Tyndale the Pastor: Author-Theologian-Translator

Tyndale was not an author and theologian and translator and pastor. Rather, he was a pastor-teacher, who exercised his teaching and shepherding gifts through writing and translating theological works, whether putting the Bible into English or writing expositions on the Bible in English.According to Daniell, if all we had of William Tyndale was his work The Obedience of a Christian Man, Tyndale "would still be of high significance for the time" (Daniell, 223). So even if we never had Tyndale the Translator, we would still have Tyndale the author-theologian-pastor.Tyndale wrote The Obedience because he was responding to false allegations regarding the Protestant Reformation. The violence in Europe was often blamed on the reformers because they were said to believe in civil disobedience. Daniell writes, "It had to be made clear that the newly-understood teaching of Scripture was that subjects must obey their kings. The reformers were not, as they had maliciously been said to be, stirring up rebellion" (Daniell, 224). Luther also believed this, having taught on it in his work, Exposition of the Eighty-second Psalm.The false allegations that Tyndale wanted to address are, however, not the more important reason that Tyndale wrote the book. They just happened to be the circumstances that birthed the book coming about at that time and in that way. There remains a deeper, more pastoral reason for Tyndale's writing.Tyndale the author and translator are simply avenues for Tyndale the theologian and pastor to bear fruit in the use of his gifts of teaching and shepherding God's people to trust, love and obey the Lord through understanding, believing in and obeying His Word. Tyndale spent his life giving people God's Word, whether through translation or exposition, both verbally proclaimed and in writing.Daniell notices this about Tyndale, and comments on his The Obedience of a Christian Man, "[I]n the heart of his argument about the necessity of having, and knowing, unmediated Scripture, Tyndale writes with the clarity of a good preacher or teacher" (Daniell, 225).Tyndale repeatedly grounds the Christian's obedience in the Word of God. Daniell says that throughout the book, when Tyndale teaches on the Christian's obedience, it is "prefaced by the long address to the reader not only defending Scripture in English, but pleading passionately, as with a kind of divine and outraged disbelief, against those from the Pope down who cannot see that Scripture is the very fountainhead of Christianity, and that that fountainhead of Christianity must be available, entire, to everyone, or else Christ died in vain" (Daniell, 225).Tyndale wanted to translate the Bible into English so that Scripture, the "very fountainhead of Christianity" would be "available, entire, to everyone."What does fellowship look like in your church? Are you co-laboring with other Christians, and other churches, to supply God's Word, "the very fountainhead of Christianity" to the remaining tribes and languages of the world? And besides providing the world with the Bible in various languages, are you co-laboring to plant healthy churches, which can then turn around and train up a new generation of pastors to keep planting healthy churches? More than 6,500 languages in the world don't have a Bible. Millions of people, some of them already professing faith, do not have God's inspired Word. How will churches without the Word teach, reprove, correct, and train in righteousness, so that their people may be adequate, equipped for every good work (2Tim. 3:14-17)?