John Wyclif: Fourteenth Century Congregational Dissenter -- By: Douglas Bookman

Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 14:4 (Winter 1971)
Article: John Wyclif: Fourteenth Century Congregational Dissenter
Author: Douglas Bookman


John Wyclif: Fourteenth Century Congregational Dissenter

Douglas Bookman

John Wyclif’s name was spelled in over thirty different ways by medieval writers. This is the form adopted by the Wyclif Society, and by many modern authors.

This study will be restricted to the substantiation of the following thesis: that John Wyclif must be considered the modern discoverer of those principles which constitute the very rudiments of historic congregational ecclesiology.

The manner in which this will be demonstrated will be simply to select a number of doctrines representative of those most distinctive of a Biblicist approach to the New Testament church, and to document—by use of statements of Wyclif, of his contemporaries, both friend and enemy, and of historians—that Wyclif did indeed espouse these, and further that he did so in a day in which these principles were almost universally unknown.

No attempt will be made here to relate the history of Wyclif, to systematize and vindicate all of his teachings, nor to trace the development of congregational dissent in general, and fit him into it. Indeed, the scope of this paper demands that a certain amount of knowledge on the part of the reader be assumed. However, in order to provide an adequate background, it is necessary to give brief attention to the attitudes of the day in which Wyclif ministered.

It is difficult for men today, who have spent their lives under a secular regime, to realize to what extent the Medieval Church dominated the life of the times. The Roman Church was, by the time of Wyclif (c. 1324–1384), an ancient institution; about two hundred popes had occupied the “chair of Peter.” They had established the superiority of the Papacy by contact with society at a thousand points. In every area of life, men were taught to rely upon the Roman Church, to obey it absolutely and unquestioningly. And the means of enforcement of these teachings was the papal ban, which, given the popular conceptions of the day, was absolutely effective against individuals or against states. Against this Medieval Church Wyclif took his stand.

It is impossible for us in this age of spiritual intelligence to estimate the strength of mind, the depth of principles, and the intrepidity of the man who, in the fourteenth century, could break away from Duns Scotus, Peter Lombard, Aristotle, and “Mother Church,” and form his theological opinions from the Word of God. Indeed, it was to the Scriptures alone that the Reformer appealed for the truth of his doctrines, and he urged men to search the Scriptures, and “see if these things were so.” By so doing, Wyclif came to strong convictions concerning certain doc...

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