Theological Origins of Modernity

162 chapter five
that schism was unavoidable. He had already recognized the likely result
of Luther’s teaching in the Diatribe: “Th is seditious wantonness of your
pen . . . brings destruction down on all good things.” 109 He had been convinced
that Luther’s agitation would not eliminate corruption, improve
morals, or foster real piety but instead would aggravate the “tyranny of
princes, bishops, theologians and monks”; liberal studies would be disregarded,
and humanists regarded with deep suspicion. 110 Luther would thus
shatter “the whole world with strife and destruction.” Nor was he willing to
accept Luther’s assertion that this confl ict was inherent in the word, asserting
that it was the result rather of how Luther had interpreted and preached
the word. 111 All of these concerns aft er two years seemed to have been only
too fully realized, and they scarcely needed to be pointed out in detail.
Erasmus begins by defending his skepticism. He asserts that Luther has
mischaracterized him as a skeptic who calls basic Christian doctrine into
question when in fact he only suggests suspending judgment about obscure
matters of interpretation on more peripheral issues. For Erasmus a
skeptic is not someone who does not care what is true or false, but is rather
someone who does not leap to conclusions or fi ght to the death for his
own opinion. Luther, by contrast, acts as if he were God himself, asserting
as certain what can at best be probable. Erasmus here again draws on
the ancient debate and particularly on Carneades’ famous concept of the
probable as a sensible alternative to Luther’s impossible, “Stoic” demand
for certainty.
Behind this discussion of the ways and extent to which we can understand
Scripture lie radically diff erent and competing notions of what it
means to be a human being and a Christian. For Erasmus humans are
fallible and a Christian must constantly struggle along with others using
every tool available to make sense out of revelation. God does not suddenly
give us supernatural insight into the meaning of Scripture, and conversion
is not a rapid and radical reversal but a gradual transformation. Here again
Erasmus denies the Stoic core of Luther’s position. Th e knowledge that
Luther and the Stoics claim to possess is merely an illusion. Even within
the limited confi nes of the Stoic cosmos, such knowledge was scarcely conceivable.
Th e Stoics themselves, for example, repeatedly wondered whether
there had ever been a Stoic sage. For Christians the possibility of such
knowledge is even more remote because the object of knowledge is not the
fi nite cosmos but the infi nite God.
Erasmus thus derides Luther’s claim to certain knowledge as hubristic
and argues that such claims to divine knowledge put civilization at risk.
He believes that Luther’s claim to divine inspiration is especially danger-