Editing Erasmus (section)

==Thought and views==
Biographers, such as [[Johan Huizinga]], frequently draw connections between many of Erasmus' convictions and his early biography: esteem for the married state and appropriate marriages, support for priestly marriage, concern for improving marriage prospects for women, opposition to inconsiderate rules (notably, institutional dietary rules), a desire to make education engaging for the participants, interest in classical languages, horror of poverty and spiritual hopelessness, distaste for friars begging when they could study or work, unwillingness to be under the direct control of authorities, laicism, the need for those in authority to act in the best interest of their charges, a prizing of mercy and peace, an anger over unnecessary war, especially between avaricious princes, an awareness of mortality, the wisdom of avoiding danger,{{refn|group=note|His earliest work, ''De contemptu mundi'', recommended that a friend become a monk for reason of spiritual safety: he who loves danger will perish in it.<ref name=post/>{{rp|665}} }} etc.
the more
===Manner of thinking===
Erasmus had a distinctive manner of thinking, a Catholic historian suggests: one that is capacious in its perception, agile in its judgments, and unsettling in its irony with "a deep and abiding commitment to human flourishing".<ref name="martinirony">Terrence J. Martin, [https://www.cuapress.org/9780813228099/truth-and-irony/ ''Truth and Irony''], quoted in {{cite journal |last1=Moore |first1=Michael |date=2019 |title=Truth and Irony: Philosophical Meditations on Erasmus (Review) |url=https://brill.com/view/journals/eras/39/1/article-p107_9.xml?rskey=MziQyb&result=1 |url-status=live |journal=Erasmus Studies |volume=39 |issue=1 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03901009 |s2cid=171963677 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231230123922/https://brill.com/view/journals/eras/39/1/article-p107_9.xml?rskey=MziQyb&result=1 |archive-date=30 December 2023 |access-date=22 June 2023}}</ref> "In all spheres, his outlook was essentially pastoral."<ref name=mansfield>{{cite book |last1=Mansfield |first1=Bruce |title=Erasmus in the Twentieth Century |date=6 May 2003 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4426-7455-4 |language=en |chapter=Erasmus in the Twentieth Century: Interpretations 1920-2000|doi=10.3138/9781442674554 }}</ref>{{rp|225}}

Erasmus has been called a seminal rather than a consistent or systematic thinker,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tracy |first1=James |title=Two Erasmuses and Two Luthers: Erasmus' strategy in defense of De libero arbitrio |journal=Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte |date=1987 |volume=78 |issue=jg |page=57  |doi=10.14315/arg-1987-jg03 |s2cid=171005154}}</ref> notably averse to over-extending from the specific to the general, who nevertheless should be taken very seriously as a [[Pastoral theology|pastoral]]{{refn|group=note|Historian Kirk Essary comments "Reading the work (''Exomologesis''), one is reminded that Erasmus remains underrated for his psychological insights in general and that he is perhaps overlooked as a pastoral theologian."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Essary |first1=Kirk |title=Collected Works of Erasmus, written by Frederick J. McGinness (ed.), Michael J. Heath and James L.P. Butrica (transl.), Frederick J. McGinness and Michael J. Heath (annotat.), and Alexander Dalzell (contrib. ed.) |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=2016 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=64–66 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03601005}}</ref>}} and rhetorical theologian, with a philological and historical approach—rather than a metaphysical approach—to interpreting Scripture<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Trinkaus |first1=Charles |title=Erasmus, Augustine and the Nominalists |journal=Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte – Archive for Reformation History |date=1976 |volume=67 |issue=jg |pages=5–32 |doi=10.14315/arg-1976-jg01 |s2cid=163790714}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|For Erasmus, "dogmatics do not exist for themselves; they take on meaning only when they issue, on the one hand, in the exegesis of scripture and, on the other, in moral action" according to Manfred Hoffmann's {{lang|de|Erkenntnis und Verwirklichung der wahren Theologie nach Erasmus von Rotterdam}} (1972).<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|137}} }} and interested in the [[Four senses of Scripture#Four types of interpretation|literal and tropological senses]].<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|145}} French theologian Louis Bouyer commented, "Erasmus was to be one of those who can get no edification from exegesis where they suspect some misinterpretation."<ref name=bouyer1>{{cite book |last1=Bouyer |first1=Louis |chapter=Erasmus in Relation to the Medieval Biblical Tradition |title=The Cambridge History of the Bible |volume=2: The West from the Fathers to the Reformation |date=1969 |pages=492–506 |doi=10.1017/CHOL9780521042550.011 |isbn=978-1-139-05550-5 |url= |language=en}}</ref>

A theologian has written of "Erasmus' preparedness completely to satisfy no-one but himself".<ref name=chester>{{cite journal |last1=Chester |first1=Stephen |title=When the Old Was New: Reformation Perspectives on Galatians 2:16 |journal=The Expository Times |date=April 2008 |volume=119 |issue=7 |pages=320–329 |doi=10.1177/0014524608091090|s2cid=144925414 }}</ref> He has been called moderate, judicious and constructive even when being critical or when mocking extremes;<ref name=ocker-book>{{cite book |last1=Ocker |first1=Christopher |title=The Hybrid Reformation: A Social, Cultural, and Intellectual History of Contending Forces |date=22 September 2022 |doi=10.1017/9781108775434.011}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|However, "his wit can be gentle; it can break out into bitterness. In controversy, resentments and anxieties can get loose, countermanding the Christian imperative of love to which he was devoted and which runs as a ''leitmotiv'' through all his writings." Mansfield <ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|230}} }} but thin-skinned against slanders of heterodoxy.{{refn|group=note|"So thin- skinned that a fly would draw blood". Albert Pio, quoted in ''Encyclopedia Britannica''.<ref name=encyc>{{cite encyclopedia |title=Erasmus |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica |edition=9th |via=Wikisource |url=https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica,_Ninth_Edition,_v._8.djvu/536 |language=en}}</ref>}}

===Manner of expression===
====Irony====
Erasmus often wrote in a highly ironical idiom,<ref name=martinirony/> especially in his letters,<ref group=note name=slippery>His mode of expression made him "slippery like a snake", according to Luther,{{cite journal |last1=Visser |first1=Arnoud |title=Irreverent Reading: Martin Luther as Annotator of Erasmus |journal=The Sixteenth Century Journal |date=2017 |volume=48 |issue=1|pages=87–109 |doi=10.1086/SCJ4801005 |hdl=1874/348917 |s2cid=31540853 |hdl-access=free }})</ref> which makes them prone to different interpretations when taken literally rather than ironically.

* Ulrich von Hutten claimed that Erasmus was secretly a Lutheran; Erasmus chided him saying that von Hutten had not detected the irony in his public letters enough.<ref name=tracey_sponge/>{{rp|27}} 
* Antagonistic scholar J. W. Williams denies that Erasmus' letter to Ammonius, "let your own interests be your standard in all things", was in apparent jest, as claimed by those more sympathetic to Erasmus.<ref name=williams>{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=W. J. |title=Erasmus the Man |journal=Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review |date=1927 |volume=16 |issue=64 |pages=595–604 |jstor=30094064 |issn=0039-3495}}</ref>  
* Erasmus' aphoristic quote on the persecution of Reuchlin, "If it is Christian to hate Jews, we are all abundantly Christians here", is taken literally by Theodor Dunkelgrün<ref name=dunkel>{{cite journal |last1=Dunkelgrün |first1=Theodor |title=The Christian Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe |journal=The Cambridge History of Judaism |date=16 November 2017 |pages=316–348 |doi=10.1017/9781139017169.014|isbn=978-1-139-01716-9 }}</ref>{{rp|320}} and Harry S. May<ref name=may>{{cite journal |last1=May |first1=Harry S. |last2=ה' |first2=מאי<!--JSTOR landing page only gives this name in Hebrew script-->|script-title=he:ארסמוס והיהודים – מחקר פסיכו-היסטורי |title=Erasmus and the Jews – a Psychohistoric Reëvaluation |script-journal=he:דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות |journal=Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies |date=1973 |volume=1–2<!--JSTOR landing page gives both--> |pages=85–93 |jstor=23529114 |issn=0333-9068}}</ref> as being approving of such hatred; the alternative view would be that it was sardonic and challenging.

He frequently wrote about controversial subjects using the [[dialogue]] to avoid direct statements clearly attributable to himself.{{refn|group=note|"[...] of all Renaissance writers, Erasmus is the one who prefers the dialogue, with its avoidance of dogmatism, it balance and swing of debate, its insistence of friendship and communication."<ref name=cwe23/>{{rp|7}}  }} For Martin Luther, he was an eel,<ref>{{cite web |last1=Wolfe |first1=Gregory |title=Erasmus is an Eel: Renaissance Humanist Hero |url=https://comment.org/erasmus-is-an-eel-renaissance-humanist-hero/ |website=Comment Magazine |language=en-CA |date=1 March 2012}}</ref> slippery, evasive and impossible to capture. 

====Copiousness====
Erasmus' literary theory of "copiousness" endorses a large stockpile of rich [[adages]], [[Analogy|analogies]], [[Trope (literature)|tropes]] and symbolic figures, which leads to compressed communication of complex ideas (between those educated in the stockpile) but some of which, to modern sensibilities, may promote as well as play off [[stereotypes]].

* Erasmus' lengthy collections of proverbs, the {{lang|la|Adagia}}, established a vocabulary he and his contemporaries then used extensively and habitually: according to philosopher Heinz Kimmerle,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Mosima |first1=Pius |title=Remembering Professor Heinz Kimmerle |journal=Journal of World Philosophies |date=2016 |doi=10.2979/jourworlphil.1.1.16|doi-access=free }}</ref> it is necessary to know the explanations of various proverbs given by Erasmus' {{lang|la|Adages}} to adequately understand many passages in Erasmus' and Luther's written debate on free will (see below).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kimmerle |first1=Heinz |title=The Arguments of Erasmus in His Debate with Luther about Free Will |journal=Scriptura, Geist, Wirkung |date=8 April 2024 |pages=97–108 |doi=10.1515/9783111315348-006|isbn=978-3-11-131534-8 }}</ref> 
*When Erasmus wrote of 'Judaism', he most frequently (though not always) was not referring to Jews:<ref group=note>For Markish, Erasmus' "theological opposition to a form of religious thought which he identified with Judaism was not translated into crude prejudice against actual Jews", to the extent that Erasmus could be described as 'a-semitic' rather than 'anti-semitic'.{{cite web |title=Erasmus of Rotterdam |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/erasmus-of-rotterdam |website=Jewish Virtual Library |publisher=AICE |access-date=15 July 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715072502/https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/erasmus-of-rotterdam |url-status=live }}</ref>  instead he referred to those Catholic Christians of his time, especially in the monastic lifestyle, who mistakenly promoted excessive external ritualism over interior piety, by analogy with [[Second Temple Judaism]]. 
** "Judaism I call not Jewish impiety, but prescriptions about external things, such as food, fasting, clothes, which to a certain degree resemble the rituals of the Jews."<ref>Erasmus, {{lang|la|Declarationes ad censuras Lutetiae}}, 1532.</ref>
** Erasmus' counter-accusation to Spanish friars of "Judaizing" may have been particularly sharp and bold, given the prominent role that some friars with the [[Spanish Inquisition]] were playing in the lethal persecution of some ''[[conversos]]''.{{refn|group=note|Historian Kevin Ingram suggests "The ''conversos'' also clearly reveled in Erasmus's comparison, in the {{lang|grc-Latn|Enchiridion}}, of Old-Christians mired in ceremonial practice to Pharisees who had forgotten the true message of Judaism, a statement they used as a counter-punch against Old-Christian accusations of ''converso'' Judaizing. The ''conversos'' conveniently ignored the anti-semitic aspect of Erasmus' statement."<ref name=ingram>{{cite thesis |last1=Ingram |first1=Kevin |title=Secret lives, public lies: the conversos and socio-religious non-conformism in the Spanish Golden Age |date=2006 |publisher=University of California San Diego |url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6270j25z |language=en |access-date=4 January 2024 |archive-date=4 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240104082837/https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6270j25z |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|71}} }}

Terence J. Martin identifies an "Erasmian pattern" that the supposed (by the reader) otherness (of Turks, Lapplanders, Indians, Amerindians,{{refn|group=note|
"Erasmus discussed Amerindians and their way of life only as a tool, an analogy or parable, for those issues that consistently preoccupied his mind, namely the mores of the Christian Church."<ref name=ron1/>}} Jews, and even women and heretics) "provides a [[Foil (narrative)|foil]] against which the failures of Christian culture can be exposed and criticized."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Martin |first1=Terence J. |title=Erasmus and the Other |journal=A Companion to Erasmus |date=25 January 2023 |pages=181–200 |doi=10.1163/9789004539686_012|isbn=978-90-04-53968-6 }}</ref> 
* In a 1518 letter to [[John Fisher]], Erasmus wrote: "The cunning of princes and the effrontery of the Roman curia can go no further; and it looks as though the state of the common people would soon be such that the tyranny of the Grand Turk would be more bearable."<ref name=letters594/>{{rp|70}}
* In {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}}, Erasmus personifies that we should "kill the Turk, not the man.[...] If we really want to heave the Turks from our necks, we must first expel from our hearts a more loathsome race of Turks: avarice, ambition, the craving for power, self-satisfaction, impiety, extravagance, the love of pleasure, deceitfulness, anger, hatred, envy."<ref group=note>Erasmus, {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}}, cited by Ron, Nathan, ''The Non-Cosmopolitan Erasmus: An Examination of his Turkophobic/Islamophobic Rhetoric'', ''op. cit.'' p 99: Ron takes this as an affirmation by Erasmus of the low nature of Turks; the alternative view would take it as a negative foil (applying the model of the parable of [[The Mote and the Beam|the mote and the beam]]) where the prejudice is [[Communication accommodation theory|appropriated]] in order to subvert it.</ref>

