Aers 2000

John Wyclif's Understanding of Christian Discipleship

Wyclif: all followers should be disciples of Christ, not just priests/friars/monks; maintains a split between Church and Scripture

• through reason we can grasp Scripture's special logic (122)

Thomas Netter argues against this; says Scripture is not only source of divine law, Holy Church has canonized law, too -- splitting Scripture from Church is like severing limbs from a whole body, splitting bridegroom from bride

• Christ is head of Holy Church, which gives life to the limbs;
• how can we believe Christ (the head) if we reject the Church of Christ (the body)? (121)
• draws on Augustine, who says there can be no authoritative canon or hermeneutics without the authority of the Church (121)

for Wyclif, Jesus' form of life:

"Jesus lived as the most materially estitute of people; and although he enjoyed the universal dominion by grace bestowed on the predestinate, he utterly renounced civil dominion, temporal proprietorship, and worldly violence, violence inextricably bound up by the exercise of civil dominion." (122)

precepts: laid out by Christ as necessary conditions for salvation; counsels: for those that want to do better than just follow the bare minimum

• Wyclif believed this distinction had no basis in Scripture (126)

at times seems to point towards a priesthood of all believers; but this concept was developed more fully by his later followers than by him (128)

• he acknowledges that an order of priesthood is founded in Scripture (129)
• we must all follow Christ's path, Wyclif says, but priests are obligated i na more binding way (130)

leading cleric, the pope, is the vicar of Christ, should follow Christ's form of life; leading layman, the king, is vicar of God

• pope should be nonviolent, but king must be violent to maintain God's order
• Mother Church must have secular lords to defend her
• "so those Christians who particpate in secular power do not, after all, have to follow the path of Jesus" (130)
• "He models Christ as an offended lord whose wife has been violated and whose kingdom laid to waste: his faithful lieges will know the revenge due to his enemies." (134)

thinks Constantine endowing the Church is poison; thought Christian disciples should reject all secular power; yet he wants the lay elites to use their secular power to disendow the church (internal tensions)

"It is thus clear that far from dissolving the traditional divisions between laity and priests Wyclif maintains it as a fundamental component of both his ecclesiology and his politics." -- he cannot let radical theology cut him off from institutional, cultural, and patronage affiliations (139)

Wyclif believes in the power of kings over sin, heresy (141-2)

scapegoating of priests inadvertently allows most lay Christians to continue their livess unchanged (146-8)' "de-Christianization of the laity" (148)