William Tyndale on the final state of the lost
Eternal conscious punishment
THE POSITION
He speaks of "eternal damnation" and "everlasting damnation" throughout, and nothing read suggests annihilation or final restoration, but no passage found argues the duration or the nature of punishment, so the tier is established and the state a lean. What he did argue, against More, is a different question: whether the souls of the dead are already in heaven, hell or purgatory. He answers that putting them there destroys "the arguments wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection," and that "what God doth with them, that shall we know when we come to them." That concerns the state before the resurrection, not the final state, and should not be read as a view on this locus.
WHY THERE IS NO QUOTATIONFifteen of the nineteen positions carry a quotation. Four do not, for two reasons: on the canon and the millennium nothing was found in the three volumes searched, and on the Trinity and the final state he assumes the answer in passing rather than arguing it. Every quotation is read from the Parker Society edition through its scanned text, not a print copy. Four come from his 1534 prologue to Romans, which follows Luther's preface closely and says so in each cell.
29 OTHERS HOLD THIS
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
English translator of the New Testament from Greek and of the Pentateuch from Hebrew, working in exile in the Low Countries, whose wording runs through the King James Version. He was strangled and burned at Vilvoorde in 1536. He was also the first English Protestant theologian of weight, defending justification by faith, the authority of Scripture over the church, and the obedience owed to kings. This entry rests on the Obedience of a Christian Man, the Answer to Sir Thomas More, the Brief Declaration of the Sacraments, the exposition of 1 John and his biblical prologues, all in the Parker Society edition (1848–1850).
Cite this page
"William Tyndale on the final state of the lost", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/tyndale/final-state (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/tyndale/final-state).