Working in his cramped study, he adopted the mocking tone he favored when seeking to bring low the lofty. As his point of entry, he slyly used his long delay in responding. “That I have taken so long to reply to your Diatribe Concerning Free Will, venerable Erasmus, has been contrary to everyone’s expectation and to my own custom,” he wrote. There perhaps had been some surprise “at this new and unwonted forbearance—or fear!—in Luther,” with many congratulating Erasmus on his victory and triumphantly chanting, “Ho, ho! Has that Maccabee, that most obstinate Assertor, at last met his match, and dares not open his mouth against him?” And he had to confess that Erasmus, being far superior to him in eloquence and native genius, had dampened his spirit and eagerness and left him exhausted “before I could strike a blow.”
That, however, was not due to any anxiety at being vanquished. Rather, it was because Erasmus had treated the subject at hand with such reasonableness that it was impossible for Luther to be angry with him. Erasmus had moreover failed to say anything important that had not already been said. It was sad to see him convey such unworthy material with such rich elegance, like “refuse or ordure being carried in gold and silver vases.” If there remained anyone who had absorbed so little of the new gospel that he could be moved by Erasmus’s arguments, Luther had thought, he did not deserve to be rescued by him. It was thus neither the pressure of work, nor the difficulty of the task, nor Erasmus’s great eloquence, that had sapped his desire to reply, “but sheer disgust, anger, and contempt.”
That he had finally decided to respond was due to the urgings of many faithful Christians, who, pointing to Erasmus’s great authority, said that the truth of Christian doctrine was in peril. He actually owed Erasmus thanks, for in stating the case for free will with such vigor, he had helped show more clearly than ever that the idea “is a pure fiction.” Having at last decided to write, Luther hoped that, just as he had put up with Erasmus’s ignorance, Erasmus would bear with his lack of eloquence.
Turning his attention to the preface of De Libero Arbitrio, Luther focused on what he considered Erasmus’s greatest offense: his reluctance to make assertions. This, he wrote, was not the mark of a true Christian mind. Asserting meant adhering, affirming, maintaining, persevering. “Take away assertions and you take away Christianity”—indeed, all religion and piety. Erasmus’s language was that of the skeptic—of one who does not care what anyone believes as long as the peace of the world is maintained and who thinks it is silly to contend over Christian dogma. Erasmus thus showed that he was at heart “a Lucian or some other pig from Epicurus’ sty, who, having no belief in God himself, secretly ridicules all who have a belief and confess it.” A “pig from Epicurus’ sty” (an image from Horace’s Epistles) referred to the Epicurean school of philosophy, which considered self-contented equanimity the greatest good. In applying the phrase to Erasmus, Luther was accusing him not just of misapprehending key Christian doctrines but of lacking faith altogether.
Luther took similar offense at Erasmus’s position that the Bible is not always clear. If some scriptural passages seem difficult, it is due to human ignorance of their vocabulary and grammar. On all essential matters, the meaning of the Bible is consistent and unambiguous. Luther was further riled by Erasmus’s placing of free will among those subjects not suitable for general discussion. If it was superfluous to ask whether God foreknows and foreordains everything and whether our will can accomplish anything pertaining to salvation, then what was relevant or useful to know? “Das ist zu viel”—“That is too much”—Luther exclaimed, using German for the first and only time in his tract.
Finally arriving at the substance of the matter, Luther stated his position with unshakable certainty: It is fundamentally necessary and salutary for a Christian to know that God foresees and does all things “by his immutable, eternal, and infallible will. Here is a thunderbolt by which free will is completely prostrated and shattered.” If there were any doubts about whether God foreknows all things, then one could not place full trust in his promises, and Christian faith would be entirely extinguished. Amid all the adversities Christians face, their one supreme consolation is “to know that God does not lie, but does all things immutably, and that his will can neither be resisted nor changed nor hindered.”
