CONTROVERSY WITH LUTHER AND GROWING CONSERVATISM
1524-6
Erasmus persuaded to write against Luther--_De Libero Arbitrio_:
1524--Luther's answer: _De Servo Arbitrio_--Erasmus's
indefiniteness contrasted with Luther's extreme rigour--Erasmus
henceforth on the side of conservatism--The Bishop of Basle and
Oecolampadius--Erasmus's half-hearted dogmatics: confession,
ceremonies, worship of the Saints, Eucharist--_Institutio
Christiani Matrimonii_: 1526--He feels surrounded by enemies
At length Erasmus was led, in spite of all, to do what he had always
tried to avoid: he wrote against Luther. But it did not in the least
resemble the _geste_ Erasmus at one time contemplated, in the cause of
peace in Christendom and uniformity of faith, to call a halt to the
impetuous Luther, and thereby to recall the world to its senses. In the
great act of the Reformation their polemics were merely an after-play.
Not Erasmus alone was disillusioned and tired--Luther too was past his
heroic prime, circumscribed by conditions, forced into the world of
affairs, a disappointed man.
Erasmus had wished to persevere in his resolution to remain a spectator
of the great tragedy. 'If, as appears from the wonderful success of
Luther's cause, God wills all this'--thus did Erasmus reason--'and He
has perhaps judged such a drastic surgeon as Luther necessary for the
corruption of these times, then it is not my business to withstand him.'
But he was not left in peace. While he went on protesting that he had
nothing to do with Luther and differed widely from him, the defenders of
the old Church adhered to the standpoint urged as early as 1520 by
Nicholas of Egmond before the rector of Louvain: 'So long as he refuses
to write against Luther, we take him to be a Lutheran'. So matters
stood. 'That you are looked upon as a Lutheran here is certain,' Vives
writes to him from the Netherlands in 1522.
Ever stronger became the pressure to write against Luther. From Henry
VIII came a call, communicated by Erasmus's old friend Tunstall, from
George of Saxony, from Rome itself, whence Pope Adrian VI, his old
patron, had urged him shortly before his death.
Erasmus thought he could refuse no longer. He tried some dialogues in
the style of the _Colloquies_, but did not get on with them; and
probably they would not have pleased those who were desirous of
enlisting his services. Between Luther and Erasmus himself there had
been no personal correspondence, since the former had promised him, in
1520; 'Well then, Erasmus, I shall not mention your name again.' Now
that Erasmus had prepared to attack Luther, however, there came an
epistle from the latter, written on 15 April 1524, in which the
reformer, in his turn, requested Erasmus in his own words: 'Please
remain now what you have always professed yourself desirous of being: a
mere spectator of our tragedy'. There is a ring of ironical contempt in
Luther's words, but Erasmus called the letter 'rather humane; I had not
the courage to reply with equal humanity, because of the sycophants'.
In order to be able to combat Luther with a clear conscience Erasmus had
naturally to choose a point on which he differed from Luther in his
heart. It was not one of the more superficial parts of the Church's
structure. For these he either, with Luther, cordially rejected, such as
ceremonies, observances, fasting, etc., or, though more moderately than
Luther, he had his doubts about them, as the sacraments or the primacy
of St. Peter. So he naturally came to the point where the deepest gulf
yawned between their natures, between their conceptions of the essence
of faith, and thus to the central and eternal problem of good and evil,
guilt and compulsion, liberty and bondage, God and man. Luther confessed
in his reply that here indeed the vital point had been touched.
_De libero arbitrio diatribe_ (_A Disquisition upon Free Will_) appeared
in September 1524. Was Erasmus qualified to write about such a subject?
In conformity with his method and with his evident purpose to vindicate
authority and tradition, this time, Erasmus developed the argument that
Scripture teaches, doctors affirm, philosophers prove, and human reason
testifies man's will to be free. Without acknowledgement of free will
the terms of God's justice and God's mercy remain without meaning. What
would be the sense of the teachings, reproofs, admonitions of Scripture
(Timothy iii.) if all happened according to mere and inevitable
necessity? To what purpose is obedience praised, if for good and evil
works we are equally but tools to God, as the hatchet to the carpenter?