===Pacifism===
Peace, peaceableness, and peacemaking, in all spheres from the domestic to the religious to the political, were central distinctives of Erasmus' writing on Christian living and his mystical theology:<ref>{{cite web |last1=Dart |first1=Ron |title=Erasmus: Then and Now |url=https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2006/09/erasmus_then_an.html |website=Clarion: Journal for Religion, Peace and Justice |access-date=28 November 2023 |archive-date=30 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231130233709/https://www.clarion-journal.com/clarion_journal_of_spirit/2006/09/erasmus_then_an.html |url-status=live }}</ref> "the sum and summary of our religion is peace and unanimity"<ref group=note>{{lang|la|Summa nostrae religionis pax est et unanimitas}}. Erasmus continued: "This can hardly remain the case unless we define as few matters as possible and leave each individual's judgement free on many questions." {{cite book |last1=Erasmus |title=Letter to Carondelet: The Preface to His Edition of St. Hilary |date=1523}} Note that the use of {{lang|la|summa}} is perhaps also a backhanded reference to the [[scholasticism|scholastic]] {{lang|la|[[summa]]}}, which he upbraided for their moral and spiritual uselessness.{{cite journal |last1=Surtz |first1=Edward L. |title='Oxford Reformers' and Scholasticism |journal=Studies in Philology |date=1950 |volume=47 |issue=4 |pages=547–556 |jstor=4172947}}</ref> At the [[Nativity of Jesus]] "the angels sang not the glories of war, nor a song of triumph, but a hymn of peace":<ref>{{cite web |last1=Erasmus |title=The Complaint of Peace, p57 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v-IvAAAAYAAJ&q=the+angels+sung+not+the+glories+of+war,+nor+a+song+of+triumph,+but+a+hymn+of+peace |website=Google Books |year=1813 |access-date=19 June 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715072639/https://books.google.com/books?id=v-IvAAAAYAAJ&q=the+angels+sung+not+the+glories+of+war,+nor+a+song+of+triumph,+but+a+hymn+of+peace |url-status=live }}</ref>

{{Blockquote|He (Christ) conquered by gentleness; He conquered by kindness; he conquered by truth itself. [...] Long ago, he was called God of Powers, the 'Lord of Hosts/Armies'; for us he is called 'God of Peace'.
 |source=''Method of True Theology'', 4 <ref group=note>"{{langx|la|Vicit mansuetudine, vicit beneficentia}}". R. Sider translates {{lang|la|vicit}} as "he prevailed": {{cite journal |last1=Sider |first1=Robert D. |title=A System or Method of Arriving by a Short Cut at True Theology by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam |journal=The New Testament Scholarship of Erasmus |date=31 December 2019 |pages=479–713 |doi=10.3138/9781487510206-020|isbn=978-1-4875-1020-6 |s2cid=198585078 }}</ref>{{rp|570}} }}

Erasmus was not an absolute [[pacifist]] but promoted political [[pacificism]] and religious [[Irenicism]].<ref name=ronpeace>{{cite journal |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=The Christian Peace of Erasmus |journal=The European Legacy |date=2014 |volume=19 |issue=1 |pages=27–42 |doi=10.1080/10848770.2013.859793 |s2cid=143485311 |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10848770.2013.859793 |access-date=19 June 2023 |archive-date=19 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230619155827/https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10848770.2013.859793 |url-status=live }}</ref> Notable writings on irenicism include {{lang|la|De Concordia}}, ''On the War with the Turks'', ''The Education of a Christian Prince'', ''On Restoring the Concord of the Church'', and ''The Complaint of Peace''. Erasmus' ecclesiology of peacemaking held that the church authorities{{refn|group=note|Bruce Mansfield summarizes historian Georg Gebhart's view: "While recognizing the teaching authority, but not the primacy, of Councils, Erasmus adopted a moderate papalism, papal authority itself being essentially pastoral."<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|132}} }} had a divine mandate to settle religious disputes,{{refn|group=note|This was not a naive or far-fetched role: historian Timothy Martin notes that in France around year 1000 "The influence of the Church, which was led by local bishops, who were often members of the region's nobility, became pivotal in restraining the rampant fighting between knights and the pillaging of Church lands and the peasantry. Several examples show that it was the bishop, backed by abbots and sacred relics, preaching a warning of eternal damnation for violators, that most often compelled the local warlords and knights into submission."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Martin |first1=Timothy |chapter=Miter and Sword: Fighting Norman Bishops and Clergy |title=Culminating Projects in History |date=1 June 2018 |url=https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/hist_etds/16}}</ref> }} in an as non-excluding way as possible,{{refn|group=note|name=baker-peace}} including by the preferably-minimal [[development of doctrine]].

In the latter, Lady Peace insists on peace as the crux of Christian life and for understanding Christ:

{{Blockquote|"I give you my peace, I leave you my peace" (John 14:27). You hear what he leaves his people? Not horses, bodyguards, empire or riches – none of these. What then? He gives peace, leaves peace – peace with friends, peace with enemies.|source= The Complaint of Peace<ref name="The Complaint of Peace">{{cite book |last1=Erasmus |title=The Complaint of Peace |url=https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complaint_of_Peace |via=Wikisource |access-date=19 June 2023 |archive-date=7 May 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230507080915/https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Complaint_of_Peace |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

A historian has called him "The 16th Century's Pioneer of Peace Education and a Culture of Peace".{{refn|group=note|If any single individual in the modern world can be credited with "the invention of peace", the honour belongs to Erasmus rather than Kant whose essay on perpetual peace was published nearly three centuries later.{{opinion<!--If this is a quotation, format and attribute it as such-->|date=May 2025}}<ref name="researchgate.net"/>}}

Erasmus' emphasis on peacemaking reflects a typical pre-occupation of [[Pre-Tridentine Mass#Vernacular and laity in the medieval and Reformation eras|medieval lay spirituality]] as historian John Bossy (as summarized by Eamon Duffy) puts it: "medieval Christianity had been fundamentally concerned with the creation and maintenance of peace in a violent world. 'Christianity' in medieval Europe denoted neither an ideology nor an institution, but a community of believers whose religious ideal—constantly aspired to if seldom attained—was peace and mutual love."<ref>{{cite web |last1=Duffy |first1=Eamon |title=The End of Christendom |url=https://www.firstthings.com/article/2016/11/the-end-of-christendom |website=First Things |access-date=27 November 2023 |language=en |date=1 November 2016}}</ref> 

====War====
{{See also|Erasmus#The Complaint of Peace (1517)}}
Historians have written that "references to conflict run like a red thread through the writings of Erasmus".<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|34}} Erasmus had experienced war as a child and was particularly concerned about wars between Christian kings, who should be brothers and not start wars; a theme in his book ''[[The Education of a Christian Prince]]''. His ''Adages'' included "War is sweet to those who have never tasted it" ({{lang|la|Dulce bellum inexpertis}} from [[:wikiquote:Pindar|Pindar]]'s Greek).{{refn|group=note|"The argument of ''Bellum'' is governed by three favorite themes that recur in other works of Erasmus. First, war is naturally wrong [...] Second, Christianity forbids war [...] Third, 'just cause' in war will be claimed by both sides and will be next to impossible to determine fairly: hence, the traditional criteria of the just war are nonfunctional."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Cahill |first1=Lisa Sowle |title=Blessed Are the Peacemakers: Pacifism, Just War, and Peacebuilding |date=2019 |publisher=1517 Media |jstor=j.ctv9b2ww5.11 |isbn=978-1-5064-3165-9 }}</ref> }}

He promoted and was present at the [[Field of Cloth of Gold]],<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/history-and-stories/the-field-of-cloth-of-gold/|title=The Field of Cloth of Gold |publisher=Hampton Court Palace |access-date=2 December 2023}}</ref> and his wide-ranging [[List of Erasmus's correspondents|correspondence]] frequently related to issues of peacemaking.{{refn|group=note|"Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More and John Colet [...] between them in the first three decades of the sixteenth century, ushered in not only humanism – an ethically sanctioned guide for practical, humanitarian ways of living in society – but also the formation of a group that might be called a 'peace movement'."<ref>{{cite book |last1=White |first1=R. S. |title=Pacifism and English Literature |date=2008 |doi=10.1057/9780230583641|isbn=978-1-349-36295-0 }}</ref>}} He saw a key role of the Church in peacemaking by arbitration<ref>{{cite web |last1=Xheraj |first1=Blerina |title=Erasmus, Jus Canonicum and Arbitration |url=https://commercialarbitrationineurope.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/erasmus-jus-canonicum-and-arbitration/ |website=The Social and Psychological Underpinnings of Commercial Arbitration in Europe |date=4 December 2020 |publisher=University of Leicester |access-date=19 June 2023 |archive-date=19 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230619155827/https://commercialarbitrationineurope.wordpress.com/2020/12/04/erasmus-jus-canonicum-and-arbitration/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and mediation,<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|50}} and the office of the Pope was necessary to rein in tyrannical princes and bishops.<ref name=gasquet/>{{rp|195}}

He questioned the practical usefulness and abuses{{refn|group=note|"I do not deny that I wrote some harsh things in order&nbsp;to deter the Christians from the madness of war, because I saw that these wars,which we witnessed for too many years, are the source of the biggest part of evils which damage Christendom. Therefore, it was necessary to come forward not only against these deeds, which are clearly criminal, but also against other actions, which are almost impossible to do without committing many crimes." Apology against Albert Pío<ref name=ronpeace/>{{rp|11}}}} of [[just war theory]], further limiting it to feasible defensive actions with popular support and that "war should never be undertaken unless, as a last resort, it cannot be avoided".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Dallmayr |first1=Fred R. |title=A War Against the Turks? Erasmus on War and Peace |journal=Asian Journal of Social Science |date=2006 |volume=34 |issue=1 |pages=67–85 |doi=10.1163/156853106776150225 |jstor=23654400}}</ref> Defeat should be endured rather than fighting to the end. In his {{lang|la|Adages}} he discusses (common translation) "[[:wikiquote:Desiderius Erasmus|A disadvantageous peace is better than a just war]]", which owes to [[Just war theory#Renaissance and Christian Humanists|Cicero and John Colet]]'s "Better an unjust peace than the justest war." Expansionism could not be justified.{{refn|group=note|"Erasmus and Vives ruled out conquests and annexation of territories."<ref name=ron1/>}} Taxes to pay for war should cause the least possible hardship on the poor.<ref name=ron2>{{cite book |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=Erasmus: intellectual of the 16th century |date=2021 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |isbn=978-3-030-79859-8}}</ref>{{rp|20}} He hated sedition as, often, a cause of oppression.

Erasmus was highly critical of the warlike way of important European princes of his era, including some princes of the church.<ref group=note>Erasmus was not out of step with opinion within the church: Archbishop [[Bernardo Zanne|Bernard II Zinni]] of [[Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Split-Makarska|Split]] speaking at the [[Fifth Council of the Lateran]] (1512) denounced princes as the most guilty of ambition, luxury and a desire for domination. Bernard proposed that reformation must primarily involve ending war and schism. {{cite journal |last1=Minnich |first1=Nelson H. |title=Concepts of Reform Proposed at the Fifth Lateran Council |journal=Archivum Historiae Pontificiae |date=1969 |volume=7 |pages=163–251 |jstor=23563707 |issn=0066-6785}}</ref> He described these princes as corrupt and greedy. Erasmus believed that these princes "collude in a game, of which the outcome is to exhaust and oppress the commonwealth".<ref name=tracy_low/>{{rp|s1.7.4}} He spoke more freely about this matter in letters sent to his friends like [[Thomas More]], [[Beatus Rhenanus]] and [[Adrianus Barlandus]]: a particular target of his criticisms was the Emperor [[Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor|Maximilian I]], whom Erasmus blamed for allegedly preventing the Netherlands from signing a peace treaty with [[Guelders]]<ref>{{cite book |last1=Tracy |first1=James D. |title=Holland Under Habsburg Rule, 1506–1566: The Formation of a Body Politic |date=23 October 2018 |publisher=Univ of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-30403-1 |pages=68–70 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=x7nADwAAQBAJ&pg=PA68 |access-date=4 August 2023 |language=en}}</ref> and other schemes to cause wars in order to extract money from his subjects.{{refn|group=note|James D. Tracy notes that mistrust of the Habsburg government in the general population (partially due to the fact Maximilian and his grandson [[Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor|Charles V]] were absentee rulers, the secret nature of diplomacy and other circumstances) was widespread, but it is notable that intellectuals like Erasmus and Barlandus also accepted the allegations.<ref name=tracy_low>{{cite book |last1=Tracy |first1=James D. |title=Erasmus of the Low Countries |date=1 January 1996 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-08745-3  |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HvbNbNMP_vcC&pg=PA94 |access-date=4 August 2023 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|94,95}} }}

One of his approaches was to send and publish congratulatory and lionizing letters to princes who, though in a position of strength, negotiated peace with neighbours, such as King [[Sigismund I the Old]] of Poland in 1527.<ref name=herwaarden/>{{rp|75}}

Erasmus "constantly and consistently" opposed the mooted idea of a Christian "universal monarch" with an over-extended empire who could supposedly defeat the Ottoman forces: such universalism did not "hold any promise of generating less conflict than the existing political plurality"; instead, advocating concord between princes, both temporal and spiritual.<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|44,45}} The spiritual princes, by their arbitration and mediation do not "threaten political plurality, but acts as its defender."<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|50}}