In refusing to acknowledge this, Erasmus’s book was so impious and blasphemous as to be without equal. The book treated free will as if it were simply a matter between the two of them of recovering a sum of money, the loss of which should not cause much stir. For Erasmus, outward peace and tranquility were “far more important than faith, conscience, salvation, the Word of God, the glory of Christ, and God himself.” What Luther was after in this dispute was so serious and necessary that “it ought to be asserted and defended to the death,” even if the whole world had to be thrown into “strife and confusion” and returned to “total chaos.” As he had in the period before Worms and while he was at the Wartburg, Luther cited Christ’s declaration that he came with a sword and Paul’s statement that he sought to turn the world upside down. “Truth and doctrine must be preached always, openly, and constantly, and never accommodated or concealed.” “Tumults, commotions, disturbances, seditions, sects, discords, wars”—all these were ways in which the world “is shaken and shattered on account of the Word of God.”
Luther did not deny freedom of choice to man in all realms. Where purely earthly matters are concerned, such as what to eat, whether to marry, and which vocation to pursue, he wrote, man is free to choose how to use his faculties and possessions. But when it comes to man’s relation to God and to matters pertaining to salvation and damnation, he “has no free choice, but is a captive, subject and slave either of the will of God or the will of Satan.” The human will is placed between these two “like a beast of burden.” If ridden by God, it goes where God wills; if ridden by Satan, it goes where Satan wills. The beast itself is incapable of choosing its rider.
This image (which would become famous) captures Luther’s brute concept of human nature. Man is but a donkey to be ridden by forces beyond his control or understanding. The contrast with Erasmus’s gentle image of the fumbling child guided by his loving father could not be sharper.
To prove the truth of his assertions, Luther of course relied on Scripture. Taking on Erasmus’s citations one by one, he produced a dense thicket of exegesis. On God’s hardening of the pharaoh’s heart, for instance, he went on for many pages trying to show (on the basis of passages from the Old Testament) that God imposed his will on the Egyptian ruler in the face of human intention. Judas, he maintained, was not forced to betray Christ, but his act was necessary in the eternal unfolding of the divine plan of redemption; God in his foreknowledge had seen what Judas would do. Luther was especially dismissive of Erasmus’s argument that the many commandments in the Bible imply man’s ability to carry them out, and he derided the Dutchman for his failure to understand verbs of the imperative mood—“something that even grammarians and street urchins know.”
More generally, Luther taunted Erasmus for the poor quality of his scholarship. “I am amazed and astounded that a man can be so utterly ignorant of Holy Writ who has worked so long and hard at it.” Where, he wondered, was “that sharp Greek mind of yours, which used to invent lies with at least some semblance of charm, but is here uttering falsehoods naked and unadorned?” Luther gleefully mocked Erasmus’s title, calling it “our Diatribe,” “Madam Diatribe,” and “that dilettante Diatribe.” “See how the invincible and all-powerful truth has cornered witless Diatribe and turned wisdom into folly.”
Of all the charges Luther leveled at Erasmus, the most serious was Pelagianism. Nearly ten years earlier, in his first approach to Erasmus (through Spalatin), Luther had sought to warn him about his bias in favor of free will and human perfectibility. It was now clear that Erasmus had learned nothing. “No one since the Pelagians has written more correctly about free choice than Erasmus!” he wisecracked. Luther, meanwhile, remained committed to the same notion
s about divine omnipotence and human depravity that he had arrived at in his initial lectures on the Psalms and Romans. The description at Romans 9:20–21 of man being in God’s hands like clay in the potter’s, he wrote, “stands unshaken as a most effective demonstration that freedom of choice is as nothing in the sight of God.” By this one simile, Diatribe “is baffled and beaten” and shown to be nothing but “rubbish.”
“If we believe it to be true,” Luther wrote in his conclusion, “that God foreknows and predestines all things, that he can neither be mistaken in his foreknowledge nor hindered in his predestination, and that nothing takes place but as he wills it,” then by “reason itself there cannot be any free choice in man or angel or any creature.” In a patronizing farewell, he returned to the contrast between his own certainty and Erasmus’s lack thereof. Unless Erasmus could do better than he had done in his Diatribe, he should remain content with his own “special gift” and promote languages and literature as he had hitherto done with such “profit and distinction.” Luther acknowledged his own debt to Erasmus in this area. On the matter at hand, however, God had not willed that he should be equal to it. That Erasmus did not yet properly understand Scripture was shown by his preference for discourse over assertion. “I for my part in this book have not discoursed, but have asserted and do assert, and I am unwilling to submit the matter to anyone’s judgment, but advise everyone to yield assent.” (The italics are Luther’s.)
