Commenting
on Wyclif and his understanding of the apocryphal book, The Gospel of Nicodemus, Ian Christopher Levy wrote:
Wyclif does trust that the Old Testament
authors were divinely inspired, not only due to the sanctity of their lives and
the authentication they received from the entire church, but because their
books resonate with love and their minds were conformed to celestial
affections. It is their pure proclamation of the Word of God that secures their
authenticity. And yet Wyclif finds that the Gospel of Nicodemus also meets
these criteria, even as he admits the work is itself apocryphal. Despite the
fact that the book’s precise status remained murky, Wyclif was not alone in
valuing the Gospel of Nicodemus; it can be found in some late medieval biblical
codices. At all events, this conclusion prompts Wyclif to examine the nature of
apocryphal books generally. He appeals to Jerome’s Prologus Galeatus to make the point that we need not disbelieve
these books as if they were false; but neither should the church militant explicitly
believe in them as if they were authentic. Wyclif then applies this principle
to the Gospel of Nicodemus as well as other books that the church has decided
neither to condemn explicitly nor canonize them explicitly. Thus even as Wyclif
finds value in such books he adopts a rather sensible and realistic position
that the current number of biblical books is sufficient since canonizing any
more may well prove burdensome for the church. Having said that, however,
Wyclif still thinks it likely that many apocryphal books can qualify as Holy
Scripture, inasmuch as they are inscribed in the Book of Life—the Liber Vitae. And this means that
Christians should trust in them, whether explicitly or implicitly, just as one
trusts the canonical scripture. Indeed, says Wyclif, many of these apocryphal
books do convey sacred truths that are contained in the Book of Life. (Ian
Christopher Levy, Holy Scripture and the
Quest for Authority at the End of the Middle Ages [Notre Dame: University
of Notre Dame Press, 2012], 61)
This is
rather interesting for many reasons including (1) Wyclif’s view of the Gospel
of Nicodemus is similar to the Latter-day Saint view of the Apocrypha (cf.
D&C 91) and (2) how even the forerunners to the Protestant Reformation had
a subjective view of canonical certainty (something I discuss vis-à-vis the internal witness of the Spirit being attesting the self-authentication of the books of the Bible in Protestant epistemology [mirroring Moroni 10:3-5, I
will add!] in Not
by Scripture Alone: A Latter-day Saint Refutation of Sola Scriptura]).
