By Richard Keeble
I ask that the reader cast his mind back to the theological tension of 1520. The papal bull, Exsurge Domine, has called for a certain monk to recant his 95 Theses or face excommunication. The lethargic Pope Leo X has effectively declared war on the reformer, and battle lines which have long been in the making are now being actualised. The books of Martin Luther begin to fuel the fires, while Luther himself prepares to face the Catholic Church and select the life of a hunted outlaw.
Caught within this deadly standoff was the prominent Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus. This was a man who also had urged the Church to reform, who had held a somewhat amiable correspondence with Luther, and had hitherto reserved judging the young man. It is perhaps therefore not surprising that Erasmus found himself attacked at the pulpit of Louvain, the preacher demanding: “You wrote for Luther, now write against him!”
This was the first of many such “suggestions”, which were quickly being heard from many corners. Frantically, Erasmus yearned:
“Let us not devour each other like fish. Why upset the whole world over paradoxes, some unintelligible, some debatable, some unprofitable? The world is full of rage, hate, and wars. What will the end be if we employ only bulls and the stake? It is no great feat to burn a little man. It is a great achievement to persuade him.”
But neither Luther nor the Church would budge. From all sides the pressure mounted for Erasmus to denounce the monk, and in so doing wipe away his own suspected heretical leanings. This was no easy choice, for Erasmus had abhorred the abuses of the Church just as he resisted the Lutheran wrath. “I am a heretic to both sides”, he complained.
When he eventually bowed to the pressure, Erasmus sought a suitable topic to distance himself from Luther. Henry VIII had proposed one some time before: the freedom of the will. Even in this Erasmus sought to heal the great divisions, for he saw in this topic the chance for reconciliation; a potential debate on a subject he considered non-essential to the faith.
Erasmus finally published his treatise in September 1524, designating it: On the Freedom of the Will: A Diatribe or Discourse by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam. He knew this subject would find disagreement from Luther, a scholar so inspired by Augustinian theology. Here follows most of the essential arguments the reluctant Erasmus pit against his controversial opponent:
“Certainly I do not consider Luther himself would be indignant if anybody should find occasion to differ from him, since he permits himself to call in question the decrees, not only of all the doctors of the Church, but of all the schools, councils and popes; and since he acknowledges this plainly and openly, it ought not to be counted by his friends as cheating if I take a leaf out of his book.”
Erasmus elucidates the great danger of Luther’s position, which is the view that the individual’s actions are not the result of free will but are pre-destined. Such a view removes the responsibility each individual holds for his own actions, and so in Erasmus’ view opens “a window to impiety… especially in view of the slowness of mind of mortal men, their sloth, their malice, and their incurable propensity toward all manner of evil.”
As well as citing the vast majority of the Church Fathers as supportive of his cause, the primary meat of Erasmus’ argument concerns itself with: “Scripture Passages That Support Free Choice”. Pride of place is given “to a passage in the book called Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Sirach, ch. 15(:14-17)”:
“God made man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his own counsel. He added his commandments and precepts. If thou wilt observe the commandments, and keep acceptable fidelity forever, they shall preserve thee. He hath set water and fire before thee; stretch forth thine hand for which thou wilt. Before man is life and death, good and evil; that which he shall choose shall be given him.”
The Book of Ecclesiasticus is a Jewish work of ethical teachings from approximately 200-175 BC and is generally considered the earliest witness to a canon of the books of the prophets. Not only does Erasmus see the exclusion of this book from the Bible as unjustified, but he goes on to identify Biblical passages which also uphold free choice. He draws attention to God’s command in Genesis: “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die” (2:16-17). Since the Fall of Mankind, where free choice was indeed exercised, one has been able to identify good from evil, a significant ability according to Erasmus:
“If the power to distinguish between good and evil and the will of God had been hidden from men, it could not be imputed to them if they made the wrong choice. If the will had not been free, sin could not have been imputed, for sin would cease to be sin if it were not voluntary, save when error or the restriction of the will is itself the fruit of sin.”
The Old Testament seems to Erasmus the best location for support of the existence of free choice. He observes God’s conditions depending on the choice of Cain (Genesis 4:6-7) and draws special attention to the Divine interaction with Moses: “‘I have set before your face the way of life and the way of death. Choose what is good and walk in it.’ What could be put more plainly? God shows what is good, what is evil, shows the different rewards of death and life, leaves man freedom to choose”. Yet the most recurring aspect of the texts Erasmus utilises is the significance of the word “if”: “If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land; but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword” (Isaiah 1:19-20); “If you will not listen to me, to walk in my law” (Jeremiah 26:4). There are many other Old Testament passages which Erasmus identifies, including Joel 2:12; Jonah 3:8; Isaiah 46:8; Jeremiah 26:3; Psalms 81:13 and 34:12-13.
Yet Erasmus does not limit his focus to such passages from the Old Testament: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess” (Matthew 19:21); “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). As Erasmus observes from Matthew 19:17 “Again, elsewhere: ‘If you would enter into life, keep the commandments.’ With what effrontery would it be said: ‘If you will…’ to one whose will is not free?” As before, many passages are provided, including Matthew 11:28; Luke 23:34; John 1:12 and 6:67; but, as Erasmus says, “we will not weary the reader by going over all the passages of this kind, since they are so countless that they will readily catch the eye of any reader… I prudently pass over many texts which are in The Acts and in the Apocalypse lest I tire the reader. These many texts have induced learned and holy men not to take free choice entirely away”.
