Wyclif by Anthony Kenny

Abstract

REVIEWS In short, while it is useful to have this text in print, this edition will have to be used with great caution. SARAH M. HORRALL University of Ottawa ANTHONY KENNY. Wye/if Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Pp. ix, 115. $12.95. One of the difficulties facing those who teach the history of the late fourteenth century to undergraduates has been the lack of a brief and succinct summary of John Wyclif's theology and philosophy. Kenny's book, however, goes a long way towards remedying this deficiency. Its aims, he states, are "to sketch the mind ofa man who combined philosoph­ ical insight with reforming zeal," and "to reassess his significance in an age in which philosophy has become secularized and theology has become ecumenical." The value ofthe book lies perhaps more in its achievement of the first aim than the second, particularly for the historian or the student of English literature, and it offers the reader an account of the essential elements of Wyclif's thought couched in straightforward language which illuminates the issues without over-simplifying them. Kenny is at pains to demonstrate the orthodoxy of much of Wyclif's theology and philosophy. In criticizing the nominalism ofOckham and his followers, Wyclif "was aligning himselfwith conservative orthodoxy," and his treatise on universals in the Summa de Ente is not only thoroughly orthodox but also, as Kenny observes, central to Wyclif's whole philosoph­ ical position. Kenny also stresses that Wyclif's belief in predestination stood firmly in the Augustinian tradition, and the condemnation after his death of his doctrine of necessity has allowed the impression to arise that his predestinarianism was both more rigid and more unorthodox than it actually was. Wyclif accepted the traditional Catholic view of the distinc­ tion between God's foreknowledge and His foreordaining of events; he recognized the problem of reconciling God's foreknowledge with the freedom of the human will, but he did not go so far as to argue that the damned as well as the saved are predestined by God. Here, as elsewhere, Kenny is at pains to show that Wyclif did not depart as far from Catholic orthodoxy as some of the reformers of the sixteenth century. Wyclif's 213 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER predestinarian theology is not, it seems, as crucial an element in his attack on the hierarchy of the church as has sometimes been supposed. It was not Wyclif's views on predestination but his treatise On Civil Dominion which incurred the censure of the ecclesiastical authorities in Romeandbroughthimsome popularity withthelay political community in England. The political implicationsofWyclif's thesis that "a man in sin has no right to dominion or lordship" were only too apparent, and far from unwelcome, to the anti-clerical laity in England in the mid-1370s, and Wyclif went on to argue that the property of clergy who failed to carry out theirspiritualdutiescouldbeconfiscatedbythesecularauthority.Thethesis elaborated in On Civil Dominion provides the key to understanding Wyclif's political career, and Kenny re-emphasises the importance of the treatise in bringing about his conflict with ecclesiastical authority both in RomeandinEngland. Itisperhapsunfortunatethat Kennydoesnotpursue the question ofWyclif's views on the authority of the secular ruler and the relationshipbetween church and state witha fuller analysisof Onthe Office ofKing, a work which enjoyed some popularity withWyclif's followers. Afterthecondemnationof On CivilDominion,Wyclif'swritingsbecame at once more unorthodoxand moresplenetic, yet even here Kenny warns us againsttooreadyacondemnationofWyclif'slastwritingsasatvariancewith Catholic tradition. He makes the point that Onthe Truth a/Holy Scripture is orthodox in its insistence on the truth and the authoritative nature ofthe Bible, and he suggests thatWyclif did not adopt a literal, fundamentalist approach to theinterpretationof Scripture. ButWyclifalso argued, though the point is not emphasised as strongly as it was to be in a later work, that Scripturecontainedalltruth; therefore, Scriptureshouldbeavailabletoall, and all men, laymen as well as clerks, should read the Bible and interpret it forthemselves.Kenny isrightlycautiousindiscussing theextent ofWyclif's responsibilityforthefirstEnglishBible, buttherecanbelittledoubtthathe encouraged it, and Kenny makes the useful point that there is little, if anything, in the first English translation which could be taken as objection­ able or tendentious by the Catholic reader. In common with others who...