This is the second post in a brief series where I quote smart men and what they have had to say about theology by way of warning. For the first post, see here.
Here is William Tyndale, the great one-time Catholic priest, Protestant reformer, translator of the Bible into English (the King James Version is about 75% Tyndale), theologian, exile, and eventual martyr on a danger particular to those of the reformed persuasion on the danger of proof-texting Scripture and rushing ahead to a particular passage while ignoring what comes before it (this quote is excerpted from Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning):
Tyndale’s interest in circumstance is reflected still more closely in his conviction that the reader must be sensitive to the natural order of a text, even one that does not tell a story, and must not jumble the beginning and the end. God’s word cannot be cut and spliced; to do so, indeed, can be dangerous, as Tyndale, following Luther, explains in the Prologue to Romans. The “unquiet, busy, and high-climbing” spirit that rushes to chapters 9-11 of Paul’s epistle in the hopes of understanding predestination runs the risk of falling into despair. Only when the reader has fully experienced the meaning of the first seven chapters is he ready for the eighth, which in turn, is the necessary introduction to those that follow: “After that, when thou art come to the eighth chapter, and art under the cross and suffering of tribulation, the necessity of predestination will wax sweet, and thou shalt feel how precious a thing it is. For except thou have born the cross of adversity and temptation, and hast felt thyself brought unto the very brim of desperation, yea, and unto hell-gates, thou canst never meddle with the sentence of predestination without thine own harm, and without secret wrath and grudging inwardly against God; for otherwise it shall not be possible to think that God is righteous and just.” (103)
Though Tyndale is quite clearly making the standard reformed case that God predestines believers to eternal election or eternal damnation, he realizes that this is a hard truth and one that requires other Scripture to make it palatable to the Christian soul. That is why the famous passage about the potter and the clay in Romans 9 comes where it does, namely, following Romans 1-8. If we take little chunks of Scripture away from their context to prove a specific point we run the risk of talking about God not how he really is, in the sense of perfectly righteous and just, but how out theological framework has already defined him to be. A good warning from a man who went to his death for the Word of God.
Here is William Tyndale, the great one-time Catholic priest, Protestant reformer, translator of the Bible into English (the King James Version is about 75% Tyndale), theologian, exile, and eventual martyr on a danger particular to those of the reformed persuasion on the danger of proof-texting Scripture and rushing ahead to a particular passage while ignoring what comes before it (this quote is excerpted from Stephen Greenblatt’s Renaissance Self-Fashioning):
Tyndale’s interest in circumstance is reflected still more closely in his conviction that the reader must be sensitive to the natural order of a text, even one that does not tell a story, and must not jumble the beginning and the end. God’s word cannot be cut and spliced; to do so, indeed, can be dangerous, as Tyndale, following Luther, explains in the Prologue to Romans. The “unquiet, busy, and high-climbing” spirit that rushes to chapters 9-11 of Paul’s epistle in the hopes of understanding predestination runs the risk of falling into despair. Only when the reader has fully experienced the meaning of the first seven chapters is he ready for the eighth, which in turn, is the necessary introduction to those that follow: “After that, when thou art come to the eighth chapter, and art under the cross and suffering of tribulation, the necessity of predestination will wax sweet, and thou shalt feel how precious a thing it is. For except thou have born the cross of adversity and temptation, and hast felt thyself brought unto the very brim of desperation, yea, and unto hell-gates, thou canst never meddle with the sentence of predestination without thine own harm, and without secret wrath and grudging inwardly against God; for otherwise it shall not be possible to think that God is righteous and just.” (103)
Though Tyndale is quite clearly making the standard reformed case that God predestines believers to eternal election or eternal damnation, he realizes that this is a hard truth and one that requires other Scripture to make it palatable to the Christian soul. That is why the famous passage about the potter and the clay in Romans 9 comes where it does, namely, following Romans 1-8. If we take little chunks of Scripture away from their context to prove a specific point we run the risk of talking about God not how he really is, in the sense of perfectly righteous and just, but how out theological framework has already defined him to be. A good warning from a man who went to his death for the Word of God.
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