the printing press is to blame. it is the single-handed greatest invention of all time eclipsed only by the modern computer. it allows printed books to be widely produced, inexpensive, and widely accessible to what was once only available to the elite of the day.
The printing press comes about c. 1450 and in early 1500s a critical greek text was produced which allowed a far wider audience to the original languages of the bible, with basic greek understanding and help by greek dictionaries anyone could interpret the bible. The result was a shift of power from the few to every tribe and language holding this power themselves.
Without the printing press the reformation would have amounted to nothing but a back alley group of protestors quickly silenced. Today the internet carries that power again even further down the line where not only the educated but now anyone with a computer and the ability to read regardless of education can interpret the bible.
William Tyndale during the early parts of the reformation, made possible through printed texts because of the printing press, is credited with the first English translation, which later got him burnt at the stake.
1. Tyndale translated the NT, and parts of the OT - not the whole Bible. Miles Coverdale, subsequently Bishop of Exeter under Elizabeth, finished Tyndale's work; the Coverdale Bible was published in 1537, the year following Tyndale's execution.
2. The 2 Wycliffite translations were made in the late 14th century, and were of the entire Bible.
3. Parts of the Bible were translated into Old English, centuries earlier still.
4. Tyndale was burnt for heresy - not for translating the Bible.
He is quoted saying "If God spare my life, ere many years I will cause a boy who drives a plough to know more of the scriptures than you do".
1. Is that anecdote the record of something he genuinely said - or is it attributed to him on insufficient grounds ?
2. To whom was Tyndale speaking or writing ? The anecdote is very familiar, but it is never, IME, given a context, let alone references.
That vision of the lowest of us or "a boy who drives a plough" did not quite come to fruition in this lifetime but where the printing press could not the internet can and now quite literally a farmhand, cashier, stockboy, etc... can interpret the bible responsibly through the wide and available resources made available today.
That sounds rather optimistic, to say the least.
the many interpretations of today have their cons but the pros are that it keeps us sharpened and accountable
That God can write straight with man's crooked lines, is no justification for the crooked lines. Accountability is not so great a good that turning what ought to be unity among Christians into a Babel of contending tongues is a price worth paying for it.
and I believe the reformation did actually "reform" the church, including the Roman Catholic church, as the reformers challenged the system and kept it accountable. Anyone can have their soapbox and spew whatever they want, from the oldest of traditions to the newest and there is plenty of history that tells us it has happened. but because of things like the printing press, the reformation, and even the internet if it's wrong it will be vehemently challenged and renounced no different than ecumenical councils of old that ordained doctrine as well forbade it and making it heretical. The heretical groups of today are effectively exiled and barred from wide acceptance because of the system of accountability that surrounds these doctrines that don't allow them to go further than fringe groups.
A lot of people think certain very large, very influential, mainstream groups are heretical.
And although their doctrines have been "challenged", those groups don't "renounce" them.
