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The Heretic Who Wrote the Bible’s Most Famous Verse · Theology Made Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Theology Made Podcast.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Jordan.
• 0:04
  Today,
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  we're going to look at the heretic who wrote the Bible's most
• 0:07
  famous verse.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the story.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's early morning, October 6, 1536.
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  A man stands bound to a wooden stake in the courtyard of the
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  war prison in Belgium.
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  SPEAKER_00: His body, thin from over a year in solitary confinement.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: The guards give the signal.
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  SPEAKER_00: His final words ring out in English.
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  SPEAKER_00: Lord, open the king of England's eyes.
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  SPEAKER_00: A moment later, his body is strangled.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: Then the fire is lit.
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  SPEAKER_00: His name, William Tyndale.
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  SPEAKER_00: His crime, translated in the Bible in English.
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  SPEAKER_00: One of the verses he made accessible to the common people?
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  SPEAKER_00: John 3.16.
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  SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world.
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  Today,
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  let's tell the story of the man who gave us that verse and died
• 0:53
  for it.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Act 1, why translation was treason.
• 0:59
  England in the early 1500s was not a place where you could just
• 1:01
  read the Bible on your own.
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  SPEAKER_00: The scriptures were locked in Latin,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Vulgate,
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  SPEAKER_00: and the church tightly controlled interpretation.
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  Most people couldn't read,
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  and even if they could,
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  Latin was reserved for the clergy.
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  SPEAKER_00: This is more than just religious.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was political.
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  SPEAKER_00: To control the Bible was to control power.
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  SPEAKER_00: To question it was to question both the church and the crown.
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  SPEAKER_00: Then came William Tyndale.
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  Born around 1494 in Gloucestershire,
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  Tyndale studied at Oxford and later Cambridge.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was brilliant,
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  SPEAKER_00: fluent in at least seven languages,
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  and deeply troubled by how little the average person knew about
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  scripture.
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  SPEAKER_00: In a famous exchange with a priest, Tyndale said,
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  SPEAKER_02: I defy the Pope and all his laws.
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  SPEAKER_02: If God spare my life,
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  ere many years I will cause a boy that driveth the plow shall
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  know more of the
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  SPEAKER_02: scripture than thou dost.
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  SPEAKER_00: He wanted to translate the Bible into English,
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  SPEAKER_00: not from Latin,
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  SPEAKER_00: but directly from the original Greek and Hebrew.
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  But when he sought permission from church authorities,
• 2:02
  they flatly refused.
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  SPEAKER_00: So in 1524, he left England.
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  SPEAKER_00: Act II, Bible Smuggler.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale went to Germany,
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  where the winds of the Reformation were already blowing thanks
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  to Martin Luther.
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  Which brings us to John 3.16 and the word choice that made it
• 2:18
  revolutionary.
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  SPEAKER_00: For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
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  SPEAKER_00: In Greek, that phrase is monogenes.
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  SPEAKER_00: It means one of a kind, only, unique in essence.
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  SPEAKER_00: It carries a sense of beloved singularity,
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  SPEAKER_00: not just in birth order,
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  SPEAKER_00: but,
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  SPEAKER_00: and here's the key,
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  SPEAKER_00: in nature.
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  SPEAKER_00: Some translations lean towards only son, others unique son.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Tyndale used a phrase that had enormous theological weight.
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  SPEAKER_00: Only begotten.
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  SPEAKER_00: Only begotten.
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  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
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  SPEAKER_00: Why?
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  SPEAKER_00: Because in the theological debates of the day, this was no small matter.
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  SPEAKER_00: The phrase only begotten was a direct challenge to both Arianism,
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  SPEAKER_00: which denied the eternal nature of Jesus,
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  SPEAKER_00: and to the Latin Vulgate's rendering,
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  SPEAKER_00: which blurred the distinction between being begotten and being created.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale wasn't just translating.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was protecting the doctrine of Christ's eternal sonship.
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  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't about semantics.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was about whether Jesus was truly God.
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  SPEAKER_00: With only begotten,
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale affirmed what the early church had fought to defend in Nicaea,
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  SPEAKER_00: that the Son was not made,
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  SPEAKER_00: not adopted,
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  SPEAKER_00: not created,
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  SPEAKER_00: but eternally generated of the same substance as the Father.
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  SPEAKER_00: In just two words, Tyndale upheld centuries of theological clarity.
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  SPEAKER_00: By 1526,
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale completed and printed the first English New Testament,
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  SPEAKER_00: translated directly from the Greek.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it couldn't legally be read in England.
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  So he smuggled it in,
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  hiding Bibles in bales of cloth,
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  wine barrels,
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  and sacks of grain.
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  SPEAKER_00: And it worked.
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  SPEAKER_00: Ordinary people began reading the word in their own language.
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  SPEAKER_00: But it also made him a target.
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  SPEAKER_00: Picture the scene.
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  SPEAKER_00: It's a gray afternoon in St.
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  SPEAKER_00: Paul's Church Art in London.
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  SPEAKER_00: A wooden platform has been built in the center of the square.
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  SPEAKER_00: And a crowd begins to gather.
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  SPEAKER_00: On the stage are piles of books.
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  SPEAKER_00: Dozens of small, leather-bound volumes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not just any books.
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  SPEAKER_00: These are contraband.
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  SPEAKER_00: They're the very first English New Testaments ever printed,
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  SPEAKER_00: smuggled in from Germany,
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  SPEAKER_00: hidden in bolts of cloth disguised in crates of wine.
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  SPEAKER_00: The bishop's men begin to throw them into the flames.
