It is always fascinating to study great figures of church history whom God raised up for extraordinary service on behalf of His covenant. It is also fascinating to try to determine what kind of personal relationship or communication giants of the faith who were contemporaries may have shared if they did not work side by side. For example, did Martin Luther and John Calvin know each other? How? To what extent? Or think about biblical figures like the Old Testament prophets Jeremiah and Habakkuk, did they have any direct communication? How about Adam and Enoch or Methusaleh, for Adam was still alive when these “sons” of many later generations were adults. Did they visit each other?

The purpose of this article is to explore any connections between Martin Luther of Germany (1483-1546) and William Tyndale of England (c.1494- 1536). These two leading figures of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation profoundly impacted history and each produced a very significant work in 1525. As we celebrate the 500th anniversaries of Luther’s Bondage of the Will and Tyndale’s English New Testament, what about the two men themselves? What was their relationship? Did they know of each other? Did they ever meet? Are there any parallels in their work?

One challenge we face in answering these questions is that William Tyndale wrote very little autobiographically, most likely because much of his adult life was spent on the run as an outlaw hated and hunted by Roman Catholic authorities. He was very careful in writing about himself lest he endanger himself or close friends and jeopardize his life’s goal of translating the Bible. Nevertheless, there are many good biographies of Tyndale that rely on what his contemporaries wrote about him and then piece together the story of his life. Combing through these works we see that Luther and Tyndale knew of each other, met each other, were co-objects of the ire of Rome, and had similar convictions. Also, while Tyndale was his own man, he was certainly influenced by Luther.1

TYNDALE READING LUTHER

What appears to be the first connection between Luther and Tyndale occurred at Cambridge University in 1520 where Tyndale would have encountered and read some of Luther’s published works. Tyndale was a university student in England in the dark days before the fervor of the Reformation gospel spread through the land. University professors delivered long, dull, and monotonous lectures full of useless hair-splitting in scholastic debates and vain speculation while bound to the opinions of the Roman Catholic Church. There was no lively, faithful, soul-stirring exposition of Scripture.

However, in those days change and excitement were in the air for two reasons. First, university students were learning Greek and reading and discussing the Greek New Testament. Having toiled in the bondage of Rome’s corruption, many students were rejuvenated by the Word of life. Edwards recounts how one student exclaimed, “I seemed unto myself inwardly to feel a marvelous comfort and quietness insomuch that my bruised bones leaped for joy” (Edwards, 34-35).

Second, students discovered something equally exciting, the writings of Martin Luther. By 1520, which is three years after Luther nailed his Ninety-five theses, the German reformer had published several notable works, including his latest, the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, for which he was excommunicated. Luther created an enormous problem for the papacy as his writing spread throughout Europe. His works were banned and burned, and the circulation of them incurred severe penalties. Luther’s works found their way into Cambridge. How liberating to hear God speak, not through the twisted, contradictory, and corrupt claims of the Romish church, but through the Scriptures as faithfully explained by Luther! The students devoured his writings so that it was reported to the local Romish clergy, “the university is infected with Lutheranism” (Edwards, 35). Tyndale would have been one of those “infected” students and he likely witnessed the grand spectacle at Cambridge the following year, 1521: a huge burning of Luther’s books at St. Paul’s Cross organized by Cardinal Wolsey and attended by his peers, bishops, and foreign ambassadors (Mozley, 20; Daniell, 50).

This first connection reminds us of God’s providence working through Gutenberg’s printing press for the wide distribution of literature and the spread of the Reformation. Tyndale did not need to sit under Luther’s lectern in Wittenberg to hear the polemics and triumphal gospel heralded by the German reformer; he could read Luther from far away, across the English Channel in Cambridge.

TYNDALE MEETING LUTHER

But Tyndale did go to Wittenberg! After Tyndale graduated from Cambridge, he was busy studying, teaching, preaching, and growing in his conviction that the common man of England must have a translation of Scripture in English to read it for himself. He traveled to London to seek approval and financing from the church but quickly discovered there was nowhere in England he could safely translate and print the Bible in a language people could understand. He left his native land and would never return, spending the rest of his life dodging ecclesiastical authorities who wanted him dead. After arriving in Hamburg, Germany, Tyndale eventually traveled to Wittenberg and met Martin Luther.

