Who was the true heir of Augustine, Luther or Erasmus?

This year we celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s book On Bound Will, in which he made his strongest case for the sovereignty and grace of God in opposition to the Romanist scholar, Desiderius Erasmus, who had opened their contest with On Free Will. Though primarily a debate about the role of the human will in salvation, this was also a feud between two men who had been Augustinian friars. The question of how to interpret St. Augustine of Hippo’s writings was central to their disagreement, as it was to the Reformation as a whole. For Luther more than Erasmus, their literary duel was over who was the true heir to Augustine.

Augustine’s Position on Free Will and Salvation

Augustine’s understanding of the will’s role in salvation cannot be separated from his teaching on how man is made righteous before God. Although he acknowledged the law of God to be good and holy, he emphasized the Apostle Paul’s distinction between what man can do by nature and what can be accomplished by God’s grace. As Augustine wrote in On Nature and Grace, “This righteousness of God, therefore, lies not in the commandment of the law, which excites fear, but in the aid afforded by the grace of Christ, to which alone the fear of the law, as of a schoolmaster, usefully conducts.”[1]

For Luther more than Erasmus, their literary duel was over who was the true heir to Augustine. Share on XThe convicting power of the law was for Augustine the beginning of man’s salvation. “This is the faith to which the commandments drive us, in order that the law may prescribe our duty and faith accomplish it.”[2] No man could fulfill the law by nature, for nature had been perverted in the Fall. Righteousness would now come through God himself working in man. “It is He who sends the Holy Ghost that is given to us, through whom that love is shed abroad in our hearts whereby alone whosoever are righteous are righteous.”[3] This amounted to spiritual resurrection.

For Augustine, the will after the Fall is bent and bound by sin. It cannot choose the righteousness of God and has no power to work it. “But that free will, whereby man corrupted his own self, was sufficient for his passing into sin; but to return to righteousness, he has need of a Physician, since he is out of health; he has need of a Vivifier, because he is dead.”[4] To declare that man could be righteous by his own free will was to declare Christ’s atonement was unnecessary.

Augustine did believe man’s will is involved in salvation, but not as an efficient cause: the power or agency to turn toward God did not belong to the will itself. “When God says, ‘Turn ye unto me, and I will turn unto you,’ one of these clauses—that which invites our return to God—evidently belongs to our will; while the other, which promises His return to us, belongs to His grace.”[5] In this way, Augustine distinguished between the themes of law and gospel in the Scriptures. It is not man’s will but God’s grace that “accomplishes the fulfilment of the law, and the liberation of nature, and the removal of the dominion of sin.”[6]

Augustine helpfully summarized this principle. “It is certain that it is we that will when we will, but it is He who makes us will what is good….It is certain that it is we that act when we act; but it is He who makes us act, by applying efficacious powers to our will.”[7] As for why God chooses to perform such a work in some and not others, Augustine deemed it a mystery. “He turns them whithersoever He wills, and whensoever He wills, to bestow kindness on some, and to heap punishment on others, as He Himself judges right by a counsel most secret to Himself, indeed, but beyond all doubt most righteous.”[8]

As Matthew Levering writes, Augustine’s emphasis on the grace of God as the sole power behind human good works moved the debate over God’s predestination from hand wringing toward adoration. He “focuses the debate away from the difficulties caused by the fact that God does not predestine all persons—although Augustine readily acknowledges these difficulties—and toward the praise of God for curing our pride by his gift of love and thereby enabling our intimate participation in the trinitarian life.”[9]

The Late Medieval Reception of Augustine

The millennium between the death of Augustine and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation was by no means a dead time in the Church when it came to the study of Augustine’s theology. His position as the preeminent theologian of the Western Church was solidified, but given his enormous corpus of writings, it was inevitable that the true nature of Augustine’s legacy would be debated as scholars focused more on certain aspects of his thought than others.

For Augustine, the will after the Fall is bent and bound by sin. It cannot choose the righteousness of God and has no power to work it. Share on XThis allowed multiple schools of thought to emerge by the late medieval period, all claiming descent from Augustine. Heiko Oberman notes this was particularly relevant to the consideration of man’s justification before God, with the nominalist school of thought (related to William of Ockham) believing it was just as faithful to Augustine as the realist school (related to Thomas Aquinas).

