John Wyclif, the Oxford theologian known as “the morning star of the reformation” and as “the evangelical doctor”, was a curious figure of the fourteenth century renown by his academic expertise, his involvements in political affairs and his opposition to many errors and doctrines of the medieval Roman Catholic church. Schaff is one of the few bold writers who risks affirming Wyclif’s year of birth[1], maybe believing in the testimony of an early writer on Wyclif, John Lewis[2], and both of them date Wyclif’s birth in the year 1324. Other writers are not so sure and declare the lack of information regarding this issue. Also curious and worthy of mention are the difficulties in knowing the accurate spelling of Wyclif’s name for, according to Schaff, there are more the twenty different renderings for it.[3]
Wyclif’s career was centered in Oxford. There were six colleges there and it seems that he spent time and exercised important duties in almost all of them. His academic career reached its peak in 1372, when he received the title of doctor of theology and it was exactly in this decade when Wyclif got involved with important political affairs and much profited from them. In 1374, the king of England sent him to a mission in Bruges to present Pope Gregory XI with England’s demands concerning the country’s relation with the church. He was previously involved with a similar situation, in 1366, when Pope Urban V requested from king Edward III the payment of papal taxation which England had been withholding since 1333[4] (in that very same year, Wyclif appeared as one of the King’s chaplains and was diametrically opposed to the payment). This time, according to Carrick, England’s demands were that “the Pontiff should desist in future from the reservation of benefices in the Anglican Church; that the clergy should henceforth freely enjoy their election to Episcopal dignities; and that in the case of electing a bishop, it should be enough that his appointment should be confirmed by his metropolitan, as was the ancient custom.”[5] The result of the mission was not all satisfactory. Evans remarks, “the outcome of the affair was not on the whole to the advantage of the English clergy” and “a second commission had better success.”[6] Whatever happened there, it was the reason which brought Wyclif two things: enmity with the Roman Church and, in 1376, the position of rector of Lutterworth. In this very same year his book on the civil dominion was published, and he participated actively in the Good Parliament, expressing his ideas of relationship between church and state. Since his return from Bruges, the Roman Church had its eye on him, and in 1377 the pope issued five bulls to England containing nineteen accusations against Wyclif which the pope considered heretical. Wyclif’s adversaries received the bulls with great joy, but the support of Oxford and of John of Gaunt (duke of Lancaster) kept the theologian safe. Gregory’s death in 1378 and the great papal schism were factors that contributed to diminish the authority of the bull.
In 1380, another protest appeared against Wyclif, this time brought by a fellow theologian, William Barton, Chancellor of Oxford, who appointed a commission to examine his doctrines of the Lord’s Supper. “The commission condemned two of Wyclif’s propositions on the Eucharist, but only by the slight majority of seven to five.”[7] His situation deteriorated more after the Peasant’s Revolt in 1381. The leader of the rebels, a priest named John Ball, affirmed that his thought had been shaped by Wyclif’s teachings for he had sat under the theologian for instruction. This terrible accusation added to the condemnation of his doctrine of the Eucharist and made Wyclif leave Oxford. The controversy on this specific issue was never resolved.
The final strike on Wyclif, and on those who still supported his ideas in Oxford, came in 1382. William Courtenay, who was Bishop of London and had been one of Wyclif’s adversaries since 1377, the time of Gregory’s bulls against the theologian. Courtenay had become Archbishop of Canterbury and would take advantage of his new position to take a last blow against Wyclif. He called a synod known as “the earthquake council”. The synod condemned twenty-four articles alleged to represent the reformer’s thought, and from these ten were regarded as heretical. Schaff lists the four principal issues condemned as heresy: Christ’s corporal absence in the Eucharist, a soul prepared to die does not need oral confession, the English church (after the death of Urban VI) should govern itself and acknowledge no pope, and that Scripture forbids temporal possessions to the clergy.[8] A few years later, in 1384, Wyclif would meet his creator when a massive stroke ended his life.