One feels one must credit Erasmus with the point that all such passages do seem to presuppose the ability of the listener to choose freely. This positivity applies further when he tackles the significant issue of Exodus 9:12 “But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them”. If God had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, then it seems that no matter what the will of Pharaoh may have been, he would not have listened. To maintain the role of free will, Erasmus uses the explanation of the Church Father Origen from his Peri archōn (On Beginnings):
“Origen… declares that an occasion of hardening was given by God, but he would throw back the blame on Pharaoh who, by his evil deeds, was made more obstinate through those things which should have brought him to repentance, just as by the action of the same rain cultivated land brings forth excellent fruit, and uncultivated land thorns and thistles, and just as by the action of the same sun, wax melts and mud hardens, so the forbearance of God that tolerates the sinner brings some to repentance and makes others more obstinate in wrongdoing.”
Another possible objection to Biblical free will is the case of Judas Iscariot. For Erasmus this is not a matter of pre-destination but foreknowledge on the part of God. In this sense Judas’ betrayal was necessary. Yet in another sense, it was committed utterly freely, and Judas retained the power to refuse to undertake it. “You say, ‘What if he had changed his mind?’ The foreknowledge of God would not have been falsified, nor his will hindered, since he himself would have foreknown and intended beforehand that Judas should change his mind”.
The final significant Biblical extract Erasmus addresses which seems to deny free will is that of the potter and the clay: “‘Oh house of Israel, can I not do with you as this potter had done?’ says the Lord. ‘Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel’”, taken from Jeremiah 18:6 and referred to by Paul in Romans 9:21-23. Clearly this seems to imply that man is governed not by the freedom of the will, but the design and intent of God. Yet Erasmus calls for us not to read this as a detailed comparison: “This potter makes a vase for dishonour not on account of preceding merits, just as he rejects some Jews, but on account of unbelief”. Erasmus argues that if one takes the potter and the clay comparison literally, then so too must one literally interpret another certain passage: “If anyone purifies himself”. Thus Erasmus contends:
“this interpretation of Paul will be found to contradict himself, for in the former passage he puts everything in the hands of God, but here he puts it all in the hands of man. And yet each passage is right, though each makes a different point. The first shuts the mouth murmuring against God, the other incites to endeavour and is a warning against complacency or despair.”
Erasmus compares the potter and the clay with the Isaiah 10:15, “Shall the axe vaunt itself over him who hews with it, or the saw magnify itself against him who wields it?” The difference between such tools and a human being is that the human being is living and rational, thus Erasmus states that “if an axe had been such, it would not have been absurd to say that they had shared in the action of the craftsman”. Another comparison is made between the potter and the clay and the master and his servant. Though the servant carries out the will of the master, he retains his free will: “The master lays down his commands and supplies what is needed, nor could the servant do anything apart from his master, and yet nobody says the servant does nothing at all when he follows the orders of his lord”. Finally Erasmus addresses the context of the original analogy, “These things are said against a wicked king, whose cruelty God has used to chastise his own people… So this analogy does not fit the taking away of free choice, but rebukes the pride of a wicked ruler who attributed his deeds not to God but to his own might and wisdom”.
Despite Erasmus’ support of free will, he never denies the role of God’s grace in gaining salvation: “since our own efforts are so puny, the whole is ascribed to God, just as a sailor who has brought his ship safely into port out of a heavy storm does not say: ‘I saved the ship’ but ‘God saved it.’ And yet his skill and his labour were not entirely useless”. For Erasmus, reaching salvation was not a matter of pre-destination or purely free choice, though free choice initiates. He envisaged man working with the grace of God, having freely chosen to do so:
“But as to the phrase in Phil. 2(:13): ‘For God is at work in us, both to will and to work for his good pleasure,’ this does not exclude free choice, for when Paul says, ‘for his good pleasure,’ if you refer it to man, as Ambrose interprets it, you understand by it that a good will cooperates with the action of grace.”
All such passages as Matthew 10:20, “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you”, is seen by Erasmus as referring to the will of man striving with the Spirit and grace of God. He applies this also, for instance, to Acts 4:8, “Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them…” etc.
The notion of pre-destination remains a suspicious and dangerous one for Erasmus. In his Epilogue he illustrates a number of apt analogies, this perhaps the most striking:
“if a master were to free a slave who had merited nothing, he might have reason perhaps to say to the other servants who murmured against this, ‘You are no worse off if I am kinder to this one; you have your due.’ But anyone would deem a master cruel and unjust who flogged his slave to death because his body was too short or his nose too long or because of some other inelegance in his form. Would not the slave rightly cry out to his master under the blows, ‘Why am I punished for what I cannot help?’ and he would say this with still more justice if it were in his lord’s power to alter the bodily blemish of his slave, as it is in the power of God to change our will, or if the lord had himself given the slave this deformity which had offended, as for example by cutting off his nose or making his face hideous with scars. In this same way God, in the view of some, works even evil in us.”
Thus Erasmus awaited Luther’s inevitable literary onslaught, and I leave it for the reader to decide for himself or herself whether this wait should have been endured with trepidation. As Erasmus himself concludes:
“Although I am getting on in years, I am not, and shall never be, ashamed or annoyed to learn from any young man if he teaches me more evident truths with evangelical courtesy… I have completed my discourse; now let others pass judgment.”
Life, theology and philosophy 