====Intra-Christian religious toleration<span class="anchor" id="Religious toleration"></span>====
He referred to his irenical disposition in the Preface to ''[[De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio|On Free Will]]'' as a "secret inclination of nature" that would make him even prefer the views of the [[Sceptics]] over intolerant assertions, though he sharply distinguished {{lang|la|[[Adiaphora#Christianity|adiaphora]]}} from what was uncontentiously explicit in the [[Bible|New Testament]] or absolutely mandated by [[Magisterium|Church teaching]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Yoder |first1=Klaus C. |title=Adiaphora and the Apocalypse: Protestant Moral Rhetoric of Ritual at the End of History (1990–2003) |date=17 May 2016 |page=2 |url=http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:27194246 |language=en}}</ref> Concord demanded unity and assent: Erasmus was anti-sectarian<ref group=note>"I have made my support of the church sufficiently clear [...] The only thing in which I take pride is that I have never committed myself to any sect." Erasmus, Letter to Georgius Agricola (1534)</ref> as well as non-sectarian.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kieffer |first1=Amanda |title=Ad Fontes: Desiderius Erasmus' Call for a Return to the Sources of a Unified and Simple Christian Faith |journal=The Kabod |date=2006 |volume=3 |issue=1 |url=https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/kabod/vol3/iss1/10/https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/kabod/vol3/iss1/10/ |access-date=16 December 2023}}</ref> To follow the law of love, our intellects must be humble and friendly when making any assertions: he called contention "earthly, beastly, demonic"<ref name="meyer1"/>{{rp|739}} and a good-enough reason to reject a teacher or their followers. In Melanchthon's view, Erasmus taught charity, not faith.<ref name="kurasawa" />{{rp|10}} The centrality of Christian concord to Erasmus' theology contrasted with the insistence of [[Martin Luther]] and, for example, later English [[Puritans]], that (Protestant) truth naturally would create discord and opposition.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Dodds |first1=Gregory D. |title=Exploiting Erasmus: The Erasmian Legacy and Religious Change in Early Modern England |date=2009 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |doi=10.3138/9781442688056 |jstor=10.3138/9781442688056 |isbn=978-0-8020-9900-6 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/9781442688056}}</ref>{{rp|219}}

[[File:Quentin_Massys-_Erasmus_of_Rotterdam.JPG|thumb|left|Portrait of Erasmus, after Quinten Massijs (1517)]]
Certain works of Erasmus laid a foundation for religious toleration of private opinions and [[ecumenism]]. For example, in {{lang|la|De libero arbitrio}}, opposing particular views of Martin Luther, Erasmus noted that religious disputants should be temperate in their language "because in this way the truth, which is often lost amidst too much wrangling may be more surely perceived". Gary Remer writes, "Like [[Cicero]], Erasmus concludes that truth is furthered by a more harmonious relationship between interlocutors."<ref>Remer, Gary, ''Humanism and the Rhetoric of Toleration'' (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press 1996), p. 95 {{ISBN|0-271-02811-4}}</ref>

In a letter to Cardinal [[Lorenzo Campeggio]], Erasmus lobbied diplomatically for toleration: "If the sects could be tolerated under certain conditions (as the Bohemians pretend), it would, I admit, be a grievous misfortune, but one more endurable than war."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Emerton |first1=Ephraim |title=Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam |date=1899 |publisher=G. P. Putnam's Sons |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47517 |language=English}}</ref>{{rp|447}} But the same dedication to avoiding conflict and bloodshed should be shown by those tempted to join (anti-popist) sects:

{{blockquote|Perhaps evil rulers should sometimes be tolerated. We owe some respect to the memory of those whose places we think of them as occupying. Their titles have some claim on us. We should not seek to put matters right if there is a real possibility that the cure may prove worse than the disease.|source=Erasmus, ''The Sileni of Alcibiades'' (1517)}}

====Heresy and sedition====
Erasmus had been privately involved in early attempts to protect Luther and his sympathisers from charges of [[heresy]].{{refn|name=telemachus|group=note|Erasmus was criticized for initially being unwilling to take sides publicly, or to see some aspects of truth or pride in both sides, on many issues. He preferred to participate in controversies he generated himself, rather than the controversies of others. He invoked a story from [[Cassiodorus]], where the monk [[Saint Telemachus]] entered the arena of the Roman stadium to separate fighting gladiators, but was stoned by the crowd.<ref name=baker2006>{{cite journal |last1=Baker-Smith |first1=Dominic |title=Affectivity and Irenicism |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=2006 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=29–42 |doi=10.1163/187492706X00051}}</ref>}} Erasmus wrote {{lang|la|[[Colloquies#Inquisitio de fide (Inquisition of faith)|Inquisitio de fide]]}} to say that the Lutherans (of 1523) were not formally heretics: he pushed back against the willingness of some theologians to cry heresy fast in order to enforce their views in universities and at inquisitions.

For Erasmus, punishable heresy had to involve fractiously, dangerously, and publicly agitating against essential doctrines relating to Christ (i.e., blasphemy), with malice, depravity, obstinacy.{{refn |group=note|Historian Johannes Trapman notes "But who are in fact heretics? According to Erasmus not somebody who doubts a minor doctrinal point or even errs in some article. [...] For the protection of the commonwealth [...] heretics who are not only blasphemous but also seditious deserve the death penalty."<ref name=trapman/>{{rp|23}} Erasmus commended that the punishment of the early church for heresy was excommunication.}} As with St [[Theodore the Studite]],<ref>{{cite web |script-title=el:Αποστολική Διακονία της Εκκλησίας της Ελλάδος |url=https://apostoliki-diakonia.gr/en_main/catehism/theologia_zoi/themata.asp?cat=patr&main=EH_texts&file=11.htm |website=Apostolic Ministry of the Church of Greece}}</ref> Erasmus was against the death penalty merely for private or peaceable heresy or for dissent on non-essentials: "It is better to cure a sick man than to kill him."<ref name=froude_life>Froude, James Anthony,
[https://archive.org/details/lifeandletterse02frougoog/page/n372 <!-- pg=359 quote=erasmus heretics kill. --> ''Life and letters of Erasmus: lectures delivered at Oxford 1893–4''] (London: Longmans, Green & Co. 1894), p. 359</ref> The Church, he said, has the duty to protect believers and convert or heal heretics; he invoked Jesus' [[parable of the wheat and tares]].<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|200}}

Erasmus' [[pacificism]] included a particular dislike for sedition, which caused warfare:

{{Blockquote|text=It was the duty of the leaders of this (reforming) movement, if Christ was their goal, to refrain not only from vice, but even from every appearance of evil; and to offer not the slightest stumbling block to the Gospel, studiously avoiding even practices which, although allowed, are yet not expedient. Above all they should have guarded against all sedition.|source=Letter to Martin Bucer<ref name=huiz>{{cite book |last1=Huizinga |first1=Johan |last2=Flower |first2=Barbara |title=Erasmus and the Age of Reformation |date=1952 |publisher=HarperCollins |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/22900/22900-h/22900-h.htm |access-date=15 July 2023}}</ref>}}

Erasmus allowed the death penalty against violent seditionists to prevent bloodshed and war: he allowed that the state has the right to execute those who are a necessary danger to public order—whether heretic or orthodox—but noted (e.g., to [[Natalis Beda]]) that [[Augustine]] had been against the execution of even violent [[Donatist]]s: Johannes Trapman states that Erasmus' endorsement of suppression of the Anabaptists springs from their refusal to heed magistrates and the criminal violence of the [[Münster rebellion]], not because of their heretical views on baptism.<ref name=trapman>{{cite journal |last1=Trapman |first1=Johannes |title=Erasmus and Heresy |journal=Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance |date=2013 |volume=75 |issue=1 |page=12 |jstor=24329313}}</ref> Despite these concessions to state power, Erasmus suggested that religious persecution could still be challenged as inexpedient (ineffective).<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Remer |first1=Gary |title=Rhetoric and the Erasmian Defense of Religious Toleration |journal=History of Political Thought |date=1989 |volume=10 |issue=3 |page=385}}</ref>

====Outsiders====
Most of his political writing focused on peace within [[Christendom]] with almost a sole focus on Europe. In 1516, Erasmus wrote, "It is the part of a Christian prince to regard no one as an outsider unless he is a nonbeliever, and even on them he should inflict no harm", which entails not attacking outsiders, not taking their riches, not subjecting them to political rule, no forced conversions, and keeping promises made to them.<ref name=vollerthun/>{{rp|50,51}}

In common with his times,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Howell |first1=Rob |title=Islam as a Heresy: Christendom's Ideological View of Islam |journal=Fairmount Folio: Journal of History |date=2003 |volume=5 |url=https://journals.wichita.edu/index.php/ff/article/view/73 |language=en}}</ref> Erasmus regarded the Jewish and Islamic religions as Christian heresies (and therefore competitors to orthodox Christianity) rather than separate religions, using the inclusive term ''half-Christian'' for the latter.{{refn|group=note|"...&nbsp;in large part half-Christian and perhaps nearer to true Christianity than most of our own folk." ''Letter to Paul Volz''<ref name=martin2024/>{{rp|32}}}}

However, there is a wide range of scholarly opinion on the extent and nature of [[antisemitic]] and [[Islamophobia|anti-Muslim]] prejudice in his writings: historian Nathan Ron has found his writing to be harsh and racial in its implications, with contempt and hostility to Islam.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=Erasmus' attitude to towards Islam in the light of Nicholas of Cusa's De pace fidei and Cribiatio alkorani |journal=Revista Española de Filosofía Medieval |date=2019 |volume=26 |issue=1 |pages=113–136 |doi=10.21071/refime.v26i1.11846 |s2cid=200062225 |url=https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7366141.pdf |access-date=15 July 2023 |archive-date=15 July 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230715072502/https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/7366141.pdf |url-status=live }} Reviewed: [https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/erasmus-and-the-other-on-turks-jews-and-indigenous-peoples-nathan-ron-london-palgrave-macmillan-2019-xiv-196-pp-4164/A9692438D8CABC869D3344F1DFBA6C88 ''Renaissance Quarterly''] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230729073149/https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/renaissance-quarterly/article/abs/erasmus-and-the-other-on-turks-jews-and-indigenous-peoples-nathan-ron-london-palgrave-macmillan-2019-xiv-196-pp-4164/A9692438D8CABC869D3344F1DFBA6C88 |date=29 July 2023 }}</ref>

=====Turks=====
In his last decade, he involved himself in the [[On War Against the Turk|public policy debate]] on war with the [[Ottoman Empire]], which was then invading [[Ottoman wars in Europe#1526–1566: Conquest of the Kingdom of Hungary|Western Europe]], notably in his book ''On the war against the Turks'' (1530), as the "reckless and extravagant"<ref>{{cite web |last1=Withnell |first1=Stephen |title=A terrible pope but a patron of genius |url=https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-terrible-pope-but-a-patron-of-genius/ |website=Catholic Herald |date=25 April 2019 |access-date=27 April 2024 |archive-date=27 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240427055122/https://catholicherald.co.uk/a-terrible-pope-but-a-patron-of-genius/ |url-status=live }}</ref> Pope Leo X had in previous decades promoted going on the offensive with a new crusade.<ref group=note>"...&nbsp;the goal of {{lang|la|De bello Turcico}} was to warn Christians and the Church of moral deterioration and to exhort them to change their ways.&nbsp;... Erasmus' objection to crusades was by no means an overall opposition to fighting the Turks. Rather, Erasmus harshly condemned embezzlement and corrupt fundraising, and the Church's involvement in such nefarious activities, and regarded them as inseparable from waging a crusade." {{cite journal |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |title=The Non-Cosmopolitan Erasmus: An Examination of his Turkophobic/Islamophobic Rhetoric |journal=Akademik Tarih ve Düşünce Dergisi (Academic Journal of History and Idea) |date=1 January 2020 |url=https://www.academia.edu/67458204}} pp. 97,98</ref> Erasmus reworked Luther's rhetoric that the invading Turks represent God's judgment of decadent Christendom, but without Luther's fatalism: Erasmus not only accused Western leaders of kingdom-threatening hypocrisy, he reworked a remedy already decreed by the [[Fifth Council of the Lateran]]: anti-expansionist moral reforms by Europe's disunited leaders as a necessary unitive political step before any aggressive warfare against the Ottoman threat, reforms which might themselves, if sincere, prevent both the internecine and foreign warfare.<ref name=herwaarden>{{cite journal |last1=van Herwaarden |first1=Jan |title=Erasmus and the Non-Christian World |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=2012 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=69–83 |doi=10.1163/18749275-00000006}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|The idea that European peace and order was a precondition for successful crusades has a longer history: Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 called for the re-enacting of the [[Peace and Truce of God#Peace of God and Truce of God and chivalry and crusades|Truce of God]] for domestic peace.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Bainton |first=Roland H. |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/963644630 |title=Christian attitudes towards war and peace: a historical survey and critical re-evaluation |publisher=Abingdon Press |year=1979 |orig-year=1st ed. 1960 |isbn=0-687-07027-9 |location=New York |oclc=963644630}}</ref>{{rp|111–112}} }}

=====Jews=====
{{See also|Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus#Controversy on antisemitism}}
[[File:LuisVives.jpg|thumb|Juan Luis Vives]]

Erasmus perceived and championed strong [[#Classical|Hellenistic]] rather than exclusively Hebraic influences on the [[Hellenistic Judaism#Cultural legacy|intellectual milieux]] of Jesus, Paul, and the early church: "If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament!"{{refn|group=note|name=OT|"If only the Christian church did not attach so much importance to the Old Testament! It is a thing of shadows, given us for a time." ''Ep 798'' p. 305.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Rummel |first1=Erika |title=Review of Opera Omnia. vo. V-2. Opera Omnia vol. V-3. Opera Omnia. II-4. |journal=Renaissance Quarterly |date=1989 |volume=42 |issue=2 |pages=304–308 |doi=10.2307/2861633 |jstor=2861633 |s2cid=164160751  |issn=0034-4338}}</ref> For Erasmus, "the relative importance we should ascribe to the different books of the Bible" accorded to how much "they bring us more or less directly to knowledge of (Christ)", which gave priority to the New Testament and the Gospels in particular.<ref name=bouyer1/> "To Erasmus, Judaism was obsolete. To Reuchlin, something of Judaism remained of continuing value to Christianity."<ref name=dunkel/>}} Perhaps the only Jewish book he published was his loose translation of the first century Hellenistic-Judaic ''On the Sovereignty of Reason'', better known as [[4 Maccabees]].<ref>{{cite journal |title=842 / To Helias Marcaeus – 863 / From Jakob Spiegel |journal=The Correspondence of Erasmus |date=31 December 1982 |pages=2–105 |doi=10.3138/9781442681026-004|isbn=978-1-4426-8102-6 |url=https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.3138/9781442681026-004/html}}</ref> 

Erasmus' pervasive anti-ceremonialism treated the early Church debates on circumcision, food, and special days as manifestations of cultural chauvinism by the initial Jewish Christians in Antioch.{{refn|group=note|"The Jews" (i.e. the earliest Jewish Christians in Antioch) "because of a certain human tendency, desire(d) to force their own rites upon everyone, clearly in order under this pretext to enhance their own importance. For each one wishes that the things which he himself has taught should appear as outstanding." Erasmus, ''Paraphrase of Romans and Galatians''<ref name=chester/>{{rp|321}} }}

While many humanists, from [[Pico della Mirandola]] to [[Johannes Reuchlin]], were intrigued by Jewish mysticism, Erasmus came to dislike it: "I see them as a nation full of most tedious fabrications, who spread a kind of fog over everything, Talmud, Cabbala, Tetragrammaton, Gates of Light, words, words, words. I would rather have Christ mixed up with Scotus<!--which? Duns Scotus?--> than with that rubbish of theirs."<ref name=letters594>{{cite book |last1=Erasmus |first1=Desiderius |title=The Correspondence of Erasmus: Letters 594–841 (1517–1518) |date=31 December 1979 |doi=10.3138/9781442681019|isbn=978-1-4426-8101-9 }}</ref>{{rp|347}}

In his ''Paraphrase on Romans'', Erasmus voiced, as Paul, the "secret" that in the end times, "all of the Israelites will be restored to salvation" and accept Christ as their Messiah, "although now part of them have fallen away from it".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cohen |first1=Jeremy |title=3. The Latin West: From Augustine to Luther and Calvin |journal=The Salvation of Israel |date=15 August 2022 |pages=50–70 |doi=10.1515/9781501764769-005}}</ref>

Several scholars have identified [[Legacy and evaluations of Erasmus#Controversy on antisemitism|cases]] where Erasmus' comments appear to go beyond theological [[anti-Judaism]] into slurs or approving to an extent certain [[anti-semitic]] policies, though there is some controversy.

