If that’s a new expression to you, as it was to me, I highly recommend you check out Tim Enloe’s post on Wycliffe’s doctrine. It gives me a great deal to think about and research. I had never heard anything like this before.
If that’s a new expression to you, as it was to me, I highly recommend you check out Tim Enloe’s post on Wycliffe’s doctrine. It gives me a great deal to think about and research. I had never heard anything like this before.
Tim’s post uncovers what becomes pretty evident when one begins to dig a little beyond what the hagiographic histories of the Reformation and bios of Wycliffe and Hus commonly say about these men. These men were cited very selectively by the magisterial Reformers. They are in many ways, especially Huss, forerunners of the Anabaptist when they touch on the Gospel and society.
Steven Ozment’s The Age of Reform does an excellent job of describing the relationship between Wycliffe, Huss, the conciliar movement, and the magesterial reformers. One factor Tim doesn’t mention explicitly that likely contributed to the connection between Luther and Wycliffe was that most Lutheran converts in England, early on in the reform there, were Lollards. Another factor is that Luther and Wycliffe were very similar on several other doctrinal issues.
Hm. Makes one think of some of the more radical elements of the “Rule of the Saints” in the Cromwell era and thereabouts.