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In the world in which William Tyndale (c. 1494-1536) emerged, Latin functioned not simply as a learned language but as the medium through which theology was studied, worship conducted, and Scripture mediated. Within the institutional life of the Western church, it held a privileged, nearly sacred status.¹ Tyndale challenged that privilege by devoting himself, at considerable personal cost, to translating the Bible into English. 

The 500th anniversary of the publication of his New Testament invites renewed attention to his achievement. This essay considers the continuing significance of what I term Tyndale’s vernacular project through three questions it poses for the church today. First is an institutional question: to whom does the work of Bible translation belong? Who bears the responsibility for undertaking and judging this work?² Second is a cultural question: when should a community retain a traditional translation or a traditional form of biblical or liturgical language? Third is a theological question: does divine revelation privilege any particular language? 

In this essay I will argue that Tyndale’s significance extends beyond his extraordinary contributions to the English Bible and English prose. His vernacular project gives expression to three closely related convictions about divine revelation: First, God entrusts Scripture to the whole church, calling into question exclusive ecclesiastical control over translation while preserving the church’s responsibility to evaluate the texts it adopts. Second, God speaks in Scripture through human languages situated within particular peoples and cultures such that the continual production of new, more intelligible translations is consistent with the character of revelation. Third, God intends revelation to be communicated in many languages and eschews the sacralization of any one language as uniquely suited for this purpose. 

Who Has the Final Word? 

Tyndale’s vernacular project, first of all, raises an institutional question: To whom does the enterprise of Bible translation belong? In the mid-twentieth century J.B. Phillips published his own translation of the New Testament. In the past fifteen years there has been a proliferation of New Testament translations by individual scholars: N.T. Wright published The Kingdom New Testament: A Contemporary Translation (2011), David Bentley Hart published The New Testament: A Translation (2017; revised 2023), and Scot McKnight published The Second Testament: A New Translation (2023). Should this proliferation of translations be welcomed? To what extent should the institutional church have oversight?  

In Tyndale’s day, the translation of Scripture was regulated through ecclesiastical structures. This arrangement had been formalized more than a century earlier in the Constitutions of Archbishop Thomas Arundel. Issued in 1409 amid concern about the continuing influence of John Wycliffe and the Lollard movement, these constitutions regulated preaching, theological instruction, controversial literature, and vernacular translations of Scripture.³ Nicholas Watson describes them as “one of the most draconian pieces of censorship in English history.”⁴ 

Of particular relevance to Tyndale was Constitution 7, Periculosa, which declared that “the translation of the text of Holy Scripture out of one tongue into another is a dangerous thing,” since “it is not easy to make the sense in all respects the same.”⁵ It therefore prohibited anyone from translating Scripture into English or another language “by his own authority” and stipulated that such translations could not “be read in whole or in part, in public or in private” without ecclesiastical approval. Periculosa did not absolutely ban vernacular translations of Scripture; it made authorization by church authorities a condition of producing and using translations.⁶

The implications of ecclesiastical control over access to translations are not insignificant. Such control could preserve familiar renderings even when their accuracy was disputed. Tyndale’s objection to “penance” serves to illustrate. He argued that the Greek imperative μετανοεῖτε should be rendered “repent” rather than “do penance,” the Latin-derived expression. The clergy, he contended, had made repentance into penance “to blind the people and to make them think that they must take pain and do some holy deeds to make satisfaction for their sins.”⁷        

Yet a translation's ecclesial setting can influence its wording even without formal restrictions. The 1984 edition of the New International Version (NIV), developed within evangelical Protestantism, renders παράδοσις "tradition" in negative contexts and "teaching" in positive ones.⁸ Although “teaching” can convey the content handed down, this variation obscures the fact that the same Greek word appears in both kinds of context, and with it Paul's commendation of faithfully transmitted apostolic tradition. The choice may reflect an evangelical suspicion of tradition,⁹ and the 2011 revision partly reversed it, rendering παράδοσις "traditions" in 1 Corinthians 11:2.

Tyndale confronted an ecclesiastical regime that sharply restricted vernacular translation. Yet his challenge to that regime does not settle how churches should assess the translations they adopt. Contemporary Roman Catholic practice offers a helpful way of distinguishing these responsibilities. The Second Vatican Council called for translations into different languages, especially from the original texts, even welcoming ecumenical cooperation. Under canon law, however, a Catholic edition of Scripture requires approval by the Apostolic See or a conference of bishops before publication.¹⁰ Translation is thus encouraged, while the authority to approve a text for the church’s use remains institutional. 

In my own ecclesiastical context, the Canadian Reformed churches, ecclesial evaluation is sharply distinguished from ecclesial prohibition. A committee for Bible translations composed of Bible scholars evaluates translations and advises general synod, which in turn makes recommendations to the churches. The 2016 General Synod explicitly affirmed that these recommendations "ultimately are advisory," acknowledging that general synod "may not forbid a church from using a particular translation."¹¹ Distinctions like these may offer a way to honour Tyndale’s insistence that Scripture belongs to the whole church without relinquishing the church’s responsibility to evaluate translations.

