Careful Thought

There’s a great discussion (and insightful comments) at Sharp Iron discussing the real value of Martin Luther in bringing about the Protestant Reformation.  Abrosia De Milano makes a good case that Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was the “true torch-bearer of reform.”  While Luther tended to use venomous, spiteful language against the Catholic church, Erasmus was peacemaker - without minimizing the need for sweeping reform within the church.

Erasmus’ work The Complaint of Peace reminds the reader that Jesus had spoken the imperative “Blessed are the Peacemakers.” He did not hide behind the excuse that the state had a right of self-defense, and that Christians ought to support war. Erasmus writes, “No greater enemy of goodness or of religion can be found.”

Humanism—not the secular humanism that rejects God—was the mark of Erasmus’ intellectual endeavors. It was not that man was the measure, but that God had endowed humanity with great gifts. These gifts had to be recognized, and drawn out to see the full glory of God that dwells in humanity. He followed the great tradition of the Dutch humanists. This led his work to be marked by an irenic spirit, one that seeks peace and reconciliation, in contrast with Luther’s fury.

It can be said that Erasmus would be one to whom Kant might say “Understanding is sublime, wit is beautiful” (From Kant’s Of the Beautiful and the Sublime). This could not be said of Luther.

Luther was seeking to overwhelm the perceived ignorance of his opponents with scalding critique. He sought to maintain enmity, rather than find common ground with which to carry on intellectual conversation. Calvinist scholar R. C. Sproul writes this of Luther, “The first key to Luther’s profile is found in his tempestuous outbursts of anger and his intemperate language. He was fond of calling his critics ‘dogs’. . . . his language was at times earthy, salted with scatological references” (The Holiness of God, p. 75).

Is this intemperate one, this man who used insult and invective to blast his intellectual and theological opponents, the Chosen One of the Reformation? Perhaps this title was given too easily to such a one as Luther. Maybe it is time Protestants (and Baptists, and other evangelicals) rethought Luther. Maybe it is time to transfer the reins of our faith to a man of peace, one of those opponents whom Luther engaged as one engages a hated enemy. Maybe it is time to consider Erasmus as the True Reformer—or to look elsewhere altogether—as to the one whom God truly called to speak out the abuses and sins of the established church of the 16th century.

The notion of ‘non-secular humanism’ is powerful.  It serves to clarify something that has long bothered me in conservative evangelicalism - the idea that human effort can’t produce anything of value. True, our best efforts still can’t get us to God, but anything beautiful and true that is shaped by human hands reflects the God who created us. If we ourselves are created by Him and in His image, what wouldn’t our works reflect Him?