Tuesday, August 13, 2019

John Wyclif and the Gospel of Nicodemus


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]).