wycliffe: hero or loose canon?

FireDragon76

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I tend to say he was just a loose canon.

He believed some very strange stuff :

-that the sacraments of the church were rendered ineffective by unworthy ministers (Luther and Calvin would disagree here for sure)

- that the Church was purely invisible. (again, Luther and Calvin did not agree)

-"God ought to obey the devil" (?)

-that any civil authority or church authority living in mortal sin was not to be obeyed.

-that prayer concerning the future was useless because everything was predestined

- that it was perfectly OK to steal from men of the Church that sinned.

- Augustine and Jerome were in Hell because they were monks (where does it teach this in the Bible?)

His views of predestination and human nature were so extreme as to be dehumanizing.

The only thing he had going for him, he translated the Bible into English. But the rest of his theology sounds like so much raving nonsense and not reasonable.

I believe Wycliff is honored by some Protestants not because his teachings were sound or true, but because he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church.

http://www.aloha.net/~mikesch/wycliffe.htm
 

Architeuthus

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I tend to say he was just a loose canon.

Well, first, a "canon" is not a "cannon."

And second, if you're going to discuss Wycliffe, perhaps you should find out what he really believed, instead of patently false propaganda like this. For example, Wycliffe was actually a huge fan of Augustine.
 
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FireDragon76

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OK, let's debate those points. From what I have read on other sites, much of seems to be true. I cannot find his original 18 theses but if you have them, I'd appreciate a link.

I've read about the Lollards before in other books, such as The Panther and the Hind. Everything I've read suggests they were anti-clerical radicals, similar to Anabaptists. They were not a constructive presence in English religious consciousness, nor was their popularity ever widespread.
 
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Architeuthus

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OK, let's debate those points. From what I have read on other sites, much of seems to be true.

There are web sites that say the moon landings were fake. I have little faith in web sites.

I cannot find his original 18 theses

My understanding is that he didn't write them: they are 18 accusations against him. Some of his writings are here.
 
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FireDragon76

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I read several of his theses.

He uses inflammatory language at many points. I can see why he was disliked.

Right from the get-go: his view of the Bible assumes, at times, a regulative authority. This is not consistent with many modern Protestants that view what is not prohibited in Scripture as lawful. It may even been edifying and something that the Church may permit in use.

He seems to be attacking the apostolic authority of bishops on several points, for instance, in confirmation by sending down the Holy Spirit. This may be news to many here, but several Protestant groups recognize that authority. In fact I would say the bulk of the world's historic Protestants do so (Church of England, most Lutherans in Europe, and their communion partners around the world).

His attacks on monasticism are unmeasured. It's hard to gauge the historical context he is writing about, but again, he is using very inflammatory language against a practice that is ancient, pious, and not prohibited by Scripture.

I could go on but those are just the most obvious examples.
 
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Architeuthus

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I read several of his theses.

You don't need to agree with him. I think you're misunderstanding him, but it's hard to tell without quotes.

Certainly he was responding to abuses in the English Church. Had those abuses been addressed back then, England might still be Catholic today.
 
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FireDragon76

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That's an odd thing to say... most historians are in agreement that England becoming Protestant was down to politics. Historians are evenly divided on whether there was any popular basis for the Reformation there, but there is widespread agreement that it was imposed from the top down on the people.

There's a primitivism in Wycliffe's arguments that is not credible. Wycliffe assumes a golden age of the Church in the apostolic times, when the Church was simple and pure (and presumably followed the Scriptures, even though the canon of Scriptures had not yet been defined), when no such Church has ever existed. This is a common error of radical Protestants.
 
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Rick Otto

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That's an odd thing to say... most historians are in agreement that England becoming Protestant was down to politics. Historians are evenly divided on whether there was any popular basis for the Reformation there, but there is widespread agreement that it was imposed from the top down on the people.

There's a primitivism in Wycliffe's arguments that is not credible. Wycliffe assumes a golden age of the Church in the apostolic times, when the Church was simple and pure (and presumably followed the Scriptures, even though the canon of Scriptures had not yet been defined), when no such Church has ever existed. This is a common error of radical Protestants.
It is the same myth of early beliefs being universal in the radical Catholic and Orthodox.
 
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ViaCrucis

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It would seem that sources on Wycliffe tend to either present him as a madman or as a nearly immaculate saint. I'd be curious if there are any neutral, objective sources that could be relied on. Or has history pretty much so skewed the portrait of Wycliffe that these are the only two we have?

-CryptoLutheran
 
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MoreCoffee

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It would seem that sources on Wycliffe tend to either present him as a madman or as a nearly immaculate saint. I'd be curious if there are any neutral, objective sources that could be relied on. Or has history pretty much so skewed the portrait of Wycliffe that these are the only two we have?

-CryptoLutheran
Why is "neutral" equated to "objective" in your post?
 
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ViaCrucis

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Why is "neutral" equated to "objective" in your post?

Neutral in the sense of neither being an apologetic for Wycliffe or a polemic against Wycliffe. I would say that would meet the criteria of objectivity.

-CryptoLutheran
 
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MoreCoffee

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His big legacy was translating the New Testament into English. I would hope that everyone would see this as a positive.
The new testament had been translated into English before, so too had the psalms, and some think that the entire old testament was also translated before his time but that is not yet proven. But he and his associates did translate from the Vulgate into English and had that been the end of it their work may have been accepted by the church but they added footnotes and had itinerant preachers travelling the countryside preaching doctrines (and it seems social revolution) that neither the church nor the civil authority liked. So a fair while after his death his bones were dug up and anathematised etcetera; I think that folk back then really did take their ideas of purgatory and hell seriously so a posthumous anathematisation was not too unusual. So, some time later still, after the religious revolution that is nowadays called the Protestant Reformation, his reputation was subjected to a bit of rework and he became something of a forerunner of the Protestants - even called the morning star of the reformation, though that title is sometimes given to Jan Huss. Hence the title of this thread. Hero or loose cannon (I'd prefer villain myself).
 
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