ANALYZING THE CHARGS OF 1377
The accusations brought against Wyclif in 1377, as related by Sergeant[9], were centered on church-state issues. They dealt with the papal power to excommunicate (8-13), the papal political dominion (1-3) and papal authority versus the king’s authority (remaining articles). These charges can be considered consistent with Wyclif’s thought for Carrick registers in his book Wyclif’s defense of them as being true biblical teaching.[10]
It seems clear why Wyclif was attacking the papal authority to excommunicate. The English refusal to pay papal taxes and to recognize the head of the church as the head of the Island would bring a ban from the church. Wyclif attacked the concept of “binding and loosing” and reduced it only to the spiritual realm (ministerial). The secondary sources consulted for this brief research do not cite the biblical basis for this argument but it seems in harmony with the content of Scripture. Neither Christ nor any of the apostles ever sought any kind of worldly dominion. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter sixteen, clearly shows Christ attributing the power of “bidding and losing” to his Church, but not to be cowardly used by its leaders to achieve their earthly desires. Christ always disconnected himself from the worldly power: he paid taxes to Rome[11] (and not the other way around), during his trial he denied any connection with the secular authority of the world[12], even in the glorious moment of his ascension (triggered by impertinent questions of his apostles) he denied any pretension to establishing a physical kingdom.[13] Wyclif seems to have been biblical in this assertion. On the other hand, still on matters of church censures, he introduced a confusing statement that is registered by Sergeant as charge number nine. It says: “it is not possible for any man to be excommunicated, unless he be first and principally excommunicated by himself.”[14] At first sight seems that the Oxford theologian was advocating self-discipline prior to the discipline of the church. Charges numbers ten and eleven sheds more light on the matter and identify the validity of the excommunication in two situations: only in the cause of God (spiritual realm) and only against the adversaries of Christ’s laws (not of earthly and human popes).[15] Therefore, so far, Wyclif’s doctrine of church discipline seems to be biblical. Christ gave the disciples control (power to bind or loose) over the Church concerning spiritual things, and this power posses efficacy and is rightly used only when the subject of the censure had truly committed a transgression according to what Christ himself classified as sin. Had Wyclif stopped there, he would have not erred. In his desperate attempt to secure a complete no-discipline-at-all situation he denied that Christ gave his disciples any power to excommunicate anyone, and he affirmed that the pope may bind or loose only when he himself obeys the law of Christ[16]. Wyclif made a clear distinction between excommunication and the act of “biding and loosing”, and he connected the power of a church leader to his personal sanctification and obedience. Concerning the authority to eject someone from the church, even if the text in Matthew is not clear enough, the apostle Paul gave good practical examples for he wrote to the church of Corinth complaining for her lethargy in removing from her midst those who where committing horrendous sins[17] and he wrote to Timothy declaring that he himself had exercised discipline against two blasphemers in the church.[18] Concerning the necessity of obedience before a leader may exercise authority in the church, one wonders if he meant absolute and complete obedience, since he gave no further explanation of what he meant. If that is the case, it is not only unbiblical (for the Scriptures clearly say that no one can fulfill perfectly the Law of God), but it gives support to some accusations that Wyclif “does not see the sharp distinction between justification by faith and justification by works which was to come into view with Luther”.[19]
In the realm of secular power and authority, Wyclif expressed an unbalanced and biased theology. While prohibiting any interference from the church into the state, Wyclif allowed the reverse. Clearly as a nationalistic reaction against the abuses of the Roman Church in his country, the evangelical doctor affirmed that the king, or civil rulers, has the power to control church properties (in his own terms, “temporalities”) even confiscating them when they see fit.[20] He even tried to diminish the absurdity of his statement by conditioning this act of management to a delinquent church, but even if the church is in a deplorable state such as this there is no biblical basis at all to support such teaching.
