Luther On Bound Choice: Celebrating The Recovery Of The Doctrine Of Sola Gratia (Part 2)—Erasmus Of Rotterdam

by on July 14, 2025 | Comment

When Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) was born, the printing press was about fifteen years old. Paul II was Pope. Frederick III was Holy Roman Emperor. What we think of today as the Netherlands was ruled by the House of Burgundy. Luther would not write his Ninety-Five Theses for about fifty years. Columbus would not sail the ocean blue for another twenty-eight years. Hus had been martyred at Constance about fifty years prior to Erasmus’ birth. Constantinople had fallen thirteen years earlier. Gabriel Biel (1420–95) was the cathedral preacher in Mainz. Thomas a Kempis (c. 1380–1471) was five years from death. Savanarola (1452–98) was a teen, and Johann von Staupitz (1455–1522), Luther’s father confessor, was Erasmus’ contemporary.

In 1466, the Renaissance was also in full swing. What was the Renaissance? Paul Oskar Kristeller characterized it as a cultural, educational (ad fontes), and moral reform movement, concerned primarily with rhetorical elegance and moral reformation.1 Our English word renaissance is borrowed from French and derived from the Latin verb renascor, to be born again.2 The Renaissance is usually said to have begun in Northern Italy, in the late fourteenth century, and to have continued into late sixteenth-century England.3 The chief goal of the Renaissance was to recover the classics and to renew Christendom morally and intellectually. They sought to get back to primary sources (ad fontes), to read those sources in their historical context, to pay attention to the intent of the human authors of Scripture, and, to a certain degree, to synthesize the rhetorical beauty of antiquity with the Christian revelation. They wanted to recover what they called bonae litterae, literally good letters.

Kristeller characterized humanism as a “cycle of scholarly disciplines, namely grammar, rhetoric, history, poetry, and moral philosophy….Renaissance humanism was not as such a philosophical tendency or system, but rather a cultural and educational program which emphasized and developed an important but limited area of studies.”4 R. D. Linder wrote of a general humanism that was marked by “concern for the potentials and actions of men as men.”5 Donald R. Kelley has also called attention to the “sense of history” which marked the humanist movement as a whole.6 Whereas the line between the ancient world and the Medieval world was, to the Medievals, fluid (and sometimes non-existent), the Renaissance humanists had a clearer sense that the ancient world was then, and they, the humanists, were living in a different time. It was the Humanists, after all, who gave us the category “Medieval.”

The relations between the Renaissance and the Reformation were complex, and that complexity was on full display in the debate between Luther and Erasmus. I agree with Lewis Spitz, who wrote, “Luther gave enthusiastic support to humanist culture in its sphere, but sharply rebuffed its encroachments in the domain of theology where God’s Word and not human letters reigns supreme.”7 Heiko Oberman remarked that in Luther’s case, humanism was “put into the service of a new Augustinian theology.”8 What Spitz and Oberman wrote about Luther was true for John Calvin (1509–54), who, like Erasmus, and unlike Luther, was educated as a humanist.9

My favorite passage in Calvin’s writing to illustrate his appropriation and conscious limitation of the authority of Renaissance humanism is in the 1559 Institutes. He wrote,

Read Demosthenes or Cicero; read Plato, Aristotle, and others of that tribe. They will, I admit, allure you, delight you, move you, enrapture you in wonderful measure. But betake yourself from them to this sacred reading. Then, in spite of yourself, so deeply will it affect you, so penetrate your heart, so fix itself in your very marrow, that, compared with its deep impression, such vigor as the orators and philosophers have will nearly vanish. Consequently, it is easy to see that the Sacred Scriptures, which so far surpass all gifts and graces of human endeavor, breathe something divine.10

Here Calvin displayed some of the characteristics of humanism: affection for classics, passion for good letters, a concern for personal renewal, and an excellent mastery of style and meter. Finally, however, as this passage illustrates, his primary source was not Seneca, but holy Scripture. Because, for all their rhetorical beauty, the classics are not God’s Word and, for the magisterial Protestants, Scripture that takes priority over rhetorical elegance.

Erasmus: Prince of the Humanists

Erasmus was born near Rotterdam.11 He was the illegitimate child of a priest, a phenomenon common in the period.12 A prodigious student, he read the classics (Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Cicero et al.).13 His piety was shaped by the Devotio Moderna, which stressed a simple piety that paid less attention to doctrine and more to personal godliness. Though Medieval schooling was strict, he loved learning, wit, and elegance. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1492 by the Bishop of Utrecht.14 Ordination, however, did not necessitate service as a parish priest. In Erasmus’ case, the Bishop of Paris released him from normal duties to study in Paris from 1495–99, where the Humanist movement flourished.15 In that period, Jacques Le Fevre d’Etaples (1455–1536), the great French Humanist, returned to Paris from Italy.

