Wyclif’s Logic and Wyclif’s Exegesis: The Context

Abstract

Wyclif found certain scholars of his time ‘in full cry against the unlogical, imprecise language of the Bible and the liturgy’. No commentaries written in that spirit survive, but traces are abundant in contemporary writings of aggressive talk in the schools and disputatious questioning along these lines. The challenge was not in its essence a new one. It is an episode in a series of encounters which had taken place between secular learning and Christian learning from the beginning; and more recently between grammar and logic and the difficulties presented by the Bible’s language. But it was perhaps new in degree. These critics of Wyclif’s day, it seems, said that the Bible was not logical and found in that a reason to question its truth, rather than to look to their logic for faults, as had been the traditional way.