WYCLIF’S DOCTRINE OF THE EUCHARIST
It was not the Bible, but philosophy (and specially Aristotelianism) which led the church to employ strenuous efforts to maintain Innocent’s III idea concerning the Eucharist, as decreed by the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Aristotle’s distinction between substance and accident, proposed that the accident of a substance may suffer alterations without affecting the substance, led the way for an explanation of the doctrine of Transubstantiation. Wyclif, on the other hand, struggled with this doctrine for a long time. He was sure the Eucharist was a biblical doctrine, an ordinance of the Lord Jesus for his church.[21] Barton, in the commission he instituted in 1381, pointed out his disagreement and reproached Wyclif on two points: that the substance of the bread and wine remains unaltered during the administration of the sacrament and that the body and blood of Christ are present merely symbolically.[22]
Wyclif viewed the doctrine approved by the thirteenth century council as a novelty, a fruit of “the moderns and of the recent Church.”[23] Philosophically, he just could not accept the separation between substance and accident. For him, the bread and the wine, even being only accidents, should preserve their substance.[24] What a thing is or if it truly exists can be rationally detected only by the fact that both elements are intimately linked together, and, therefore, if a thing can afford its accidents existing independently from its substance, then it is impossible to tell what a thing is or whether it exists at all.[25] Wyclif’s book on the Eucharist raises the question if a mouse, eating of the sacramental elements after the “magic” which takes place during the mass, would be partaking of the body of Christ. The cleverness and absurdity of such argument is a demonstration of Wyclif’s rational approach to the matter. In fact, concerning the philosophical approach embraced by the Roman Church he said it is “grounded neither in holly writ ne reson ne wit but only taught by newe hypocritis and cursed heretikis that magnyfyen there own fantasies and dremes.”[26]
Thus, it is clear that for Wyclif bread remains bread and wine remains wine, but what about the presence of Christ in the administration of the sacrament and of the spiritual benefits it confers upon believers? Carrick exaggerated when he compared Wyclif’s position with that held by Calvin, Knox and the confessional churches of England and Scotland. In his words:
It must be carefully noticed that with the first Reformers the doctrine of a real presence was clearly and distinctly taught, not transubstantiation, nor Luther’s consubstantiation, but a real spiritual presence. The Zwinglian dogma of a simple memorial and symbol was in direct opposition to Calvin’s institutes and Knox’s confession of Faith and the doctrine of the two Reformed Churches of England and Scotland in the Thirty-nine Articles and the Confession of Faith is identical with that enunciated by Wycliffe with such distinctness and persistency.[27]
Schaff expressed the same understanding when expressed Wyclif’s views in the following way:
Christ is in the bread as a king is in all parts of his dominions and as the soul is in the body. In the breaking of the bread, the body is no more broken than the sunbeam is broken when a piece of glass is shattered: Christ is there sacramentally, spiritually, efficiently – sacramentaliter, spirittualiter et virtualiter. Transubstantiation is the greatest of all heresies and subversive of logic, grammar and all natural science.[28]
Taking into account Wyclif’s inclination to philosophy and his highly scholastic education at Oxford, it is more likely that the theologian was, although with sincerity in his heart, looking for a rational approach to the elements of the Eucharist that would satisfy his reason. It would certainly be unfair to remove spirituality and piety from Wyclif’s labors for a more biblically sound knowledge of the Lord’s Supper mysteries, but comparing his doctrine and definitions to the developments made by the great reformers of the sixteenth and seventeenth century is clearly a biased statement. Regarding this issue, Frassetto and Evans express a more balanced view. Both do not deny a certain degree of spirituality on Wyclif’s writings on the matter, but the former reminds their readers that Wyclif agreed with the official position of the church until somewhere in 1378 and that it was John’s contact with philosophical realism which led him to question the Catholic position[29]; Evans points out that the Oxford theologian found it outrageous that the church’s thought was supported not on reason nor on the Bible but on the opinion of a fallible pope.[30]
WYCLIF ON SCRIPTURE
The understanding of Wyclif’s doctrine of Scripture is crucial for the analysis of his position on further doctrines. All secondary sources describe the Oxford theologian embracing Scripture as inerrant (without errors or contradictions and, therefore, all its content is true), authoritative (the supreme rule to followed and obeyed) and divinely originated.
