John Wycliffe

[Music] in this lecture I'm going to be talking about the writings and the life of John Wickliffe the English Theologian who later became a heretic and who inspired the Lawler movement and many later Bible translators and the first thing I want to talk about is wickliff context Wickliffe was shaped not by a time of prosperity or of optimism but actually by a time of pessimism that had descended upon late medieval Europe particularly in England during wickliff life there were a number of factors that led to a context that naturally gave rise to a certain amount of criticism of the way the establishment was running the church and there were also natural factors such as the Black Death that allowed wickliff to really sort of capitalize on the general Paul of the experience of those throughout England who were struggling to either make ends meet or who were struggling to stay alive throughout England at this time in the late 1300s there was also increased tension amongst the English peasants the English peasants increasingly stressed that the nobility and the ruling classes had had stolen the money of the nation and that the wealth needed to be redistributed and that those who labored in the lands need not go hungry because they needed to be fed and they needed to receive the money and the wages that they had earned and at this time as we've already seen there was a Papal Schism occurring throughout Southern Mediterranean Europe if those were the negative factors that gave rise to wickliff challenge to the papacy into the Theology of the Catholic Church there were some other positive factors that shaped Wickliffe thinking and that is that in the late Middle Ages or at least as early back as the high Middle Ages you have an increased urbanization of European Christianity and European life people leave the Farms increasingly and they come to the cities for the hope of prosperity for the hope of jobs for the hope of a better life and as people come to cities they very often find education this is true throughout most of History up until today that those who go to the cities who live in the cities who make their life in and around cities tend to find themselves better educated obviously than if you live out on the farms where you have no access to either education or Tutors or anyone that could help you learn to read or to study or these kinds of things and so in the late Middle Ages going all the way back to the high Middle Ages you have a rise in literacy levels in many urban populations throughout Europe one of those is in and around the Southern and Southeastern regions of England London Cambridge Oxford all of these cities found an increased number of people moving into the city to find jobs and so as the these regions become urbanized they become more literate and as people become more literate they tend at least there is a There's an opportunity for them to reject the Catholic church and its insistence that Christians not read the scriptures for themselves and that they not try to understand the scriptures for themselves once you can read the natural inclination of many people is to say well I can read the Bible for myself I don't need a priest to read the scriptures to me now I may need the church to interpret it in some cases but I don't need the church to read the Bible to me and into this context both the negative and the positive John wickliff steps he was born in and around 1329 we don't know the exact date precisely in 1351 he went up to Oxford to study and he really makes his life in Oxford and even when he becomes an ambassador later in life and he gets involved in politics and other things Oxford really is the place that wickliff is best known 1372 or 1373 again exact dates are a bit bit imprecise wickliff received his Doctorate and in a way that's a bit inexplicable at this same time Wickliffe somehow joins in Royal political issues we see him becoming an ambassador around this time we see him making connections with powerful families all the way up to the nobility itself and with powerful figures around the family at the Royal Court why Wickliffe was suddenly embroiled in all these things is a bit of a mystery a man who receives a doctorate very often continues teaching in the University he usually does not then jump straight into politics but Wickliffe does he gets involved in what we might today call public life throughout the 1370s wickliff seems to have engaged in some radical thinking on the subject not of theology itself but on politics and Civil Life in 1377 we see evidence of this because the Archbishop of Canterbury at the time actually charges Wickliffe with not with heresy but with sedici preaching and in a very famous scene as Wickliffe goes to lambath Palace to stand trial and of course lambath Palace is on the Tims River in the heart of London across the river from Westminster and the lambath palace is the London base for the Archbishop of canterbary well as Wick is heading to trial to sort of stand before the Archbishop of Canterbury he brings with him two of the most powerful men in the region not the members of the royal family themselves per se but others in the court and in government that were significantly well known as serious important fellows and many have commented that Wickliffe is really kind of grandstanding here he's showing his hand that he has power that despite the Archbishop of canterbury's desire to see Wickliffe brought to heal that he has the men behind him to not listen to the Archbishop of canabury and do just as he pleases but it doesn't end there the Archbishop of Canterbury seems to have commended the issue over to the papacy and just shortly after the Fiasco at lameth Palace the pope himself condemns 19 articles of Wick Cliffs and declares that they should not be taught anymore and the origin of wili's teachings that were considered problematic comes not again not from a theological Treatise per se but from his book on civil leadership in 1376 now if it were not for the situation of the papal Schism there is some evidence that Wickliffe would have been dealt with pretty handily but just as the papacy condemns Wickliffe coincidentally the papacy suddenly fractures and splits and the papacy then begins to deal with its own internal problems and it doesn't have the the