LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University

LEININGER: HOW LUTHERAN WAS WILLIAM TYNDALE 67
sorrow and mourn in their hearts for health. Health is power or strength to
fulfil the law, or to keep the commandments. Now he that longeth for that
health, that is to say, for to do the law of God, is blessed in Christ, and hath a
promise that his lust shall be fulfilled, and that he shall be made whole.
This longing and consent of the heart unto the law of God is the working of
the Spirit, which God hath poured into thine heart, in earnest that thou
mightest be sure that God will fulfil all his promises that he hath made
thee …. So long as thou seest thy sin and mournest, and consentest to the
law, and longest (though thou be never so meek), yet the Spirit shall …
certify thine heart that God for his truth shall deliver thee and save thee …. 38
In contrast with Lutheran orthodoxy, which strove to clearly distinguish
justification (an act of God on behalf of the sinner) and sanctification (Christ
at work in the justified), Tyndale describes justification as a healing process
whereby Christ gives the “power and strength to fulfil the law” and promises
to complete this process for the sinner’s salvation.
II. Tyndale in mid-career: 1530-32
Tyndale’s soteriological works of the early 1530s include his translation of
the Pentateuch (1530); The Practice of Prelates (1530); A Pathway unto
Holy Scripture (1531), which included the previous The Cologne Fragment
(1525); The Exposition of 1 John (1531), which may have had a Lutheran
model; 39 and The Answer to More (1531).
While some scholars read in these works a significant shift towards
legalism, Carl Trueman holds that Tyndale’s theology remains essentially
the same, but with a greater emphasis on works. In any case it is apparent
that Tyndale’s organic justification emphasizes the ethical effects rather than
the objective foundations of God’s saving work. Noteworthy for our present
discussion is that these works are considerably less indebted to Luther.
While at Wittenberg Tyndale seems to have resonated with Luther’s
theology in development, including his 1522 writings, and then in his mid
and mature years drove these ideas in a direction which would become fully
legalistic. Tyndale was not influenced by the Melanchthonian advances in
forensic justification.
The organic justification metaphors continue in this period. Here is but
one example from his prologue to the book of Exodus:
‘He gave them power to be the sons of God, in that they believed on his
name’
And of that power they work; so that he which hath the Spirit of Christ is
now no more a child: he neither learneth nor worketh now any longer for pain
38 Works 1:78-79.
39 Rupp, English Protestant Tradition, 51.