In Paris, he tried and failed to become a doctor of theology so he threw himself into humanist studies—so much so that he damaged his health.16 Poor, he had to rely on church scholarships (benefices) and gifts from patrons until he sold enough books that he was able to live comfortably. In 1496 he published his first book, a small collection of poems.17

In 1499 he befriended his contemporary, the English humanist John Colet (1467–1519).18 That connection allowed him to travel to England for a while until he returned to Paris.19 He remained in Paris until an outbreak of the plague drove him back to the Netherlands. Finally, in 1503, the publication of his Handbook of the Christian Soldier brought him some fame and a little money. In the Enchiridion we see him arguing for what he called a philosophia Christi (a philosophy of Christ), which emphasized a return to Scripture (ad fontes), Christian morality, the imitation of Christ (imitatio Christi), and a piety that valued simplicity over ceremony. Greta Grace Kroeker says Erasmus’ view of Christianity “focused on morality, a Christian ethic or the philosophia Christi, which emphasized the behaviors that good Christians should exhibit.”20 One of his most notable works was his 1516 Novum Instrumentum Omne (New Complete Instrument) in which he published the Greek New Testament with a Latin translation on facing pages.21 His translation challenged some of the translations found in the Vulgate. His Greek text would facilitate the renewed study of the Greek New Testament and Luther used it in the Castle Warburg as he made is German translation in the summer of 1522.

By 1518, Erasmus was working Basle, supervising the publication of his books, and writing.22 Alongside figures like Lefevre, Erasmus was the great humanist figure of the period. He was friendly with Johannes Oecolampadius (1482–1531), Martin Bucer (1491–1551), Wolfgang Capito (c. 1478–1541),23 and Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560). Among the young scholars, he was a rock star. They all admired his wit, his Latin, and his knowledge of ancient sources. In the 1520s and 30s, only Martin Luther garnered more attention in universities and among scholars. Until the very end of his life in Basle, Erasmus was thinking of returning to the Netherlands, but he died in Basle.24

For his part, early on, Erasmus supported Luther’s attempts to reform the Roman church. He expressed support for the Ninety-Five Theses.25 When it became clear, upon Luther’s excommunication in 1521, that Luther was not merely seeking a moral and structural reform of the Roman church but something more radical, Erasmus became more hostile. For all his complaints about the church and for all the doubts that other Roman Catholics had about Erasmus, he remained a loyal son of the Roman Catholic church.

Scholars of Erasmus note that he was, a one writer puts it, “a man in the middle.”26 Some in the Roman church suspected him of secretly supporting Luther and even of co-authoring books with Luther. Those who had joined the Reformation, however, were disappointed that he would not join them. 27

His relationship with Luther was complex. His May 1519 letter to Luther from Louvain was cordial. He praised Luther’s letter to him as displaying a “shrewd wit” and as “breathing a Christian spirit.”28Once the controversy over the freedom of choice commenced, his tone changed. His 1526 letter to Luther was sharp and even biting. He was stung by Luther’s harsh language in On The Bound Will in the previous year. He accused Luther of inflicting “mortal wounds” and having written an earlier frenzied letter.29 The next year he replied to Bucer with an equally bitter letter explaining why he would never join his Reformed church.

The Debate With Luther

Erasmus was not the obvious choice to challenge Luther on the servitude of the will. He took theology seriously but he was not a theologian. He was an educational reformer, a moral reformer, but the dogmatic works of the theologians left him cold. He was pressured into writing On Free Choice (De libero arbitrio) in 1524 by the emperor Charles V (1500–58), Duke George of Saxony (1471–1539), and others.30 The point was for someone important, someone famous and learned to put a mouthy Augustinian monk in his place. The dispute on the nature of free choice was merely a vehicle. According to Kroeker, he chose this topic for three reasons: 1) it was “key to the theological foundation of the most central issues at stake in the Reformation;”31 2) Erasmus thought that the church tradition supported his view;32 3) he saw the tradition as providing “cover” for his views.33

His goal was not to destroy Luther. In his own mind, he left room for Luther’s view. He intended to be tolerant. Kroeker describes him as being committed to religious compromise as a matter of principle.34 J. Huizenga traced the latitudinarianism of the Dutch civil magistrates in the seventeenth century directly to Erasmus.35

According to James D. Tracy, the battle between Luther and Erasmus was partly hermeneutical (how we interpret texts) and partly theological. By March of 1521, Luther was committed to the Protestant principle of sola scriptura, which rested on the essential perspicuity of Scripture.36 For Luther, what must be known by the Christian for salvation and the Christian life, can be known from Scripture. For Erasmus, however, tradition was the “only sure guide” to understanding Scripture. To be sure, Luther was no biblicist. He read the Scriptures with the church but he prioritized the Scriptures over tradition. The theological question before them was to “what degree the human capacity for knowing and doing what is right has been vitiated by the sin of Adam?”37

