William Tyndale on Authority of Scripture
Scripture alone is the final, only infallible authority
And therefore they that will be believed without scripture are false hypocrites, and not Christ's church.
THE POSITION
Scripture judges the church, and not the other way round. Against More's claim that the church holds truths it need not prove from Scripture, Tyndale answers that the word begets the church, so the gospel comes first; that Christ and the apostles, for all their miracles, did not ask to be believed without Scripture; and that councils are tested by it, as any new question will be. The book is a sustained argument on exactly the question this locus asks.
29 But Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; let your brothers listen to them.’
24 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 Authority of Scripture", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/tyndale/scripture-authority (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/tyndale/scripture-authority).