that situation and the situation in the New Testament when the Lord Jesus Christ comes and teaches what the Old Testament was always supposed to be teaching. And yet you've got a whole religious structure in place. The Pharisees, the scribes, the lawyers and so on are teaching something completely different. And so what they seek to do is to silence the Son of God himself. And you've got a similar situation in that period where the religious authorities have constructed a religious system which is not biblical, although it uses biblical language and biblical ideas and biblical concepts and biblical stories. Fundamentally, the message itself is not the message of God. It's not the gospel. And then somebody comes along opening up that message and they seek to shut him down.

And this is why, isn't it — I mean, you said, Stephane, earlier on, I'm not sure if it was before the podcast or when we'd begun, that the Reformation is your kind of favorite period. And isn't this why so many of us find the period so exciting and thrilling? It's because we've got men like Tyndale who are bringing back the gospel to the people, who are restoring hope after potentially centuries of this structure which was preventing people, in the name of God, from hearing the voice of God.

Stephane: Yes, absolutely. And that's why we talk about the Protestant Reformation. We often forget that the reformers did not want to create a new church. When we talk about reformation, we don't mean revolution. The idea was to go back to the past, to go back to the Bible, to go back to primitive Christianity.

So the idea was not improving things or revolutionizing the church or creating a new church. Martin Luther was a priest in the church. He never wanted to create a new church. He had to — in the end he did because he was excommunicated. And you're right, it's such an exciting period. And what I've always found exciting is when you read the testimony of the first generation reformers like Tyndale or like Lefèvre or Farel in France, what's really striking is this almost anger that they have when they read the Bible and they realize that they have been deceived. There is a kind of holy anger there, if you want, realizing that for centuries they've been deceived, they've been told things which were not true. I think this sense of injustice, really, this sense of being deceived, goes a long way to explain the energy that they have. People like Tyndale thought, we've got to tell the people — that's not what's in scripture. We've got to tell them. So this is what appears so full of energy — people are rediscovering something which is life changing. So yeah, it's absolutely great.

John-Mark: Tyndale, from your presentation, Stephane, seems to have had a fierce zeal for the work, a motivation to travel across the world, go wherever it's safe, work wherever he can get this New Testament printed. And you mentioned the word "primitive" there. There is a primitive quality to Tyndale in that this New Testament is granting the English-speaking people an opportunity to go back to the sources and to rediscover the ecclesiology, the soteriology, just the early Christianity that's presented in the New Testament, that's presented by Christ and by the apostles and the pastoral epistles.

Do you think there is something of a separatist leaning for Tyndale — without wanting to say, well, if Tyndale was here today he'd obviously be a Baptist — there is something about him that seems to communicate a desire to put off those things which are not clearly and plainly presented in scripture. And we see that in our tradition, don't we? The desire to remove the burden of infant baptism, which for many of our forefathers was a remnant of Rome. Do you think there was an element of that leaning in Tyndale, or is that pushing it too far?

Stephane: So it is an interesting question. That's a complicated question. I think it is pushing it a bit too far to say that there was such a leaning in Tyndale. However, it is clear that some of the words that he chose in his translation and some of his ideas would later go into that direction and lead to separatist movements in the 17th century. Tyndale himself is not there, obviously.

Let's take for example the idea of ecclesia — he translated it as "congregation." We are very grateful to Thomas More because Thomas More questioned everything Tyndale did. He forced Tyndale to explain what he was doing, which is very helpful. And Tyndale said, when I chose the word "congregation," it is because for most people, when they think about the church, they think mainly of the clergy. And I want them to think that the church is not just the clergy and authority, but all the people who profess to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it's all the people. That's why also he says bishops and elders are the same thing. That's what he says in one of the footnotes of his New Testament. So he is not going in a separatist direction, but what he's doing is the first step really. The first step is to react against the sacramental and episcopal concept of the church. There should not be any hierarchy of bishops. Bishops and elders are the same thing. The church is not the hierarchy first and then the rest — the church is all the people who worship the Lord Jesus.

Then of course, as you probably know, the King James Bible reintroduced the word "church" and "bishop." So the story is not so linear. But Tyndale and the reformers like Luther — even when Luther said there's no difference between the clergy and the laity — that was the first step into that direction.

On the other hand, in 1 Peter chapter 5, when Peter says "look after the flock that has been entrusted to you," Tyndale translates "look after the parish," interestingly. And there's a different Greek word — like the people who have been given to you by lots — he translates "parish." So he's still a man of his time.

But there's another aspect which is interesting and going in the same direction. Like the first generation reformers, Tyndale was very optimistic about people's ability to read the Bible for themselves. That's why he wanted to translate the Bible. And of course we resonate with that, don't we? We believe people should be able to understand the Bible and read it for themselves.

