An Answer unto Sir Thomas More's Dialogue

Not only does Tyndale's Answer (1531) provide the missing link between St. Thomas More's Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529, 1531) and Confutation of Tyndale (1532, 1533), but its newly minted phrases and biblical images, its attack on the Donation of Pepin (AD 754), and its emphasis on feeling faith make it essential reading for scholars and graduate students of English language and literature, church history, and theology.

Here in the Foundational Essay, Tyndale takes his position on six major topics: his English translation of the New Testament, Scripture versus tradition, election to glory, the papacy, historical faith versus feeling faith, and religious ceremonies. In the remaining two-thirds of Answer, Tyndale attacks points from each of the four books in More's Dialogue.

The introduction to this critical edition of Answer briefly presents the history of its composition and the principles of its theology. The commentary spans fifteen-hundred years of church history from the New Testament to Tyndale's works of polemic and exegesis. Sidenotes from the Whole Works of 1573 show how Answer was received in Elizabethan England, after the queen had been excommunicated by Pius V in 1570. The glossary alerts the reader to the subtle differences between Renaissance and Modern English, and the indices to Scripture, Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas, Erasmus, More, and Luther provide access to the rich theological background.

ABOUT THE EDITORS:

Anne M. O'Donnell, S.N.D., is Emerita professor of English at The Catholic University of America and founding executive editor of the Independent Works of William Tyndale series. She is the coeditor of Word, Church, and State: Tyndale Quincentenary Essays. Jared Wicks, S.J., is professor of theology and former academic dean of the faculty of theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He is the author of several books, including Luther's Reform: Studies in Conversion and the Church.

PRAISE FOR THE BOOK:

"In this new edition of Tyndale's 'Answer,' students of the Reformation will find a wealth of fascinating material; the editors have done their homework, and their explanations of Tyndale's text are detailed, lucid, and admirably fair."—Catholic Historical Review

"With their splendid edition of An Answer, Anne O'Donnell, S.N.D., and Jared Wicks, S.J., inaugurate the Independent Works of William Tyndale, a much-needed edition of the nontranslation prose.... The Independent Works will make Tyndale's complete oeuvre available in texts that conform to up-to-date editorial standards. They will enable scholars to study a remarkable textual bedrock of exegetical and controversial writings that exerted an extraordinary influence on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English Protestant theological doctrine, literature, ideology, politics, and history.... This book represents a model edition of a text fundamentally important to English Renaissance and Reformation studies."—John N. King, Sixteenth Century Journal

"This volume provides the best possible aperitif to sustaining main courses promised in the language, literature, history, and theology scholars have come to link with a remarkable Englishman.... A truly objective edition of Tyndale's Answer to Thomas More's damning Dialogue.... Sister Anne O'Donnell and Father Jared Wicks have taken endless trouble to assemble the full range of academic apparatus and appendices only to be found in the best critical editions."—Peter Newman Brooks, Journal of Theological Studies