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  One by one,
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  some are still wrapped in cloth,
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  others are held high first as if to shame them.
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  Before being condemned to fire,
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  the crowd watches,
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  some cheering,
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  some silent,
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  some weeping.
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  SPEAKER_00: The flames crackle, spitting ash and smoke into the overcast sky.
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  SPEAKER_00: And here's the twist of irony.
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  SPEAKER_00: The bishop responsible,
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  SPEAKER_00: Cuthbert Tunstall,
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  SPEAKER_00: had unwittingly purchased many of these very Bibles in bulk,
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  SPEAKER_00: thinking he was stopping the movement.
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  SPEAKER_00: But the man who sold them?
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  Well,
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  he was a supporter of Tyndale and used the money to fund even
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  more copies.
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  SPEAKER_00: So for every Bible burned in London, two more were printed in Europe.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Tyndale's enemies didn't just burn his books.
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  SPEAKER_00: They went after his name.
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  SPEAKER_00: Among his fiercest critics was none other than Sir Thomas More,
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  SPEAKER_00: the Lord Chancellor of England,
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  SPEAKER_00: a Catholic apologist and later canonized as a saint.
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  SPEAKER_00: More didn't just disagree with Tyndale's theology.
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  SPEAKER_00: He despised the man.
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  SPEAKER_00: In over a million words of rebuttal across multiple volumes,
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  SPEAKER_00: More painted Tyndale as,
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  SPEAKER_01: "'A hellhound in the kennel of the devil,'
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  discharging a filthy foam of blasphemies out of his brutish,
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  beastly mouth.
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  SPEAKER_00: He called him arrogant, lawless, perverted.
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  SPEAKER_00: To more, Tyndale was not a reformer.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was a corrupter, a dangerous man twisting scripture into poison.
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  And Tyndale responded,
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  not with equal venom,
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  but with firm scriptural rebuttal.
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  SPEAKER_02: He wrote back, I suffer wrongfully as an evildoer.
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  SPEAKER_02: Yet I endure all things for the elect's sake.
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  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't a debate between two polite theologians.
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  It was a war of words,
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  and it mirrored a deeper war over who had the right to speak
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  for God.
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  SPEAKER_00: Act 3, The Price of Scripture.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale didn't stop with the New Testament.
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  SPEAKER_00: He began translating the Old Testament as well, working from Hebrew.
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  SPEAKER_00: But he was on the run.
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  In 1535,
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  he was betrayed by an Englishman named Henry Phillips,
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  who pretended to be his friend.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale was arrested at Antwerp and imprisoned at Vilvidor Castle.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was held for over a year, cold, alone, but still translating.
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  SPEAKER_00: Finally, in 1536, he was condemned as a heretic.
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  SPEAKER_00: On October 6, he was executed.
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  SPEAKER_00: He was strangled first, then burned.
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  SPEAKER_00: His last prayer?
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  SPEAKER_00: Lord, open the king of England's eyes.
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  SPEAKER_00: Act 4, Legacy.
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  SPEAKER_00: Two years later, that prayer began to be answered.
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  SPEAKER_00: In 1539,
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  SPEAKER_00: King Henry VIII authorized the printing of the Great Bible,
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  SPEAKER_00: and it was based largely on Tyndale's work.
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  SPEAKER_00: When the King James Version was completed in 1611,
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  SPEAKER_00: over 80% of its New Testament used Tyndale's exact wording.
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  The man they burned as a heretic gave us the Bible that shaped
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  the English-speaking world.
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  SPEAKER_00: But Tyndale didn't just influence our theology.
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  SPEAKER_00: He helped shape the way we speak.
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  SPEAKER_00: Many of the phrases you and I use,
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  SPEAKER_00: without thinking,
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  SPEAKER_00: phrases baked into modern English,
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  SPEAKER_00: came straight from Tyndale's pen.
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  SPEAKER_00: Take a listen.
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  SPEAKER_00: And of course, for God's love, the world.
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  SPEAKER_00: That last phrase,
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  SPEAKER_00: John 3.16,
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  SPEAKER_00: the one found in football end zones,
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  SPEAKER_00: Instagram bios,
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  SPEAKER_00: and tattoos of bikers and suburban Christian moms alike,
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  SPEAKER_00: would become the most famous verse in the Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: These weren't common sayings before Tyndale.
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  SPEAKER_00: They became common because of Tyndale.
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  SPEAKER_00: One language said it best.
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  SPEAKER_00: Without Tyndale, there would have been no Shakespeare.
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  SPEAKER_00: He made the Bible not just readable, but memorable.
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  SPEAKER_00: Not just accessible, but beautiful.
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  SPEAKER_00: His goal wasn't to simplify the word.
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  SPEAKER_00: It was to let the poetry of Scripture sing in the language of the people.
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  SPEAKER_00: So when you quote the Bible, you may be quoting William Tyndale too.
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  SPEAKER_00: Closing reflection.
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale didn't die for a political cause or a vague spiritual idea.
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  He died because he believed ordinary people deserved to hear
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  the gospel in their own language.
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  He believed that you,
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  yes you,
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  should be able to open the word of God and read it for
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  yourself.
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  SPEAKER_00: Today we have dozens of translations in our pockets.
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  SPEAKER_00: ESV, NIV, NLT, CSB.
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  SPEAKER_00: But do we treasure it?
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  SPEAKER_00: Tyndale didn't give us a Bible.
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  SPEAKER_00: He gave us access.
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  SPEAKER_00: He believed the gospel is worth dying for because God already had.