Erasmus

Review: Fool’s Talk

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Fool's Talk

Fool’s Talk, Os Guinness. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2015.

Summary: Guinness argues for the recovery of the lost art of persuasion that combines good apologetic work with evangelism and is aware of the many people Christians address who are not open to their message.

This is a book that Os Guinness has been preparing for a lifetime to write. Throughout his life, Guinness has been presenting the Christian faith in the public square, not only with the interested but also those who are not, those who would oppose or are disinterested in the Christian message and worldview. The book reflects a summation of the lessons he has learned and his urgent sense that the pressing need for Christian witness today is a recovery of the lost art of Christian persuasion. We know how to proclaim and we know how to protest. But do we know how to persuade those with whom we differ, engaging both minds and hearts?

He contends that often we settle for mere technique, whether that be “canned” evangelistic presentations, or “canned” arguments for the faith. This often is not enough because such approaches assume the interest of the person with whom we engage. Yet to persist in the work of persuading is urgent for those who love God because our enemy seeks to rob God of glory either by questioning his existence or by impugning God with the blame for humanity’s problems.

He argues that we take the approach used by Erasmus in The Praise of Folly, becoming the “holy fool” a kind of court jester representing the kingdom of heaven pointing out the follies of unbelief, and perhaps at times following the holiest fool of all, the Lord Jesus. [Having read and reviewed this biography of Erasmus recently, my interest is piqued to read In Praise of Folly!] He then plunges into considering the anatomy of unbelief, and how often it is ultimately not simply an intellectual incapacity to believe, but a heart-driven unwillingness to believe because of what this would mean for one’s life.

This calls for different forms of persuasion depending on the person. It may mean the turning of tables on them, pressing them to the ultimate conclusions of their beliefs (for example, “relativizing the relativizers”), if they are a person who prides themselves on consistency. For others, less consistent, it may be exploring the disturbing “signals of transcendence” that point to a reality other than can be explained by their worldview. The challenge is bringing a person to a place of facing the inadequacy of the belief they’ve embraced to be willing to consider something different.

The latter chapters consist of several warnings for the advocate of Christian faith. One is the “know-it-all” attitude that is not characterized by a humility before truth. Another is hypocrisy in one’s life where one’s claims and one’s character fail to match up. And finally, he warns of the ways we may betray the faith. The four step process of embracing an assumption of modern life as superior, abandoning all that does not square with this, adapting whatever faith is left around this, and finally assimilating into the culture. What Guinness points out is the danger in our efforts to engage with the culture, that if we are not clear on what must be central and unchanging, that we will make fatal compromises.

Perhaps the most significant idea here, and one worth further development, is this idea of the “holy fool.” As Guinness observes, there have been some, like Erasmus, G.K. Chesterton, Pascal, Muggeridge, and Lewis, who with wit, humor, and incisive argument point out the weaknesses and follies of others while commending by persuasion and a kind of winsome humility the transforming nature of Christian faith. Such an approach takes both truth and people seriously, engaging heart and mind, not with canned approaches or sterile arguments, but warm-hearted persuasion that gives people reasons for heart, soul, mind and strength to love God more than all else.

One might ask, “where is God in all this?”, and at points this seems like a book on the Christian rhetorician’s art, and this alone is all that is needed. What Guinness reminds us of, is that while the Christian communicator always is dependent of the work of God in those with whom they communicate, the person may often only become aware of this as they come to the place of commitment. He writes, and with this I’ll conclude:

     “Intriguingly, this fourth stage of the journey is often when God’s presence becomes plain for the first time. The wholehearted step of faith of the new believer is far more than simply his or her own step. At one moment a seeker making her commitment knows as she has never known anything before that she is more responsible for the step of faith than for any other choice in life, and that she has never been more fully herself than in taking it. But the next moment she knows too that the One she thought was the goal was all along the guide as well. She knows that she has not so much found God as that God has found her. All the time the seeker thought she was seeking, but actually she was being sought, for God can only be known with the help of God. ‘The hound of heaven,’ as the poet Francis Thompson called God, has tracked the seeker down” (p. 248).

 

 

Review: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation

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Erasmus

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, Johan Huizinga, tr. F. Hopman. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957 (first published in 1924). Link is to Dover Publications reprint. This book is now in the public domain and there are free versions for Kindle and other digital formats.

Summary: An elegantly written biography of Desiderius Erasmus describing his life, thought and character as a scholar who hoped to awaken “good learning” and to bring about a purified Catholic church, and the tensions resulting from being caught between Reformers and Catholic hierarchy.

