John Wycliffe, the greatest English religious thinker, started his education at Oxford University at the young age of sixteen. During the medieval period, it was quite customary for young men to become a student at one of the great colleges at Oxford between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years. The students would usually spend about seven years studying for their first degree. Oxford, which was one of the great learning centers in Europe at the time, was an institution of great intellectual ferment in which scholars pursued a broad range of subjects, such as theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences.
Having completed his initial university years, Wycliffe went on to become a fellow of Merton College, which was one of Oxford's most esteemed institutions. It was in this time that he came across the writings of Thomas Bradwardine, one of the scholars whose work would later exert a tremendous impact in shaping Wycliffe's intellectual and theological thoughts. Bradwardine was a scholar who mastered numerous subjects such as mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy. Even though deeply engaged in these intellectual pursuits, Bradwardine was also deeply committed to biblical studies. His search for theological honesty led him to concentrate on the doctrine of righteousness through faith, a message that would later turn out to be one of the most solid pillars of the Protestant Reformation.
Bradwardine's ideas on salvation and the cross meant a lot to Wycliffe. Being a pious scholar, Bradwardine had spent years reading and interpreting the Scriptures, and he became strongly convinced that salvation was achieved through belief in Jesus Christ and not through the cumbersome rituals and practices upheld by the Church. This was a revolutionary position in an era when the Roman Catholic Church wielded tremendous influence over religious instruction and practice. Bradwardine's conviction that salvation was centered on faith, and not human efforts, was contrary to the beliefs accepted by the Church and left a lasting impression on his students, including Wycliffe.
Wycliffe began to explore these theological concepts in greater depth under Bradwardine's supervision. He read the Bible thoroughly, attempting to understand the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine. His academic curriculum at Marton College, not to mention the intellectual rigor of Oxford, endowed him with the capability to deconstruct the religious establishment of his time. Wycliffe came to question various Church practices and teachings as he progressed in studies, particularly those that seemed to be moving further away from the scripture.
Bradwardine's teachings had an enormous impact on Wycliffe. The emphasis on salvation through faith, instead of dependence upon church authority and indulgences, planted seeds of reformist thought in the mind of Wycliffe. Wycliffe's thoughts would ultimately develop into a full-blown theological movement challenging the prevailing order of religion and opening the door for later reformers. His scholarly work and religious quest at Oxford were the context for his later works, which would ultimately help cause the Reformation and Protestantism centuries later.
