new church life: november/december 2017
Yet within the church there
were voices of dissent. In the 1380s
John Wycliffe began the project of
translating the Word into English, the
first such translation into the language
of the people. The translated Word
was copied by hand and circulated by
itinerant preachers to receivers called
“Lollards.”
Lollards survived in England
until the Reformation, but they were
persecuted strenuously for opposing
the authority of the Church. By
introducing the idea that the Word
needed to be accessible, Wycliffe
stands at the beginning of a process of
religious change that would eventually
result in the Last Judgment.
Martin Luther furthered the process when he set into motion a
Reformation that undermined hundreds of years of Catholicism. He
challenged the corruption of the papacy, and the doctrines that were derived
from and supported it – especially saints, relics and indulgences. Like Wycliffe,
he insisted that people should be able to read the Word in their own language.
After refusing to recant he was forced to flee.
On his way home to Wittenberg he was “kidnapped” and taken to
Wartburg Castle, owned by the ruler of Wittenberg, Frederick the Wise. While
he remained in hiding he began a translation of the New Testament into
German. He used the new Greek version produced by Erasmus in 1516 – so it
was brand new and untainted by the translation errors found in the Catholic
Vulgate.
Luther’s goal was to translate the New Testament into common language,
and to do this, he would venture out into towns and villages and listen to
the people talking to capture the nuances of language. This translation is to
Germans what the King James Version is to the English.
The Reformation marked the beginning of the restoration of the Word.
By 1534 the German Bible was complete, and stands as one of the greatest
achievements of the Reformation. In the years immediately following Luther’s
break with the Catholic Church, other reformers followed suit. In 1526 English
and Dutch translations appeared, and in 1531 the French version. In 1609 even
the Roman Catholics produced an English translation of the Vulgate.
By the end of the 16 th century the Bible had been translated into dozens of
When he nailed the
Ninety-Five Theses to
the church door, Luther
could not have imagined
how this act would
change the course of
history. The full result
would not come to light
until the giving of the
Heavenly Doctrine.
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