That intent was apparent in the title Erasmus chose: The Freedom of the Will: A Diatribe or Discourse (in Latin, De Libero Arbitrio). By “diatribe,” Erasmus meant not a tirade in the modern sense but a discussion or inquiry in the classical sense. Before laying out his argument, he decided to offer a long preamble making clear his constructive aim. This was in many ways the most distinctive and original part of the book. It was “far from a crime,” he observed, to take issue with a teaching of Luther’s, especially if one engaged in a “temperate debate” aimed at eliciting the truth. He would discuss free will “without abuse,” avoiding the “angry repartee” in which the truth was so often obscured. Surely Luther would not take it amiss if someone disagreed with him on a point or two. Moreover, he intended to approach the matter with an open mind and even a “slight bias” in Luther’s favor. “I will act as a disputant, not as judge; as inquirer, not as dogmatist.”
In fact, Erasmus noted, he was a reluctant disputant. Free will was one of many abstract matters in the Bible whose meaning, though often discussed, remained elusive and about which he would consider himself a skeptic if the Church allowed it. On the precepts of a good life, by contrast, the Scriptures are “absolutely clear.” Here, the Word of God “need not be sought by scaling the heights of heaven or brought back from across the sea, but is close at hand, in our mouths and in our hearts.” These principles should be learned by all; the rest should be left to God. How many squabbles had broken out over the distinction between the persons in the Trinity, the coinherence of the divine and the human in Christ, the distinction between filiation and procession? What confusion had been stirred by the strife over the conception of Christ by the Virgin Mary? Other matters, while perhaps worthy of debate, were best left unpublicized.
After setting out this statement of principles, Erasmus undertook the (as he saw it) thankless but necessary task of amassing scriptural passages to back his position. In support of free will, he found more than two dozen in the Old Testament alone. Ecclesiasticus 15, for instance, stated that “God created man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel.” In the story of Cain and Abel, God offered a reward for choosing the right path and threatened punishment for those pursuing the opposite. At Deuteronomy 30, the Lord said to Moses, “I have placed before you the way of life and the way of death. Choose what is good, and walk in it.” (This is Erasmus’s paraphrase.) What, Erasmus asked, could be clearer? God shows us what is good and what is bad; “the freedom to choose he leaves to man.” Nearly the whole of Scripture speaks of conversion, endeavor, and striving to improve, all of which would be meaningless if doing good or evil were considered a matter of necessity rather than choice. In the New Testament, Matthew was especially rich in passages supporting free will. At 7:20, for instance, the Lord says, “By their fruits you shall know them,” with “fruits” clearly meaning “works.”
Turning to those passages that seemed to deny free will, Erasmus maintained that most were not persuasive. For deniers of free will, a favorite example was the pharaoh in Exodus, who repeatedly declared his intention to let the Israelites go, only to have God harden his heart; the pharaoh’s will was thus captive to God’s. But, Erasmus argued, God acted in this way because the pharaoh had of his own accord persisted in his godlessness. Even the verses in the Pauline Epistles that seemed to undermine the notion of free will could be seen as simply suggesting the need for divine grace and human will to work together. As many scriptural references as there are to God’s help, Erasmus wrote, there are “just as many proofs” of the existence of free will and “they are innumerable,” so if the issue was to be decided by the number of scriptural proofs, “the victory is mine.”
Moving with relief beyond such Scripture-mongering, Erasmus in the final section of his treatise addressed the fundamental issue of the relationship between God and man. The idea (advanced by Luther) that man should claim no credit for his good deeds but ascribe them all to God’s grace was worthy insofar as it deflated human arrogance. But when people maintained that human nature is so worthless that all human works, even those of godly men, are sins, Erasmus wrote, he grew exceedingly uneasy. He went on to state some of the classic objections to the idea of predestination. A God who foreordained great benefits for some but condemned others to eternal torment without their having done anything to deserve it seemed extraordinarily cruel. To try to justify such a God, Luther’s adherents had vastly exaggerated the place of original sin, claiming that Adam’s and Eve’s delinquency had left man so corrupted that he deserved divine punishment. But this, too, made God seem unfair, since he was willing to vent his wrath on the whole of mankind for someone else’s sin.