And if this were so, it would be dangerous to reveal such a doctrine to
the multitude, for morality is dependent on the consciousness of
freedom.
Luther received the treatise of his antagonist with disgust and
contempt. In writing his reply, however, he suppressed these feelings
outwardly and observed the rules of courtesy. But his inward anger is
revealed in the contents itself of _De servo arbitrio_ (_On the Will not
free_). For here he really did what Erasmus had just reproached him
with--trying to heal a dislocated member by tugging at it in the
opposite direction. More fiercely than ever before, his formidable
boorish mind drew the startling inferences of his burning faith. Without
any reserve he now accepted all the extremes of absolute determinism. In
order to confute indeterminism in explicit terms, he was now forced to
have recourse to those primitive metaphors of exalted faith striving to
express the inexpressible: God's two wills, which do not coincide, God's
'eternal hatred of mankind, a hatred not only on account of demerits and
the works of free will, but a hatred that existed even before the world
was created', and that metaphor of the human will, which, as a riding
beast, stands in the middle between God and the devil and which is
mounted by one or the other without being able to move towards either of
the two contending riders. If anywhere, Luther's doctrine in _De Servo
Arbitrio_ means a recrudescence of faith and a straining of religious
conceptions.
But it was Luther who here stood on the rockbed of a profound and mystic
faith in which the absolute conscience of the eternal pervades all. In
him all conceptions, like dry straw, were consumed in the glow of God's
majesty, for him each human co-operation to attain to salvation was a
profanation of God's glory. Erasmus's mind after all did not truly
_live_ in the ideas which were here disputed, of sin and grace, of
redemption and the glory of God as the final cause of all that is.
Was, then, Erasmus's cause in all respects inferior? Was Luther right at
the core? Perhaps. Dr. Murray rightly reminds us of Hegel's saying that
tragedy is not the conflict between right and wrong, but the conflict
between right and right. The combat of Luther and Erasmus proceeded
beyond the point at which our judgement is forced to halt and has to
accept an equivalence, nay, a compatibility of affirmation and negation.
And this fact, that they here were fighting with words and metaphors in
a sphere beyond that of what may be known and expressed, was understood
by Erasmus. Erasmus, the man of the fine shades, for whom ideas
eternally blended into each other and interchanged, called a Proteus by
Luther; Luther the man of over-emphatic expression about all matters.
The Dutchman, who sees the sea, was opposed to the German, who looks out
on mountain tops.
'This is quite true that we cannot speak of God but with inadequate
words.' 'Many problems should be deferred, not to the oecumenical
Council, but till the time when, the glass and the darkness having been
taken away, we shall see God face to face.' 'What is free of error?'
'There are in sacred literature certain sanctuaries into which God has
not willed that we should penetrate further.'
The Catholic Church had on the point of free will reserved to itself
some slight proviso, left a little elbow-room to the consciousness of
human liberty _under_ grace. Erasmus conceived that liberty in a
considerably broader spirit. Luther absolutely denied it. The opinion of
contemporaries was at first too much dominated by their participation in
the great struggle as such: they applauded Erasmus, because he struck
boldly at Luther, or the other way about, according to their sympathies.
Not only Vives applauded Erasmus, but also more orthodox Catholics such
as Sadolet. The German humanists, unwilling, for the most part, to break
with the ancient Church, were moved by Erasmus's attack to turn their
backs still more upon Luther: Mutianus, Zasius, and Pirckheimer. Even
Melanchthon inclined to Erasmus's standpoint. Others, like Capito, once
a zealous supporter, now washed their hands of him. Soon Calvin with the
iron cogency of his argument was completely to take Luther's side.
It is worth while to quote the opinion of a contemporary Catholic
scholar about the relations of Erasmus and Luther. 'Erasmus,' says F. X.
