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ERASMUS: Humanist who caused the Reformation

 By Chuck Collins

February 4, 2025

 

Erasmus caused the 16th century Reformation. Desiderius Erasmus, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1553), was almost as important as Luther, Calvin and Cranmer for laying the groundwork for the biggest shakeup the church has ever seen. Virtually every character who played a political or religious part in the English Reformation was profoundly influenced by the New Learning of Humanism. But unlike the others who became well known Protestant reformers, Erasmus was a Humanist academic and an ordained Catholic priest who never embraced the evangelical faith. So how is it that someone causes a reformation that he doesn't come to believe?

 

The "ad fontes" (back to the original sources) cry of the Renaissance and 16th century Humanism drove Erasmus like a wild obsession to write and publish the first edition of the Greek New Testament from ancient sources, Novum Testamentum. He wisely dedicated this to the pope February 1, 1516, and in the following two decades it was celebrated around the world with five additional published editions. This was the text used by the 16th century Reformers (including Tyndale and Luther) to translate the Holy Bible into the languages of their people. A shock wave went throughout Europe when the Bible was released from ecclesiastical captivity! "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther hatched" was the motto of his Franciscan detractors.

 

When Erasmus studied the New Testament and traveled to various libraries to take notes from the best Greek manuscripts, he quickly found that Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, the only Bible available for one thousand years, was replete with mistakes in translation. For example, Matthew 3:2 and 4:17 quotes John the Baptist and Jesus as saying, “Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is close to hand.” The Catholic Church latched on to this and used it to say: “find a priest, confess your sins, and carry out any acts of penance the priest requires of you.”

 

But the original Greek suggests nothing that would support the Medieval system of penance or an ex opere operato understanding of absolution in auricular confession. Erasmus translated this: “Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” thus taking repentance off the shelf of actions we willfully do for God, to a change of heart and will that positions us once again towards God. Another glaring error of the Latin Vulgate is in Luke 1:28 that was translated: “Hail, O one that is full of grace! The Lord is with you!” The clear implication, and the one that fueled the mariolatry of the Middle Ages (and today!), is that Mary is a reservoir full of God’s grace ready to dispense it to anyone in need. But the actual Greek text doesn’t say that! The clear reading says that Mary had found God’s favor, not that she could bestow that favor on others: “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” Erasmus corrected more than 600 such errors in Jerome’s Vulgate Bible.

Erasmus was as much admired as he was despised: a true provocateur. Lutherans turned against him because he wouldn't join them. Catholics threatened his life and banned his books because they blamed him for starting the Reformation and for satirically poking fun of the blatant abuses of monasticism and the church of his day (In Praise of Folly). But as lines began to be drawn in the sand, Erasmus chose to be a spectator rather than an actor. "Let others court martyrdom," he said, "I don't consider myself worthy of this distinction.”

Parallel to his Greek New Testament, Erasmus also wrote his own Latin version. He also wrote paraphrases of every book in the New Testament (pictured below). Katherine Parr, the sixth wife of Henry VIII who was a devout evangelical, arranged for Erasmus's Paraphrases to be translated into English. In 1547 King Edward VI issued a royal proclamation requiring the Pharaphrases, along with a copy of the English Bible, to be publicly available in every parish in the Church of England for all to read. Ashley Null postulates that one of the three books depicted in Gerlach Flicke’s famous portrait of Thomas Cranmer was likely Erasmus’s New Testament because of the Archbishop’s admiration for the “Dutch reformer.”

Erasmus, like Cranmer and the other Protestant reformers, wanted people to know the Bible, not an interpretation of the Bible that was covered with 1,500 years of dust and spin. Erasmus famously wrote, “Would that the farmer might sing snatches of Scripture at his plough and that the weaver might hum phrases of Scripture to the tune of his shuttle, that the traveler might lighten with stories from Scripture the weariness of his journey.”

 

He had confidence that God's word that goes out will not return empty, but it will accomplish all that God purposes. When people begin to read the Bible for themselves they recognize the importance of the primacy of Holy Scripture over all other authorities, they discover the freedom and hope of a righteousness that is more than their failed attempts at self-righteousness, and they experience a relationship with Christ who is the only true and sufficient mediator between God and his people.

 

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