The later Middle Ages are marked by a lively and at times bitter debate regarding the doctrine of justification, intimately connected with the interpretation of the works of Augustine on the relation of nature and grace. We have tried to show that the outer structure of the nominalistic doctrine of justification is intended to safeguard the Augustinian heritage and to neutralize the Pelagian dangers of an emphasis on the moral responsibilities of the viator. Our conclusion that nominalism has not been able to avoid a Pelagian position should not obscure the fact that nominalism was fully involved in the ongoing medieval search for the proper interpretation of Augustine.[10]

Martin Luther encountered nominalism during his time at the University of Erfurt, particularly as it was developed in the writings of Gabriel Biel. Here the emphasis on God’s free action (a characteristic of the related philosophy of voluntarism) had resulted in a more positive view of man’s natural abilities now often deemed “semi-Pelagian,” though the nominalists themselves believed they were upholding Augustine’s legacy, as Oberman notes. The nominalist school included such figures as William of Ockham, Robert Holcot, and Pierre d’Ailly. It was also known as the via moderna in opposition to the via antiqua of the realist school.

Another stream of thought which some have termed High Augustinianism or the Schola Augustiniana Moderna also emerged at this time and prioritized Augustine’s understanding of God’s grace as the sole efficient cause that works righteousness in man. Here we find the theologian most associated with the realist school, Thomas Aquinas, but also a host of others including Thomas Bradwardine, John Wycliffe, Gregory of Rimini, Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, and Laurentius Valla.[11]

This divide was not strictly by monastic order, university, or political region. It was among the chief theological fault lines in Western Christendom at the dawn of the sixteenth century. As Diarmid MacCulloch has noted, “When Martin Luther and other theologians in his generation recalled the Church to Augustine’s soteriology, western Christians would have to decide for themselves which aspect of his thought mattered more: his emphasis on obedience to the Catholic Church or his discussion of salvation….So from one perspective a century or more of turmoil in the Western Church from 1517 was a debate in the mind of long-dead Augustine.”[12]

The stage was therefore set for clash between these opposing interpretations of Augustine by two of the greatest minds of the Reformation period: Desiderius Erasmus and Martin Luther.

The Luther-Erasmus Controversy

In the first decade of the sixteenth century, the Basel printer Johann Amerbach released the complete works of Augustine in a newly edited version, granting scholars greater access to this essential thinker than ever before. The effect upon Western theology was nothing less than revolutionary. As Arnoud Visser notes, “most anti-Pelagian works, concerned with human sinfulness and the nature of divine grace in response to the followers of Pelagius, had never been printed before. Precisely this part of Augustine’s oeuvre would be picked up by the Protestant Reformers hardly a decade after Amerbach’s edition was published.”[13] Among those absorbing these teachings was Martin Luther, who gained access to the Amerbach editions around 1515.[14]

Martin Luther encountered nominalism during his time at the University of Erfurt, particularly as it was developed in the writings of Gabriel Biel. Share on XAs the Reformation dawned, Luther and his colleague Philip Melanchthon drew upon this anti-Pelagian stream of Augustine’s thought as they developed their law/gospel dichotomy. Yet, it is worth noting that some of their opponents held the same High Augustinian position on the extent of man’s bondage after the Fall, while also upholding Augustine’s understanding of ecclesiology. Visser explains that “conservative Catholics, such as Eck and Hoogstraeten…could also appeal to Augustine’s anti-Donatist works to fight the schism-makers.”[15] It was Johann Eck who debated Luther in 1519 and served as messenger for the papal bull against him.

But when Luther was given shelter in Saxony following his condemnation at the 1521 Diet of Worms, a different type of opponent was needed. Here attention turned to a best-selling author of the day, Desiderius Erasmus, student of the via moderna. Ironically, Erasmus like Luther had taken his vows in the Order of St. Augustine, though the Dutchman had no special love for the order’s namesake.

Erasmus’ distaste for Augustine, which waxed and waned at various points in his life, can be attributed to multiple factors. First, Erasmus was a scholar of the Greek language, and Augustine famously struggled with that tongue. We have Erasmus’ own words on the matter when he concluded, “In his knowledge of the biblical languages [Augustine] was so inferior to Jerome that it would be impudent to compare one man with the other.”[16]

Diarmid MacCulloch also notes that, “Augustinian pessimism was not for Erasmus. Instead he preferred the thinking of another giant of the early Church’s theology, a brilliant Greek-speaking maverick who had lived in the eastern Mediterranean two centuries before Augustine, Origen.” [17] Erasmus would draw upon the work of Origen, whose writings were also becoming available as never before, to shape his theology. “We have already seen that the concept of spirit became crucial in Erasmus’s thought, and this was one major reason: of the three components of humanity, said Origen, only the flesh had been thoroughly corrupted, and the highest part, the spirit, was still intact. No wonder Erasmus made so much of the spirit in his theology: here was a splendid basis for humanist optimism in the face of Augustine.” [18]