It is surprising to me how few biographies I can find of Desiderius Erasmus in online searches, and most of these older works. The good news is that Huizinga’s very readable account of Erasmus’ life is available in either low cost reprints or for free digitally due to its passing into the public domain. There are also free versions of many of Erasmus’ works in various digital formats. I found the edition that was the basis of this review in the bargain shelves of my local used book store. If you want to readable introduction to the life of Erasmus, this is a great place to start to understand the life of this humanist scholar overshadowed in some ways by the Reformers.

We learn about the early life of this out-of-wedlock son of a Catholic priest, forced by poverty to take monastic vows. Yet from early on it was clear that Erasmus was a scholar, not a monk, who found a way through the Bishop of Cambrai for whom he served as secretary, to pursue theological studies at the University of Paris in 1495. Huizinga portrays a man who was something of a rolling stone, moving between England, Paris, Louvain, Italy, and Basle in search of patrons, peace, and publishers. He would be a restless man all his life. He works for a time with the famed Aldus Manutius (after whom the Aldus font is named) and later collaborates with Johan Froben in the publication of a number of his later works including his Greek and Latin version of the New Testament. During one of his travels, he pens In Praise of Folly, the work for which he is most famous. He also assembles a collection of adages in Latin (Adagia) that serves as a compendium of the best of the ancient classics.

Huizinga shows us a scholar deeply committed to the value of “good learning”, believing the recovery of the classic texts along with careful biblical scholarship would result in a Catholic church purified from the accretions of the centuries. There is a brief, shining moment, around 1517, where profits from publications, renown of scholarship, and sympathies with many other reformers brought him into the limelight at the same time as he is finally released from his monastic vows. All too briefly does he enjoy the life of scholarship, pleasant conversation, and freedom from want.

Soon he is chased from Louvain by those objecting to his efforts toward a purified church. He is courted by Luther and the Reformers only to keep his distance and eventually and reluctantly engage Luther in a dispute over the freedom versus bondage of the will. As he grows older he writes against the excesses of both the humanists (in Ciceronianus) and against the Reformers.

As I commented in my post on “The Challenge of the ‘Third Way,’ ” Erasmus fault was that he was a moderate, who preferred quiet to a fight. He was not an ideologue, but one who cared for clarity in expression, careful scholarship, and purity of morality. Huizinga traces this out in successive chapters on Erasmus’ thought and character. For many years, Catholics thought he had given too much aid and comfort to the Reformers. Protestants thought him a sell out, who remained loyal to the church he never wanted to leave. Yet to the last he was a scholar, returning to Basle to wrap up his affairs, entrusting his scholarly legacy to the house of Froben to publish his complete works. And it is as a scholar in the humanist tradition that he is most remembered.

More recent scholarship has raised questions about Erasmus sexuality, particularly his relationship with Servatius and his dismissal as tutor of Thomas Gray. Huizinga, a scholar in an age less concerned with matters sexual and more open to the expressions of spiritual friendship in letters, raises no questions about such things.

Huizinga also provides us with a selection of his letters. Two stand out. One is his letter to Servatius, arguing for why he should not return to the monastic life at such length that I suspect Servatius gave in to gain relief. The second is a finely drawn verbal portrait of Thomas More. We see his early correspondence with Luther, and the later deterioration of the relationship.

So, for both style and substance, I would highly recommend this biography. It leaves one wondering about the might-have-beens of what would have occurred had Erasmus not been overshadowed by Luther, Calvin, and others. My own hunch is that in the end, he would have been opposed and simply withdraw as was his wont, and little would be changed. As it was, he refused to “lead the charge”, leaving this to Luther and the Catholic hierarchy in turn. If he had influence at all, it was through his translation of the New Testament, used by Luther for a vernacular translation and through his other scholarly works, works that enriched individual minds rather than galvanized movements.

 

The Challenge of “The Third Way”

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220px-Holbein-erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus, by Holbein

I’ve written in the past about the idea of Christians as “third way” people, who refuse to be drawn into the polarities of which our culture seems so fond. Such people are “both-and” people who prefer the perplexity of paradox to the simplicity of either-or.

I’ve been reading a biography of Erasmus, which suggested to me that there are particular challenges to pursuing this course. Erasmus might be considered the first among humanist scholars. Among his greatest works was a fresh Latin version of Jerome’s Vulgate New Testament, with the Greek text alongside. It was the text Luther used to translate the New Testament into German.

First and foremost he was a scholar, yet he happened to live during the time that has come to be known as the Reformation. As an “apostle of reason”, he argued against some of the excesses of the Church, its monasticism, its scholasticism, and other corrupt practices. Yet he never saw himself as other than a faithful Catholic. He hated taking sides, even though both Catholics and Reformers wanted to claim him. Devotion, moral practice, and the quiet life of a scholar were more important to him than theological disputes. Reading his dispute with Luther on the freedom of the will, one senses how much he detests being drawn into this sort of thing, as different as night from day to Luther. Seeking a “middle way”, at points he had to flee to avoid danger to life and limb from both sides. There were no “here I stand” moments, nor was there martyrdom, as friends like Oecolampadius and Thomas More faced. He died a quiet death as an old man after completing his last publishing projects.