Erasmus took up the biblical image most favored by opponents of free will—that of the potter and his clay, from Jeremiah 18. Just as clay in the potter’s hand is to be shaped as he wills, so is man in God’s hand. In its place, Erasmus proposed another image—that of a young child learning to walk. When his father shows him an apple from some distance away, the boy wants to run toward it, but because his limbs are weak, his father puts out his hand to guide him. Thus supported, the boy is able to reach the apple, which the father gladly gives him as a reward for his effort. The child could not have stood up if his father had not supported him; he could not have walked if his father had not helped him; he could not have reached the apple if his father had not placed it in his hands. Though the child is completely in his father’s debt and so has no reason to glory in his own powers, he has still done something on his own. So it is with God the Father and his children. If he works in us simply as the potter shapes his clay, what blame can be imputed to us if we err?
In the end, Erasmus argued, some space must be allotted to free will to allow the ungodly to be deservedly condemned, to clear God of the accusation of cruelty and injustice, and to spur us on to moral endeavor. Maintaining its existence did not, however, invalidate Luther’s godly and Christian assertions that we should remove our trust in our own merits and deeds and place all in God and his promises. Concluding, Erasmus said that he was playing the part not of a judge but of a disputant. Though an old man, he would not be ashamed or reluctant to learn from the young, should there be anyone who could teach him “with evangelical mildness.”
The God whom Erasmus conjures up in The Freedom of the Will is caring, wise, reasonable, and, above all, just. In many ways, he seems a Christian humanist. Erasmus’s God has no divine inscrutability, no hint of a capacity for acting in ways that humans might find incomprehensible or unfair. Some might consider such a deity banal. Erasmus’s real concern, though, was not with God but with man. Facing a movement intent on denying any human dignity or autonomy, he was fighting to keep the divine spark alive. Without it, his whole philosophy of Christ, based as it was in the notion that men and women can choose to imitate him, would collapse.
In February 1524, Erasmus sent a copy of his tract to his friend Ludwig Baer, a professor of theology in Basel, inviting his comments. “I send you the first draft of a trifling piece about the freedom of the will,” he wrote, seeking to downplay its importance. “On this I have wasted five days”—obviously an understatement—“and very tedious days they were.” Not long afterward, he sent a copy to Henry VIII. “If your Majesty, and other learned men, approve this sample of my work,” he wrote, “I shall finish it and arrange for its printing elsewhere, for here, in my opinion, there is no printer who dares print anything in which a single word reflects [badly] on Luther, while against the pope one may write what one likes.”
While waiting to hear back from the king, Erasmus tended to various other projects, including a paraphrase of the Acts of the Apostles. Erasmus would dedicate this work to the new pope: Clement VII. Adrian VI had died on September 14, 1523, after barely twenty months in office. Clement, a Medici and a cousin of Leo X, had supported Adrian’s reform efforts and was expected to continue them. More important, from Erasmus’s standpoint, Clement was a longtime admirer. In return for Eras
mus’s dedication, he sent him two hundred florins. (These payments were a not-insignificant side benefit of Erasmus’s loyalty to the Church.) As long as Clement ruled in Rome, Erasmus’s Catholic critics there would have to remain silent.
Then, in early May 1524, Joachim Camerarius arrived with Luther’s letter. Erasmus, whose relations with Melanchthon remained cordial, took an immediate liking to this young friend of his but had little time to spare for him. Aside from various ailments he was battling, he was trying to fend off a nosy Polish nobleman who was pressing him on his views about Luther. With Camerarius preparing to return to Wittenberg, though, Erasmus hurriedly drafted a reply to Luther that he could take back with him.
