Words Written and Words Inspired: More and Sola Scriptura

Abstract

The main features of More’s position on Luther’s doctrine of evident scripture and Tyndale’s deployment of it are familiar to students of More’s controversial works: adherence to scripture alone defies the gospel promise of Christ’s perpetual presence in the Church; it defies the Church’s authority, and it renounces the prophecy in Jeremiah 31:33 of a new covenant to be written not in books but in men’s hearts. These assertions appear repeatedly in the Responsio ad Lutherum, A Dialogue concerning Heresies, and The Apology. However, in The Confutation of Tyndale’s Answer More appealed to one further dimension of orthodoxy’s position with regard to scriptural authority: asserting the authority of the specfically unwritten character of the new covenant, he argued that it displaced the written character of the law. Tyndale, in his adherence to sola scripture, More found, could thus be represented as defying the gospel covenant.