Sword & Trowel 2017: Issue 1


he weighed and found wanting the Latin translation of the Vulgate, the official Bible of the Western medieval church. The Renaissance rediscovery of the Greek language, coupled with the ad fontes drive towards the sources of Christianity, resulted in Erasmus’ printed edition of the Greek New Testament in 1516. This was a bridge across which many students travelled from the Renaissance into the Ref- ormation. Martin Luther was one of them. We find it in Luther’s 95 Theses, the earliest Reformation mani- festo, in the first two theses: ‘When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, “Repent,” he meant that the entire life of believers should be a life of repentance. The word cannot be understood as referring to the sacrament of penance – that is, confession and satisfaction – as administered by priests.’ Luther here is appealing to the


Greek word for ‘repent’, which means a change of attitude, against the Latin Vulgate translation paenitentium agite, ‘do penance’, which had previously been understood as referring to the sacrament of penance (confession to a Catholic priest followed by absolution and a prescribed act of penitence). In other words, Luther here, in affirming that Christ’s exhortation to repent means to change one’s at- titude and life, is acting the part of a critical Renaissance thinker; he wants to get behind secondary sources in the encrusted traditions of an ec- clesiastical translation of Scripture, back to the primary sources in the Greek text and the Greek language. If this involved questioning the place


of church practices hallowed by long usage, such as the sacrament of penance, so be it. Luther may have parted company with Erasmus over what exactly the Greek New Testament taught; but it was Erasmus who put the Greek New Testament into Luther’s hands and taught him to prefer it over the Latin Vulgate.


Erasmus not only threw a tick- ing time bomb into the institutional church of his day by publishing the Greek New Testament, he also strongly advocated the translation of Scripture from its original languages into the various native languages of Europe and indeed the world. In a famous passage he says: ‘The sun itself is not more common and open to everyone than the teach- ing of Christ is. I utterly disagree with those who do not want the holy Scriptures to be translated into the native tongue and read by ordinary people – as if Christ’s teaching were so complicated that only a few theo- logians could understand it! Or as if the strength of the Christian faith were found in people’s ignorance of it! It may be wise to conceal the mysteries of kingly government from ordinary folk, but Christ wanted his mysteries to be proclaimed as openly as possible. I want even the lowliest woman to read the Gospels and the letters of Saint Paul. I want them to be translated into all languages, so that they can be read and understood by Scots and Irishmen, by Turks and Muslims. To make people understand what Christianity teaches is surely the first step to converting them. Perhaps many will mock the Scriptures, but


Seeds of the Reformation


 page 23


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44