Though striving for an even tone, he could not hide his irritation at Luther’s taunts. “I do not concede that your passion for the purity of the gospel is more sincere than my own,” he wrote. What Luther described as weakness and ignorance “is partly conscience and partly conviction.” He had done much more for the cause of the gospel than many of those who so loudly used that word. “I see many desperate and disloyal men taking advantage of the present situation. I see humane letters and good learning tumbling into ruin. I see old friendships broken, and I fear a bloody conflict is about to break out.” To that point he had not attacked Luther in writing, even though he could have won the applause of princes by doing so, for he realized that he would have inflicted injury on the gospel. Why should Luther be upset if someone wanted to argue with him in the hope of deepening his understanding? Perhaps Erasmus’s opposition would do more for the gospel than all the support Luther had received from the many “dullards” who were making Erasmus’s own life so miserable. Such people “are driving me into the opposite camp—even if pressure from the princes were not pushing me in the same direction.”
In his letter, Luther had criticized Erasmus for writing so uncharitably about Hutten in his Spongia. Erasmus now mentioned all the disreputable things about Hutten that he had left out—his taste for extravagance, women, and dice; his debts, highway robberies, and extortions from monks; the many false charges he had leveled at Erasmus. Hutten and his kind “are not human beings at all, but raging demons. Do you honestly think the gospel will be restored by perverted creatures like these? Are men like this to be the pillars of a renascent church?”
Erasmus did not mention his work on free will, perhaps because he had not yet decided to publish it. After he sent Camerarius on his way, though, he continued to polish it, and on May 13, 1524, he informed Oecolampadius that it was done. On July 21, he wrote to Pirckheimer in Nuremberg that, in light of the many rumors circulating about the book, “I think it best to publish, so that they cannot suspect it to be worse than it is. For I treat the topic with such moderation that I know Luther himself will not take offense.” His fear that no one in Basel would publish his tract turned out to be unfounded—Froben took it on—and on August 31 Erasmus reported that De Libero Arbitrio was in the press. He had initially planned to dedicate the book to Thomas Wolsey, but he reconsidered when he realized that he would be accused of writing to please him; in the end, he dedicated it to no one.
For years, Erasmus had resisted the demands from Rome and London, popes and kings, that he confront Luther. Having finally given in, he now wanted to make sure that the work got the widest possible circulation. As soon as it came off the press (as a compact octavo), he sent off copies to various friends and patrons. One went to Gian Matteo Giberti, a prominent figure at the Datary in Rome. Two went to Saxony—one to Duke George, the other to Melanchthon. Several went to England, including one to Henry VIII. “The die is cast,” he wrote to the king. “A short book on freedom of the will has seen the light of day—a desperate step, believe me, in the present state of Germany. I await a shower of stones.”
Part V
Rupture
35
The Gospel of Discontent
Within weeks of the publication of The Freedom of the Will, the tributes began to pour in. From Rome, Gian Matteo Giberti wrote to Erasmus to say that the treatise’s style, religious feeling, and wisdom ensured it “the warmest of welcomes.” He had shown a copy to Pope Clement VII, who was so appreciative that he would soon provide Erasmus with “the resources and dignity” he so richly deserved. Duke George of Saxony wrote to say that the book had given him “great pleasure” and that he was sure it would make “a lasting contribution to the glory and advancement of Christendom.” From England Juan Luis Vives reported that Henry VIII, after reading several pages between church services, had shown signs of being very pleased and that Queen Catherine had likewise expressed her admiration and gratitude. “My book on the freedom of the will,” Erasmus exulted in mid-October 1524, “has already produced a change of heart in many people who had been wholly committed to the Lutheran view.”
But it was the reaction from Wittenberg that mattered most, and it soon came in the form of a letter from Melanchthon. Erasmus’s book, he wrote, had “had a very mild reception here.” His moderate attitude “gave great satisfaction, though you do slip in a barbed remark now and again.” Luther “is not so irascible that he can swallow nothing. And so he promises to use equal moderation in his reply.” Given Luther’s goodwill toward Erasmus, Melanchthon observed, it was Erasmus’s duty “to make sure that this discussion is not embittered by any greater ill will on your side.” In closing, he noted that Luther “sends you his respectful greetings.”
Reading this, Erasmus felt tremendous relief. After all the months of anxiety and dread over how Luther and his supporters would respond, he could finally relax.