Kiefl,[19] 'with his concept of free, unspoiled human nature was
intrinsically much more foreign to the Church than Luther. He only
combated it, however, with haughty scepticism: for which reason Luther
with subtle psychology upbraided him for liking to speak of the
shortcomings and the misery of the Church of Christ in such a way that
his readers could not help laughing, instead of bringing his charges,
with deep sighs, as beseemed before God.'
The _Hyperaspistes_, a voluminous treatise in which Erasmus again
addressed Luther, was nothing but an epilogue, which need not be
discussed here at length.
Erasmus had thus, at last, openly taken sides. For, apart from the
dogmatical point at issue itself, the most important part about _De
libero arbitrio_ was that in it he had expressly turned against the
individual religious conceptions and had spoken in favour of the
authority and tradition of the Church. He always regarded himself as a
Catholic. 'Neither death nor life shall draw me from the communion of
the Catholic Church,' he writes in 1522, and in the _Hyperaspistes_ in
1526: 'I have never been an apostate from the Catholic Church. I know
that in this Church, which you call the Papist Church, there are many
who displease me, but such I also see in your Church. One bears more
easily the evils to which one is accustomed. Therefore I bear with this
Church, until I shall see a better, and it cannot help bearing with me,
until I shall myself be better. And he does not sail badly who steers a
middle course between two several evils.'
But was it possible to keep to that course? On either side people turned
away from him. 'I who, formerly, in countless letters was addressed as
thrice great hero, Prince of letters, Sun of studies, Maintainer of true
theology, am now ignored, or represented in quite different colours,' he
writes. How many of his old friends and congenial spirits had already
gone!
A sufficient number remained, however, who thought and hoped as Erasmus
did. His untiring pen still continued to propagate, especially by means
of his letters, the moderating and purifying influence of his mind
throughout all the countries of Europe. Scholars, high church
dignitaries, nobles, students, and civil magistrates were his
correspondents. The Bishop of Basle himself, Christopher of Utenheim,
was a man after Erasmus's heart. A zealous advocate of humanism, he had
attempted, as early as 1503, to reform the clergy of his bishopric by
means of synodal statutes, without much success; afterwards he had
called scholars like Oecolampadius, Capito and Wimpfeling to Basle. That
was before the great struggle began, which was soon to carry away
Oecolampadius and Capito much further than the Bishop of Basle or
Erasmus approved. In 1522 Erasmus addressed the bishop in a treatise _De
interdicto esu carnium_ (_On the Prohibition of eating Meat_). This was
one of the last occasions on which he directly opposed the established
order.
The bishop, however, could no longer control the movement. A
considerable number of the commonalty of Basle and the majority of the
council, were already on the side of radical Reformation. About a year
after Erasmus, Johannes Oecolampadius, whose first residence at Basle
had also coincided with his (at that time he had helped Erasmus with
Hebrew for the edition of the New Testament), returned to the town with
the intention of organizing the resistance to the old order there. In
1523 the council appointed him professor of Holy Scripture in the
University; at the same time four Catholic professors lost their places.
He succeeded in obtaining general permission for unlicensed preaching.
Soon a far more hot-headed agitator, the impetuous Guillaume Farel, also
arrived for active work at Basle and in the environs. He is the man who
will afterwards reform Geneva and persuade Calvin to stay there.
Though at first Oecolampadius began to introduce novelties into the
church service with caution, Erasmus saw these innovations with alarm.
Especially the fanaticism of Farel, whom he hated bitterly. It was these
men who retarded what he still desired and thought possible: a
compromise. His lambent spirit, which never fully decided in favour of a
definite opinion, had, with regard to most of the disputed points,
gradually fixed on a half-conservative midway standpoint, by means of
which, without denying his deepest conviction, he tried to remain
faithful to the Church. In 1524 he had expressed his sentiments about
confession in the treatise _Exomologesis_ (_On the Way to confess_). He
accepts it halfway: if not instituted by Christ or the Apostles, it was,
in any case, by the Fathers. It should be piously preserved. Confession
is of excellent use, though, at times, a great evil. In this way he
tries 'to admonish either party', 'neither to agree with nor to assail'
the deniers, 'though inclining to the side of the believers'.