Erasmus’ reputation is that of a great humanist scholar but not that of a hero of the faith, Catholic or Protestant. At times, it seems like he simply thought the conflict between The Church and the Reformers as irrational and that a compromise could be found. He did not want conflict, he wanted quiet. His life reveals what may be true for many of us who believe in a “third way”. Because we don’t like us versus them, we often hope that simply a rational statement of the “third way” will be enough and we can go along with our own lives, while the rest of the world comes to our way of thinking.

It doesn’t seem to work that way too often. As Erasmus found, the “third way” can be the third angle on which the other two triangulate! Perhaps the real test comes at this point. To be a “third way” person is to choose the life of a reconciler, a peacemaker, but this involves wading into the messiness of the either-or and doing the hard work of creating a vision of both-and out of these either-or polarities. Sometimes it is the peacemaker that ends up getting killed, either physically or metaphorically!

Perhaps what is critical to choosing the third way is that this is cannot be “feel good” compromise but a principled way, which for Christians is rooted in the “both-ands” of our theological and lived worlds. This implies hard-thinking and hard choices. And that may suggest why it is often the way not taken….

Review: Erasmus and Luther: The Battle Over Free Will

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Erasmus and Luther: The Battle over Free Will Luther Erasmus edited by Clarence H. Miller, translated by Clarence H. Miller and Peter Macardle. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2012.

Summary: This work is a compilation of the argument between Erasmus and Luther over the place of free will and grace in salvation, excluding most of the supporting exegesis but giving the gist of the argument.

How free is the human will? This is a theological and philosophical discussion that has been ongoing for at least two millenia. In our present context the question arises in light of research findings in evolutionary biology and neuroscience. More narrowly, this has been a point of contention within Christian theology from the disputes between Augustine and the Pelagians (fourth century) to more present-day discussions between Calvinists and Arminians. The argument between Luther and Erasmus at the beginning of the Reformation comes a bit over midway in this history and helps us understand some of the theological fault lines between the churches of the Reformation and the Roman Catholic Church that are still under discussion to the present day.

The “battle” is really a disputation in a formal sense that was initiated somewhat reluctantly by Erasmus who was actually sympathetic to many of Luther’s contentions for reform but felt that Luther’s Augustinian embrace of sovereign grace alone with no place for human will in salvation to be extreme. His initial discourse with Luther was a somewhat moderated appeal that sought to thread a path between grace alone and some allowance for the place of human will assisted by grace. Luther’s reply, which we know as The Bondage of the Will argues forcefully, and at times acerbically, that when it comes to our salvation “free” will is a non-existent entity. Erasmus responded with a two part reply, known under the title of The Shield-Bearer Defending in which he more forcefully defends the place of human will in salvation.

The arguments are lengthy, detailed and at points repetitious and thus the group I read this work with were glad for a compilation rather than the full versions of both works. In the introductory material, the editor outlines the works, showing in bold print the sections included in the compilation. This edition is well-annotated, providing background material for allusions and helpful connections back to opposing arguments when these are referred to.

As I mentioned, this debate helped delineate some of the fault lines between Catholic and Reformation churches:

  • The question of the perspicacity of scripture–how easy or difficult is it for the individual reader to understand scripture?
  • How important is the tradition of how the church has read scripture versus the priority of the individual reader, particularly Luther?
  • Assumptions about “fallen” human nature. Are we utterly incapable of doing anything to contribute to our salvation or is there some “spark” of goodness which may be assisted by grace?
  • Related to this, is our salvation to be attributed exclusively to the sovereign grace of God or is there some place for the human will in seeking and believing?

We concluded that the arguments did not resolve these questions for us. In our reading group were those leaning toward Luther and those toward Erasmus, although most of us were troubled on the one hand by Luther’s exclusive emphasis on sovereign grace, and on the other by Erasmus’s language of “meriting” grace and his implication that justification is a process, confusing justification and sanctification. We wondered if the word “free” might be a sticking point and a discussion of human agency might have been more helpful. We recognized that we are dealing with things that are either paradoxical (apparently contradictory) or antinomies (two contrary things that are both true). We saw the challenge of attempting to reconcile as abstractions (“free will” vs. “grace”) realities lived out in the existential life of faith where we experience both our “chosenness” and our “choosing” under the grace of God.

Hence, if one is looking for a “pat” answer to this discussion, this work will either simply confirm your pre-understanding or not help. But if you wish to understand the discussion, listening to these two great figures will prove illuminating and perhaps help you think more deeply about some of the fundamental questions in Christian theology.