Unfortunately, Melanchthon had been misinformed. At the time that he wrote to Erasmus, Luther had not actually read De Libero Arbitrio. When he finally got around to sampling it, he felt absolute loathing. Despite the critical importance of the subject, Erasmus had brought nothing new to it. Instead, he had rehashed all the old arguments to which Luther had already responded. Luther was most exasperated by Erasmus’s trademark slipperiness. It was the book’s very eloquence and polish, unaccompanied by any real substance, that made it so detestable in his eyes. “It is annoying to have to reply to such an educated man about so uneducated a book,” Luther wrote to Spalatin on November 1, 1524. But reply he must, since otherwise tongues would wag, saying that he had been bested, and some might use Erasmus’s spurious arguments to impugn the evangelical cause. On November 17, Luther informed his friend Nicholas Hausmann that he would answer Erasmus “not for his own sake, but for the sake of those who abuse his authority for their own glorying against Christ.”
He would not do so right away, however. In fact, it would take Luther more than a year to get around to the task. For he was about to enter his life’s most difficult passage. To this point, his main opponents had been popes and archbishops, princes and dialecticians. To them would now be added a new array of foes, including rebellious peasants, rivals within his own movement, and, finally, the humanists, led by Erasmus. These new conflicts would fundamentally alter Luther’s public stature as well as his personal life. More generally, 1525 would be a watershed year for the Reformation as Germany was swept by the largest popular uprising in Europe prior to the French Revolution—an upheaval prompted, in part, by Luther’s own writings.
In the Saale valley, the climate was turning explosive. In Allstedt, Thomas Müntzer was loudly proclaiming the advent of the final days. To Luther’s dismay, the Saxon princes remained passive. In the second week of July 1524, Elector Frederick and his brother Duke John, passing through Allstedt on their way to Weimar, actually invited Müntzer to preach. Seizing the opportunity, Müntzer took as his portion the second chapter of the book of Daniel—a favorite text of the apocalyptically minded, in which Daniel, interpreting the dreams of Nebuchadnezzar, foretells the downfall of earthly kingdoms and the coming of God’s reign. With righteous ferocity, Müntzer urged the princes to take up the sword and purge Christendom of the wicked imposters in its midst. “Do not permit evildoers to live any longer, for a go
dless person has no right to life when he hinders the pious,” he declared. He denounced “Brother Fattened-swine” and “Brother Soft-life”—clear allusions to Luther—who, in rejecting the visions of the prophets, had become an enemy of the gospel and had to be put away. If the rulers refused to wield the sword against impious priests and monks, it would be taken from them; if they worked in opposition to the gospel, they themselves would be “strangled without any mercy.”
Müntzer was essentially calling for a religious war and warning the Saxon princes that, if they refused to lead it, they would become its victims. Despite this provocation, Frederick and John continued on to Weimar. Müntzer, meanwhile, set about preparing for that war. On July 24, after another harangue, members of his congregation marched to the Allstedt town hall and enlisted in a Christian league aimed at revolutionary transformation and defending the gospel against the godless.
Infuriated by the princes’ inaction, Luther prepared an open Letter to the Princes of Saxony Concerning the Rebellious Spirit. The “Satan of Allstedt,” he wrote, clearly intended to arm the masses and spur them to topple the government and become “lords of the world.” He called on Frederick and John to fulfill their duty as stipulated in Romans 13 to use the sword to prevent mischief and forestall rebellion. If they failed to act, they would surely feel the mob’s wrath.
In the meantime, Müntzer—seeking to expand his movement—sent appeals to several nearby communities, including Orlamünde. He urged its citizens to forge an alliance with the people of Allstedt to defend the gospel, with force if necessary. But Karlstadt, who was still in charge there, remained unalterably opposed to the use of violence, and in the reply he helped draft, the Orlamünders—citing Christ’s order to Peter to sheath his sword when the guards came to arrest him—rejected Müntzer’s plea. “If you want to be armed against your enemies,” they advised, “dress yourself in the strong, steel-like, and unconquerable armor of faith.” This letter was soon printed in Wittenberg, where Luther saw it. He nonetheless remained convinced that Karlstadt planned to join Müntzer in an unholy alliance.
Fatal Discord Page 72