resources or the energy or the time to deal with this wickliff over in England that is far away and not as important as healing the division in the Catholic church but at this time though it does seem that wickliff kind of radicalized his theology again the the problematic issue with the Catholic Church throughout the Middle Ages and up and into the Reformation is that they continue to seek closure on certain principles and on certain theological issues not by hearing them out and then deciding which is usually what happens at a council or what should happen at a council at least but rather they slap people down without really giving them a trial or much of an opportunity to defend themselves and too often as we'll see again and again when you do this to someone when you do not give them a chance to speak or defend themselves when you shut them down without really any Fanfare the problem that happens is the person tends not to be cowed but it tends to be radicalized it's certainly the case with Martin Luther and it's the case with wickliff here as he begins to deal more and more with the problems of the papacy and the immorality that he sees in government he writes two treatises that that begins to express his more radical theological thinking 1378 he writes the book on the church in 1379 he writes his book on the Eucharist and it's often pointed out that as Wick continues to radicalize there does seem to be a situation in which the papacy wanted Wickliffe to be brought to heal he they wanted wickliff to be slapped down but again because of wickliff Royal connections because the king and the royal family in particular considered wickliff to be a bit of an ally or at least an asset for the kingdom Wickliffe lived much of his life really without much controversy at all he never really was all that concerned for his life and he died of a good old age in his bed without the fear of capital punishment the problem with wickliff theology though is that just as he writes these two radical books in 1378 and 1379 suddenly almost instantaneously there is the 1381 peasants Revolt in England Now The Peasants Revolt has long been studied it's it's one of the great uprisings of of a lower and middle class people to attempt to overthrow the nobility it is led by one preach in particular but but there are a number of religious elements being employed to justify The Peasants rebelling against their superiors and it really becomes quite serious in England in 1381 when this Uprising continues to sort of spread throughout parts of England and despite the fact that wickliff at least according to historical record has no connection whatsoever to the 1381 Uprising nevertheless those in wickliff day and some historians not not many but some historians have suggested that that wickliff himself was the primary instigator or at least one of the major supporters of the 1381 peasants Revolt historically though that doesn't seem to be much evidence for this wickliff very much is an elite he is actually a crony with many of the nobility and his life in Oxford is one of the things that would certainly have separated him from those peasants who were uprising and trying to overthrow those who were in power if anything wickliff would have been seen as one of the people in power or at least affiliated with power if the peasants would have really been all that concerned about him and so wickliff continued to write and preach and express his theological thinking which we'll cover in just a minute but it all came down to the Council of constant in 1415 of course the Council of constance is the council that eventually heals the papal Schism but it's also the council where wickliff teachings were finally and fully condemned Now by this point wickliff had already died he died in 1384 but that didn't stop the council from condemning him nonetheless declaring him to be a heretic and in 1428 as was not uncommon in the case of Heretics his body was exuded he was burned at least his bones were burned and his ashes were scattered into the river I I always sort of chuckle at that because it's supposed to be sort of a spiteful enactment of wickliff punishment but I really think the only person punished would be the the poor sad who had to open the tomb uh and dig out this rotting carcass in order to burn it so at the end in the early 15th century Wickliffe is declared a heretic and he is forever branded as a man that is not to be embraced within the Catholic church now just what were his ideas what was his theology simply put wickliff theology focused almost exclusively on biblical reading and biblical vernacular translations as a vehicle for change in the religious life and though some of wickliff teachings seem reformational they seem somewhat quasi Protestant they're not entirely Protestant in fact some of them really are still medieval in many ways but nevertheless because Wickliffe is so focused on biblical knowledge and biblical literacy as a vehicle for religious thought there is a theological kinship between what Wickliffe says in some of the criticisms that he has of the Catholic church and those that Luther and Calvin and cranmer and others will have in the 16th century there are a number of things that wickliff rejects for example he rejects prayers for the dead he eventually argues that the papacy itself should be abolished and he claims uh sort of to the embarrassment of the papacy that the Schism that they were going through was God's sign that the papacy was not of biblical origin and that should be abolished he also calls for the abolition of monasticism now all of those criticisms of course appear very Protestant in some ways they are but the main focus for Wickliffe is that these doctrines these ecclesiastical offices Etc are not found in scripture and if they're not found in scripture he either declares that they should be overthrown or he calls into doubt their existence entirely now one of the things about wili's understanding of the Bible is that it's again it's not entirely Protestant Wickliffe never quite gets to the point of saying that the Bible alone is the source of theological truth the Bible is supreme it is above all the source of theological thinking but there are other things as well that can be brought in he does not then in other words have the doctrine