So early on in the Reformation, people like Tyndale said, if we translate the Bible into English and people read it, they're going to understand it. Of course it needs to be preached and explained, but they can all understand it. Interestingly, after that, during the Reformation quite quickly, there was a kind of reaction against that because of the Anabaptists. The Anabaptists came along and they just put everything on the table and questioned everything. And the magisterial reformers like Calvin said, yes, of course we want people to have the Bible in their own language, but what is really important is the teaching and the preaching from those who are qualified to teach and preach.

And then there's been this tension ever since in our Protestant world. On the one hand, everybody's able to understand scripture, as Tyndale thought. On the other hand, there is still — we must still pay attention to church traditions, the creeds. Some people should be trained in the original languages to teach and preach scripture properly. So there is a tension there. But clearly, as Baptists, we are optimistic about people's ability to understand the Bible for themselves and to be mature Christians.

Oliver: Yeah, I think that's really helpful, Stephane. And for us, isn't it, when we think about preaching — for us it's so important that it is the preaching of the Bible and that it is the Bible that people can see, people can read, people can know that it is a faithful exposition of what they have in front of them, rather than simply me as the man of God telling you what you should believe because I've been appointed by the bishops to do that, or whatever. So I think it's good that we have that tension hopefully in a good place in our current ecclesiology.

I did want to pick up something you said earlier on. We've talked about God's providence in terms of preparing Tyndale for the work, both conviction-wise and competence-wise. You mentioned earlier on about also all the elements that had to come together to make this work. He had to go to Europe, he had to find the printers. The printers had to be willing to do it, which does seem rather extraordinary, as you say, in English, which was basically a very backward language spoken by hardly anybody in that weird place across the water. Getting them to do that. And then of course not only printing them, but printing them in great numbers and then transporting them when it was illegal, getting them into England at the time — the smuggling, the role of the merchants. Can you just kind of explain just quite how many things had to come together there for this actually to produce an outcome, rather than just being one zealot doing his best and it all burning out and coming to nothing?

Stephane: Yeah, that's right. I mean, that's more or less what you explained. So many things had to come into place. And what is extraordinary in all this is that it seems that everybody was involved except the church. The church authorities had nothing to do with it. It was about one guy translating the Bible into English and convincing, as you said, German printers to print it. I think the only reason why they were convinced is because they got assurance that they would sell their books to someone. I'm sure they must have been in touch with the English merchants.

So what happened, quite simply, is that many English merchants, especially cloth merchants who were influenced by Lollard ideas and probably also Luther's ideas and were sympathetic to the whole enterprise, agreed to finance the whole thing. And because they had commercial contacts with all the great ports in Germany and they had connections, they were able to actually transport these New Testaments. And let's remember, they were very small books — like a hymn book. So they're not difficult to hide on a boat. But they were willing and able to do that through the commercial network.

So this is a very concrete, down-to-earth aspect of it that we often don't talk about. The Lord in his providence uses means. He uses people and he also uses money. Somebody had to pay for the whole thing. Tyndale could not pay and the German printers were not going to pay. And we know the Lord does not make bank transfers from heaven. And so somebody had to pay, and they were English merchants who were convinced by the whole enterprise, and they paid for that. And it's a sign of God's providence.

And as I said, what is amazing in all this is that the church was not involved at all. So it was not an ecclesiastical project. You can imagine the panic of the church authorities. Think about it — the church authorities in England know that all these New Testaments in English are coming and you don't know how many there are. You don't know who's reading what, and you expect your authority to be challenged from one day to the next. People saying, well, you say this, but I've read something different. You can understand this sense of panic — this book coming to England. That's what is amazing about the word of God. The word of God is the only book in the world that some people are afraid of. But yeah, does that answer your question?

Oliver: Yes, it does, Stephane. And I'm particularly interested in that question myself because as well as being a minister, I'm also in business. And I think that sometimes, particularly as Baptists, as John Mark mentioned earlier, we like our independency and we're very keen on what can be at times a form of isolationism. But we really do need one another. And we need not only one another as church to church, but also need merchants. We need business people, we need financiers. We need all God's people across every walk of life to be playing their part in full for God to accomplish his purposes. And I think that I particularly appreciated that element you brought out when you made the presentation in January.

Stephane: Yes, absolutely. And we need to do more things together. I think the 17th century Reformed Baptists did more things together, and they even put money together, I think, to train people or to do things together. I think too often we confuse the independence of the local church with the autonomy of the local church. I think we need each other, don't we?

Oliver: Amen. Amen.

John-Mark: There is this almost romantic quality to Tyndale, isn't there? There's that wonderful phrase that he coins — his desire, he says, is that the plowboy would know the word of God even better, if I remember it correctly, than the loftiest cardinal or bishop in the Church of Rome.

And there's just an almost romance to the Reformation in that sense because of the power of the word of God and Tyndale's belief in what it really can do, how the Lord will use this strong, powerful word. And yet stepping back from these events like you've presented, Stephane, there is just this recognition and this reality that although it was Tyndale who engaged in so much of the hard work of translation, the Lord used so many others who we will never know — whether it is those merchants or the people that transported these books. We don't know who they were and yet they were greatly used by the Lord in the forcing back, the pushing back of the ignorance that was spread by the Church of Rome. And the progression of the Reformation in England is a great encouragement to us to see the value of those small acts in service of the Lord.