Neither Luther nor Tyndale ever wrote of their encounter and modern writers deny that the two ever met. However, Demaus demonstrates that contemporaries of Tyndale, whether friendly (John Foxe) or hostile (Sir Thomas More or Cochlaeus), maintain with one voice that Tyndale went to Wittenberg to see Luther, and any denials of this by modern writers are too feeble to merit serious refutation (58). Edwards surmises that the reason the two reformers never wrote of their encounter was probably that “Luther considered the meeting of relative unimportance in the light of his pressing problems, and Tyndale had already begun to draw a veil of silence and mystery over all his movements” (78). The biographer J.F. Mozley discovered some very intriguing evidence of Tyndale’s visit to the University of Wittenberg (52-53). A copy of the registers of the University of Wittenberg shows the names of students who enrolled there. One entry from June 10, 1525 reads: Guilhelmus Roy ex Londino. This is William Roye of London, a well-known friend and assistant of Tyndale. And, one year earlier, under the date May, 27, 1524, a strange entry appears: Guillelmus Daltici ex Angila. This is to be read as William Daltici of England, that is, William Tyndale. To conceal his identity as an exile on the run in these perilous times when men commonly disguised their names, he reversed the two syllables of his last name turning Tin-dale into Dal-tin (a copyist confused the ‘n’ for ‘ci,’ mistakenly giving Daltici). Thus, the register appears to show Tyndale enrolled in Wittenberg.

It is estimated that Tyndale remained in Wittenberg nine or ten months, probably working on his English translation and nearly bringing it to completion. We can only imagine, somewhat romantically, what it must have been like for Tyndale to hear Luther preaching or teaching, or to sit in on his “table-talk,” or for the two to sit down in private conversation. Tyndale would have had to learn the German language, but he could have accomplished that with God’s blessing during his stay in Wittenberg, for his Roman Catholic adversary Cochlaeus once labeled Tyndale and his friend William Roye as “two apostates from England who learned the German language at Wittenberg” (Demaus, 60).2 However, we will never know of any private discourse between the two reformers, unless some details of this and other mysterious meetings of history will be divulged in heaven as we converse about God’s wonderful works.

TYNDALE CONDEMNED WITH LUTHER

Another important historical connection between Luther and Tyndale is that in their day their books topped the “banned books” list of the church. This was true in England where merchants and other travelers would clandestinely carry into the country these books, often smuggling them in bales of cloth tucked away in their boats. In addition to Luther’s works, Tyndale’s Bible became so influential already in 1526, the year of its publication, that it also came under the church’s public condemnation. For example, Cardinal Wolsey ordered a rigorous search of London, Oxford, and Cambridge for anything written by Luther and for Tyndale’s Bible so that they might be burned. One sure way for an Englishman to get punished by the church and perhaps even burned at the stake was to be caught with Luther or Tyndale in his possession (Edwards, 95- 96; Demaus, 84).

One reason for the vehement opposition to Tyndale, who had merely put God’s Word into another language, was that the authorities were convinced he was allied with Luther, and therefore, a heretic bringing treason, anarchy, schism, and the overthrow of the government. One cardinal of Rome wrote to his colleagues calling Tyndale and others “children of iniquity…maintainers of Luther’s sect, blinded by extreme wickedness, declining from the way of truth and the orthodox faith, have with crafty trickery translated the holy gospel of God into our vulgar English language…” (in Mozley, 115). A bishop wrote to King Henry VIII of England warning him against Tyndale, “I need not to advertise your grace what infection and danger may ensue hereby, if it be not withstanded. This is the next way to fulfill your realm with Lutherans…” (in Mozley, 65).

What an honor it must have been for these two faithful servants to draw the ire of Rome together and suffer for the cause of the Lord together as co-heirs of the grace of life. As the inspired Peter, who together with John drew the ire of the Sanhedrin, once wrote, “But and if ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye, and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled” (1 Pet. 3:14).

TYNDALE INFLUENCED BY LUTHER

The monumental achievement of Tyndale’s life was his English translation of the New Testament. Tyndale used Luther’s 1522 German translation of the Bible as an aid in his work, as is evident from a comparison of the first edition of his English translation with Luther’s Bible. Also, his explanatory notes in the outer and inner margins borrow largely from Luther (Edwards, 83; Mozley, 63; Daniell, 113-124).