of Sola scriptura though I do always point out to students that Sola scriptura doesn't believe that we only have the Bible too that we only read the Bible that that theological discourse or philosophy or looking at church history and tradition is somehow antithetical to scripture that's what I call the doctrine of solo scriptura that the Bible only is the thing we're supposed to read and frankly I don't think that's possible I think we always bring the scripture to other texts when we read them and we bring our knowledge of other subjects other truths to the scriptures in order to understand it just for example we use languages and linguistic skills and our knowledge of the vernacular and all these things to read the Bible well those those are tools that the Bible doesn't give us the Bible doesn't give us English we bring that to the Bible we we use our our modern context our modern language and our modern tools of interpretation to read the scriptures and we need to be aware of these so I do think wickliff teachings on the scripture are more closely aligned with Protestant than some people might understand it to be but the other thing that wickliff doesn't really Embrace is he does not really have much of a concern for the study of Greek or Hebrew now a lot of this is because he's not a humanist he's a Scholastic he does not yet appreciate or maybe even have the the capacity of the or the awareness of the fact that the study of the original languages actually will increase our knowledge of the scriptures that is to come at a later date the other things that are in wickliff theology that appear to a bit more traditional is for example he does not deny that there is such a thing as mortal sin he does not in other words deny that there are certain sins that make your sin sort of imperiled or in Jeopardy if you are Before the Throne of God in other words there is no real doctrine of assurance of faith that we would ever find in protestantism and in fact Wickliffe never addresses the subject of justification by faith alone or faith for that matter he never discusses the subject of sanctification outside of his desire for biblical knowledge Wickliffe really is concerned mostly with morality ethics and The Obedience of the clergy so one of his more radical teachings at the time was wickliff believed that mortal sin actually disqualifies someone from ecclesiastical office and even he says from Royal office that people who are in grave sin people who are murderers adulterers people who are grossly negligent in the faith these kinds of things that they can be removed from ecclesiastical office now that might seem not very controversial today because we do talk about this in many Protestant churches that certain actions can get you removed from office still in its time in the Middle Ages this was Radical the idea that that the sins of the priest would disqualify him runs all the way back to St Augustine and his controversy with the donatists of course the donatists believed that those priests and Bishops and clergymen in the early church who had given in under persecution and allowed the gospels to be burned or who had denied the faith while under some form of torture that they had lost their right to be a priest and Augustine in a very shrewd way points out that if you're going to deny the spiritual validity of the pastor because he is a sinner well then we might as well have no pastors because there is no such thing as a sinless priest outside of our high priest who is Christ now here Wickliffe is citing in some small way against St Augustine and with the donatists now of course he is never accused of donatism and he doesn't really seem to drive this point home all that strongly but still for Wickliffe sin removes the validity of one's ecclesiastical office and it does more than that wickliff actually goes on to say that though those immoral priests who are still in power still in office that lay folk can actually withhold tithes for the pastor for the priest if the person is living in Gross sin of all of these teachings again we see just some elements of of what would later be called protestantism and we see some elements that are very much medieval concerns the one issue above all though that Wickliffe fought and wrote and was animating about more than any other was the subject of the mass now the mass of course is the central issue of worship in the medieval Church it is when the Bread and Wine are transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ and for Wickliffe when he looked at the subject of the Eucharist he ended up deciding that he was physically present in the Lord's Supper that that the physical eating of Christ and the physical drinking of his blood was the doctrine that wickliff embraced he doesn't Embrace memorialism or some type of spiritual Presence by the Holy Spirit it is actually physically Christ's body still wickliff was pretty scathing about his understanding of the doctrine of transubstantiation in the later years of his life he wrote again and again and again Treatise after Treatise attacking the Catholic doctrine of the mass calling it a Superstition calling into question its philosophical and its intellectual Heritage declaring that it was the doctrine that should be rejected now you have to remember that that again that sounds very enlightened of Wickliffe but he is writing in the late 1300s and you have to remember that the doctrine of transubstantiation had only been declared in the early 1200s and wickliff is actually engaging in a pretty serious critique and one of the things that he seems to be pointing out is that the doctrine of transubstantiation is a new doctrine that it should not have been added to the Catholic Church as a requirement for faith that belief in the physical presence of Christ was all that mattered lastly let's talk about wickliff impact in and around England if wickliff had died merely as a theologian and a writer of Books we probably would not be much aware of Wickliffe but in fact wickliff had a number of followers he had a number of people who embraced his Core teaching at least on the need for vernacular scriptures and wickless followers are known as the lards now the atmology of the word lard is Up For Debate the simple reality is we do not know the origin of the word lard