Intelligibility and Inherited Language

Tyndale’s vernacular project raises a second, cultural question: when should a community retain a traditional translation or a familiar form of liturgical language? Some evangelicals remain committed to the King James Version, just as some Catholics remain attached to the Vetus Ordo, or Traditional Latin Mass.¹² Immigrant congregations may preserve ancestral languages as bearers of communal identity and theological memory, even when younger generations understand them imperfectly. Other Christians value older liturgical language for its beauty, solemnity, and historical resonance. When does such language sustain theological memory and ecclesial unity, and when does it impede a congregation’s understanding of the Word?

The purpose of Tyndale’s vernacular project was neither to dispense with teachers nor to make every interpretation equally authoritative but to give clergy and laity access to the same intelligible Scripture.¹³  As Tyndale explained in his 1530 “Preface to the Five Books of Moses”: “I perceived by experience how that it was impossible to stablish the lay people in any truth, except the Scripture were plainly laid before their eyes in their mother-tongue, that they might see the process, order, and meaning of the text.”¹⁴ 

Tyndale grounded his case for an accessible Scripture in a principle he found in 1 Corinthians 14: speech in worship must be intelligible if it is to edify its hearers. Criticizing “long ceremonies, long matins, long masses, and long evensongs, and all in Latin, that they understand not,” he appealed to Paul’s requirement that speech in worship occur “in the tongue that all understand.” Otherwise, “the lay man thereby is not edified or taught.”¹⁵ 

Tyndale’s controversial rendering of πρεσβύτερος as “elder,” as opposed to “priest,” illustrates his effort to combine ordinary English with exegetical precision. David Daniell notes that “elder” belonged to Tyndale’s linguistic world, where it could describe a respected and experienced neighbour who offered counsel.¹⁶ Yet intelligibility alone cannot establish a translation’s adequacy. Tyndale insisted that the pursuit of familiar English must remain answerable to the biblical text. In a letter to John Frith, he declared that he had “never altered one syllable of God’s Word against my conscience,” nor would he do so for “honour, pleasure or riches.”¹⁷ He defended “elder” on exegetical grounds: the apostles used πρεσβύτερος, rather than ἱερεύς, the term for a sacrificial priest.¹⁸ His aim was an English translation that ordinary people could understand and that could withstand examination against the Greek.

Inherited language therefore has value insofar as it sustains understanding and theological memory but where it impedes comprehension the church must consider explanation, adaptation, or replacement.

What Language Does God Speak?

Tyndale’s vernacular project raises a final, theological question: does divine revelation privilege any particular language? Within Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, Hebrew retains a privileged liturgical and formative role. Traditionally designated לָשׁוֹן הַקֹּדֶשׁ, “the holy tongue,” it connects worshippers with Scripture, prayer, and the historical Jewish community.¹⁹ Islam binds revelation still more closely to the language of its textual form: the Qur’an, properly speaking, is the Arabic text and not a translation.²⁰ Arabic recitation therefore remains integral to ritual prayer even for Muslims whose first language is not Arabic.²¹ Does Christianity require such a linguistic centre for the church’s reception of Scripture?

The biblical canon itself resists confining revelation to one language. The Old Testament was written primarily in Hebrew, with portions in Aramaic; the New Testament was written in Koine Greek, a widely used form of Greek in the Mediterranean world. Despite being a translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Greek Septuagint was accepted as the Word of God for many ancient Jews and for the early church.²² This did not mean that it reproduced every feature of the Hebrew text: translations must still be judged for fidelity to their sources and intelligibility to their readers.²³ The Christian affirmation of the gospel’s translatability is a profound one. God eschews the sacralization of any one language as uniquely suited for this purpose and intends his revelation to be communicated in many languages. This was Tyndale’s conviction, though there is a line of argument for it in Scripture that Tyndale, so far as I can tell, did not use. 

The argument is that the diversification of language at Babel was not merely a judgment but also an act of grace. Those who constructed the tower enlisted linguistic uniformity to establish human permanence and greatness apart from God.²⁴ God’s judgment in confusing their speech and scattering them did not lie in making translation necessary for communication. Rather, by diversifying language, God was redirecting humanity toward his purpose for creation, enabling the fulfillment of his command to multiply, fill, and develop the earth. The problem at Babel was not an absence of human unity but an idolatry of human unity.²⁵ 

Pentecost offers a striking biblical answer to Babel. When the Spirit is poured out, God does not overcome linguistic plurality by restoring a universal language. Instead, pilgrims hear the apostles declaring “the wonders of God” in their “own tongues” (Acts 2:11; NIV). The miracle makes the one gospel intelligible in many languages without requiring the nations to adopt Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, or Latin. God addresses them in the languages they speak, and Christian unity rests in the confession of one Lord rather than in a common language or culture. The Spirit thus makes the languages of the nations vehicles for declaring God’s mighty works, anticipating the redeemed multitude drawn “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9).

The God who spoke through Hebrew and Greek can also speak through English. Tyndale’s vernacular project therefore represents more than the replacement of Latin with another language. It rejects the premise that any one human language should monopolize divine speech. Churches must assess translations for fidelity to Scripture, but they must also ensure that the people who hear them can understand them. God speaks English because God speaks the languages of his people.