I was delighted to be asked to present Radio 4 Sunday Worship today, commemorating the 500th anniversary of Tyndale’s English translation of the New Testament.
You can listen again here (for, I think, 30 days): https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002pdxv
Tyndale’s translation makes up something like 80% of the text we now know as the King James Version. He’s credited, along with Shakespeare, in creating what we now think of as traditional English.
But it was incredibly controversial at the time. When Tyndale’s translation first made its way to England 500 years ago - a shipment of 3000 copies from where they’d been printed in the Netherlands- the Bishop of London bought up all the copies he could find and burned them in the churchyard of St Paul’s! I start the programme standing on the mark in St Paul’s grounds now where we think that took place. Yet only ten years later, King Henry VIII ordered a copy of the Bible in English to be placed in every parish church.
It’s a dramatic example of how what seems unthinkably blasphemous and dangerous to the church can quickly change.
One of the things that I find so disheartening in our current church debates over changing doctrine is a persistent refusal to engage with the reality that doctrine - including the doctrine of the Bible, and our understanding of what the church is and teaches, ie our doctrine of doctrine itself, has radically changed over time. The latest LLF paper on the nature of changing doctrine simply does not take this seriously, which is deeply disappointing. It’s hardly hidden esoteric knowledge that the reformation happened and that these debates were had and are still ongoing. I often think that our current debates show that, in historical terms, we are still experiencing a very long tailed reformation.
I also find it deeply strange that the more Reformed elements of the churches nowadays seem to be occupying the position of the medieval Catholic Church, and arguing that that only church-approved biblical interpretations are acceptable. It seems to me that one of the great gifts of Anglicanism is holding together the reformation commitment to people reading the Bible for themselves, and a resulting humility about the church as an institution, with a profound commitment to the historical continuity of the church as Gods people and community of practice.
Here are the texts of the prayers I wrote for the service:
Almighty God, who guided the magi by a star, guide us, we pray, by the light shone on your Word by generations of biblical translators and scholars. May we share their commitment to draw near to you in worship, their perseverance in the face of opposition, and their willingness to lay their gifts at your feet.
Amen.
Almighty God, we thank you for revealing yourself to your world: in the beauty of creation, in the incarnation of your Son Jesus, and in the witness of the Holy Scriptures.
We thank you for those who in countless generations have passed in the scriptures to us. We thank you for the skills of translators and scholars; of preachers, readers, composers and lyricists; and for all those involved in the printing and distribution of Bibles throughout the world.
We pray for those who risk danger simply by owning a Bible, or by challenging those who seek to enforce one reading of it. We pray for all those who are persecuted for their faith; and we pray for a world where love, joy and peace may prevail.
