LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

LEININGER: HOW LUTHERAN WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE 55
Fig. 1: Tyndale’s debt to Luther
The Cologne Fragment (1525) [The Prologue]
• based on Luther’s 1522 New Testament preface.
• included in Tyndale’s Pathway into Holy Scripture, London (1531).
The Prologue to the Epistle of Romans (1526)
• copied from Luther’s Introduction to Romans (1522)
The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1528)
• includes all of Luther’s 1522 sermon for the 9 th Sunday After Trinity
The Obedience of a Christian Man (1528)
• reliant on Luther’s theology of the Two Realms, the Fourth
Commandment, and his exegesis of Romans 13.
• specifically draws on Luther’s Prefaces to the Old Testament.
Prologues to the Old Testament (1530)
• reliant on Luther’s Prefaces to the Old Testament (1523-28)
The Exposition of 1 John (1531)
• similarities with Luther’s sermons
Exposition of the 5 th , 6 th , and 7 th Chapters of Matthew (1533)
• contains translations of Luther’s sermons
Pathway into Holy Scripture, printed in London (1531). 4 His most well
known borrowing comes from The Prologue to the Epistle of Romans (1526)
[hereafter abbreviated The Prologue to Romans], which relies heavily on
Luther’s own 1522 introduction—the reading of which Wesley credited for
his conversion. The Parable of the Wicked Mammon (1528) follows
verbatim at times Luther’s 1522 sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity.
Even Tyndale’s classic presentation of Reformation obedience theology, The
Obedience of a Christian Man (1528), which gives the opposite side of the
political coin to Luther’s Freedom of the Christian Man, has been shown to
be indirectly, if not directly, based upon Luther’s Zwei-Regimente-Lehre, his
exposition on obedience due unto rulers subsumed under the fourth
commandment, and his exegesis of Romans 13. 5 In fact, the more one
juxtaposes Tyndale and Luther, the more the English exegete seems to have
borrowed. His Exposition upon the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Chapters of
Introductions to Different Portions of the Holy Scriptures [hereafter abbreviated Works 1], ed.
H. Walter (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1848); Expositions and Notes on Sundry Portions of
the Holy Scriptures, together with The Practice of Prelates [Works 2] (1849); An Answer to
Sir Thomas More’s Dialogue [Works 3] (1850).
4 The Prologue (1525) is edited in The First Printed English New Testament, ed. T. Arber
(London, 1871).
5 Richard Rex reviews Luther’s conceptual influences on Tyndale’s Obedience of the
Christian Man in “The Crisis of Obedience: God’s Word and Henry’s Reformation”, The
Historical Journal 39.4 (1996): 866-67.