it seems to mean something like mumbler la la la la la this kind of thing um and there's some at least General consensus amongst historians again it's it's up for Up For Debate but there are some consensus that in a world where biblical reading was always done aloud where you didn't read to yourself quietly as we do today that generally or poorly literate masses for Lay folks who are trying to read the scriptures and they're not reading it in elegant Latin they're reading it in English that the established clergy and those that were in power began to sort of describe the laws as mumblers as those who just sort of fumbled their way through the reading of scripture and the reason we need to discuss the laws is they're a bit misunderstood in historical context when we get to the English Reformation and we sort of fast forward from Wickliffe until the time of the tutors you have a number of assumptions about the presence of lards in England that really have no basis in historical fact a number of historians have argued over the years particularly several Generations ago that England did not need Luther or Calvin or anyone else to reform itself that there was already a natural movement within England the lards who were ready to grab the Reigns of reformation and take it in an English Direction so there are a number of relatively popular misconceptions about lardy in England that it was widespread that it was lurking in many cities that it was a powerful presence and that it was a cohesive movement all throughout the English Countryside and lardy was a factor it was important particularly in and around the time of Wickliffe l in wickliff day was strongest amongst the middle class orans in the town folk throughout England but it wasn't a movement lty had no churches it actually had no specific doctrines it anyone could come up with their own opinions about certain doctrines based on their reading of scripture there was no cohesive confessional Central perspective of the laws the focus of the lawers was just Bible reading groups it was individual it was the desire of lay people to meet and to hear the word of God and so in wickliff time the small groups that got together to read scriptures were eventually persecuted now that persecution brings a little bit of a change to the way the laws engag with the world around it in 1395 there were the 12 conclusions it was a publication of the laws that was really just a simple articulation of lardy however as they began to be oppressed and suppressed in England as we see in other groups throughout history they began to militarize and become more rebellious and so just 15 years later in 1410 there was published a book called the lantern of light and this book is more rebellious and it begins to describe a number of ways in which lardy would begin to resist the establishment of course that only begins to raise the alarm even further those who were suppressing L of course point out that the lantern of light amongst other books is a book of pretty serious radicalism and all of this came to aead in 1414 with what we know as old Castle's Revolt old castle was a lard he was a man um he he was a lay person he was not a pastor or a priest and and at one point he was arrested and charged with lardy and he was condemned and as he was awaiting his death old castle somehow managed to escape from prison and as again as we see in other parts of History deciding that he had nothing to lose deciding that his life was forfeit deciding that the Catholic church had condemned him without so much as a word that of defense for himself he decided to raise a rebellion and so he called for a nationwide lardy Rebellion now the fact of the matter is is rebellions usually need a great deal more planning than what old castle had given they need to muster arms they need to devise a plan an attack plan where are they going who are they going to attack these kinds of things and so old Castle's rebellion was really just sort of a blip on the screen it it tried to raise up the lardy movement into a cohesive single Army but it never managed to do this and eventually old castles Revolt is put down old Castle's Revolt really only served to prove the point that lardy was inherently seditious that it was Bible reading not necessarily only for the sake of piety but also for the sake of thumbing your nose at The Establishment and that those within lardy could be considered seditious just because they were lards now as time wor on and as you get closer to the 1500s lardy begins to go on the Wayne it ceases to have the power that it once had almost certainly this is due to the fact that lty is accused of sedition sedition in most late medieval and early modern kingdoms is punished with severe force and so many lards perhaps didn't want to be accused of sedition or in other ways the suppression of lawty becomes effective in England lty begins to diminish we do know that by by the time you get to the English Reformation in the 1530s that there really isn't much lty left in England there are some law elements there's a famous case in tutor England of a lard in London who murders a priest and attempts to get away with it but again I think there you see lardy is being used as a word for political sedition it's not really being used as a religious or theological movement and so has a short-lived life it follows immediately on the heels of Wickliffe and after wickliff life it has a couple of important stages its early Publications and then eventually the old castle Revolt as well as a few other pieces but lery is not a force it is not a movement it doesn't have a theology behind it and really because it doesn't have much substance built into it LLY begins to wear out by the time you get to the Reformation [Music] [Music]

Channel: Ryan Reeves

Views: 157,210

Keywords: John Wycliffe (Philosopher), Church History, John Wycliffe (Author), Religion (TV Genre), Lollards, English History, Middle Ages (Event), University Of Oxford (College/University), Roman Catholic Church (Organization Founder), Pope (Religious Leadership Title), Protestantism (Religion), Protestant Reformation (Event), Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary (College/University), Ryan M. Reeves

Id: DtSgqKp5lfE

Length: 28min 39sec (1719 seconds)

Published: Mon May 26 2014