In the long list of his polemics he gradually finds opportunities to
define his views somewhat; circumstantially, for instance, in the
answers to Alberto Pio, of 1525 and 1529. Subsequently it is always done
in the form of an _Apologia_, whether he is attacked for the
_Colloquia_, for the _Moria_, Jerome, the _Paraphrases_ or anything
else. At last he recapitulates his views to some extent in _De amabili
Ecclesiae concordia_ (_On the Amiable Concord of the Church_), of 1533,
which, however, ranks hardly any more among his reformatory endeavours.
On most points Erasmus succeeds in finding moderate and conservative
formulae. Even with regard to ceremonies he no longer merely rejects. He
finds a kind word to say even for fasting, which he had always abhorred,
for the veneration of relics and for Church festivals. He does not want
to abolish the worship of the Saints: it no longer entails danger of
idolatry. He is even willing to admit the images: 'He who takes the
imagery out of life deprives it of its highest pleasure; we often
discern more in images than we conceive from the written word'.
Regarding Christ's substantial presence in the sacrament of the altar he
holds fast to the Catholic view, but without fervour, only on the ground
of the Church's consensus, and because he cannot believe that Christ,
who is truth and love, would have suffered His bride to cling so long to
so horrid an error as to worship a crust of bread instead of Him. But
for these reasons he might, at need, accept Oecolampadius's view.
From the period at Basle dates one of the purest and most beneficent
moral treatises of Erasmus's, the _Institutio Christiani matrimonii_
(_On Christian Marriage_) of 1526, written for Catherine of Aragon,
Queen of England, quite in the spirit of the _Enchiridion_, save for a
certain diffuseness betraying old age. Later follows _De vidua
Christiana_, _The Christian Widow_, for Mary of Hungary, which is as
impeccable but less interesting.
All this did not disarm the defenders of the old Church. They held fast
to the clear picture of Erasmus's creed that arose from the _Colloquies_
and that could not be called purely Catholic. There it appeared only too
clearly that, however much Erasmus might desire to leave the letter
intact, his heart was not in the convictions which were vital to the
Catholic Church. Consequently the _Colloquies_ were later, when
Erasmus's works were expurgated, placed on the index in the lump, with
the _Moria_ and a few other works. The rest is _caute legenda_, to be
read with caution. Much was rejected of the Annotations to the New
Testament, of the _Paraphrases_ and the _Apologiae_, very little of the
_Enchiridion_, of the _Ratio verae theologiae_, and even of the
_Exomologesis_. But this was after the fight against the living Erasmus
had long been over.
So long as he remained at Basle, or elsewhere, as the centre of a large
intellectual group whose force could not be estimated, just because it
did not stand out as a party--it was not known what turn he might yet
take, what influence his mind might yet have on the Church. He remained
a king of minds in his quiet study. The hatred that was felt for him,
the watching of all his words and actions, were of a nature as only
falls to the lot of the acknowledged great. The chorus of enemies who
laid the fault of the whole Reformation on Erasmus was not silenced. 'He
laid the eggs which Luther and Zwingli have hatched.' With vexation
Erasmus quoted ever new specimens of narrow-minded, malicious and stupid
controversy. At Constance there lived a doctor who had hung his portrait
on the wall merely to spit at it as often as he passed it. Erasmus
jestingly compares his fate to that of Saint Cassianus, who was stabbed
to death by his pupils with pencils. Had he not been pierced to the
quick for many years by the pens and tongues of countless people and did
he not live in that torment without death bringing the end? The keen
sensitiveness to opposition was seated very deeply with Erasmus. And he
could never forbear irritating others into opposing him.
FOOTNOTES:
[19] _Luther's religioese Psyche_, Hochland XV, 1917, p. 21.