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| Desiderius Erasmus is a somewhat enigmatic figure. Though he called for many reforms in the Church of his day, he never became a reformer in the same sense as Wycliffe and Huss before him or as Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin after him. Yet the work of Erasmus was essential to the sixteenth century Reformation and helped prepare the ground for it.
Erasmus was born in Rotterdam in the year 1466. He was the illegitimate offspring of what he himself described as `a sacrilegious union'. As a child, his mother sent him to a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life. This was a lay movement that emphasised inward spirituality, devotion to Christ and a simple, non-doctrinal faith. Thomas a Kempis (c 1380 - 1471), author of the famous devotional book The Imitation of Christ, belonged to this movement. The teachings of the Brethren deeply affected Erasmus and influenced him throughout the rest of his life.
In 1487, the bookish Erasmus joined an Augustinian monastery at Steyn. Apparently, the monastery's library was a strong incentive! Erasmus was ordained a priest in 1492. Erasmus was a man of immense genius. He had a great love for classical literature and was drawn to the movement known as humanism, which sought to revive classical literature and culture. Almost to the end of his life, Erasmus travelled widely around Europe. He studied and taught in some of the most prestigious universities of his day including Paris (1495), Oxford (1499), and Cambridge (1509-14) where he was Lady Margaret professor of divinity and Greek. Erasmus soon became a scholar of international repute. Indeed, in his lifetime he became the most famous scholar in Europe and was friendly with most of the leading humanist scholars of his day.
He published many popular books in which he set forth his view of the Christian life as essentially simple and practical. The most famous of these became his Handbook of the Christian Soldier (1503). He was also a great satirical writer and in his book The Praise of Folly (1509), he poured scorn on various abuses in the Church. He also edited and published several scholarly editions of classical writers and the Church Fathers, amongst which Jerome was his personal favourite.
For his learning and wit, Erasmus was patronised by the rich and influential. In fact, he was on friendly terms with many of the most powerful men in Europe including the Emperor, Charles V Francis I, King of France, various popes (especially Leo X) and our own Henry VIII.
Erasmus' criticisms of abuses in the Church of Rome helped pave the way for Luther and other reformers. However, his greatest contribution to the Reformation came in 1516 with the publication of his famous edition of the Greek New Testament which was accompanied by his own Latin translation. Although it had many shortcomings, Erasmus' Greek New Testament was little short of revolutionary. Its publication brought to light many doctrinal deviations that had been introduced by the Church of Rome and exposed the serious flaws that were present in the Latin Vulgate, which was the Bible translation sanctioned by the Church of Rome. Without realising it, Erasmus provided the coming Protestant reformers with just the weapon they needed. Hence, it is said that Luther hatched the egg that Erasmus had laid. It is surely no coincidence that it was in the year following the publication of Erasmus' 1516 Greek New Testament that Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the door of the Castle Church at Wittenberg. Luther's action marked the beginning of the Protestant reformation.
Erasmus himself fell short of being a true reformer. He abhorred the Church's opulence and its use of temporal power and he longed for a return to the simplicity of the early Church Fathers, but he had little concern for doctrine. He criticised the cult of the saints, indulgences, the veneration of images, monasticism, and even the papacy, but only because he thought that the people were emphasising the ceremonial aspects of these things at the expense of their spiritual and ethical aspects. He never utterly condemned any of them, nor did he question their essential validity when `properly used. Above all, Erasmus wanted to maintain the peace. `The sum of our religion', he wrote, `is peace and unanimity'. Unlike the apostle Paul and the Reformers, he was prepared - like many an ecumenical today - to sacrifice truth on the altar of peace and unity. Thus, though he attacked many abuses, Erasmus never took any practical steps to reform them.
When the Reformation dawned, Erasmus was for a time sympathetic to it. He thought of Luther as an advocate of religious freedom and toleration like himself. Thus, in 1519 Erasmus sent Luther a letter full of praise. However, when the full implications of the Reformation became clear to him, Erasmus became critical of it and thereafter always sought to distance himself from it. This was inevitable since Erasmus never accepted the two fundamental principles of the Reformation - the sole authority of the Scriptures and salvation by faith alone. Instead, he accepted Church tradition as a valid source of truth and never questioned the Roman Catholic doctrine that salvation is a cooperative effort between man and God.
Thus it was that in 1524 - partly to clear himself from charges of sympathising with Luther - Erasmus was goaded into writing a book against Luther entitled On the Freedom of the Will. Luther replied the following year with his book On the Bondage of the Will. Benjamin B Warfield, a great nineteenth century scholar, called Luther's book the manifesto of the Reformation'. Indeed, the very titles of these two books highlight the essential difference between Erasmus and Roman Catholicism on the one side, and the Protestant Reformation on the other. The Reformation was essentially a struggle between the biblical Augustinian view of salvation by grace alone, and the unbiblical Pelagian view that salvation is partly by grace and partly by works.
Erasmus died a rather dejected and lonely man on the 11th or 12th July 1536. He had hoped vainly that the recovery of classical learning and the teaching of the Church Fathers would banish ignorance, superstition and worldliness from the Church. He had hoped that this could be achieved peacefully and that the unity of the Church could be preserved. Instead, the Church was divided and those who opposed the Reformers had become even more hardened in their ways and hostile to the new learning.
Thus, the life of Erasmus stands out as an eloquent testimony to the fact that there can be no compromise between truth and error. All attempts to preserve the peace and unity of the Church at the expense of truth are doomed to failure. Erasmus suffered the fate that comes upon many compromisers. By the time of his death he was regarded with suspicion and hostility by both Roman Catholics and Protestants alike. After his death, everything he had written - including his Greek New Testament - was placed on the register of forbidden books by pope Paul IV in 1559 and then again by Sixtus V in 1590.
Further Reading
Roland H Bainton's Erasmus of Christendom (first edition 1969) gives a scholarly, yet highly readable account of Erasmus' life and thought and is fairly easy to obtain. If you are interested in reading Erasmus himself, his satirical work, In Praise of Folly, is available in the Penguin Classics series.
Originally published in May - June 2004 issue of Protestant Truth. |
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