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Rector’s Reflections
Tuesday 4th February 2025
Why Thomas More Matters
In yesterday’s reflections, I shared some thoughts on Thomas’s most famous work, his Utopia, which was first published back in 1516. Thomas wrote many other works as well, and several of these were written in defence of the Roman Catholic faith. Thomas was a man with the courage of his convictions, and he did not hold back from sharing his views with others. If he thought that some one was peddling heresy, Thomas said so, and he was perfectly capable of expressing his views in a very forceful manner. When we read Thomas today, we may well be shocked by his occasional lapses into vulgarity. Nowadays we wouldn’t expect to find this sort of language in the writings of a saint of the Church, or in any theological writing. But things were different back in the 16th Century. The different parties in a theological debate could be quite at ease with a degree of scurrility and vulgarity which we would find profoundly shocking today. Are our standards higher today? Or is that we no longer care about matters of theological truth?
Thomas wrote works in both English and Latin. In 1529, his published his Dialogue, which has 4 sections. The first two sections contain a defence of traditional Roman Catholic against the criticisms raised by Protestant reformers, such as Martin Luther. The third section denounces Tindal’s translation of the New Testament into English. So why wasn’t Thomas keen of translating the New Testament into English? Basically, there were two reasons. The first was that Thomas thought that this would lead to uneducated people believing all sorts of weird things: for Thomas, the Bible is a book which has first to be interpreted and explained by scholars and theologians who have received the necessary training. It can’t simply be left in the hands of the uneducated. Secondly, Thomas was probably a bit of a scholarly snob: Thomas was a very fine classical scholar, and he probably looked down on the less-trumpeted academic credentials of Tindal. (I should add that Tindal was actually a fine scholar, who was more than capable of providing an accurate translation of the original Greek into contemporary English).
The final section of Thomas’ Dialogue contains a personal attack on Martin Luther. This is the sort of thing we probably wouldn’t approve of nowadays, but it part of the bread and butter of Reformation debates. Luther himself had made a scurrilous attack on Thomas’ master, King Henry VIII, so Thomas might well have thought that he was simply paying Luther back in the same coinage.
Thomas continued his attack on Tindal in several other works. He also defended traditional Roman Catholic doctrine in works such as his Supplication of Souls, published perhaps in 1529.
Thomas knew that he had reputation for being somewhat long-winded and perhaps over abusive in his writings. In his Apology of 1533, he defends himself against charges of undue length and personal abuse.
Clearly, Thomas did not hold back from expressing his commitment to defending the traditional theology of the Roman Catholic Church , as that theology had come to be generally understood at the end of the Middle Ages. I add this rider, because Roman Catholic theology has always been evolving down the centuries, and Thomas’s understanding of Roman Catholic theology reflected the approach and understanding prevalent in the Church of his day.
We may agree or disagree with the positions which Thomas defended, but he can admire the fact that he had the courage of his convictions. He was prepared to make a stand on what he took to be theological truth. Are we prepared to take a stand on what we honestly believe to be the truth? Or do we think that there’s no such thing as truth, or that if it does exist, it’s not worth fighting for it?
The Reformation was an age when men and women were prepared to fight for what they believed to be the truth in matters of religion. And today, are we prepared to show a similar commitment to what we sincerely believe to be true? Or are we content to slouch around in a post-truth world?