LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

LTR XV (Academic Year 2002-03): 54-72
HOW LUTHERAN WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE
Jeffrey W. Leininger
JUSTIFICATION IN AN ENGLISH REFORMER
In Kentish Town, London, there stands one of the oldest Lutheran
churches in England. It goes by a name which expresses the strong link
assumed between one of England’s earliest and most influential
reformers and the “Great Reformer” himself. The name of the church is
“Luther-Tyndale”. Previously called Emmanuel, the church was renamed by
the members of the congregation in 1938 to reflect the shift towards spoken
English within many of the congregation’s families. They wanted the
theology of Luther in the language of English. What better name than
William Tyndale (d. 1536), the earliest and most prolific English translator
of Luther 1
Tyndale and Luther’s names have been linked since the Reformation;
they remain so today. The question of Tyndale’s Lutheranism appears
obvious from the outset. No other theologian of the English Reformation
translated as much Luther as did William Tyndale (fig. 1). 2 Tyndale’s first
attempt to translate the New Testament included a prologue (1525;
sometimes referred to as The Cologne Fragment) based on Luther’s 1522
New Testament preface. 3 This prologue was incorporated into Tyndale’s
1 The link between Luther and Tyndale was more recently celebrated in Cambridge,
England. Tyndale House, one of Europe’s premier exegetical centres, hosted a study
conference on Luther in 2001. At this conference I presented an earlier version of this paper,
for within the walls of Tyndale House there has been a constant stream of exegetes who could
be described as “Tyndale House Lutherans”. This paper was also presented at the Evangelical
Lutheran Church of England’s Pastors’ conference in 2002. This “Barnes Conference” is so
named because of the work of Robert Barnes (martyred, 1540), another sixteenth-century
reformer who promoted Luther’s theology in Britain.
2 On Tyndale’s life and literary career, see Carl Trueman, Luther’s Legacy: Salvation and
the English Reformers 1525-1556 (Oxford: Clarendon Press), 9-14. Trueman follows but
improves upon J. F. Mozley, William Tyndale (London: Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge, 1937). Luther’s Legacy has replaced William Clebsch, England’s Earliest
Protestants (New Haven: Yale UP, 1964) as an accurate account of Tyndale’s soteriology;
and is a more balanced approach than L. J. Trinterud, “A Reappraisal of William Tyndale’s
Debt to Martin Luther”, Church History 31 (1962): 24-45. On Tyndale’s significant and
lasting contributions to the development of the English language, see David Daniell’s rather
hagiographical account, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven: Yale UP, 1994).
3 There is no modern critical edition of Tyndale’s works; the most widely used remains the
Parker Society’s three-volume set of his most important writings: Doctrinal Treatises and