Opening thoughts
During the Reformation some 500 years ago, William Tyndale laboured to bring the word of God into English. What he began ended with the King James Bible.
Tyndale was not a modern textual critic, neutral academic or unbelieving liberal student of Scripture. He was a professing Christian whose translation work was guided by the strong conviction that the word of God is clear, authoritative and binding because it is God’s word, not because scholars approve it.
Tyndale’s opposition was not merely to Rome’s control of Scripture, but to any system — clerical, institutional or intellectual — that places human mediation between God’s word and the believer. His insistence that Scripture be placed directly into the hands of ordinary Christians was grounded in faith. He believed God was the author and that what God had spoken could be known, trusted and obeyed.
From this starting point, it is historically and theologically coherent to argue that Tyndale himself would have stood opposed to modern approaches that treat the biblical text as unstable, perpetually reconstructible or dependent upon scholarly consensus for its authority. Such approaches do not rest on faith in divine preservation, but on scepticism, that is, naked unbelief.
This unbelief is built upon Enlightenment philosophy and permeates the organisations using Tyndale’s name today, being Tyndale House Cambridge (UK) and Tyndale House Publishers (USA).
Tyndale’s Theology of Scripture
Tyndale translated Scripture under persecution because he believed God had already given His word and that it could be faithfully received and rendered in good English. His confidence rested not in the recovery of an original autograph but in God’s providential preservation of His word for His people.
This is the fault line between Tyndale’s theology and modern textual criticism.
The modern critical approach as refined and institutionalised in places such as Tyndale House Cambridge operate on the assumption that:
- the biblical text exists in a state of uncertainty,
- preservation is partial and uneven and
- authority must be reconstructed through scholarly comparison of manuscripts.
This approach, however sophisticated sounding, begins not with faith in God’s promise to preserve His word (see Psalm 12:6–7), but with methodological doubt. Such doubt is not neutral because it assumes a deistic posture that contradicts the doctrine of preservation.
This unbelief is a serious problem. Faith, according to Scripture, operates through confident hearing and speaking of the word (see Romans 10:17). A text surrounded by scholarly uncertainty cannot function as a stable object of faith. One cannot boldly confess what scholars themselves treat as tentative.
We are told that the word is nigh us (see Romans 10:8), but this is not what modern EVANGELICAL scholarship teaches. And this problem is permeating Baptist, Pentecostal, Presbyterian and Reformed Churches.
This is a spiritual problem that continually injects uncertainty in the text and translation of Scripture.
Tyndale’s Provision of Scripture
It is well known that William Tyndale was making a profit out of providing the Scripture, but that profit was for funding the Scripture. He had to be paid for his labours.
While Tyndale House Cambridge represents scholarly mediation like the Catholic priests, Tyndale House Publishers represents editorial mediation. This is the other end of the same continuum.
The rise of paraphrases and dynamically equivalent translations, most notably The Living Bible, rests on the assumption that the biblical text, as historically received, is insufficiently clear or effective on its own.
The assumption of paraphrase, with all its doctrinal expansion and doctrinal smoothing, would have been foreign to William Tyndale. Such a concept undermines verbal authority and the accuracy of the communication. Scripture’s power is inseparable from its written form.
Since words are important, then altering the words of Scripture alters its expressive force. To change Mary from a virgin to a maiden is dangerous. A believer cannot “stand” on the legal language of God’s law and promises if the Scripture’s words have been dumbed down and altered.
The problem is that market forces and commercial interests are manipulating the provision of Bibles. There is no need for new translations or new versions but these are pushed as consumer products.
Sadly, Scripture is being treated as dependent on human expertise for its clarity, authority or usefulness.
William Tyndale rejected precisely this model because he actually believed:
- God had spoken clearly,
- God preserves His word and
- believers could trust and obey it without institutional filtration.
Closing thoughts
Ironically, both institutions mentioned appeal to the legacy of William Tyndale, yet neither fully embodies his conviction.
Tyndale’s passion was not deistic scholarship or market consumerism, but people’s direct access to the word of God in a stable, authoritative form. His goal was not endless revision but final clarity so that even the ploughboy could know and declare Scripture.
At least Tyndale House Publishers provide Hendricksons KJVs, whereas figures associated with Tyndale House Cambridge have been openly against the King James Bible, such as, D. A. Carson (who wrote a whole book essentially attacking the KJV) and John Piper (who has preached against the KJV).
As such people lay claim to the Tyndale legacy while attacking, rejecting or otherwise trying to undermine the KJV they are sadly working in an opposite direction to what Tyndale stood for, and to what actually perpetuates his legacy, which is the King James Bible itself.
There are Roman Catholics who try to argue that Protestants should come back to the supposed real and original Church, but actually, Christians should be invited to come back to the authoritative English Bible.
This year we celebrate the 500th anniversary of Tyndale’s translation. This anniversary marks a turning point in the history of the English Bible. Because of the pioneering work of Tyndale, the word of God was able to come into the hands of the hands of ordinary people. It’s now time to make sure that all who use the banner of Tyndale are not working to undermine his legacy. The KJV is the Bible for the all people: prince or pleb.