The clearest example of Luther’s strong influence is seen in Tyndale’s “Prologue to the Book of Romans.” The book of Romans was arguably the single most important book of Scripture for the reformers, as it showed most clearly the pure gospel of salvation by faith alone and brightened a way into the whole Bible. When introducing this significant book, Tyndale relied heavily upon Luther. Whereas most of Tyndale’s prologues consist of a one-page introduction to a book of Scripture, this one extends to seventeen pages. Demaus notes that this work “is in truth hardly an original work but is much more correctly described as a translation or paraphrase of Luther’s Preface to the same Epistle” (83).

Another evidence of Luther’s influence can be seen in Tyndale’s well-known treatise, The Parable of the Wicked Mammon, which is essentially an exposition of the doctrine of justification by faith alone. About this book Demaus writes,

The choice of subject may fairly enough be considered an indication of the paramount influence which Luther now exercised over the mind of Tindale, and indeed, there are several striking similarities of sentiment and expression which were almost certainly suggested by the writings of the great German Reformer. Tindale at the same time, treats the subject in a perfectly original manner, with the boldness and clearness of a man who had perfectly grasped it in his own mind… (54).

Though inspired by Luther, Tyndale did not produce his English translation from Luther’s German, but from the original Greek. Cochlaeus, a bitter foe of the Reformation, alleged that Tyndale did not even know Greek. He once excoriated Tyndale as an English apostate who hoped that “all the people of England would shortly become Lutheran, by means of Luther’s New Testament, which [he] had translated into the English tongue” (in Mozley, 58). Tyndale did not translate from Luther’s German, but from the original Greek. One New Testament scholar of the nineteenth century said about Tyndale’s Bible, “It is impossible to read a single chapter without gaining the assurance that Tyndale rendered the Greek directly…. He deals with the text as one who passed a scholar’s judgment upon every fragment of the work, unbiased by any predecessor” and if he used the help of others like Luther he did so “as a master and not as a disciple… style and interpretation are his own” (in Mozley, 87).

In his analysis of Tyndale’s use of Luther in translating the Bible, Daniell illustrates the situation this way: “(T)hough he [Tyndale] is swimming alone, Luther is never far away” (123). That is, if translating the New Testament from the original Greek is like swimming across a large lake, Luther was not the canoe in which Tyndale paddled, but a fellow swimmer available for assistance. Tyndale swam alone all the way across the lake, though he probably would not have made it without Luther.

Luther might even acknowledge that Tyndale’s work in translating the Bible was more impressive than his own. Luther was aided by many counterparts who knew German. But Tyndale worked alone in a foreign country— an Englishman in Germany with no aids to assist him. As Luther himself once quipped, “In the work of translation, one man is no man” (Mozley, 54). That is, translating Scripture is so difficult it exceeds the capability of one man, so that one man is as good as no man. Tyndale was certainly aided and influenced by Luther’s German translation, but Tyndale did his own work.

SHARED CONVICTIONS

William Tyndale and Martin Luther had much in common as reformers and they shared many of the same religious, theological, and biblical convictions. Above all, both men were grieved and restless that the common man did not know the simple gospel of the righteousness of Christ because the church corrupted it and the Bible was closed to them. Both men were driven by love and willing to hazard their lives so that their fellow countrymen could have a Bible in their own language. In His marvelous faithfulness, God gave to the Germans through Luther and to the Englishmen through Tyndale a Bible (and many another published works and sermons) for beholding the lovely and soul-comforting gospel of Christ.

1 This article relies on four major biographical works, and I list them here in chronological order from the date of publication. Any reference to one of these works hereafter will simply give author and page number in parentheses. Robert Demaus, William Tindale: A Contribution to the Early History of the English Bible (London: The Religious Tract Society, 1871). J.F. Mozley, William Tyndale (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937). Brian H. Edwards, God’s Outlaw: The Story of William Tyndale and the English Bible (Darlington, England: Evangelical Press, 1976). David Daniell, William Tyndale: A Biography (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1994).
2 It was well known that Tyndale was exceptional in eight languages: Latin, Greek, German, French, Hebrew, Spanish, Italian, and English.