Reformation
Netherlands / Basel / Freiburg
Christian Humanism
Also: Erasmus
⭐ He and Luther diagnosed the division of the church in fundamentally different ways, and this decided where he would later stand. Luther held that the main problem was theological: if Rome would not change its theology drastically, true Christians should stamp their feet and walk out. Erasmus, as Olson gives his view, said that the main source of the turmoil was moral collapse. ⚠ Look back at the first part of this thread: when Pelagius arrived in Rome, his diagnosis was just the same as this. Eleven hundred years apart, the synergist side both times started from the conviction that the actual life of the church had gone bad. His lifelong dream was to reform the Roman Catholic Church without tearing it to pieces, and he never saw it come true. To both sides, as they cursed each other, he once cried out, as Olson records, that they should stop their foul language, brawling and railing like madmen.
Below: first his own position, then the church’s verdict — kept separate. A rejected opinion keeps equal weight here.
His own position
His own view (1524, On Free Will), as Olson gives it: although free choice has been damaged by sin, it has not been destroyed by it; and although in this process it has become so weak that before receiving grace we lean more toward evil than toward good, it has not been wholly rooted out, except in those whose grievous sins have become a second nature. ⚠ He deliberately drew a line between himself and Pelagius: he granted that there is a helping or cooperating grace which, Olson notes, is absolutely indispensable to the free will of fallen humanity. What he held was synergism, and in this cooperation, as Olson puts it, grace is the chief partner. On salvation he was looking for a middle way: on the one hand he granted free will and human cooperation; on the other he granted that people absolutely need grace and that faith is absolutely a gift. As Olson gives his words: those who rely on their own wisdom, strength and merits, and on ceremonies, privileges and papal documents, have never received this (heavenly) blessing, because true confidence can arise only in God's grace and promises.
⭐Scripture and Tradition — the reference book he made. Olson writes that of all Erasmus's contributions, the most important may have been the critical Greek New Testament published in 1516. Its influence on the Reformation, he says, cannot be measured. It became the basis of Luther's German translation of the Bible, and gave all the scholars of Christendom a touchstone for interpretation and translation.
⭐ Why this matters on this thread: before sola scriptura can stand, there must first be a reliable Bible in the original languages. ⚠ And the man who made this book stayed in the Catholic Church all his life, and ten years later fought Luther head-on in print over grace and free will — he gave his opponent the most important tool of all, and then argued with him for the rest of his life.
The church’s verdict
He remained in the Catholic Church all his life and was never condemned. ⚠ Luther's charge, as Olson reports it: if not an outright Pelagian heretic, then at least fallen into the rut of Semi-Pelagianism. Erasmus in turn charged that Luther's teaching was absurd and fanatical, contrary to Scripture and to the witness of the fathers before Augustine, and even accused Luther of believing Manichaeism — ⚠ notice: a thousand years on, the two sides were still pinning the same two labels on each other. González records that in his later years he moved further and further away from the Protestants, so far that before his death he had accepted many things in the Catholic Church that he himself had once condemned.
What was at stake for salvation
What he was guarding was the reality of a person's own acts: if a person has no response at all to make in salvation, repentance and faith become a stage play. ⭐ Read him side by side with Luther — Luther was guarding salvation as a pure gift. Both were fighting for salvation, in opposite directions.
Principal works
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On Free Will 1524
De libero arbitrio; ⭐ he chose this subject to challenge Luther, and Luther was actually delighted — as Olson puts it, Erasmus had gone straight to the heart of their difference
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On Restoring the Concord of the Church
A work of his later years, which Olson judges to be his most mature thinking on the true reform of the church and on theology
Threads he belongs to
Grace and Free Will
Round 2 · The Reformation Counterclaim ⚠ His diagnosis of the church's division — that, as Olson gives it, the main source of the turmoil was moral collapse — is just the same as Pelagius's eleven hundred years earlier.
Scripture and Tradition
Dispute Carries on ⭐ 1516 年批判式希腊文新约 ——「惟独圣经」要能成立，先得有一本可靠的原文圣经。⚠ 他给了对手最要紧的工具，然后与对手争了一辈子。