William Tyndale on the nature of saving faith

Essentially trust that grasps Christ

THE POSITION

Faith is trust in God's favour, so firmly set that a man would not doubt it though he died a thousand times, and it cannot be separated from good works any more than heat from fire. In the Answer to More he draws the same line in his own words: an "historical faith" rests on the honesty of whoever told you and is "but an opinion," while a "feeling faith" is like having put your finger in the fire. The prologue to Romans in his 1534 New Testament follows Luther's 1522 preface to Romans closely, expanded by Tyndale, so this sentence is Tyndale's English of a text that is largely Luther's. He published it as his own and as the key to the epistle, which is why it is quoted here, but it is weaker evidence of his own mind than a sentence from the Obedience or the Answer to More.

13 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).