Theological Origins of Modernity

164 chapter five
of grace that operates at three diff erent levels. At the foundation of things
is natural grace that creates us as we are and pulls us toward the good.
At a second level is preparatory grace that off ers us the chance to lead a
Christian life. And fi nally, there is justifying grace that helps us resist the
attractions of sin aft er we have been justifi ed. 119 Free will for Erasmus is
only the capacity to accept or reject preparatory grace, and a practicing
Christian thus does not simply immerse himself in the word but works
with the assistance of grace to continually improve his moral character.
Central to Erasmus’s view here too is the notion that nature is a kind of
grace. An individual’s natural gift s, Erasmus argues, are his by the grace of
God. 120 Erasmus knew that Paul had considered and rejected this idea, but
he believed that it was at least arguably orthodox, basing this assumption
on material mistakenly attributed to Augustine. 121 Some have argued that
this understanding of nature as a form of grace points to a pantheistic
current in Erasmus’s thought, but Erasmus does not assume that God is
present and active in everything. For example, he points out that “according
to some, once God has given to the secondary causes, namely nature,
the power to reproduce and act, he does nothing unless for special reasons
he suspends the common action of nature.” 122 God is pictured here not
as a prime mover who sets everything in motion but as an artifi cer who
creates a world that moves on its own, and who for the most part does not
aft erwards interfere in this creation. If that is true, then man’s fate in this
world and in the next is largely in his own hands. In Hyperaspistes Erasmus
moves much closer to such a view than in his Diatribe. Th is change also
moves him closer to the heroic humanism of the Italians and further from
the Augustinian position he claims to defend. Th is is evident in a crucial
passage in which he misquotes Augustine: “God does many good things
in man that man does not do; but man does many things that God does
not do.” 123 What Augustine actually says, however, is that “God does many
good things in man which man does not do; but man does none which
God does not make him capable of doing.” 124 While this may simply be a
careless error, it is an error that allows Erasmus to retain the appearance
of orthodoxy while actually defending an unorthodox position. Even if
his position is unorthodox, however, there is no indication that it is un-
Christian. Erasmus may simply want to expand Christianity to include a
natural moral life and a sense of being at home in this world in opposition
to the alienation and longing for a cataclysmic transformation that he sees
in Luther.
Not only does this view of a minimal role for human free will provide a
theological foundation for human dignity, it also frees God from the impu-