LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

58 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XV
One of the reasons for this disparity among Tyndale scholars is that no
one has sufficiently untangled the most important question: when are we
reading Tyndale and when are we reading Luther. The task is daunting and
will only be unravelled as proper modern editions of his works emerge. 15
One example is found in the Tyndale’s treatment of election. In Luther’s
Legacy Trueman contrasts the two reformers’ views, maintaining that
Tyndale used predestination only to underline “that salvation is by grace”,
defined as the “free favour of God”; and to assert “that man’s will is bound,
preventing the individual from initiating his own salvation.” 16 Trueman
further argues that Tyndale does not develop a doctrine of reprobation: the
English reformer “never indulges in speculation and stresses that God’s
choice of one and not another is hidden and not to be inquired into.” 17 If we
may be permitted to impose a later theological shorthand, here, Trueman
maintains that Tyndale holds to “single-particular” predestination—a
perspective embraced by Lutheran orthodoxy.
This label fits Tyndale, so far as it goes, and Trueman cites the following
passage from The Prologue to Romans as evidence:
In the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters he treateth of God’s predestination;
whence it springeth altogether; whether we shall believe or not believe; be
loosed from sin, or not be loosed. By which predestination our justifying and
salvation are clean taken out of our hands, and put in the hands of God;
which thing is most necessary of all. For we are so weak and so uncertain,
that if it stood in us, there would of a truth be no man saved; the devil, no
doubt would deceive us. But now is God sure, that his predestination cannot
deceive him, neither can any man withstand or let him; and therefore have we
hope and trust against sin. 18
Trueman, however, goes on to contrast Tyndale’s views here with Luther’s.
There are a number of difficulties with this. In the first place, English
scholarship on Luther has focused almost exclusively on Bondage of the Will
as a litmus test for his theology of election. They speak in terms of Luther’s
“double” predestination theology, as it relates to a distinction of the revealed
and hidden will of God. 19 A full discussion on the topic cannot detain us
15 For example, J. A. R. Dick, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, “A critical ed. of William
Tyndale’s The Parable of the Wicked Mammon” (Yale, 1974).
16 Trueman, Luther’s Legacy, 85.
17 Trueman, Luther’s Legacy, 86.
18 Works 1:504-5.
19 Trueman maintains that Luther’s argument “demands a doctrine of double
predestination”. Luther’s Legacy, 86 n. 13, and 67ff. Similarly, Alister McGrath contrasts
Luther with Augustine (!): “Luther explicitly teaches a doctrine of double predestination,
whereas Augustine was reluctant to acknowledge such a doctrine, no matter how logically
appropriate it might appear.” Iustitia Dei: A History of the Doctrine of Justification (2 nd ed.;
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998 [1 st ed. 1986]), 203.