On Free Will (De Libero Arbitrio)

Summary

On Free Will, published in Latin at Basel in September 1524 as De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio (a discourse or comparison of passages concerning free will), is Erasmus's public answer to Martin Luther on the question of whether the human will has any part in salvation. Erasmus had long hesitated to write against Luther, whose criticism of abuses he partly shared, but by 1524 he was pressed by friends, princes and churchmen to declare himself, and he chose the one doctrine on which he thought Luther had gone furthest: Luther's statement of 1520 that free will after the Fall is a name without a reality. The book opens with a preface on method. Erasmus says he takes little pleasure in fixed assertions and would rather follow the judgment of Scripture and the Church where Scripture is plain, and suspend judgment where it is obscure. Some questions, he argues, are like the hidden recesses of a cave, and may be discussed among the learned without being pressed on ordinary believers. He then defines free will as a power of the human will by which a person can apply himself to the things that lead to eternal salvation or turn away from them. The main body is a careful collation of texts. First come passages that seem to support free will: Ecclesiasticus 15, where God leaves man in the hand of his own counsel; Genesis 4 and Deuteronomy 30, where life and death are set before the people; the calls to turn and repent in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Zechariah; and in the New Testament Christ's lament over Jerusalem, the commandments offered to the rich young man, and Paul's exhortations to run the race. Erasmus asks what sense commands, promises, warnings, rewards and punishments can have if the will can do nothing. Next he takes up the texts Luther relied on, among them the hardening of Pharaoh's heart, Jacob and Esau and the potter and the clay in Romans 9, and Christ's words that without him we can do nothing, and offers readings that preserve both grace and human responsibility. He reviews the range of opinion from Pelagius through the scholastics and Augustine to Luther's own position, and favours a view that ascribes almost everything to grace while leaving the will a small, real part in consenting to it. The epilogue argues that this middle way honours God's mercy without making him the author of sin or rendering moral effort pointless. Luther replied in December 1525 with The Bondage of the Will, and Erasmus answered him in the two books of Hyperaspistes (1526-1527). No public-domain English translation is stored in this library; the familiar modern translations are still in copyright.

Top Lessons

• Reading Scripture by collation

  Erasmus's method is to lay passages side by side, testimony for and against, and to ask how they can be read together. The book is a model of the humanist habit of going back to the sources and weighing texts before drawing conclusions.

• Moderation as a theological temper

  Erasmus prefers a middle way between Pelagius and Luther and distrusts certainty on questions he thinks Scripture leaves partly hidden. His defenders see in this humility and peace-making; Luther and others saw an unwillingness to confess what Scripture plainly teaches.

• Grace and human responsibility

  Erasmus wants to give nearly everything in salvation to grace while keeping a real, if small, place for the will's consent. He argues that this keeps God just, keeps exhortation meaningful and gives believers a reason to strive.

• Controversy among friends of reform

  Erasmus and Luther had both criticized abuses in the Church and both appealed to Scripture, yet they parted on this question. The exchange shows how a shared desire for renewal could lead to different answers about human nature and grace.

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Medical Lens

The treatise is a theological discussion of grace, the will and the interpretation of Scripture; it has no medical content.