Pastor Glenn McDonald: God’s Word for Everyone

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Each day this Lent we’re looking at major “turning points” in Christian history – moments or seasons in which the story of God’s people took an important and often unexpected turn.  

In a typical medieval village, there was only one copy of the Bible.

It would have been considered irreplaceable – the product of countless hours of faithful copying by monastic scribes, most likely on expensive parchment or vellum. Bibles were so precious that they might be chained to the altar of the parish church.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t as if people were lining up to run off with such a ponderous book. For one thing, the text was in Latin – a language unknown to rank-and-file citizens of Christendom. A good many parish priests knew nothing of Latin, either.

In a sense, the Bible was protected by sheer mystique. These were the very words of God. Only the bravest person would risk God’s wrath by seizing, let alone touching, this unique gift from heaven.

Literacy was a limited skill in most European communities. Christian education for the masses was primarily visual, not verbal. Stained glass windows, along with statues of saints and Bible heroes, aimed to depict the essential truths of both Old and New Testaments.

Since Catholic worship was exclusively in Latin, church attenders heard little or nothing they could comprehend.

There was a general awareness, of course, that when the priest took the host during the Lord’s Supper and uttered the words, Hoc est enim corpus meum (“This is my body”), something supernatural was happening. The bread was becoming the body of Christ. Some historians suggest those oft-repeated words, slurred together, are the source of the expression “hocus-pocus.” Worship was magic – not the sort of thing an ordinary person could be expected to understand.

Then, seemingly out of the blue, came a number of pastors and preachers who thought differently.

One of them was Oxford professor John Wycliffe, who dared to translate the Bible into English, his native tongue. 

During his lifetime, Wycliffe was widely regarded as Europe’s preeminent scholar. He had the unsettling habit of speaking his mind, and frequently found himself accused of a variety of heresies and dragged into the courts of the church. Even though he personally remained a loyal Catholic and never advocated separation from Rome, Protestants would one day regard him as “The Morning Star of the Reformation.”

Late in life, stripped of his tenure at Oxford and forbidden to teach his dissenting views, Wycliffe chose to throw himself into the task of creating an English version of the Bible. “Forasmuch as the Bible contains Christ, that is all that is necessary for salvation, it is necessary for all men, not for priests alone.”

Critics scoffed. Latin was the language of the angels, they believed, and reserved for spiritual elites. English was a primitive language spoken only by “pigs.”

Wycliffe was more than willing to throw in his lot with the pigs, seeing as he was convinced Jesus had likewise preferred the company of the humble “swine” of his own time as opposed to self-important elites.

The scholar-in-exile polished off his first edition about 1380. It was distributed secretly by his followers. More than two centuries later, the translation team that produced the 1611 King James Version of the Bible relied heavily on Wycliffe’s scholarship.

This was a turning point of immense significance. All of a sudden, God’s Word could belong to ordinary people. 

Why was Rome so agitated? Wycliffe’s actions constituted a direct challenge to Church authority. The deliberations of Catholic councils and papal decrees, over the centuries, had become a sacred body of tradition. Those opinions were regarded as God’s opinions – functionally equal to the words of Scripture, since they represented the authoritative interpretation of Bible texts.

If “just anyone” was given a copy of the Bible in their own language, what might happen? That person might arrive at any number of ridiculous or dangerous conclusions. Souls were at stake.

That’s why there was no way John Wycliffe’s theological opponents were going to let his earthly remains rest in peace.

In 1415, some 31 years after the Oxford professor had died, he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church at the Council of Constance. Thirteen years later, his bones were exhumed from his grave. They were summarily burned and then scattered on the River Swift.

Take that, you heretic.  

That wasn’t the only ominous decision at the Council of Constance.

The Church prelates were determined to squelch the voice of the Bohemian pastor Jan Hus. He had been preaching that Jesus Christ alone is head of the Church, and that Christ’s word could and should be available to all.

Hus was invited to present his views at the Council. Even though he was promised safe passage, he was summarily apprehended and imprisoned. Asked to recant his views in the public hearing shown above, he declared, “I would not, for a chapel full of gold, recede from the truth.” The powers that be sentenced him to burn at the stake.

On the way to his execution, he passed a bonfire that was consuming his books. He laughed. He urged those nearby not to believe the verdict about his so-called sins.

Then he announced, “Today you cook a goose [a great pun, since the name Hus means “goose”] but in one hundred years you will hear a swan sing – and him you will have to hear!”

Students of the Reformation have long noted that almost exactly 100 years later, Martin Luther posted his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. In the minds of many, he became the Reformation “swan.”

In the meantime, a technological revolution changed the world.

A German craftsman and inventor named Johann Gutenberg began experimenting with movable type. By setting pages of books in interchangeable lead characters, it suddenly became possible to imagine the mass production of books and manuscripts.

Within a short period of time, Luther and others were making the Word of God available “to every plowboy and serving maid.”

Literacy spread. So did books.

And so did the Good News.

Things would never be the same again.

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