Carrick affirms that it was in the book Of the Truth of Holy Scripture that Wyclif explained his positions on the Bible. Carrick wrote:
By far, the most outstanding feature of Wycliffe’s life and work is the claim he makes for the absolute supremacy, sufficiency and infallibility of the Scripure; and his work, Of the truth of the Holy Scripture, in Latin, develops his views in the most clear and explicit manner. Christ is the author of the Scripture, as as the Word of God, it should be in the hands and heart of everyone, cleric and lay – a right denied by the Church of Rome.[31]
Carrick’s statement is shared by other writers. Frassetto says “Wyclif asserted the absolute truth of Scripture and the absolute centrality of the Bible to Christian life.”[32] In addition, he points to Wyclif’s passion for the Bible as a probable inspiration for the first English translations of the sacred text. Evans depicts Wyclif’s centrality on Scripture saying:
Wyclif opens his book with a bold challenge. In the Bible lies the safety of the faithful; there is the foundation of every orthodox opinion and the place to look for a refutation of every error. The lightest mistake in connection with Scripture is death to the church. On these assumptions he sets out to establish, but in a true scholastic fashion, with every subtlety at his command, the truth of Scripture (1-8), its authority (9-14), its divine origin (16-19) and three theses (20-31): that Scripture is superior to all human writings; that all Christians have a right to read it; that the Bible is the best foundation for the organization of human life, secular and ecclesiastical.[33]
Such opinions, on the other hand, do not express the very source of Wyclif’s beliefs concerning the Bible. Were they fruit of philosophical presuppositions or were they biblically rooted? Evidences point to the former option. While the majority of the writers on Wyclif only state his position on the Bible without pointing to its origin, Evans call them “assumptions” and sheds even more light on the matter by writing on John Cunningham’s (or Kenningham) opposition to Wyclif. Cunningham, who was a recent graduate in theology, described Wyclif’s position on the source of validity and truth of Scripture as its antiquity or its eternity. Wyclif’s response to the charge, far from being scripturally based, was more of a philosophical-logical treatise. In it, he appealed to three “nests” in which beginning theologians are reared and that are the roots of his thought: logic, natural philosophy and metaphysics.[34]
Therefore, for someone who stood for the absolute authority of the Holy Bible, Wyclif demonstrated a huge failure in not using the sacred text itself to prove all he said that it is. The apostle Paul affirmed a great testimony of the divine origin of the Bible and of its authority when he wrote to Timothy: “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”[35] The use of this text alone could have supported Wyclif’s concept of Scripture and responded to his adversaries in a way consistent with his claims. He could have made use of the formula “Thus says the Lord”, which is so common in the Bible and that per se is a witness of its divine source. When it comes to its inerrancy and infallibility, the fulfillment of the many prophecies of the Bible is a scriptural argument consistent with Wyclif’s claims which he neglected. He should have reminded his adversaries of Peter’s use of Joel’s prophecy cited in Acts 2:16 as a clear example of prophetic accomplishment.