=====Slaves=====
On the subject of slavery, Erasmus characteristically treated it in passing under the topic of tyranny: Christians were not allowed to be tyrants, which slave-owning required, but especially not to be the masters of other Christians.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Kute |first1=David |title=Erasmus and the Ideal Ruler |url=https://davidkute.com/2019/12/26/396/ |date=26 December 2019}}</ref> Erasmus had various other piecemeal arguments against slavery: for example, that it was not legitimate to enslave people taken in an unjust war; but it was not a subject that occupied him. However, his belief that "nature created all men free" (and slavery was imposed) was a rejection of Aristotle's category of natural slaves.<ref name=ron1>{{cite book |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |chapter=Erasmus' and las Casas' Conception of Barbarian Peoples |title=Erasmus and the "Other" |date=2019 |pages=77–96 |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-24929-8_6|isbn=978-3-030-24928-1 }}</ref>

====Politics====
Erasmus promoted the idea that a prince rules with the consent of his people, notably in his book ''[[The Education of a Christian Prince]]'' (and, through More, in the book [[Utopia (book)|''Utopia'']], which proposed a "republic completely lacking sovereignty"<ref name=mayer>{{cite journal |last1=Mayer |first1=T. F. |title=Tournai and Tyranny: Imperial Kingship and Critical Humanism |journal=The Historical Journal |date=1991 |volume=34 |issue=2 |pages=257–277 |doi=10.1017/S0018246X00014138 |jstor=2639498 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2639498 |issn=0018-246X}}</ref>). He may have been influenced by the [[Brabant]]ine custom of an incoming ruler being officially told of his duties and welcomed:<ref name=maarten/> the [[Joyous Entry of 1356|Joyous Entry]] was a kind of contract. A monarchy should not be absolute: it should be "checked and diluted with a mixture of aristocracy and democracy to prevent it ever breaking out into tyranny".<ref name="seop2009" /> The same considerations applied to church princes.

Erasmus contrasts the Christian Prince with the Tyrant, who has no love from the people, will be surrounded by flatterers, and can expect no loyalty or peace. Unspoken in Erasmus' views may have been the idea that the people can remove a tyrant; however, espousing this explicitly could expose people to capital charges of sedition or treason. Erasmus typically limited his political discussion to what could be couched as personal faith and morality by or between Christians, his business as a ''magister'' of theology.

===Religious reform===
{{Catholic philosophy}}

====Personal reform====
Erasmus expressed much of his reform program in terms of the proper attitude towards the [[sacraments]] and their ramifications:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Payne |first1=John B. |title=Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments |date=1970 |publisher=Knox |language=en}}</ref> notably for the underappreciated sacraments of Baptism and Marriage (see ''[[#On the Institution of Christian Marriage (1526)|On the Institution of Christian Marriage]]'') considered as vocations more than events;{{refn|group=note|
In marriage, Erasmus' two significant innovations, according to historian Nathan Ron, were that "matrimony can and should be a joyous bond, and that this goal can be achieved by a relationship between spouses based on mutuality, conversation, and persuasion."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ron |first1=Nathan |chapter=Erasmus on the Education and Nature of Women |title=Erasmus: intellectual of the 16th century |date=2021 |publisher=Palgrave Macmillan |location=Cham |doi=10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_4 |doi-broken-date=1 November 2024 |isbn=978-3-030-79859-8 |url=https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4 |chapter-url=https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4_4 |pages=37–47 |access-date=1 January 2024 |archive-date=1 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240101133933/https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-79860-4 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|4:43}} }} and for the mysterious Eucharist, pragmatic Confession, the dangerous [[Last Rites]] (writing ''On the Preparation for Death''),<ref group=note>According to historian Thomas Tentler, few Christians from his century gave as much emphasis as Erasmus to a pious attitude to death: the terrors of death are "closely connected to guilt from sin and fear of punishment" the antidote to which is first "trust in Christ and His ability to forgive sins", avoiding (Lutheran) boastful pride, then a loving, undespairing life lived with appropriate penitence. The priests' focus in the Last Rites should be comfort and hope. {{cite journal |last1=Tentler |first1=Thomas N. |title=Forgiveness and Consolation in the Religious Thought of Erasmus |journal=Studies in the Renaissance |date=1965 |volume=12 |pages=110–133 |doi=10.2307/2857071 |jstor=2857071  |issn=0081-8658}}</ref> and the pastoral Holy Orders (see ''[[#The Preacher (1536)|Ecclesiastes]]'').<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Tylenda |first1=Joseph N. |title=Book Review: Erasmus: His Theology of the Sacraments |journal=Theological Studies |date=December 1971 |volume=32 |issue=4 |pages=694–696 |doi=10.1177/004056397103200415|s2cid=170334683 }}</ref> Historians have noted that Erasmus commended the benefits of immersive, docile scripture-reading in sacramental terms.{{refn|group=note| name=sider2020|"It is because Christ is in the pages of the bible that we meet him as a living person. As we read these pages we absorb his presence, we become one with him." Robert Sider<ref name=sider2020>{{cite journal |last1=Sider |first1=Robert |editor-first1=Robert D. |editor-last1=Sider |title=Erasmus on the New Testament |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=31 December 2020 |doi=10.3138/9781487533250|isbn=978-1-4875-3325-0 |s2cid=241298542 }}</ref>}}

=====Sacraments=====
[[File:Johannes Oecolampadius by Asper.jpg|thumb|''Johannes Œcolampadius'' by Asper (1550)]]
A test of the Reformation was the doctrine of the sacraments, and the crux of this question was the observance of the [[Eucharist]]. Erasmus was concerned that the [[sacramentarian]]s, headed by [[Johannes Oecolampadius|Œcolampadius]] of Basel, were claiming Erasmus held views similar to their own in order to try to claim him for their schismatic and "erroneous" movement. When the Mass was finally banned in Basel in 1529, Erasmus immediately abandoned the city, as did the other expelled Catholic clergy.

In 1530, Erasmus published a [[list of editiones principes in Latin|new edition]] of the orthodox treatise of [[Algerus]] against the heretic [[Berengar of Tours]] in the eleventh century. He added a dedication, affirming his belief in the reality of the Body of Christ after consecration in the Eucharist, commonly referred to as [[transubstantiation]]. However, Erasmus found the scholastic formulation of transubstantiation to stretch language past its breaking point.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Praise-of-Folly-by-Erasmus|title = Praise of Folly &#124; work by Erasmus |encyclopedia=Encyclopædia Britannica}}</ref>

By and large, the miraculous real change that interested Erasmus, the author, more than that of the bread is the transformation in the humble partaker.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Williams |first1=David |title=Sacramental Reading: Foxe's Book of Actes and Milton's Fifth Gospel |journal=The Communion of the Book |date=15 November 2022 |pages=157–228 |doi=10.1515/9780228015857-009|isbn=978-0-2280-1585-7 }}</ref>{{rp|211}} Erasmus wrote several notable pastoral books and pamphlets on sacraments, always looking through rather than at the rituals or forms:{{refn|group=note|On confession "he differed from Luther and Wycliffe as much as he differed from mainstream conservative theology in deferring any question of how the sacrament worked in favour of its creating a moral development in the penitent."<ref name=marquis/>{{rp|54}} }} 

*on marriage and wise matches, 
*preparation for confession and the need for pastoral encouragement by priests (whose primary duty was to shepherd, not just to consecrate/absolve),<ref name=marquis/>{{rp|73}}  
*preparation for death and the need to assuage fear, 
*training and helping the preaching duties of priests under bishops, 
*baptism and the need for that faithful to own the baptismal vows made for them.

====Catholic reform====

=====Institutional reforms=====
[[File:Albrecht Dürer - Portrait of Erasmus - WGA07088.jpg|thumb|Albrecht Dürer, ''Portrait of Erasmus'', sketch: black chalk on paper, 1520]]
The [[Protestant Reformation]] began in the year following the publication of his [[Textus receptus|pathbreaking]] edition of the [[Novum Instrumentum omne|New Testament]] in Latin and Greek (1516). The issues between the reforming and reactionary tendencies of the [[Catholic Church|church]], from which [[Protestantism]] later emerged, had become so clear that many intellectuals and churchmen could not escape the summons to join the debate.

According to historian C. Scott Dixon, Erasmus not only criticized church failings but questioned many of his Church's basic teachings;<ref group=note name="Dixon 2012">"Erasmus had been [[criticism of the Catholic Church|criticizing the Catholic church]] for years before the [[Protestant Reformers|reformers]] emerged, and not just pointing up its failings but questioning many of its basic teachings. He was the author of a series of publications, including a [[Novum Instrumentum omne|Greek edition of the New Testament]] (1516), which laid the foundations for a model of Christianity that called for a pared-down, internalized style of religiosity focused on Scripture rather than the elaborate, and incessant, outward rituals of the [[Christianity in the Middle Ages|medieval church]]. Erasmus was not a forerunner in the sense that he conceived or defended ideas that later made up the substance of the Reformation thought. [...] It is enough that some of his ideas merged with the later Reformation message." {{cite book |last=Dixon |first=C. Scott |year=2012 |title=Contesting the Reformation |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i6kf0Tv_i1AC&pg=PA60 |publisher=[[Wiley-Blackwell]] |page=60 |isbn=978-1-4051-1323-6 }}</ref> however, according to biographer Erika Rummel, "Erasmus was aiming at the correction of abuses rather than at doctrinal innovation or institutional change."{{refn |group=note|"Unlike Luther, he accepted papal primacy and the teaching authority of the church and did not discount human tradition. The reforms proposed by Erasmus were in the social rather than the doctrinal realm. His principal aim was to foster piety and to deepen spirituality."
<ref name=rummel1>{{cite journal |last1=Rummel |first1=Erika |title=The theology of Erasmus |journal=The Cambridge Companion to Reformation Theology |series=Cambridge Companions to Religion |date=2004 |pages=28–38 |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-reformation-theology/theology-of-erasmus/A1916A5FFA073EEC8D42C60E03F028E3 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |doi=10.1017/CCOL0521772249.005 |isbn=978-0-521-77224-2 |access-date=10 November 2023 |archive-date=10 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231110071325/https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/cambridge-companion-to-reformation-theology/theology-of-erasmus/A1916A5FFA073EEC8D42C60E03F028E3 |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|37}} }}

In theologian Louis Bouyer's interpretation,<ref name=bouyer1/> Erasmus' agenda was "to reform the Church from within by a renewal of biblical theology, based on philological study of the New Testament text, and supported by a knowledge of patristics, itself renewed by the same methods. The final object of it all was to nourish [...] chiefly moral and spiritual reform".<ref group=note>"Rigorously scientific biblical study must sustain an effort to renew the interior life, and the interior life must itself be at once the agent and the beneficiary of a renewal of the whole of Christian society." This went beyond the  {{lang|la|devotio moderna}}, which "was a spirituality of teachers"m</ref>

At the height of his literary fame, Erasmus was called upon to take one side, but public partisanship was foreign to his beliefs, nature, and habits. Despite all his [[Criticism of the Catholic Church|criticism of clerical corruption and abuses within the Western Church]],{{refn|group=note|Writer Gregory Wolfe notes however "For Erasmus, the narrative of decline is a form of despair, a failure to believe that the tradition can and will generate new life."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Wolfe |first1=Gregory |title=The Erasmus Option |journal=Image Journal |issue=94 |url=https://imagejournal.org/article/erasmusoption/ |access-date=19 January 2024 |archive-date=19 January 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119230956/https://imagejournal.org/article/erasmusoption/ |url-status=live }}</ref>}} especially at first he sided unambiguously with neither Luther nor the anti-Lutherans publicly (though in private he lobbied assiduously against extremism from both parties), but eventually shunned the breakaway Protestant Reformation movements along with their most [[Radical Reformation|radical offshoots]].<ref name="Hoffmann 1989"/>

{{Blockquote|I have constantly declared, in countless letters, booklets, and personal
statements, that I do not want to be involved with either party.|source=Erasmus, ''Spongia'' (1523)}}

The world had laughed at his satire, ''[[The Praise of Folly]]'', but few had interfered with his activities. He believed that his work had commended itself to the religious world's best minds and dominant powers. Erasmus chose to write in Latin (and Greek), the languages of scholars. He did not build a large body of supporters among the unlettered; his critiques reached a small but elite audience.<ref>{{cite book|last=Wallace|first=Peter G.|title=European History in Perspective: The Long European Reformation|year=2004|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|location=New York|isbn=978-0-333-64451-5|page=70}}</ref>

Erasmus was also notable for exposing several important historical documents of theological and political importance as forgeries or misattributions: including pseudo-[[Dionysius the Areopagite]], the {{lang|la|[[Gravi de pugna]]}} attributed to [[St Augustine]], the {{lang|la|[[Ad Herennium]]}} attributed to Cicero, and (by reprinting [[Lorenzo Valla]]'s work)<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Levine |first1=Joseph M. |title=Reginald Pecock and Lorenzo Valla on the Donation of Constantine |journal=Studies in the Renaissance |date=1973 |volume=20 |pages=118–143 |doi=10.2307/2857015 |jstor=2857015  |issn=0081-8658}}</ref> the [[Donation of Constantine]].

