Erasmus as Reformer: Humanism and Piety—Scholarship and Tolerance

Abstract

Erasmus was an older contemporary of Luther, who agreed with Luther that reform was most necessary for the church, but he did not take the side of Luther because his approach to reform was very different from the one of Luther. This paper will consider some important aspects of Erasmus’s approach in comparison with Luther’s positions. Central in Erasmus’s view of reform was a return to the Scriptures: a return to the original texts (not the Vulgate), a return to the philosophy of Christ (not the scholastic speculations of his time), and a return to the Fathers as models of Bible readers (particularly the Greek Fathers, Origen). Erasmus did not see the core of the Gospel so much in particular doctrines (orthodoxy) but rather in the practice of Christian life (orthopraxis). In this perspective, Erasmus could tolerate theological errors in Origen as well as in Luther, as long as the basic commitment to the Gospel and the church was assured. Therefore, Erasmus blamed those Catholic theologians who were keen and quick to condemn Luther rather than to enter into serious theological dialogue with him. Erasmus’s De Libero Arbitrio was an attempt to model such a dialogue, but the times were not favourable for it.