There is not much agreement among those who write about Wyclif’s idea of the harmony between biblical authority and the writings of the church fathers. Frassetto asserts “Wyclif did not adopt the notion of sola Scriptura, as did Luther and the Protestant Reformers, but he recognized the value of the writings of Augustine and other exegetes and theologians on the Bible.”[36] The problem with Frassetto’s statement is that it does not define accurately the principle of Scripture alone defended by the Reformers. Luther, Calvin and other theologians of the Reformation regarded as important the opinion of the church father in matters of doctrine and Bible interpretation while never considering them as infallible, for that is a characteristic of Scripture alone. Concerning this matter, Evans expresses a position diametrically opposite to Frassetto. She says:
Wyclif accepted the need for ‘interpretation’ and he had no real concerns about making use of the comments of earlier Christian authorities, although he insists that if the Bible contradicts human knowledge, one should not be ashamed to prefer what ‘the Bible says’…. Scripture should be followed rather than secular writing, with the great early Christian writers such Augustine having a certain accepted reliability. Wyclif point out that even an Augustine is not infallible….[37]
WYCLIF’S INFLUENCE
Although the controversy about the title of “morning star of the reformation” remains, it is undeniable that this great man caused substantial changes in the Western thought. Walker, for example, was reluctant to recognize both Wyclif and Hus as exponents of the great doctrines defended in the time of the Reformation. He wrote:
Wyclif and Hus have often been styled forerunners of the Reformation. The designation is true if regard is had to their protest against the corruption of the church, their exaltation of the Bible and their contribution to the sum total of agitation that ultimately resulted in reform. When their doctrines are examined, however, they appear to belong rather to the Middle Ages.[38]
Therefore, the fight against papal power so boldly fought by Wyclif had immediate and recognized effects on Hus and certainly on the Luther and the further reformers of the sixteenth century. There are some indications that Wyclif’s views influenced the Protestant party in England, which sought to promote more control of state on church.[39]
Wyclif’s view on Scripture and his desire to make a copy of the Bible available to each citizen in England was a great contribution both to the spread of the Gospel and to the development of the English language. Frassetto remembers that at the end of the fourteenth century the Island was blessed by a Wyclifite English Bible, many sermons, a commentary on the Book of Revelation, a gloss of the Gospels, a theological dictionary and all this for the use of preacher without access to a good library.
May the Lord of glory, who blessed His church with a mature faith and gave her a healthy and developed doctrine in the 21st century, raise more men with the same spirit and disposition as Wyclif so that His kingdom may be expanded and the world recognize him as the only and true God.
[1] Philp Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 6 (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 2006), 315.
[2] John Lewis, The History of the life and sufferings of the Reverend and learned John Wyclif (London, 1720), 1.
[3] Schaff, Christian Church, 315, N.2.
[4] G. R. Evans, John Wyclif: Myth and Reality (Downers Gove: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 141.
[5] J. C. Carrick, Wyclif and the Lollards (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 97.
[6] Evans, John Wyclif, 144.
[7] Michael Frassetto, The Great Medieval Heretics, Five Centures of Religious Dissent (New York: BlueBridge, 2008), 162.
[8] Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 321.
[9] Lewis Sergeant, John Wyclif: Last of the schoolman and first of the English Reformers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1803), 177-79.
[10] Carrick, Wyclif and the Lollard, 110.
[11] Matthew 22:21.
[12] John 18:36.
[13] Acts 1:6-8.
[14] Sergeant, John Wyclif, 178.
[15] Ibid, 178.
[16] See charges 12 and 15, respectively, in Sergeant.
[17] I Corinthians 5:1-5.
[18] I Timothy 1:10.
[19] Evans, John Wyclif, 159.
[20] See charges 6, 7, 17 and 18 in Sergeant.
[21] Frassetto, Medieval Heretics, 171.
[22] Evans, John Wyclif, 186.
[23] Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 336.
[24] Evans, John Wyclif , 170.
[25]Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 337.
[26] As quoted in Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 337.
[27] Carrick, Wycliffe and the Lollards, 189.
[28] Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 336.
[29] Frassetto, Medieval Heretics, 170.
[30] Evans, John Wyclif, 188.
[31] Carrick, Wycliffe and the Lollards, 177.
[32] Frassetto, Medieval Heretics, 169.
[33] Evans, John Wyclif, 121.
[34] Ibid, 120.
[35] 2 Timothy 3:16.
[36] Frassetto, Medieval Heretics, 169.
[37] Evans, John Wyclif, 113.
[38] Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (Edinburg: T. & T. Clark, 1953), 306.
[39] Ibid, 405.
