The Social Doctrine of John Wyclif - Essay Example

The common view is that Wycliffe's legacy exerted a certain influence on the Reformist movement only a century after his death, while his impact on theology, social life, philosophy, and politics of 14th century England does not receive appropriate attention. The fact is that Wycliffe was involved in a number of happenings in philosophy, science, and theology that occurred in his day.

These happenings laid the foundation for the subsequent flowering of science, art, and literature known as the Renaissance, and Wycliffe's contribution to these developments deserves to be studied more deeply and systematically. Although Wycliffe as a priest supported the idea of a papacy for most of his life, his late views of the church were rather close to the doctrines of contemporary religious institutions. Thus, he considered the church to be the congregation of the predestined, believed in the priesthood of all believers, and rejected the traditional doctrine that the clergy were synonymous to the church claiming they were also laymen as any other believer (Parker, 1965: 36).

Moreover, Wycliffe also argued that popes can make mistakes and take wrong decisions because only God is flawless, while even the most righteous pope is also a layman (McLaughlin, 2000: 4). These challenging views found their reflections in the doctrines of lordship, dominium, and the state of grace formulated by Wycliffe during the political phase of his career. The doctrine of Dominium postulates that man had had full lordship over the world before the Fall, and Christ restored it through his death on the cross.

However, he restored the lordship, not to the clergy alone: the lordship is restored to all the believers who truly shared the passion of Christ. The entailing conclusion that those who share are in a state of grace and thus have lordship over the world undermined the lordship of clergy and church greatly. The assumption that the origin of lordship and authority was truth coupled with the supposition that even popes make mistakes led Wycliffe to conclude that if the church takes bad wrong decisions, its authority vanishes.

The real danger of such views for the church became apparent when John of Gaunt, a civil leader, seized the temporalities based upon Wycliffe's doctrine that "If the church fails in its duty, the temporal lords may rightly and lawfully deprive it of its temporal possessions; the judgment of such failure lies not with the theologian but with the civil politician" (Poole cited in McLaughlin, 2000: 5). Wycliffe's attitude to the concepts of forgiveness and salvation also contradicted the established doctrine of the church.

He claimed that salvation could be achieved only by sincere faith: "Trust wholly in Christ; rely altogether on his sufferings; beware of seeking to be justified in any other way than by his righteousness. Faith in our Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient for salvation (McLaughlin, 2000: 5).