=====Anti-fraternalism=====
Reacting from his own experiences, Erasmus came to believe that monastic life and institutions no longer served the positive spiritual or social purpose they once may have:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Post |first1=Regnerus Richardus |title=The Modern Devotion: Confrontation with Reformation and Humanism |date=1968 |publisher=Brill Archive |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|669}} in the ''Enchiridion'' he controversially put it "Monkishness is not piety."{{refn|group=note|{{lang|la|monachatus non est pietas}}, "Being a monk is not piety", but he adds "but a way of life that may be useful or not useful according to each man's physical make-up and disposition".<ref name=rummel1/>{{rp|36}} }} At this time, it was better to live as "a monk in the world" than in the monastery.{{refn|group=note|DeMolen claims: "It is important to recall that Erasmus remained a member of the Austin Canons all his life. His lifestyle harmonized with the spirit of the Austin Canons even though he lived outside their monastic walls."<ref name=demolen1/> Erasmus represents the anti-[[Observantism|Observantist]] wing of the canons regular who believed that the charism of their orders required them to be more externally focussed (on pastoral, missionary, scholarly, charitable and sacramental works) and correspondingly de-focussed on monastic severity and ceremonialism. 
}}

Many of his works contain diatribes against supposed monastic corruption and careerism, particularly against the mendicant friars (Franciscans and Dominicans). These orders also typically ran the university's Scholastic theology programs, from whose ranks came his most dangerous enemies. The more some attacked him, the more offensive he became about what he saw as their political influence and materialistic opportunism.

{{rquote|right|Alastor, an evil spirit: "They are a certain Sort of Animals in black and white Vestments, Ash-colour'd Coats, and various other Dresses, that are always hovering about the Courts of Princes, and [to each side] are continually instilling into their Ears the Love of War, and exhorting the Nobility and common People to it, haranguing them in their Sermons, that it is a just, holy and religious War. [...]"
Charon: "[...] What do they get out of it?"
Alastor: "Because they get more by those that die, than those that live. There are last Wills and Testaments, Funeral Obsequies, Bulls, and a great many other Articles of no despicable Profit. And in the last Place, they had rather live in a Camp, than in their Cells. War breeds a great many Bishops, who were not thought good for any Thing in a Time of Peace." |source=Erasmus, "Charon", ''Colloquies''}}

He was scandalized by superstitions (such as that if a person were buried in a Franciscan habit, they would go directly to heaven),{{refn|group=note|See the colloquy {{lang|la|Exequiae Seriphicae}}<ref name=bietenholz/>}} crime,<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Lusset |first1=Elizabeth |title='Non monachus, sed demoniacus': Crime in Medieval Religious Communities in Western Europe, 12th–15th Centuries |journal=The Monasric Research Bulletin |date=2012 |issue=18 |url=https://www.york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/documents/publications/The%20Monastic%20Research%20Bulletin,%20Issue%2018%20(2012).pdf |access-date=13 December 2023 |archive-date=13 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231213153028/https://www.york.ac.uk/media/borthwick/documents/publications/The%20Monastic%20Research%20Bulletin%2C%20Issue%2018%20%282012%29.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> and child novices. He advocated various reforms, including a ban on taking orders until the 30th year; the closure of corrupt and smaller monasteries; respect for bishops; requiring work, not begging (reflecting the practice of his own order of [[Augustinian Canons]]); the downplaying of monastic hours, fasts and ceremonies; and a less mendacious approach to gullible pilgrims and tenants.

However, he was not in favour of speedy closures of monasteries, nor of closing larger reformed monasteries with important libraries: in his account of his pilgrimage to Walsingham, he noted that the funds extracted from pilgrims typically supported houses for the poor and elderly.<ref name=pilgrimage>''A Religious Pilgrimage'', {{cite web |last1=Seery |first1=Stephenia |title=The Colloquies of Erasmus |url=https://it.cgu.edu/earlymodernjournal/vol1-no1/seery.html |publisher=Claremont Graduate University}}</ref>

These ideas widely influenced his generation of humanists, both Catholic and Protestant,<ref name=knowles>{{cite journal |last1=Knowles |first1=Dom David |title=Ch XI – Erasmus |journal=The Religious Orders in England |date=27 September 1979 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511560668.012}}</ref>{{rp|152}} and the lurid hyperbolic attacks in his half-satire ''The Praise of Folly'' were later treated by Protestants as objective reports of near-universal corruption. Furthermore, "what is said over a glass of wine, ought not to be remembered and written down as a serious statement of belief", such as his proposal to marry all monks to all nuns or to send them all away to fight the Turks and colonize new islands.<ref name=gasquet/>

He believed the only vow necessary for Christians should be the vow of baptism, and others such as the vows of the [[evangelical counsels]], while admirable in intent and content, were now mainly counter-productive.

However, Erasmus frequently commended the [[evangelical counsels]] for all believers, and with more than lip service: for example, the first adage of his reputation-establishing {{lang|la|Adagia}} was "Between friends all is common", where he tied common ownership (such as practiced by his order's style of poverty) with the teachings of classical philosophers and Christ.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Willinsky |first1=John |title=Make Haste Slowly: Aldus and Erasmus, Printers and Scholars |url=https://aldine.lib.sfu.ca/willinsky-make-haste-slowly |website=Aldus |publisher=Simon Fraser University}}</ref>

His main Catholic opposition was from scholars in the mendicant orders. He purported that "[[Francis of Assisi|Saint Francis]] came lately to me in a dream and thanked me for chastising them."<ref>Letter to Charles Utenhove (1523)</ref> After his lifetime, scholars of mendicant orders have sometimes disputed Erasmus as hyperbolic and ill-informed. A 20th-century [[Benedictine]] scholar wrote of him as "all sail and no rudder".<ref name=seaver/>{{rp|357}}

Erasmus did also have significant support and contact with reform-minded friars, including [[Franciscans]] such as Jean Vitrier and [[Cardinal Cisneros]], and Dominicans such as [[Cardinal Cajetan]], the former master of the [[Order of Preachers]].

====Protestant reform====
The early reformers built their theology on Erasmus' philological analyses of specific verses in the New Testament: repentance over penance (the basis of the first thesis of the Luther's [[95 Theses]]), justification by imputation, grace as favour or clemency, faith as hoping trust,<ref name=green>{{cite journal |last1=Green |first1=Lowell C. |title=The Influence of Erasmus upon Melanchthon, Luther and the Formula of Concord in the Doctrine of Justification |journal=Church History |date=1974 |volume=43 |issue=2 |pages=183–200 
|jstor=3163951 |s2cid=170458328 |doi=10.2307/3163951 |issn=0009-6407}}</ref> human transformation over reformation, congregation over church, mystery over sacrament, etc. In Erasmus' view, they went too far, downplayed Sacred Tradition such as Patristic interpretations, and irresponsibly fomented bloodshed.

Erasmus was one of many scandalized by the sale of indulgences to fund Pope Leo X's projects. His view, given in a 1518 letter to [[John Colet]], was less theological than political: "The Roman curia has abandoned any sense of shame. What could be more shameless than these constant indulgences? And now they put up war against the Turks as a pretext, when their aim really is to drive the Spaniards from Naples."<ref name=letters594/>

=====Increasing disagreement with Luther=====
[[File:Cranach, Portraits of Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5|Portraits of [[Martin Luther]] (left) and [[Philip Melanchthon]] by [[Lucas Cranach the Elder]]]]
Erasmus and Luther impacted each other greatly. Each had misgivings about each other from the beginning (Erasmus on Luther's rash and antagonistic character, Luther on Erasmus' focus on morality rather than grace) but strategically agreed not to be negative about the other in public.

Noting Luther's criticisms of corruption in the Church, Erasmus  described Luther to Pope Leo X as "a mighty trumpet of gospel truth" while agreeing, "It is clear that many of the reforms for which Luther calls" (e.g., on the sale of indulgences) "are urgently needed."<ref name="Galli, Mark 2000, p. 344">Galli, Mark, and Olsen, Ted. ''131 Christians Everyone Should Know''. Nashville: Holman Reference, 2000, p. 344.</ref> However, behind the scenes Erasmus forbade his publisher Froben from handling the works of Luther<ref name=serikoff>{{cite journal |last1=Serikoff |first1=Nicolaj|title=The Concept of Scholar-Publisher in Renaissance: Johannes Froben |journal=Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences |date=2004 |volume=90 |issue=1 |pages=53–69 |jstor=24530877 |issn=0043-0439}}</ref>{{rp|64}} and tried to keep the reform movement focused on institutional rather than theological issues, yet he also privately wrote to authorities to prevent Luther's persecution. In the words of one historian, "at this earlier period he was more concerned with the fate of Luther than his theology."<ref name=kleinhans>{{cite journal |last1=Kleinhans |first1=Robert G. |title=Luther and Erasmus, Another Perspective |journal=Church History |date=1970 |volume=39 |issue=4 |pages=459–469 |doi=10.2307/3162926 |jstor=3162926 |s2cid=162208956  |issn=0009-6407}}</ref>

In 1520, Erasmus wrote that "Luther ought to be answered and not crushed."<ref>Letter to Louis Marlianus, 25 March 1520</ref> However, the publication of Luther's ''[[On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church]]'' (October 1520),<ref>{{cite web |title=Erasmus – Dutch Humanist, Protestant Challenge |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erasmus-Dutch-humanist/The-Protestant-challenge |website=Encyclopelædia Britannica |language=en |access-date=21 June 2023 |archive-date=21 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230621053941/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Erasmus-Dutch-humanist/The-Protestant-challenge |url-status=live }}</ref> which largely repudiated Church teaching on sacraments,<ref name=marquis>{{cite thesis |last1=Marquis |first1=Todd A. |title=From penance to repentance: themes of forgiveness in the early English reformation |date=February 2016 |publisher=University of Warwick |url=http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/82158 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|82}} and his subsequent bellicosity drained Erasmus' and many humanists' sympathy, even more as Christians became partisans and the partisans took to violence.

Luther hoped for his cooperation in a work which seemed only the natural outcome of Erasmus' own,<ref group=note>"In the first years of the Reformation many thought that Luther was only carrying out the program of Erasmus, and this was the opinion of those strict Catholics who from the outset of the great conflict included Erasmus in their attacks on Luther." [[wikisource:Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Desiderius Erasmus|''Catholic Encyclopedia'']]</ref> and spoke with admiration of Erasmus's superior learning. In their early correspondence, Luther expressed boundless admiration for all Erasmus had done in the cause of a sound and reasonable Christianity and urged him to join the Lutheran party. Erasmus declined to commit himself, arguing his usual "small target" excuse, that to do so would endanger the cause of {{lang|la|[[Humanitas#Classical origins of term|bonae litterae]]}}{{refn|group=note|An expression Erasmus coined. ''[[:wikt:bonus#Latin|Bonae]]'' connotes more than just good, but also moral, honest and brave literature. Such ''sound learning'' encompassed both sacred literature ({{langx|la|sacrae litterae}}), namely patristic writings and sacred scriptures ({{langx|la|sacrae scripturae}}), and profane literature ({{langx|la|prophanae litterae}}) by classical pagan authors.<ref name=vankooten2024>{{cite journal |last1=van Kooten |first1=George |last2=Payne |first2=Matthew |last3=Rex |first3=Richard |last4=Bloemendal |first4=Jan |title=Erasmus' Cambridge Years (1511–1514): The Execution of Erasmus' Christian Humanist Programme, His Epitaph for Lady Margaret's Tomb in Westminster Abbey (1512), and His Failed Attempt to Obtain the Lady Margaret's Professorship in the Face of Scholastic Opposition |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=6 March 2024 |volume=44 |issue=1 |pages=33–102 |doi=10.1163/18749275-04401002|doi-access=free }}</ref>}}<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Cummings |first1=Brian |title=Erasmus and the Invention of Literature |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=1 January 2013 |volume=33 |issue=1 |pages=22–54 |doi=10.1163/18749275-13330103}}</ref>  which he regarded as one of his purposes in life. Only as an independent scholar could he hope to influence the reform of religion. When Erasmus declined to support him, the "straightforward" Luther became angered that Erasmus was avoiding the responsibility due either to cowardice or a lack of purpose.