According to Tracy, they were also divided by theological influences. Luther read Romans with the anti-Pelagian Augustine.38 Erasmus, however, read Romans under the influence of Origen, who anticipated key Pelagian positions.39 Erasmus rejected Augustine’s federal reading of Romans 5:12 and he rejected Augustine’s view of Romans 7 in favor of Pelagius’ theory that Paul there adopts a persona, that he could not be describing his Christian experience.40 In later correspondence he was frank about how he regarded Augustine and Paul:

But if I govern my pen in such a way as to attribute some power to free will but great efficacy to grace, I offend both sides, which was my experience in the Diatribe. If I follow Paul and Augustine, very little is left to free will. . . . For myself, I should not be averse to the opinion according to which we can of our own natural powers and without particular grace acquire congruent grace, as they say, except that Paul opposed that view.41

Luther would have recognized Erasmus’ personal position as that of Ockham and Biel, the very Franciscan theology which he himself had rejected during the course of his first lectures in the Psalms and Romans (1513–16).42

Erasmus was born decades before the Reformation but, somewhat reluctantly, he became a mutual combatant in one of the most important and enduring debates of the Reformation. It is to his critique of Luther that we will next turn.

notes

  1. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Renaissance Thought and Its Sources ed. M. Mooney (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).
  2. Oxford English Dictionary, “Renaissance (n.), Etymology,” December 2024, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/7484179767.
  3. On the English Renaissance see C. S. Lewis, English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, Excluding Drama (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954).
  4. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, 22.
  5. R. D. Linder, “Calvinism and Humanism: The First Generation,” Church History 44 (1975), 169.
  6. D. R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship: Language, Law, and History in the French Renaissance (New York, 1970), 21.
  7. Lewis Spitz, The Religious Renaissance of the German Humanists (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963), 238.
  8. Heiko Oberman, “Headwaters of the Reformation: Initia Lutheri-Initia Reformationis,” in Dawn of the Reformation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992), 78.
  9. Parts of the foregoing are harvested and revised slightly from R. Scott Clark, Caspar Olevian and the Substance of the Covenant: The Double Benefit of Christ (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2008), 39–73.
  10. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 and 2, The Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1961), 1.8.1.
  11. Erasmus was anxious for people to think that he was born in Rotterdam and nearly every source says that he was. Some years ago, however, I read an article (which, to my shame I did not save or document), that argued that he was born in a small town outside of Rotterdam. I suspect that he was born in Gouda, since that is where is father’s family was.
  12. J. Huizenga, Erasmus of Rotterdam (London: Phaidon Press, 1952), 5. Upon arriving in Zürich, Zwingli confessed to fornication. Heinrich Bullinger was the son of a priest. Alexander VI (1431–1503) kept a mistress (Giulia Farnese) in the papal quarters and had at least four children, including Lucretia Borgia and Cesare, whom he appointed a cardinal and whom he intended to succeed him in the papacy. His plan failed because Cesare died of syphilis.
  13. Huizenga, 13.
  14. Huizenga, 15.
  15. Huizenga, 16, 19.
  16. Huizenga, 22.
  17. Huizenga, 25.
  18. Huizenga, 29.
  19. He was again impoverished by customs officials who seized all his funds on the way out of the country. Huizenga, 35.
  20. Greta Grace Kroeker, “Erasmus and Luther: Free Will and Tradition,” in Eric MacPhail, ed., A Companion To Erasmus (Leiden: Brill, 2023), 98.
  21. The Complutensian Polyglot (Spain) was finished earlier but not printed till 1520.
  22. Huizenga, 133.
  23. Huizenga published an English translation of Erasmus’ 1516/17 letter to Capito in which Erasmus spoke in fairly glowing terms. Capito would not convert to the Protestant side until c. 1523. Huizenga, 218.
  24. Huizenga, 184. He sold his library to the Polish Reformed theologian Johannes a Lasko (Jan Waski). Ibid., 184.
  25. Huizenga, 140.
  26. Kroeker, 90.
  27. Kroeker, 101.
  28. Huizenga, 229.
  29. Huizenga, 243–46.
  30. Kroeker, 94–95.
  31. Kroeker, 95.
  32. Kroeker, 96.
  33. Kroeker, 96.
  34. Kroeker, 100.
  35. Huizenga, 194.
  36. Erasmus and Luther: The Battle Over Free Will, ed. Clarence H. Miller and Peter Macardle. Introduction by James D. Tracy (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hacket Publishing Company, 2012), “Introduction,” ix.
  37. Tracy, “Introduction,” x.
  38. Tracy, xiv, xvii.
  39. Tracy, xii-xiv.
  40. Tracy, xiv.
  41. Ep. 1804, Collected Works of Erasmus, lines 82–102 in Kroeker, 101.
  42. Tracy says as much. “Introduction,” xvii-xviii.

©R. Scott Clark. All Rights Reserved.

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    R.Scott Clark is the President of the Heidelberg Reformation Association, the author and editor of, and contributor to several books and the author of many articles. He has taught church history and historical theology since 1997 at Westminster Seminary California. He has also taught at Wheaton College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Concordia University. He has hosted the Heidelblog since 2007.

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