This favoritism toward Origen would not sit well with Luther during their later print debate. MacCulloch notes, “It is significant that in the middle of the bitter literary clash between Erasmus and Martin Luther over free will, Luther took the trouble to sneer at Origen’s tripartite anthropology.”[19] The issue was not simply that Erasmus revered Origen or Jerome. Rather, Luther viewed Erasmus as anti-Augustinian, a tendency particularly distasteful given that Erasmus like Luther belonged to the Augustinian Order. As Luther wrote two years before they clashed in print “Erasmus is not to be feared either in this or in almost any other really important subject that pertains to Christian doctrine. Truth is mightier than eloquence, the Spirit stronger than genius, faith greater than learning….The eloquence of Cicero was often beaten in court by less eloquent men; Julian was more eloquent than Augustine.”[20]

But Erasmus would not be defeated by such criticism. Just weeks before publishing his book On Free Will, he wrote to a friend that the superiority of Jerome was recognized by Augustine in their own time. “[Jerome’s] sacred learning in all its power and richness was so ready to hand that, old and isolated as he was, he could cope with all those different subjects. Nor were learned bishops ashamed to learn from a mere priest; Augustine was one of them.”[21]

Erasmus’s dislike for Augustine may also be due to the fact that he had never wanted to take vows in the order that bore Augustine’s name. Recalling that time, Erasmus wrote, “They threatened me with immense dangers from the wrath of Augustine himself, if I were to abandon a garment he held so dear.”[22]

The Literary Duel

When the time finally came for Erasmus to oppose Luther in print, he sought to maintain some hope for man without opening himself up to charges of Pelagianism. His strategy was to fall back on uncertainty. “Fully aware that he must play by Augustinian rules, he emphasized that the initiative in grace was with God. After that, however, he sought to avoid dogmatism and an assertion of one single truth on grace; for him this was Luther’s chief fault,”[23] writes MacCulloch.

Erasmus refers to Augustine a few times in On Free Will, addressing Augustine’s belief that when God crowns our merits, he only crowns his own work. “Again, suppose for a moment that it were true in a certain sense, as Augustine says somewhere, that ‘God works in us good and evil, and rewards his own good works in us, and punishes his evil works in us’; what a window to impiety would the public avowal of such an opinion open to countless mortals!”[24] The surest way to keep man from improving, according to Erasmus, was to tell him he could not improve.

Erasmus attempted to paint Luther into a Stoicist corner. “From the time of the apostles down to the present day, no writer has yet emerged who has totally taken away the power of freedom of choice, save only Manichaeus and John Wyclif.” [25] Both Manichaeus and Wyclif were considered heretics by the Roman Church. Of course, there were some late medieval theologians who shared Luther’s interpretation of Augustine, and there Erasmus chose to simply dismiss their importance, declaring that Laurentius Valla “has not much weight among theologians.”[26]

Augustine had maintained a role for human will in salvation, sometimes using the language of cooperation with the Spirit. Erasmus clung to this for proof of his own orthodoxy. “This grace which others call ‘prevenient,’ Augustine calls ‘operative.’ For faith, which is the doorway to salvation, is the free gift of God. To this, charity is added by the more abundant gift of the Spirit, which he calls ‘cooperative grace,’ which is always present in those who strive until they attain their end, but on condition that at the same time and in the same work both free choice and grace operate; grace, however, as the leader and not as a companion.”[27] However, while Erasmus talked the talk of Augustinian theology on this point, his overall understanding of salvation is more synergistic than Augustine’s—that is, when Erasmus asserts a firm opinion, which he rarely does in On Free Will.

Luther walked away from the exchange believing not only that he had defeated Erasmus, but that he had done so with Augustine firmly on his side. Share on XIn his response On Bound Will, Luther responded directly to Erasmus’ placement of him in the same category as Wyclif and Valla. “In short, on [Erasmus’] side stand erudition, genius, multitude, magnitude, altitude, fortitude, sanctity, miracles—everything one could wish. On my side, however, there is only Wyclif and one other, Laurentius Valla (though Augustine, whom you overlook, is entirely with me), and these carry no weight in comparison with those.”[28] Here Luther’s sarcasm is thick, for he believed the forces on his side to be stronger than Erasmus admitted. Luther even wrote that his position was similar to Bernard of Clairvaux’s in its essentials.