However, any hesitancy on the part of Erasmus may have stemmed not from lack of courage or conviction, but rather from a concern over the mounting disorder and violence of the reform movement. To [[Philip Melanchthon]] in 1524 he wrote:

{{quote|I know nothing of your church; at the very least it contains people who will, I fear, overturn the whole system and drive the princes into using force to restrain good men and bad alike. The gospel, the word of God, faith, Christ, and Holy Spirit – these words are always on their lips; look at their lives and they speak quite another language.<ref>{{cite book| chapter=Letter of 6 September 1524| title= Collected Works of Erasmus| year= 1992 | publisher=University of Toronto Press| volume=10| isbn= 0-8020-5976-7 |page= 380 | chapter-url= https://books.google.com/books?id=bYVEgXbiunkC&pg=PA380}}</ref>}}

Catholic theologian George Chantraine notes that, where Luther quotes Luke 11:21 "He that is not with me is against me", Erasmus takes Mark 9:40 "For he that is not against us, is on our part."<ref name=kinney>{{cite journal |last1=Kinney |first1=Daniel |title=Georges Chantraine, S. J., Erasme et Luther: Libre et serf arbitre, etude Historique et Theologique. Paris: Éditions Lethielleux / Presses Universitaires de Namur, 1981. XLV + 503 pp. in-8°. 270 Fr |type=book review |journal=Moreana |date=February 1983 |volume=20 |issue=77 |pages=85–88 |doi=10.3366/more.1983.20.1.22}}</ref>{{rp|86}}

Though he sought to remain accommodative in doctrinal disputes, each side accused him of siding with the other, perhaps because of his perceived influence and what they regarded as his dissembling neutrality,<ref group=note>Future cardinal [[Aleander]], his former friend and roommate at the [[Aldine Press]], wrote "The poison of Erasmus has a much more dangerous effect than that of Luther". [[wikisource:Catholic Encyclopedia (1913)/Desiderius Erasmus|''Catholic Encyclopedia'']]</ref> which he regarded as peacemaking [[Accommodation (religion)#Christian accommodation|accommodation]]:

{{Blockquote|text=I detest dissension because it goes both against the teachings of Christ and against a secret inclination of nature. I doubt that either side in the dispute can be suppressed without grave loss.
|source=''On Free Will''<ref name="Galli, Mark 2000, p. 344"/>}}

=====Dispute on free will=====
{{Main|De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio}}
{{Further | Works of Erasmus#On Free Will (1524)}}
By 1523, and first suggested in a letter from Henry VIII, Erasmus had been convinced that Luther's ideas on necessity/free will were a subject of core disagreement deserving a public airing, and strategized with friends and correspondents<ref>{{cite web |last1=Emerton |first1=Ephraim |title=Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47517/47517-h/47517-h.htm#FNanchor_152 |website=Project Guttenberg |access-date=30 April 2023 |archive-date=30 April 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230430060431/https://www.gutenberg.org/files/47517/47517-h/47517-h.htm#FNanchor_152 |url-status=live }}</ref> on how to respond with proper moderation<ref>{{cite book |last1=Alfsvåg |first1=Knut |title=The Identity of Theology (Dissertation) |date=October 1995 |pages=6, 7 |url=https://www.alfsvag.com/onewebmedia/IdentityofTheology.pdf}}</ref> without making the situation worse for all, especially for the humanist reform agenda. He eventually chose a [[De libero arbitrio diatribe sive collatio#Background|campaign]] that involved an irenical 'dialogue' ''The Inquisition of Faith'',  a positive, evangelical model sermon ''On the Measureless Mercy of God'', and a gently critical 'diatribe' ''On Free Will''.

The publication of his brief book ''On Free Will'' initiated what has been called "The greatest debate of that era",<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Costello |first1=Gabriel J. |title=Erasmus, Luther and the Free Will Debate: Influencing the Philosophy of Management 500 Years on-whether we realise it or not! |journal=Conference: Philosophy of Management Conference University of Greenwich |date=2018 |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325127081 |access-date=24 October 2023}}</ref> which still has ramifications today.<ref name=massing>Massing, 2022 ([https://www.harpercollins.com/products/fatal-discord-michael-massing?variant=39387603533858  publisher's abstract])</ref> They bypassed discussion on reforms which they both agreed on in general, and instead dealt with authority and biblical justifications of [[synergism]] versus [[monergism]] in relation to salvation.

Luther responded with [[w:On the Bondage of the Will|''On the Bondage of the Will'']] ({{lang|la|De servo arbitrio}}) (1525).

Erasmus replied to this in his lengthy two-volume ''Hyperaspistes'' and other works, which Luther ignored. Apart from the perceived moral failings among followers of the Reformers—an important sign for Erasmus—he also dreaded any change in doctrine, citing the long history of the Church as a bulwark against innovation. He put the matter bluntly to Luther:

{{Blockquote|text=We are dealing with this: Would a stable mind depart from the opinion handed down by so many men famous for holiness and miracles, depart from the decisions of the Church, and commit our souls to the faith of someone like you who has sprung up just now with a few followers, although the leading men of your flock do not agree either with you or among themselves – indeed though you do not even agree with yourself, since in this same ''Assertion''<ref>A reference to Luther's {{lang|la|Assertio omnium articulorum per bullam Leonis X. novissimam damnatorum}} (''Assertion of all the Articles condemned by the Bull of Leo X'', 1520), [[Weimar edition of Martin Luther's works|WA]] VII.</ref> you say one thing in the beginning and something else later on, recanting what you said before.|source=''Hyperaspistes'' I<ref>''Collected Works of Erasmus, Controversies: De Libero Arbitrio / Hyperaspistes I'', Peter Macardle, Clarence H. Miller, trans., Charles Trinkhaus, ed., University of Toronto Press, 1999, {{ISBN|978-0-8020-4317-7}} Vol. 76, p. 203</ref>}}

Continuing his chastisement of Luther – and undoubtedly put off by the notion of there being "no pure interpretation of Scripture anywhere but in Wittenberg"<ref>{{cite book|author=István Pieter Bejczy|title=Erasmus and the Middle Ages: The Historical Consciousness of a Christian Humanist|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=MxLV1yVyT7sC&pg=PA172|year=2001|publisher=Brill|isbn=90-04-12218-4|page=172}}</ref> – Erasmus touches upon another important point of the controversy:

{{Blockquote|text=You stipulate that we should not ask for or accept anything but Holy Scripture, but you do it in such a way as to require that we permit you to be its sole interpreter, renouncing all others. Thus the victory will be yours if we allow you to be not the steward but the lord of Holy Scripture.|source=''Hyperaspistes'', Book I<ref>''Hyperaspistes'', Book I, ''Collected Works of Erasmus'', Vol. 76, pp. 204–05.</ref>}}

===== "False evangelicals" =====
In 1529, Erasmus wrote "An epistle against those who falsely boast they are Evangelicals" to [[Gerard Geldenhouwer|Gerardus Geldenhouwer]] (former Bishop of Utrecht, also schooled at Deventer).

{{Blockquote| text=You declaim bitterly against the luxury of priests, the ambition of bishops, the tyranny of the Roman Pontiff, and the babbling of the sophists; against our prayers, fasts, and Masses; and you are not content to retrench the abuses that may be in these things, but must needs abolish them entirely.<ref name=preserved>''The Reformers on the Reformation (foreign),'' London, Burns & Oates, 1881, [https://archive.org/stream/a636947900londuoft#page/12/mode/2up/search/vulturius+neocomus pp. 13–14]. See also ''Erasmus'', Preserved Smith, 1923, Harper & Brothers, [https://books.google.com/books?id=l0obJ9XfPMUC&pg=PA391 pp. 391–92].</ref>}}

Here Erasmus complains of the doctrines and morals of the Reformers, applying the same critique he had made about public Scholastic disputations:

{{Blockquote|
Look around on this 'Evangelical' generation,<ref>{{lang|la|Circumspice populum istum Euangelicum...}} Latin text in Erasmus, [https://books.google.com/books?id=WIhDAAAAcAAJ&pg=PT174 ''Opera Omnia''] (1706), vol. 10, 1578BC.</ref> and observe whether amongst them less indulgence is given to luxury, lust, or avarice, than amongst those whom you so detest. Show me any one person who by that Gospel has been reclaimed from drunkenness to sobriety, from fury and passion to meekness, from avarice to liberality, from reviling to well-speaking, from wantonness to modesty. I will show you a great many who have become worse through following it. [...] The solemn prayers of the Church are abolished, but now there are very many who never pray at all. [...]

I have never entered their conventicles, but I have sometimes seen them returning from their sermons, the countenances of all of them displaying rage, and wonderful ferocity, as though they were animated by the evil spirit. [...]

Who ever beheld in their meetings any one of them shedding tears, smiting his breast, or grieving for his sins? [...] Confession to the priest is abolished, but very few now confess to God. [...] They have fled from Judaism that they may become Epicureans.
|source=''Epistola contra quosdam qui se falso iactant evangelicos.''<ref>{{cite book |editor=Manfred Hoffmann| title=Controversies | publisher=University of Toronto Press |year=  2010 | isbn=978-1-4426-6007-6 | doi=10.3138/9781442660076 | page=}}</ref>}}

===== Other=====
According to historian Christopher Ocker, the early reformers "needed tools that let their theological distinctions pose as commonplaces in a textual theology; [...] Erasmus provided the tools", but this tendentious distinction-making, reminiscent of the recent excesses of Scholasticism to Erasmus' eyes, "was precisely what Erasmus disliked about Luther" and "Protestant polemicists".<ref name=ocker2022/>

Erasmus wrote books against aspects of the teaching, impacts or threats of several other Reformers:<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Regier |first1=Willis |title=Review of Erasmus, Controversies: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 78, trans. Peter Matheson, Peter McCardle, Garth Tissol, and James Tracy. |journal=Bryn Mawr Review of Comparative Literature |date=1 January 2011 |volume=9 |issue=2 |url=https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/vol9/iss2/5 |access-date=6 August 2023 |issn=1523-5734 |archive-date=6 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230806082322/https://repository.brynmawr.edu/bmrcl/vol9/iss2/5/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

* [[Ulrich von Hutten]]: {{lang|la|[[#A Sponge to wipe away the Spray of Hutten (1523)|Spongia adversus aspergines Hutteni]]}} (1523)
* [[Martin Bucer]]: ''Responsio ad fratres Inferioris Germaniae ad epistolam apologeticam incerto autoreproditam'' (1530)
* {{ill|Heinrich Eppendorf|de}}: ''Admonitio adversus mendacium et obstrectationem'' (1530)

However, Erasmus maintained friendly relations with other Protestants, notably the irenic [[Melanchthon]] and [[Albrecht Dürer]].

A common accusation, supposedly started by antagonistic monk-theologians,{{refn|group=note|Namely Egmondanus, the Louvain Carmelite Nicolaas Baechem.<ref name=ocker2022/>}} made Erasmus responsible for Martin Luther and the Reformation: "Erasmus laid the egg, and Luther hatched it." Erasmus wittily dismissed the charge, claiming that Luther had "hatched a different bird entirely".<ref name=renolds>Reynolds, Terrence M. (1977). [http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/reynoldserasmusresponsibleluther.pdf "Was Erasmus Responsible for Luther? A Study of the Relationship of the Two Reformers and Their Clash Over the Question of the Will"]. ''Concordia Theological Journal''. p. 2. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230326031149/http://www.ctsfw.net/media/pdfs/reynoldserasmusresponsibleluther.pdf |date=26 March 2023 }}. Reynolds references Arthur Robert Pennington (1875), [https://archive.org/details/lifeandcharacte00penngoog/page/n242 ''The Life and Character of Erasmus''], p. 219.</ref> Erasmus-reader [[Peter Canisius]] commented: "Certainly there was no lack of eggs for Luther to hatch."<ref name=canisius>{{cite book |first=Himer M.|last= Pabel|chapter= Praise and Blame: Peter Canisius's ambivalent assessment of Erasmus |editor-last1=Enenkel |editor-first1=Karl Alfred Engelbert |title=The reception of Erasmus in the early modern period |date=2013 |page=139 |doi=10.1163/9789004255630_007 | isbn=978-90-04-25563-0}}</ref><ref group=note>Another commentator: "Erasmus laid the egg that Luther broke." {{cite web |last1=Midmore |first1=Brian |title=The differences between Erasmus and Luther in their approach to reform |url=http://www.passionforgrace.org.uk/Erasluther.html |access-date=3 December 2023 |date=7 February 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070207041537/http://www.passionforgrace.org.uk/Erasluther.html |archive-date=7 February 2007 }}</ref>

=== Philosophy ===
[[File:Hans Holbein d.J. und Werkstatt - Erasmus von Rotterdam.jpg|thumbnail|Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger and workshop]]
Erasmus has a problematic standing in the history of philosophy: whether he should be called a philosopher at all,<ref group="note">For Craig R. Thompson, Erasmus cannot be called philosopher in the technical sense, since he disdained formal logic and metaphysics and cared only for moral philosophy. Similarly, John Monfasani reminds us that Erasmus never claimed to be a philosopher, was not trained as a philosopher, and wrote no explicit works of philosophy, although he repeatedly engaged in controversies that crossed the boundary from philosophy to theology. His relation to philosophy bears further scrutiny. {{Cite web |last=MacPhail |first=Eric |title=Desiderius Erasmus (1468?—1536) |url=https://iep.utm.edu/erasmus/#H2 |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=28 July 2023 |archive-date=17 August 2010 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100817120759/https://iep.utm.edu/erasmus/#H2 |url-status=live }}</ref> (as, indeed, some question whether he should be considered a theologian either<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|205}}).  Erasmus deemed himself to be a rhetorician (rhetoric being the art of argumentation to find what was most probably true on questions where logic could not provide certainty)<ref group=note>"Humanists regarded it (rhetoric) as a practical way to investigate questions on which dialectical argumentation based on logic had proved unable to produce certitude. Rhetoric was the procedure to be used in pursuit of conclusions that could not be proved beyond doubt but were the most probable choice among the alternatives explored." {{cite web |last1=Nauert |first1=Charles |title=Desiderius Erasmus |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archIves/spr2010/entries/erasmus/#RheSke |website=plato.stanford.edu |language=en}}</ref> or grammarian rather than a philosopher.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Traninger |first1=Anita |title=Erasmus and the Philosophers |journal=A Companion to Erasmus |date=25 January 2023 |pages=45–67 |doi=10.1163/9789004539686_005|isbn=978-90-04-53968-6 }}</ref>{{rp|66}} He was particularly influenced by satirist and rhetorician [[Lucian]].<ref group=note>"According to Erasmus, Lucian's laughter is the most appropriate instrument to guide pupils towards moral seriousness because it is the denial of every peremptory and dogmatic point of view and, therefore, the image of a joyful {{lang|la|pietas}} ("true religion ought to be the most cheerful thing in the world"; {{lang|la|De recta pronuntiatione}}, CWE 26, 385). By teaching the relativity of communicative situations and the variability of temperaments, the laughter resulting from the art of rhetoric comes to resemble the most sincere content of Christian morality, based on tolerance and loving persuasion." {{cite journal |last1=Bacchi |first1=Elisa |title=Hercules, Silenus and the Fly: Lucian's Rhetorical Paradoxes in Erasmus' Ethics |journal=Philosophical Readings Online Journal of Philosophy |date=2019 |volume=CI |issue=2 |url=https://www.academia.edu/38549692 |access-date=20 October 2023 |archive-date=1 November 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231101204154/https://www.academia.edu/38549692 |url-status=live }}</ref> Erasmus' writings shifted "an intellectual culture from logical disputation about things to quarrels about texts, contexts, and words".<ref name=ocker>{{cite journal |last1=Ocker |first1=Christopher |title=Review: Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 73: Controversies: Apologia de 'In Principio Erat Sermo', Apologia de Loco 'Omnes quidem', De Esu Carnium, De Delectu Ciborum Scholia, Responsio ad Collationes, edited by Drysdall, Denis L. |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=2017 |volume=37 |issue=2 |pages=229–231 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03702007}}</ref>