The deities described in Erasmus’s and Luther’s dueling tracts could hardly be more dissimilar. Erasmus’s God is an even-tempered rationalist who sagely judges men and women by how they behave in the world. Luther’s God is an inscrutable being who acts according to his own unfathomable logic, apart from human understanding and expectation. Erasmus’s God requires the existence of free will to ensure that his rule is just; Luther’s God has to reject free will to make sure his power is unbounded. Whereas Erasmus wanted to protect the freedom of man to choose, Luther wanted to safeguard the freedom of God to act.
In the end, though, Erasmus and Luther were separated as much by their approaches to interpreting Scripture as by their visions of the Almighty. Erasmus believed that while some passages in the Bible (mostly having to do with the precepts for a good life) are clear, many others remain obscure, and that on such passages pious Christians can differ. Christians should thus respect dissenting viewpoints and not press their own opinions too insistently lest violence and upheaval result. To Luther, such a stance was abhorrent. For him, the meaning of the Bible was utterly clear, and anyone disagreeing with his own particular interpretation deserved to be condemned as a skeptic and nonbeliever. For Erasmus, the ideal setting is a dinner party at which scholars amicably discuss Bible passages over capon and wine. For Luther, it is the pulpit, from which God’s unassailable Word is ardently proclaimed. (Erasmus’s tolerant attitude, however, did not extend to the Jews.)
The debate between Erasmus and Luther marked an important bifurcation in Western thought. Prior to the appearance of Erasmus’s tract, Luther, while subscribing to the doctrine of predestination, had never given it his full attention. Now, goaded by Erasmus, he was fatefully placing it at the heart of his theology. The idea of predestination as outlined in The Bondage of the Will would later be taken up and amplified by John Calvin. Promoted by him, predestination would become a pillar of the Reformed faith and through it a theological fixture of English and American Puritanism.
Erasmus’s belief in free will and human autonomy, meanwhile, pointed toward the Enlightenment. The argument described in The Freedom of the Will in many ways anticipated the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. In Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, written in 1793, Kant (who was raised a pious Lutheran) stressed the importance of human capacity and the freedom of the individual to choose to act, and he embraced the individual’s moral responsibility in a way that strongly recalled Erasmus’s philosophy of Christ. “Man himself,” Kant wrote, must make himself “into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become.” Either way, the outcome “must be an effect of his free choice,” since “otherwise he could not be held responsible for it and could therefore be morally neither good nor evil.”
Luther finished his book in mid-November 1525. The printing, by Hans Luftt in Wittenberg, was completed on the last day of the year. The volume came to 383 octavo pages—nearly four times the length of The Freedom of the Will. Over the next year, it would be reprinted in Mainz, Strasbourg, Cologne, Nuremberg, Tübingen, and Wittenberg itself—a dozen editions in all.
With The Bondage of the Will, Luther was finalizing his break from not only Erasmus but also Christian humanism in general, with its emphasis on autonomy, pluralism, and rationalism. With it, one can see the Reformation parting ways with the Renaissance. Viewed more broadly, Luther was creating a new religious model in Western Christendom—that of the Bible-quoting militant who considers Scripture the unchallengeable Word of God and who in asserting it is ready to cause tumult, strife, and bloodshed.
Word of Luther’s tract and its harsh tone quickly reached Erasmus. Try as he might, though, he could not obtain a copy. He began to suspect that the Lutherans were deliberately withholding it from him so that he could not respond in time for the spring fair in Frankfurt, thus leaving the field to Luther. In fact, there was no such effort—the Wittenbergers had simply neglected to send him a copy. Erasmus was further distressed to hear that the book was already being translated into German “so as to prejudice every laborer and peasant against me.”