But I can easily show you…that holy men such as you boast about, whenever they come to pray or plead with God, approach him in utter forgetfulness of their own free choice, despairing of themselves and imploring nothing but pure grace alone, though they have merited something very different. This was often the case with Augustine, and it was so with Bernard when, at the point of death, he said, ‘I have lost my time, because I have lived like a lost soul.’[29]

Luther allowed for a slight difference between himself and Augustine: the latter maintains the language of free will while removing its agency, whereas Luther was prepared to call free will a fiction after the Fall.[30] But Luther also pressed the similarity between himself and Augustine on the characterization of God’s law. Erasmus had claimed the law which cannot save consists only in ceremonial rituals rather than the entirety of God’s commands. Speaking of this view, Luther argued, “But they are in the habit of trying to get round Paul here, by making out that what he calls works of the law are the ceremonial works, which since the death of Christ are deadly. I reply that this is the ignorant error of Jerome, which in spite of Augustine’s strenuous resistance—God having withdrawn and let Satan prevail—has spread out into the world and persisted to the present day.”[31]

At one point, Luther used an Augustinian turn of phrase to describe Erasmus’ book, speaking of the “bestiam, quae se ipsam comesset,” or “the beast that eats itself.”[32] This too reveals that Luther saw himself and not Erasmus as the true heir of Augustine.

Luther’s alignment with Augustine

Even as Erasmus could not countenance what he saw as Luther’s Stoicism, Luther could not abide Erasmus’ preference of Jerome and Origen over Augustine. Their debate was a continuation of medieval trends pitting a High Augustinianism against the via moderna. While Erasmus did not seek as Luther to align himself perfectly with Augustine, he knew his orthodoxy depended on showing some link to the greatest of the Latin Fathers. Luther walked away from the exchange believing not only that he had defeated Erasmus, but that he had done so with Augustine firmly on his side.

---

Endnotes

[1] St. Augustine of Hippo. On Nature and Grace in The Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Benjamin B. Warfield et al (Altenmünster, Germany: Jazzybee Verlag, 2017), 175.

[2] Augustine, Nature and Grace, 181.

[3] Augustine, Nature and Grace, 205.

[4] Augustine, Nature and Grace, 184.

[5] St. Augustine of Hippo. A Treatise on Grace and Free Will in The Anti-Pelagian Writings, ed. Philip Schaff, trans. Benjamin B. Warfield et al (Altenmünster, Germany: Jazzybee Verlag, 2017), 508.

[6] Augustine, Treatise, 516.

[7] Augustine, Treatise, 519.

[8] Augustine, Treatise, 523.

[9] Levering, Matthew. The Theology of Augustine: An Introductory Guide to His Most Important Works (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013), 71.

[10] Oberman, Heiko. The Harvest of Medieval Theology: Gabriel Biel and Late Medieval Nominalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2000), 427.

[11] The definitions of these schools of thought and placement of theologians in one group or the other varies between scholars of late medieval scholasticism.

[12] MacCulloch, Diarmaid. The Reformation: A History (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 111. Internal citation – Warfield, Benjamin Breckenridge. Calvin and Augustine (Philadelphia: P&R Publishing, 1956), 332.

[13] Visser, Arnoud S.Q. Reading Augustine in the Reformation: The Flexibility of Intellectual Authority in Europe, 1500-1620, Oxford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 15.

[14] Visser, 25.

[15] Visser, 30.

[16] Quoted by Erika Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1986), 59. Quoted from Annotationes in Iohannem 21:22, ASD VI-6:170-71, lines 169-92.

[17] MacCulloch, 113.

[18] MacCulloch, 113.

[19] MacCulloch, 114.

[20] Luther, Martin. “Letter 122 – To an Anonymous Addressee, Wittenberg, 28 May 1522” in Luther’s Works (American edition), Vol. 49 – Letters II, trans. Gottfried G. Krodel (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), 6-8. The internal quote:

[21] Erasmus, Desiderius. “Letter 1453 – To William Warham, Basel, 5 June 1524” in The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 10 – Letters 1356 to 1534, trans. R.A.B. Mynors (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1992), 280-2.

[22] Erasmus, Desiderius. “Letter 1581A – To X, Basel, spring 1525” in The Correspondence of Erasmus, Vol. 11 – 1535 to 1657, trans. Alexander Dalzell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), 162-9.

[23] MacCulloch, 151.

[24] Erasmus, Desiderius. De Libero Arbitrio (On Free Will) in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Ichthus edition, trans. E. Gordon Rupp (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 41.

[25] Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio, 43.

[26] Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio, 43.

[27] Erasmus, De Libero Arbitrio, 51-2.

[28] Luther, De Servo Arbitrio (On Bound Will) in Luther and Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation, Ichthus edition, trans. E. Gordon Rupp (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1969), 144-5.

[29] Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, 148-9.

[30] Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, 180-1.

[31] Luther, De Servo Arbitrio, 302-3.

[32] This was likely borrowed from Contra Iulianum III.xxi.47.

---

Image credit: ba7b0y.