The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer

More claims that scripture cannot stand alone as the foundation of faith, because the Church that assembled and preserved the Bible also carries doctrines and practices received orally from the apostles. He rejects the reformist premise that each believer can reach saving truth by reading scripture directly, arguing that such confidence invites endless disagreement. In his view the Church's continuous consensus is the safeguard against error. This position underlies his defense of the sacraments, saints, purgatory, and clerical office, which Tyndale had attacked.

The Dialogue Concerning Heresies, published in 1529, defended Catholic practice against reformist criticism and attacked vernacular translations it considered corrupt. Tyndale replied with his Answer in 1531, and the Confutation is More's reply to that reply, working through Tyndale's text passage by passage. Because it quotes and rebuts at great length, the Confutation also preserves much of Tyndale's argument. Readers can therefore follow the exchange as a sustained debate, though the form is heavily weighted toward More's side.

More objected that Tyndale rendered certain key Greek terms in ways that undercut Catholic doctrine, for example using 'congregation' rather than 'church', 'elder' rather than 'priest', and 'repentance' rather than 'penance'. He argued these were not neutral choices but doctrinal moves that dismantled the vocabulary of ecclesial authority. Modern scholars note that Tyndale had philological and humanist grounds for his renderings, and the dispute is often cited as a case where translation and theology were inseparable. The disagreement illustrates how contested vernacular Bible translation was in early Tudor England.

The book runs to many hundreds of pages in modern editions because More answers Tyndale in detail, digresses into stories, jokes, and arguments, and repeats his points to anchor them. Its prolixity has made it less read than Utopia, and many students encounter it only in excerpts. Scholars generally treat it as a major document of Tudor polemic and of More's late thought, valuable for its rhetoric and for the evidence it gives of how the Reformation was argued in English. A sensible approach is to read selections alongside the editorial introduction.

The work is often cited in debates over More's attitude to heresy, since he defended the prosecution of heretics and was sharply hostile to Tyndale. Some historians, such as Richard Marius in his biography, have emphasized the severity of his polemic, while others, including scholars associated with the Yale Edition, have stressed the legal and religious framework in which he operated and his sincere pastoral concern. The question remains contested. Readers should weigh the text's harsh rhetoric against the period's norms and More's stated reasons, instead of treating it as proof of either extreme.

The standard scholarly edition is the Yale Edition of the Complete Works of St. Thomas More, volume 8, in three parts, edited by Louis A. Schuster, Richard C. Marius, James P. Lusardi, and Richard J. Schoeck. It provides the English text with extensive commentary. Because the work is lengthy and written in early sixteenth-century English, readers should look for introductions that explain the structure of More's reply and compare it with Tyndale's original, which is also available in modern scholarly editions.