With the publication of his diatribe on free will, Erasmus was now an outcast among the Lutherans. Yet he remained a pariah among conservative Catholics as well. “No matter what I do,” he complained, “I am still considered a Lutheran and continue to be the target of vicious and defamatory pamphlets.” Roman loyalists—determined to extinguish the possibility of moderate reform—now stepped up their campaign against him.
In Louvain, a group of Dominicans collaborated on an anonymous work that condemned Erasmus for both supporting the eating of meat (on fast days) and questioning the sacramental nature of penance. His longtime adversary Jacobus Latomus published three works that, though not mentioning him, were clearly aimed at him, especially at the questions he had raised about whether confession had been instituted by Christ.
On top of it all, a group of “rabble-rousers” were “moving heaven and earth to destroy the Collegium Trilingue,” as Erasmus put it. By that point, the college had gained a Continent-wide reputation for humanistic scholarship, but the Louvain theologians continued to see it as an enemy agent that, under the cover of promoting Greek and Hebrew, was seeking to weaken the authority of the Vulgate and by extension the Church. Exasperated, Erasmus sent a trusted agent to Rome to ask Clement VII to silence the Louvain faculty. The pope agreed, and an emissary was dispatched to Louvain with such an order. But the Louvain theologians refused to heed it. The need to suppress heresy outweighed any obligation to obey the pope, they maintained, and in the end they won over the emissary himself.
By then, however, Louvain as a center of anti-Erasmian agitation was being eclipsed by Paris. In May 1526, a committee appointed by the Sorbonne denounced a long list of passages in the Colloquies as objectionable and called for the work “to be forbidden to all, especially the young, because under the pretext of eloquence a youth might be more corrupted than instructed by such reading.” Pierre Cousturier, who had earlier condemned vernacular translations of the Bible, now accused Erasmus of committing blasphemy against the Virgin Mary for having written in his paraphrases that a kind of coitus had taken place between God and the Virgin and that Gabriel was the “groomsman” for their marriage. (Erasmus had indeed used such suggestive language.) Noël Béda published a collection of annotations on Erasmus’s paraphrases that listed passages he considered erroneous, impious, schismatic, contrary to good morals, and—most damning of all—Lutheran. And Louis de Berquin, Erasmus’s French translator, who in 1523 had been impris
oned after being condemned by the Paris faculty, was arrested and imprisoned a second time as a relapsed heretic for his continuing efforts to promote Erasmus’s books and the reform cause.
With the most powerful theology faculty in Europe thus seeking to crush him, Erasmus turned to his most influential French supporter: the king. In January 1526, Francis I, after nearly eleven months as Charles’s prisoner, had finally signed a peace treaty in which he made huge territorial concessions (and which he guaranteed by handing over his two young sons as surety). He arrived back in France in March. In June, Erasmus sent him an urgent plea to muzzle Béda, Cousturier, and other “godforsaken souls” in France “who were born to hate good literature and the public peace.” If “the outrageous behavior of these Pharisees goes unpunished, no good man will feel safe in the future.” Moved by his appeal, Francis in early August ordered the removal of Béda’s tract from all bookstores, and agents were sent around to ensure compliance. By then, however, only 50 or so of the 650 copies in print remained, and a new edition was quickly produced in Cologne.
Amid all this opprobrium, Erasmus found some diversion in the presence of an urbane houseguest. Jan Łaski was a Polish nobleman and humanist in his midtwenties, and Erasmus was taken with both his quick mind and his youthful male charm. Łaski further endeared himself to Erasmus by picking up his household expenses during his six-month stay. Erasmus, in turn, tutored Łaski in his vision of ethics-based Christianity. When he left, in October 1525, Erasmus was disconsolate. Upon his return to Poland, however, Łaski would help stimulate interest in Erasmus’s works among the Polish elite, and Cracow would become a lonely outpost of Erasmian humanism in Eastern Europe. (Yet, like so many young disciples of Erasmus, Łaski would eventually join the evangelical camp, becoming an influential early promoter of Calvinism.)
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