====Classical====
Erasmus syncretistically took phrases, ideas and motifs from many classical philosophers to furnish discussions of Christian themes:{{refn|group=note|According to historian Jamie Gianoutsos, Erasmus was not cherry-picking, in the way of St Augustine's 'spoiling the Egyptians', i.e., acquiring what is valuable from the pagan heritage for the benefit of Christianity. "Erasmus, in contrast, had expressed reserve and even cautious criticism for Augustine's views while betraying great enthusiasm for St Jerome and his metaphor of the freeman who marries the captive slave to obtain her freedom. Christianity [...] had wed itself to the classical heritage to enhance and liberate it (i.e., that heritage) from its pagan ethos".<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Gianoutsos |first1=Jamie A. |title=Sapientia and Stultitia in John Colet's Commentary on First Corinthians |journal=Reformation & Renaissance Review |date=4 May 2019 |volume=21 |issue=2 |pages=109–125 |doi=10.1080/14622459.2019.1612979|s2cid=182939353 }}</ref>}} academics have identified aspects of his thought as variously [[Platonist]] (duality),<ref group=note>{{cite book |quote=Erasmus does not engage with Plato as a philosopher, at least not in any rigorous sense, but rather as a rhetorician of spiritual experience, the instigator of a metaphorical system which coheres effectively with Pauline Christianity.|first= Dominic |last=Baker-Smith|title=Platonism and the English Imagination |chapter= Uses of Plato by Erasmus and More  |date=1994 |pages=86–99 |doi=10.1017/CBO9780511553806.010  |isbn=978-0-521-40308-5 |quote-page=92}}</ref> [[Cynicism (philosophy)|Cynical]] ([[asceticism]]),<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Laursen |first1=J. C. |title=Erasmus and Christian Cynicism as Cultural Context for Toleration |journal=Theological Foundations of Modern Constitutional Theory|publisher= Nantes Institute for Advanced Study |date=2016 |url=https://www.iea-nantes.fr/rtefiles/File/Ateliers/2016%20Hong/erasmus-and-christian-cynicism-j-c-laursen.pdf |access-date=8 August 2023}}</ref>
<ref name=dogs>{{cite journal |last1=Roberts |first1=Hugh |title=Dogs' Tales: Representations of Ancient Cynicism in French Renaissance Texts |journal=Faux Titre Online| volume= 279|date=1 January 2006 |doi=10.1163/9789401202985_006|s2cid=243905013 }}</ref> [[Stoicism|Stoic]] ([[adiaphora]]),<ref name=dealy>{{cite book |last1=Dealy |first1=Ross |title=The Stoic Origins of Erasmus' Philosophy of Christ |date=2017 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |jstor=10.3138/j.ctt1kgqwzz |isbn=978-1-4875-0061-0}}</ref> [[Epicurean]] ([[ataraxia]],<ref group=note>"Despite a lack of formal philosophical training and an antipathy to medieval [[scholasticism]], Erasmus possessed not only a certain familiarity with [[Thomas Aquinas]], but also close knowledge of [[Plato]] and [[Aristotle]]. Erasmus' interest in some Platonic motifs is well known. But the most consistent philosophical theme in Erasmus' writings from his earliest to his latest was that of the [[Epicurean]] goal of peace of mind, ''[[ataraxia]]''. Erasmus, in fact, combined Christianity with a nuanced Epicurean morality. This Epicureanism, when combined in turn with a commitment to the {{lang|la|[[Sensus fidelium#Use by the magisterium|consensus Ecclesiae]]}} as well as with an allergy to dogmatic formulations and an appreciation of the [[Greek Fathers]], ultimately rendered Erasmus alien to [[Martin Luther|Luther]] and [[Protestantism]] though they agreed on much." Abstract of {{cite journal |last1=Monfasani |first1=John |title=Twenty-fifth Annual Margaret Mann Phillips Lecture: Erasmus and the Philosophers |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=2012 |volume=32 |issue=1 |pages=47–68 |doi=10.1163/18749275-00000005}}</ref>  pleasure as virtue),<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Leushuis |first1=Reinier |title=The Paradox of Christian Epicureanism in Dialogue: Erasmus' Colloquy The Epicurean |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=2015 |volume=35 |issue=2 |pages=113–136 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03502003}}</ref> realist/non-voluntarist,<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2010/12/a-much-neglected-basic-choice-in-theology/|title=A Much Neglected Basic Choice in Theology|first=Roger E.|last=Olson|date=26 December 2010|access-date=2 December 2023|archive-date=19 January 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240119154826/https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2010/12/a-much-neglected-basic-choice-in-theology/|url-status=live}}</ref>
and [[Isocrates|Isocratic]] (rhetoric, political education, syncretism).<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Innerd |first1=W. L. |title=The contribution of Isocrates to Western educational thought |date=1969 |publisher=Durham University |url=http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9599/ |type=Masters |access-date=21 December 2023 |archive-date=13 April 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210413053157/http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/9599/ |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|19}} However, his Christianized version of [[Epicureanism]] is regarded as his own.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Linkels |first1=Nicole |title=Philosophy and Religion in service of the Philosophia Christi |journal=Erasmus Student Journal of Philosophy |date=2013 |issue=5 |page=48 |url=https://www.eur.nl/sites/corporate/files/ESJP.5.2013.04.Linkels.pdf |access-date=19 July 2023}}</ref>

Erasmus was sympathetic to a kind of epistemological ([[Ciceronian]]<ref>{{cite web |last1=Thorsrud |first1=Harald |title=Cicero: Academic Skepticism |url=https://iep.utm.edu/cicero-academic-skepticism/ |website=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |access-date=21 April 2024 |archive-date=13 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240313225043/https://iep.utm.edu/cicero-academic-skepticism/ |url-status=live }}</ref> not [[Cartesian doubt|Cartesian]])<ref name=boyle/>{{rp|50}} [[Pyrrhonism|Scepticism]]:{{refn|group=note|Historian Fritz Caspari quipped that [[Machiavelli]] "appears as a sceptic whose premise is the badness of man", while Erasmus is a sceptic whose general premise is "man is or can be made good".<ref name=caspari>{{cite journal |last1=Caspari |first1=Fritz |title=Erasmus on the Social Functions of Christian Humanism |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |date=1947 |volume=8 |issue=1 |pages=78–106 |doi=10.2307/2707442 |jstor=2707442  |issn=0022-5037}}</ref> }}

{{Blockquote|A Sceptic is not someone who doesn't care to know what is true or false&nbsp;... but rather someone who does not make a final decision easily or fight to the death for his own opinion, but rather accepts as probable what someone else accepts as certain&nbsp;... I explicitly exclude from Scepticism whatever is set forth in Sacred Scripture or whatever has been handed down to us by the authority of the Church. |source= Erasmus<ref>{{cite web |last1=Rummel |first1=Erika |last2=MacPhail |first2=Eric |title=Desiderius Erasmus |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erasmus/#Meth |website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |date=2021 |access-date=25 August 2023 |archive-date=11 December 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171211081603/https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/erasmus/#Meth |url-status=live }}</ref>}}

Historian Kirk Essary has noted that from his earliest to last works Erasmus "regularly denounced the Stoics as specifically unchristian in their hardline position and advocacy of {{lang|la|apatheia}}": warm affection and an appropriately fiery heart being inalienable parts of human sincerity;<ref name=fiery>{{cite journal |last1=Essary |first1=Kirk |title=Fiery Heart and Fiery Tongue: Emotion in Erasmus' Ecclesiastes |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=2016 |volume=36 |issue=1 |pages=5–34 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03601014}}</ref>{{rp|17}} however, historian Ross Dealy sees Erasmus' decrial of other non-gentle "perverse affections" as having Stoical roots.<ref name=dealy/>

Erasmus wrote in terms of a tri-partite nature of man, with the soul the seat of free will:

{{Blockquote|The body is purely material; the spirit is purely divine; the soul&nbsp;... is tossed back and forwards between the two according to whether it resists or gives way to the temptations of the flesh. The spirit makes us gods; the body makes us beasts; the soul makes us men.|Erasmus<ref name=laytam/>
}}

According to theologian [[George van Kooten]], Erasmus was the first modern scholar "to note the similarities between Plato's ''Symposium'' and John's Gospel", first in the ''Enchiridion'' then in the ''Adagia'', pre-dating other scholarly interest by 400 years.<ref name="vanKooten">{{cite web |last1=van Kooten |first1=George |title=Three Symposia |url=https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/inaugural-lecture-george-van-kooten-three-symposia.pdf |website=Faculty of Divinity |publisher=University of Cambridge |access-date=5 August 2023 |archive-date=11 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230811151428/https://www.divinity.cam.ac.uk/system/files/documents/inaugural-lecture-george-van-kooten-three-symposia.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>
<ref>{{cite book |contributor-first=Harold W. |contributor-last=Attridge |contribution=Plato, Plutarch, and John: Three Symposia about Love |last1=Townsend |first1=Philippa |last2=Denzey Lewis |first2=Nicola |last3=Jenott |first3=Lance |last4=Iricinschi |first4=Eduard |title=Beyond the Gnostic Gospels: Studies Building on the Work of Elaine Pagels |series=Studies and Texts in Antiquity and Christianity |volume=82 |date=2013 |publisher=Mohr Siebec |location=Tübingen}}</ref>

====Anti-scholasticism====
[[File:Thomas van Aquino inspireert zich op de geschriften van andere theologen Titelpagina voor D. Augvstini et SS. Patrvm de Libero Arbitrio Interpres Thomifticus Contra Ianfenitas (titel op object), RP-P-OB-7416.jpg |thumb|Thomas Aquinas inspiring himself on Free Will from the writings of previous theologians such as Augustine (1652)]]

{{blockquote|text=Erasmus did not have a metaphysical bone in his frail body, and had no real feeling for the philosophical concerns of scholastic theology. |source=Lewis W. Spitz<ref name=spitz>{{cite journal |last1=Spitz |first1=Lewis W. |title=Desiderius Erasmus |journal=Reformers in Profile: [essays] |date=1967 |url=https://archive.org/details/reformers-in-profile/page/n67/mode/2up}}</ref>{{rp|70}} }}

He usually eschewed metaphysical, epistemological and logical philosophy as found in [[Peripatetic school|Aristotle]]:<ref group=note>In the ''Adagia'', Erasmus quotes Aristotle 304 times, "making extensive use of the moral, philosophical, political, and rhetorical writings as well as those on natural philosophy, while completely shunning the logical works that formed the basis for scholastic philosophy". {{cite book |last1=Mann Phillips |first1=Margaret |title=The 'Adages' of Erasmus. A Study with Translations |date=1964 |publisher=Cambridge University Press}} Cited by {{cite book |last1=Traninger |first1=Anita |chapter=Erasmus and the Philosophers |title=A Companion to Erasmus |date=25 January 2023 |pages=45–67 |doi=10.1163/9789004539686_005|isbn=978-90-04-53968-6 }}</ref> in particular the curriculum and systematic methods of the post-Aquinas Schoolmen ([[Scholastics]]){{refn|group=note|"However learned the works of those men may be, however 'subtle' and, if it please them, however 'seraphic', it must still be admitted that the Gospels and Epistles are the supreme authority." Erasmus, ''Paraclesis'', cited by Sider<ref name=sider>{{cite journal |last1=Sider |first1=Robert |editor-first1=Robert D. |editor-last1=Sider |title=Erasmus on the New Testament |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=2 April 2020 |doi=10.3138/9781487533250  |publisher=University of Toronto Press |isbn=978-1-4875-3325-0 |s2cid=241298542 |language=en}}</ref>}} and what he regarded as their frigid, counter-productive [[Aristoteleanism]]:{{refn|group=note|Erasmus followed the tradition of proto-humanist [[Petrarch]], summarized as: "Aristotle was spiritually deficient, because although he could define virtue, his words lacked the power to motivate men to lead virtuous lives. It was not possible to know God adequately in this life, but it was possible to love him, which made virtue far more important than knowledge."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Hitchcock |first1=James |title=The Age of Reformations by James Hitchcock |journal=Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity |url=http://touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=30-05-036-f |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|39}} }} "What has Aristotle to do with Christ?"<ref>{{cite book |title=The Erasmus Reader |chapter=Letter to Dorp |date=1990 |pages=169–194 |chapter-url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3138/j.ctt1287x95.12 |publisher=University of Toronto Press|jstor=10.3138/j.ctt1287x95.12 |isbn=978-0-8020-6806-4 }}</ref>{{refn|group=note|A narrowing of [[Tertullian#Other beliefs|Tertullian]]'s "What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?"}}

