John Wycliffe

c. 1328 – 1384

10/26/2023

John Wycliffe, sometimes called “The Morningstar of the Reformation,” was born nearly 200 years before Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-Five Theses to that famous door at the catholic religious facility in Wittenberg. It’s worth contemplating the truth that he and his followers, derisively called “Lollards” (meaning “mumblers”), began to grasp—along with the price they paid for speaking up.

Today, Wycliffe is mostly known for his insistence that the Bible be available in the language of common people. In his day, the scriptures were typically only found in Latin and were often locked away from the “laity.” As Wycliffe grew in conviction that contemporary religion had deviated disastrously from the New Testament record, he began to promote Bible translation.

Wycliffe wrote: “No man is to be credited for his mere authority’s sake unless he can show Scripture for the maintenance of his opinion.” And again: “As the faith of the Church is contained in the Scriptures, the more these are known...the better.”

In response to the backlash from religious leaders who thought giving common people access to the Bible was “casting pearls before swine,” Wycliffe said: “Those heretics ought not to be listened to, who imagine that temporal lords should not possess the law of God, but that it is sufficient for them to know what may be learned from the lips of their priests and prelates.”

As he looked at the religion of his era, Wycliffe was dismayed that salvation was misrepresented as being dispensed through “sacraments” provided by a religious clergy and by performance of empty rituals, like undertaking pilgrimages and venerating relics. He found the sale of “indulgences,” a religious “get out of jail free” card that would supposedly bypass future consequences of sin in exchange for a cash donation, especially dangerous. As Wycliffe put it, “It is plain to me that our prelates, in granting indulgences, do commonly blaspheme the wisdom of God.”

Wycliffe strongly believed that salvation could only come through total trust in Jesus: “The higher the hill, the stronger the wind: so the loftier the life, the stronger the enemy's temptations. Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on His sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by His righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation. There must be atonement made for sin according to the righteousness of God. The person to make this atonement must be God and man.”

At the same time, Wycliffe saw through the deception of “cheap grace,” recognizing that genuine faith is expressed in works. As he put it, “Belief fails when it works not well indeed but is idle as a sleeping man... Each virtuous deed is strong when it is grounded upon the solidity of belief.”

As radical as these statements must have sounded in fourteenth-century England, Wycliffe probably could have remained relatively unscathed if he had stopped there. But he went on to confront the corruption he believed was rampant in the religious hierarchy, from monk to priest to bishop, all the way up to the pope. Wycliffe believed they had usurped Jesus’ authority for their own ends: “We are under God’s power, and we can do nothing but by the power of God, and woe shall hereafter be to us if we abuse that power.”

The so-called “mendicant friars,” monks who traveled about on speaking tours, supposedly subsisting on alms, came under Wycliffe’s fire. He pointed out that the friars and other clerics were “given to gluttony and worldly affairs and frequent the courts of lords,” noting they rode about on “great fat horses” and dressed in “extravagant clothing.” Yet they thought nothing of lining their pockets with money taken from the desperately poor English peasants.

“It is forsaking the commandment of Christ, which teaches the duty of giving alms to the feeble, the crippled, the blind, and the bedridden, to give alms to hypocrites that pretend to be holy and needy.”

Wycliffe even began to question the whole foundation of the clergy-laity system. The true Christian community, he taught, is not an institution, even if that institution is called “the church.” Instead, the true church is a group of people who have been given grace. They are God’s instruments for good in the world. In a religious institution, authority may be placed in people who are not even saved by grace. There was no guarantee that even the pope himself was saved.

In the heresy trials of 1428-1431, a Lollard named Hawise Mone summed up Wycliffe’s teaching about the priesthood of believers as this: “Every man and every woman being of good life, out of sin, is as good a priest and has as much of the power of God in all things as any priest ordained, be he pope or bishop.” The Lollards claimed that titles do not make men leaders; a Christlike life does.

John Wycliffe was twice subjected to heresy trials, one of them famously interrupted by an earthquake. He was briefly imprisoned and threatened with excommunication. Wycliffe died of natural causes in 1384 before he could be punished further. He was still persecuted after death, however:

“The Council of Constance would declare John Wycliffe a heretic on May 4, 1415. They banned all of his writings and posthumously excommunicated him. The then pope, Martin V, decreed that his body should be exhumed from its consecrated ground and burned. He also decreed that all of Wycliffe’s writings should be burned. The exhumation and cremation of his corpse was carried out in 1428, his ashes cast into the River Swift.” (Hourly History, John Wycliffe: A Life from Beginning to End, p. 42)

The Lollards were subjected to a brief but vicious persecution at the same time. John Badby, a craftsman, was burned at the stake in 1410 for refusing to renounce his faith. He was the first “layman” in British history to be executed for alleged heresies. He would not be the last. Surviving Lollards were driven underground, and historians are uncertain what happened to them.

Six centuries later, it remains true that there are four critical questions—“Four Truths for a Foundation”—that must be addressed if there is to be any lasting, real Change in the landscape of Christendom. What is a Christian? What is leadership? What is the daily life of a genuine believer to look like? And what is the purpose and spiritual dynamic of a gathering of Christians?

John Wycliffe and the Lollards had begun to grasp and proclaim at least the first two of these truths. It cost them dearly. They have joined the “Great Cloud of Witnesses” the Hebrews writer spoke of, but they are counting on us to press on to the finish line, despite the persecution that always comes when those “four truths” are proclaimed and lived.

“Truly aware I am that the doctrine of the gospel may for a season be trampled underfoot. Equally sure I am, that it shall never be extinguished; for it is the recording of truth itself.” —John Wycliffe

“These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised, since God had planned something better for us so that only together with us would they be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:39-40).

•  Four Truths for a Foundation