Theological Origins of Modernity

128 chapter four
therefore perhaps depends more on Paul than on Jesus. But why should
Paul be taken as defi nitive? He may be clearer than Jesus, but is clarity
closer to truth than ambiguity, or is it only nearer fanaticism?
Luther’s religious mission began on that July aft ernoon in 1505 when
he found himself in a storm from which he never actually emerged. In all
the tumult of struggle and debate that surrounded him the rest of his life,
he held fast to his core doctrine that saw God as everything and man as
nothing. Th is was the point of certainty on which everything else turned.
Th is position, however, was directly at odds with that of humanism. It was
thus in a sense inevitable that these two great movements of thought that
had arisen in response to nominalism should collide. Th e resultant collision
produced the greatest debate of the sixteenth century, the debate
between Erasmus and Luther on the freedom and the bondage of the will.
In this debate we can see the great divide between the two, a divide that
remains in the heart of modernity. Th eir debate was a matter of words,
but it was a prelude to a debate of a diff erent kind, in which words were
replaced by deeds and pens by swords, and what had been written in ink
was henceforth written in blood.