Thought-Bombs of Erasmus

Executive Summary


Erasmus' issues look tied up around a question that perhaps hasn't yet been answered: Without an episcopate, how would the churches of Christ support one another? How would authority between congregations be handled, and how can the interpretation of Scripture be faithfully managed?

Long-Winded Version

Trying to straddle a middle ground during the reformation was the non-confrontational Erasmus. He didn't like abuses by the all-too-human leaders in the Roman church -- something we all dislike in any church, and something all of our churches have had their share of. Erasmus' concern was directed first at the Roman church, but then just as equally to the Protestant churches, which were largely endorsed and supported by secular kings:

You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists [...]

[but] Look around on this ‘Evangelical’ generation, and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it....[...]

They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.

 Make of that what you will, but note that everywhere the Church is, there are tares among the wheat, and false shepherds among the sheep: Erasmus was correct, but his argument is nothing new. If anything, his point was an evasion. Erasmus knew that the major point lay not with behavior, but with authority:

We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now [...]

[Cue footage of Topol as Tevye from Fiddler on the Roof, pointing with both hands into the sky and declaiming loudly: TRADITION!]

The decisions of the Church are not lightly abandoned. His reference to "you" (Luther) is a diversion at this point: his concern is that in abandoning authority you abandon Christ's church.

You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.

Whether or not Luther commanded men to forsake all and follow him is left as an exercise to the reader. It's another diversion from Erasmus' main point. We already know that Luther was a fallible man: a mixed bag like everyone else, saved only by the grace of God.

And here's Erasmus' main point: the Roman church taught that the Church (big C) was only an established, visible institution; the Roman church was the entire Church of Christ. Leave the institution and you've left the Church. The Church is visible, and its functions are essentially magical. There is no invisible church. Of course Erasmus believes this; this was the teaching of the churches at that time -- Roman, Greek, et cetera -- and of many churches today. Many reformers believed it, too, to some degree... or at least their patrons did. States used this to their benefit - Geneva, the Netherlands, and England for example. If the government owns a state church then you have a bit more protection from foreign influence. Leave the state church and you've left the protection of the church, physically as well as spiritually. This particular error is taking a long time to work out, even though the corrective is ancient: the church is invisible and visible.