The Word of God is Seed: John Wyclif’s Evangelical Theology
Founders Day 2015 - Wyclif presentation by Dr. Sean Otto When the founders of Wycliffe College were deciding on that name, they no doubt thought of John Wyclif as a shining example of evangelicalism in an otherwise dark age in which the gospel lay hidden from the eyes of the laity. But was this the case? Who was this man after whom they renamed the Protestant Episcopal Divinity School? What did he stand for? Was he truly evangelical? The short answer is that it is anachronistic to speak of Wyclif as an evangelical in the 19th, 20th, or 21st – century understanding of the word. This lecture explores a much longer answer, one which explores various aspects of Wyclif’s theology, removing (to borrow a phrase from K.B. MacFarlane) “several layers of rich brown Protestant varnish” to unearth something of the man and his times, but leaves it to the listener to decide whether or not we can call Wyclif evangelical.