LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

62 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XV
translation of the New Testament. 25 Thus, Tyndale’s personal exposure to
Luther would have been rather limited; and what exposure he did have was
to the Luther in transition.
Tyndale’s Organic Justification
While Tyndale always maintained that salvation was by faith alone, his
understanding of the nature of justification can be characterized as
“organic”, rather than “forensic”. He continually returns to images like the
“tree and the fruit” in order to show that righteousness, though brought about
through faith, will necessarily produce works. This enables him in his
debates with Thomas More to maintain that salvation is caused only by
faith, but will always be correlated with the production of right living, love,
obedience, etc …. Further, organic justification functioned as an exegetical
tool in treating the many biblical passages exhorting good works.
Concomitant with this organic concept came an understanding of the
process, or growth of real righteousness, which left little room for the
distinction between justification and sanctification. And because works came
to be seen as a consequential process of justification, they also could be
regarded as evidence or certification of salvation, and a basis for assurance.
I. Tyndale’s Early Career: 1525-29
It has become standard to divide those writings of Tyndale which reflect
most clearly his soteriology into three periods: I. his early career, 1525-29;
II. his mid-career, 1530-32; and III. his mature theology, 1533-36. 26
Tyndale’s early works are those most indebted to Luther: The Cologne
Fragment (1525), which served as prologue to his first attempt to publish the
New Testament in English; The Prologue to the Epistle of Romans (1526),
The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, and The Obedience of a Christian Man
(1528) (see Fig. 1 , above).
Tyndale’s The Parable of the Wicked Mammon [hereafter abbreviated
The Mammon] serves well as an exemplar for his theology during this
period. It may have been written at Marburg, though we know it was printed
at Amsterdam, 1528. 27 Ostensibly based upon Luke 16:1-9 (better known as
the Parable of the Unjust Steward) The Mammon is in fact an extended
treatise on the Reformation sola fide.
25 Mozley, William Tyndale, 53-58.
26 The tripartite division was first introduced by Clebsch, England’s Earliest Protestants.
27 It is difficult to say which printing of Luther’s 1522 sermon on the Unjust Steward
Tyndale used. It could have been a 1528 Strassburg publication, where Bucer translated the
German into Latin. Luther maintained that Bucer “poisoned” portions of this printing,
referring, of course, to the Eucharist. It is noteworthy that Luther’s sermon also contains
facitive, effective righteousness language, which Tyndale embellished.