LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University
LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW - Brock University
72 LUTHERAN THEOLOGICAL REVIEW XV obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances, whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to bear and suffer. 52 His words would prove prophetic. In 1536 Tyndale was betrayed by a friend and executed by strangulation and burning. It is one of history’s pleasant ironies that scarcely a year later Henry VIII authorized a vernacular Bible heavily dependent on Tyndale’s work, which would be required in every parish of the realm. It is this work of bringing the Scriptures into the hands of the people which the name “Tyndale” represents. It is for this endeavour he gave his life, and although it may not be appropriate to call Tyndale a Lutheran, “Luther-Tyndale” still adds honour to the German reformer’s name in Kentish Town. Rev. Jeffrey Leininger, Ph.D. (Cantab.), is campus pastor at Concordia University, River Forest, Illinois, U.S.A. 52 Mozley, William Tyndale, 198.
LTR XV (Academic Year 2002-03): 73-87 ROBERT BARNES AND EARLY ENGLISH LUTHERANISM, 1517-1540 1 Korey D. Maas Anyone first being introduced to Robert Barnes, unless they have been thoroughly desensitized by television and film, will be struck by the fact that his life—and especially its tragic end—was a highly dramatic affair. It includes, to offer just a sound bite: a rapid rise from obscurity to prominence, frequent travel in disguise, more than one arrest and several narrow escapes, one feigned suicide, and ultimately, as the dramatic climax, death by being burned at the stake. If it is not necessarily a Hollywood action film, it could at least be a swashbuckling novel by Alexander Dumas, something in the vein of The Three Musketeers or The Count of Monte Cristo. Barnes was well known in the courts of Kings Henry VIII of England and Christian III of Denmark. He was equally well known in those of the German princes John Frederick, Elector of Saxony, and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse. Barnes included Martin Luther, Luther’s own pastor John Bugenhagen, and his fellow professor Philip Melanchthon—all architects of the Reformation in Germany—among his closest friends. Among his patrons he counted Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Thomas Cromwell, minister to the King, the two men we can undoubtedly consider the masterminds behind the English Reformation. And among lesser known but nonetheless influential men of the age, Miles Coverdale, the first to offer a complete sixteenth-century English translation of the Bible, is worth mentioning as having been a student of Robert Barnes in the Augustinian friary that once stood in Cambridge. Despite these credentials, or even in part because of them, Robert Barnes has been almost all but forgotten. The reason, I will suggest, is that Barnes was one of what is still a very rare breed: an English Lutheran. Lutheranism world-wide remains by and large a German and Scandinavian commodity. So it is that even in countries like the United States, Canada, or Australia, each home to a sizeable number of English-speaking Lutherans, little attention has been given by Lutherans to the country of England. And conversely, England, which decided even in the sixteenth century that Lutheranism was not a viable option as the national faith, gave little more consideration to those Lutherans who had called England their home. The 1 Slightly revised versions of this paper were originally presented to the Oxford and Cambridge University Lutheran Societies, and to a meeting of the pastors of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in England.
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72 <strong>LUTHERAN</strong> <strong>THEOLOGICAL</strong> <strong>REVIEW</strong> XV<br />
obtained. And till that time, I will abide the asperity of all chances,<br />
whatsoever shall come, and endure my life in as many pains as it is able to<br />
bear and suffer. 52<br />
His words would prove prophetic. In 1536 Tyndale was betrayed by a<br />
friend and executed by strangulation and burning. It is one of history’s<br />
pleasant ironies that scarcely a year later Henry VIII authorized a vernacular<br />
Bible heavily dependent on Tyndale’s work, which would be required in<br />
every parish of the realm. It is this work of bringing the Scriptures into the<br />
hands of the people which the name “Tyndale” represents. It is for this<br />
endeavour he gave his life, and although it may not be appropriate to call<br />
Tyndale a Lutheran, “Luther-Tyndale” still adds honour to the German<br />
reformer’s name in Kentish Town.<br />
Rev. Jeffrey Leininger, Ph.D. (Cantab.), is campus pastor at Concordia<br />
<strong>University</strong>, River Forest, Illinois, U.S.A.<br />
52 Mozley, William Tyndale, 198.
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