AG STUDY GUIDE FINAL - The Forerunner

Chapter 5: The Reformation
Erasmus vs. Luther
(Video running time: 16:49 minutes)
“By free choice in this place we mean a power of the human will
by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to
eternal salvation, or turn away from them.” - Desiderius Erasmus
1. Eric: On September 1, 1524, Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam, a Roman
Catholic apologist, published a work entitled Diatribe Concerning Free Will.
Martin Luther, the German Reformer, responded with On the Enslaved Will or The
Bondage of the Will, a masterful apologetic that referenced over three-hundred
Bible verses. Luther maintained the full Augustinian position against the semi-
Pelagian position of Erasmus…Luther considered it to be his most important work
because it spoke to the issues that went to the very heart of what it meant to be a
Christian. Dr. B.B. Warfield, the great Princeton Theologian, called The Bondage
of the Will the “________________________ of the Protestant Reformation.”
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Desiderius Erasmus (ca. 1466/1469 – ca. 1536) was a
Dutch Renaissance humanist and Catholic Christian
theologian. Using humanist techniques for working on
texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions
of the New Testament. These, along with books like The
Praise of Folly – which cast a critical eye on many of the
abuses of the clergy – raised issues that would be
influential in both the Protestant Reformation as well as
the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
Even though his writings and scholarship cast the Roman church in less than an
“infallible” light, Erasmus remained committed to reforming it from within. He
also held to Catholic doctrines such as “free will,” which Protestant Reformers
rejected in favor of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road disappointed
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