Stephane: Yes, and Tyndale himself is a fascinating character for that reason. There is this mix of, on the one hand, a certain romanticism as you put it — maybe a bit of naivety sometimes, but certainly a great faith in God. God is going to do it. And the plowboy — the plowboy was probably illiterate at the time anyway, but somebody would read it to him. God can do it. Something is going to happen.

And at the same time, there is this great down-to-earth quality about Tyndale. We've got to organize things. I've got to find collaborators, printers, merchants, people to transport things. So he's got this wonderful mixture between being a very down-to-earth person, very practical, and at the same time he was a great linguist. Whenever he had spare time, he would read Greek or Hebrew. One of his last requests in his last letter when he was imprisoned before dying — he asked for a Hebrew dictionary. So he was an intellectual, as we would call him today. But he also had a great practical sense. God can do it, but yet it requires organization. I think it's a bit like Carey who said, "Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." The two go together, absolutely.

John-Mark: Similar qualities — if only we were to be as devoted to our cause as Tyndale. And yet also not carried away with naive delusions of grandeur, but practically minded. It is a great model for service. And I just wanted to circle this round then, because we began with Tyndale as a man and looking at his life and some of that context. We've progressed through a discussion of how his English New Testament came about, some of its details — those translation elements, ecclesia as "congregation," and so forth. And we've moved on to some of its impact. And maybe we can finish by just discussing how Tyndale's work 500 years on is still in many ways a foundation for much of our theology.

I wanted to read something from the Second London Confession, that 1689 Confession, chapter one, paragraph eight. And I wonder whether, when the editors — and much of this language comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith, and it's carried over into the Savoy Declaration and so forth — whether they had something of Tyndale's emphasis in mind here. Chapter one on Holy Scripture, paragraph eight: "Because these original tongues" — that's the Greek and Hebrew — "are not known to all the people of God who have a right unto and interest in the scriptures and are commanded in the fear of God to read and search them, therefore they are to be translated into the vulgar language of every nation unto which they come, that the word of God dwelling plentifully in all, they may worship him in an acceptable manner, and through patience and comfort of the scriptures may have hope."

Do you think that is something of what Tyndale devoted his life to, Stephane?

Stephane: Absolutely. Yes. I think all the reformers would say amen to that. But in particular Tyndale — Tyndale is the one who was really single-minded. That was his whole life. He gave his life so that English people could have scriptures in their own language. And you can't say that of any other reformer or humanist in the 16th century.

This is the core of our belief as Protestants. And this is why today we send missionaries, we have missions translating the Bible into people's own language. Because we know that they don't just need to be told about the word of God, they need to hear God himself through the words. That's our conviction, isn't it? When we read the words, God himself speaks. The Bible is not people talking about God. It's God himself talking through people. And that was Tyndale's conviction. That is our conviction as well. Absolutely.

John-Mark: You mentioned William Carey earlier on, and the ways in which he was similar to Tyndale. Of course, Carey, a man who loved the scriptures in English, would then go onto the mission field. And like you say, the translation of the scriptures into the vulgar tongue is absolutely critical.

Stephane: Yes, that's right. The only thing about Carey is I'm very sorry for his wife, his poor wife. She went through so much. At least Tyndale was not married. But it's just an aside. But yeah, Carey was absolutely amazing as well.

You see, I mean, we can conclude on that. I was reading recently a work from a famous Catholic theologian, a French cardinal called Yves Congar — one of the greatest Catholic theologians of the 20th century. And he wrote a book about the history of the church. He wrote about the Protestant Reformation in very dismissive terms. But he understood what it was all about, because he talks about it and he defines Luther's revolution as "this dramatic encounter of men with God through his word."

So it's very interesting that a Catholic cardinal would describe the Protestant Reformation like this. He understood it was the root of it — the dramatic encounter of man with God through the Bible, God speaking through the Bible. And this was Tyndale's conviction. Yeah, absolutely.

John-Mark: There is that tension, isn't there, between the — maybe we might call it perspicuity of scripture — that scripture is clear and to be read. And on the other hand, the need for it to be taught. But if anything, the lesson that Tyndale teaches us is that there is such an amazing value in the scripture lettered in the vulgar tongue to be read. And may we preserve that.

Stephane: Absolutely. Yes. Amen.

John-Mark: Well, thank you very much for joining us, Stephane. It's been wonderful to have you speak to us about William Tyndale. If you're listening to this, hopefully we will be able to put some of this material from Stephane online in one way or another in the future. We are considering whether it might make a nice booklet to commemorate 500 years of the Lord's use of this English New Testament. And may you be encouraged listening to this about what the Lord may do in the future before Christ returns through the scriptures in the languages of all nations.

Well, if you're listening to this, you can find us online at brokenwharf.com. Tune onto our other podcast. We've got the podcast and the Coffee House Sessions available on YouTube or wherever you listen. Thanks.