Diarmaid MacCulloch has sought to remind us that, at its heart, the Reformation was a revolution sparked by theological ideas. Brad Pardue examines the initial social consequences in England of the ensuing doctrinal debate carried out in public through the new medium of print. He argues that the emergent vernacular book culture fostered by the interactions of William Tyndale, Thomas More and Henry viii created ‘a discursive space’ in England ‘previously unimaginable’, providing ‘some of the vital prerequisities for the later emergence of a Habersmasian public sphere’ (pp. 213, 217). In particular, Pardue sees in Tyndale's direct appeal to the public for a new understanding of the Church a precedent which would eventually lead to a new understanding of the State.

According to Pardue's historical reconstruction, Tyndale's promotion of a self-interpreting vernacular Bible sought to create an egalitarian Christian fellowship of Scripture believers, whereas More always insisted that biblical texts required an institutional hierarchy to establish their meaning. During the crisis with Rome, Henry viii's advisors at first sought to manipulate Tyndale's reading communities to build popular support for the break from papal authority. However, the project foundered because of fundamentally different ecclesiologies. Henry wanted hierarchical supremacy over both Church and State, whereas Tyndale wanted a Christian community of equals. Building on the work of Bruce Boerhrer, in contrast to that of Richard Duerden, Pardue is at pains to argue that the commonly accepted notion of Tyndale's radical obedience to the king was only in matters of civil society, not in ecclesiastical affairs as well. For Pardue's ultimate claim is that Tyndale's thoroughly egalitarian vision of the Church began a process of challenging societal assumptions about hierarchy ‘that would ultimately have profound implications in both the religious and politic spheres' (p. 212).

Pardue is at his strongest when analysing ‘the material manifestations of religious ideas’ (p. 99). He notes the irony that More's practice of refuting Tyndale by quoting his writings further disseminated Reformation ideas, that the advent of a humanist book culture established the historical development of the Church, buttressing Tyndale's critique of current church practice against that of the early Church, and that by providing a complete vernacular Bible Tyndale had at last given the reading public at least the opportunity – and arguably even the authority – to judge Christian ideas for themselves.

However, Pardue is not always nuanced in matters theological. For example, he asserts that Tyndale's commentary on the Sermon on the Mount (1533) reflects an understanding of the two regiments which by that date Luther himself had abandoned. Yet, as Arne Dembek's study has shown, Tyndale drew directly from and was in agreement with the discussion of this doctrine in Luther's 1532 German preaching series on the same passage (William Tyndale, 390). More importantly, Purdue also uses Tyndale's statements about the radical egalitarianism of the invisible Church of the elect to argue for a ‘nascent congregationalism’ as Tyndale's understanding of any future reformed version of the visible institutional Church (pp. 59, 166–8), yet without any direct discussion of the theological distinctions involved. Pardue has not been helped in these matters by the paucity of studies in English focused on Tyndale's theology, as opposed to the translation work, nor by his own inability to make use of German sources.

Nothing demonstrates the usefulness of German-language skills for Tyndale studies better than Arne Dembek's recent exhaustive inductive examination of the reformer's writings. Fully conversant with all the English literature on Tyndale but also being deeply read in Luther's works and the German scholarship on them, Dembek is able to present Tyndale authentically in his historical context, namely as the chief spokesperson of the Central European Reformation for England during the 1520s and early 1530s. Through a thorough comparison of all of Tyndale's writings with those of Luther, Bucer and Zwingli, Dembek convincingly argues that Tyndale faithfully introduces the essential teachings of the Reformation to the English reading public but always in his own distinct voice. The Leitmotiv of Tyndale's Scripture-derived theology is that the evangelical doctrine of justification by faith leads to the healing of the human will. Behind Tyndale's emphasis on obedience is a conviction that the power of God's gracious love inspires in the hearts of his grateful children an abiding love for keeping his law. Luther as well believed that the conversion of the hearts of believers towards God would lead to their conversion to the loving service of their neighbours. Unlike Bucer, however, Luther famously declined to assign the tertius usus legis such a prominent role in this process.

If William Clebsch always considered Tyndale's deviations from Luther a negative sign of incipient Puritan moralism and Carl Trueman's superior study still examined Tyndale's writings through a systematic grid of doctrinal commonplaces, Dembek's approach is to honour Tyndale's (as well as Luther's) exegetically-driven theological method. As indicated by the subtitle of his book – ‘Reformation theology as contextual scriptural interpretation’ – Dembek simply follows the historical order of Tyndale's life and writings, carefully noting each new work's theological reflections on the Bible as well as tracking the trajectory of their development over time. Consequently, Dembek's singular achievement has been to allow Tyndale's distinctive doctrinal voice to be heard afresh, the voice of a European reformer, even if spoken with an English accent.