{{blockquote |They can deal with any text of scripture as with a nose of wax, and knead it into what shape best suits their interest.|source= ''[[The Praise of Folly]]''<ref>{{cite book |last1=Foote |first1=George |title=Flowers of Freethought |date=1894 |url=https://web.seducoahuila.gob.mx/biblioweb/upload/FLOWERS_OF_FREETHOUGHT.pdf}}</ref>{{rp|75}}}}

Erasmus held that academics must avoid philosophical factionalism as an offense against Christian concord, in order to "make the whole world Christian".<ref>{{cite book |title=Collected works of Erasmus: an introduction with Erasmus' prefaces and ancillary writings |date=2019 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto, Buffalo (New Jersey), London |isbn=978-0-8020-9222-9}}</ref>{{rp|851}} Indeed, Erasmus thought that Scholastic philosophy actually distracted participants from their proper focus on immediate morality,<ref group=note>Rice puts it "Philosophy is felt to be a veil of pretense over an unethical reality&nbsp;... pious disquisitions cannot excuse immorality." {{cite journal |last1=Rice |first1=Eugene F. |title=Erasmus and the Religious Tradition, 1495–1499 |journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |date=1950 |volume=11 |issue=4 |pages=387–411 |doi=10.2307/2707589 |jstor=2707589  |issn=0022-5037}}</ref><ref group=note>"For I am ready to swear that Epimenides came to life again in Scotus." ''Erasmus to Thomas Grey'' Nichols, ep. 59; Allen, ep 64</ref> unless used moderately,{{refn|group=note|"Like [[Jean Gerson]] before him, he recommended that (scholastic method) be practiced with greater moderation and that it be complemented by the new philological and patristic knowledge that was becoming available."<ref name=origenscheck>{{cite book |last1=Scheck |first1=Thomas P. |title=Erasmus's Life of Origen |chapter=Erasmus's Program for Theological Renewal |date=2016 |pages=1–42 |chapter-url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt19rmcgd.7 |publisher=Catholic University of America Press|doi=10.2307/j.ctt19rmcgd.7 |jstor=j.ctt19rmcgd.7 |isbn=978-0-8132-2801-3 }}</ref>{{rp|26}} }} and by "excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation."<ref group=note>"I find that in comparison with the Fathers of the Church our present-day theologians are a pathetic group. Most of them lack the elegance, the charm of language, and the style of the Fathers. Content with Aristotle, they treat the mysteries of revelation in the tangled fashion of the logician. Excluding the Platonists from their commentaries, they strangle the beauty of revelation." ''Enchiridion'', Erasmus, cited by {{cite journal |last1=Markos |first1=Louis A. |title=The Enchiridion of Erasmus |journal=Theology Today |date=April 2007 |volume=64 |issue=1 |doi=10.1177/004057360706400109|s2cid=171469828 |page=86}}</ref> "They are windbags blown up with Aristotle, sausages stuffed with a mass of theoretical definitions, conclusions, and propositions."<ref>Erasmus, ''The Sileni of Alcibiades'' (1517)</ref>

Nevertheless, church historian {{ill|Ernst Wilhelm Kohls|de|lt=Ernst Kohls}} has commented on a certain closeness of Erasmus' thought to [[Thomas Aquinas]]', despite Erasmus' skepticism about runaway Aristotelianism<ref name=cwe23/>{{rp|9}} and his methodological dislike of collections of disconnected sentences for quotation. Ultimately, Erasmus personally owned Aquinas' {{lang|la|[[Summa theologiae]]}}, the {{lang|la|[[Catena aurea]]}} and his commentary on Paul's epistles.<ref name=books>{{cite book |last1=Gulik |first1=Egbertus van |last2=Grayson |first2=J. C. |last3=McConica |first3=James |last4=Trapman |first4=J. |title=Erasmus and his books |date=2018 |publisher=University of Toronto Press |location=Toronto; Buffalo; London |isbn=978-0-8020-3876-0}}</ref>

===={{lang|la|Philosophia Christi}}====
{{rquote|right|Everything in the pagan world that was valiantly done, brilliantly said, ingeniously thought, diligently transmitted, had been prepared by Christ for his society.|source=Erasmus, ''Antibarbari''<ref name=cwe23 />{{rp|9}} }}

(Not to be confused with his Italian contemporary Chrysostom Javelli's {{lang|la|Philosophia Christiana}}.)

Erasmus approached [[Ancient philosophy#Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy|classical philosophers]] theologically and rhetorically: their value was in how they pre-saged, explained or amplified the unique teachings of Christ (particularly the Sermon on the Mount<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|117}}): the {{lang|la|philosophia Christi}}.<ref group=note>"Why don't we all reflect: this must be a marvelous and new philosophy since, in order to reveal it to mortals, he who was God became man". {{cite book |last1=Erasmus |title=Paraclesis |date=1516 |url=https://www.cite-osucc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Erasmus.Paraclesis.1516.pdf |access-date=11 August 2023 |archive-date=11 August 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230811143733/https://www.cite-osucc.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Erasmus.Paraclesis.1516.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>{{refn|group=note|A Lutheran view: "{{lang|la|Philosophia christiana}} as taught by Erasmus has never been factual reality; wherever it was {{lang|la|philosophia}}, it was not {{lang|la|christiana}}; wherever it was {{lang|la|christiana}}, it was not {{lang|la|philosophia}}." [[Karl Barth]]<ref name=ewolf>{{cite journal |last1=Wolf |first1=Erik |title=Religion and Right in the Philosophia Christriana of Erasmus from Rotterdam |journal=UC Law Journal |date=1 January 1978 |volume=29 |issue=6 |page=1535 |url=https://repository.uclawsf.edu/hastings_law_journal/vol29/iss6/11/ |issn=0017-8322}}</ref>{{rp|1559}} }}  

{{blockquote|A great part of the teaching of Christ is to be found in some of the philosophers, particularly Socrates, Diogenes and Epictetus. But Christ taught it much more fully, and exemplified it better&nbsp;...|source=Erasmus, ''Paraclesis'' }}

In fact, he said, Christ was "the very father of philosophy" ({{lang|la|Anti-Barbieri}}).<ref group=note>Similar to [[John Wycliffe]]'s statement "the greatest philosopher is none other than Christ."{{cite book |last1=Lahey |first1=Stephen Edmund |title=John Wyclif |date=1 May 2009 |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195183313.003.0005}}</ref>

In works such as his ''Enchiridion'', ''The Education of a Christian Prince'' and the ''Colloquies'', Erasmus developed his idea of the {{lang|la|philosophia Christi}}, a life lived according to the teachings of Jesus taken as a spiritual-ethical-social-political-legal<ref name=ewolf/> philosophy:{{refn|group=note|Philosopher Étienne Gilson has noted "Confronted with the same failure of philosophy to rise above the order of formal logic, [[John of Salisbury]] between 1150 and 1180, [[Nicolas of Autrecourt]] and [[Petrach]] in 1360, Erasmus of Rotterdam around 1490, spontaneously conceived a similar method to save Christian faith", i.e. a sceptical-about-scholasticism {{lang|la|ad-fontes}} religious moralism promoting peace and charity.<ref name=gilson>{{cite book |last1=Gilson |first1=Etienne |title=The Unity of Philosophical Experience |year=1999 |orig-year=1st pub. Charles Scribner's Sons 1937 |publisher=Ignatius Press |isbn=978-0-89870-748-9 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|102–107}} }}

{{Blockquote|text=Christ the heavenly teacher has founded a new people on earth,&nbsp;... Having eyes without guile, these folk know no spite or envy; having freely castrated themselves, and aiming at a life of angels while in the flesh, they know no unchaste lust; they know not divorce, since there is no evil they will not endure or turn to the good; they have not the use of oaths, since they neither distrust nor deceive anyone; they know not the hunger for money, since their treasure is in heaven, nor do they itch for empty glory, since they refer all things to the glory of Christ.…these are the new teachings of our founder, such as no school of philosophy has ever brought forth.|source=Erasmus, ''Method of True Theology''}}

In philosopher Étienne Gilson's summary: "the quite precise goal he pursues is to reject Greek philosophy outside of Christianity, into which the Middle Ages introduced Greek philosophy with the risk of corrupting this Christian Wisdom."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Gilson |first1=Étienne |title=Medieval Essays |date=1990 |url=https://archive.org/details/medieval-essays-by-etienne-gilson/page/n17/}}</ref>

Useful "philosophy" needed to be limited to (or re-defined as) the practical and moral: 
{{blockquote|You must realize that 'philosopher' does not mean someone who is clever at dialectics or science but someone who rejects illusory appearance and undauntedly seeks out and follows what is true and good. Being a philosopher is in practice the same as being a Christian; only the terminology is different.|source= Erasmus, ''Anti-Barbieri''}}

===Theology===
Three key distinctive features of the spirituality Erasmus proposed are [[Accommodation (religion)|accommodation]], inverbation, and {{lang|la|scopus christi}}. {{refn|group=note|Accommodation and {{lang|la|scopus christi}} were ideas significant later, in Calvin's theology.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Coetsee |first1=Albert J. |last2=van der Walt |first2=Sarel |last3=Muller |first3=D. Francois |last4=Huijgen |first4=Arnold |last5=van den Brink |first5=Gijsbert |last6=van Alten |first6=H. H. |last7=van den Broeke |first7=Leon |last8=Kotzé |first8=Manitza |last9=Kruger |first9=P. Paul |last10=Potgieter |first10=Raymond M. |last11=Fick |first11=Rikus |last12=Dreyer |first12=Wim |title=The Belgic Confession |date=17 November 2023 |doi=10.4102/aosis.2023.BK448 |isbn=978-1-77995-289-9 |language=en}}</ref>{{rp|231,131}} }}

In the view of literary historian Chester Chapin, Erasmus' tendency of thought was "towards cautious ''dulcification'' of the traditional [Catholic] view".{{refn|group=note|For example, "It is likely that Erasmus rejected the traditional view of Hell as a place of real, material fire. But although he probably conceived of it as a place of mental rather than physical torment,&nbsp;... Erasmus does not appear to reject the eternality of Hell."<ref name=chapin>{{cite journal |last1=Chapin |first1=Chester |title=Alexander Pope: Erasmian Catholic |journal=Eighteenth-Century Studies |date=1973 |volume=6 |issue=4 |pages=411–430 |doi=10.2307/3031577 |jstor=3031577 |issn=0013-2586}}</ref>}}

====Accommodation====
Historian Manfred Hoffmann has described accommodation as "the single most important concept in Erasmus' [[hermeneutic]]".{{refn|group=note|Furthermore, "the role [[Hermeneutics#Allegorical|allegory]] plays in Erasmus' [[exegesis]] is [[Analogy#Catholicism|analogous]] to the crucial place accommodation obtains in his theology".<ref name=hoffmann>{{cite journal |last1=Hoffmann |first1=Manfred |title=Erasmus on Language and Interpretation |journal=Moreana |date=July 1991 |volume=28 |issue=2–3 |pages=1–20 |doi=10.3366/more.1991.28.2-3.4}}</ref>{{rp|7}})}}

For Erasmus, accommodation is a universal concept:{{refn|group=note|name=baker-peace|"This sense of our restricted capacity to handle truth is a basic corollary of his humanism and it provides the grounds for his appeal for toleration. ... Erasmus is less concerned about errors in doctrine than about the mental intransigence with which they may be upheld or opposed. This is not to say that he is indifferent to error, but priority goes to the preservation of a community, the body of Christ".<ref name=baker2006/>}} humans must accommodate each other, must accommodate the church and ''vice versa'', and must take as their model how Christ accommodated the disciples in his interactions with them, and accommodated humans in his [[Incarnation (Christianity)|incarnation]]; which in turn merely reflects the eternal mutual accommodation within the [[Trinity]]. And the primary mechanism of accommodation is language,<ref  group=note>"We see Erasmus' hermeneutic as governed by the idea of language as mediation [...] The dynamics of mediation, central as it is in Erasmus' hermeneutic, informed all aspects of his world view." {{cite book |last1=Hoffmann |first1=Manfred |title=Rhetoric and Theology |date=1994 |publisher=University of Toronto |isbn=978-0-8020-0579-3 |url=https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781487585884_A35159560/preview-9781487585884_A35159560.pdf |access-date=23 February 2024 |archive-date=23 February 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240223001814/https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9781487585884_A35159560/preview-9781487585884_A35159560.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref>{{rp|6}} which mediates between reality and abstraction, which allows disputes of all kinds to be resolved and the gospel to be transmitted:<ref name=hoffmann/> in his New Testament, Erasmus notably translated the Greek ''logos'' in [[John 1:1]] "In the beginning was the Word" more like "In the beginning was Speech:<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jarrott |first1=C. A. L. |title=Erasmus' "In Principio Erat Sermo": A Controversial Translation |journal=Studies in Philology |date=1964 |volume=61 |issue=1 |pages=35–40 |jstor=4173446}}</ref> using Latin ''sermo'' (discourse, conversation, language) not ''verbum'' (word) emphasizing the dynamic and interpersonal communication rather than static principle:{{refn|group=note|"Just as the Word of God
is the image of the Father, so too, human speech is a certain image of the human mind, which is the most wondrous and powerful thing man has."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Vance |first1=Jacob |title=Secrets: Humanism, Mysticism, and Evangelism in Erasmus of Rotterdam, Bishop Guillaume Briçonnet, and Marguerite de Navarre |date=11 September 2014 |doi=10.1163/9789004281257_003}}</ref>{{rp|27}} }} "Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God":<ref name=martin2024>{{cite book |last1=Martin |first1=Terence J. |title=The Christology of Erasmus: Christ, Humanity, and Peace |date=12 January 2024 |publisher=CUA Press |isbn=978-0-8132-3802-9 |url=https://www.cuapress.org/9780813238029/the-christology-of-erasmus/ |language=en |access-date=23 May 2024 |archive-date=19 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240419131347/https://www.cuapress.org/9780813238029/the-christology-of-erasmus/ |url-status=live }}</ref> "He is called Speech [sermo], because through him God, who in his own nature cannot be comprehended by any reasoning, wished to become known to us."<ref name=boyle>{{cite journal |last1=Boyle |first1=Marjorie O'rourke |title=Evangelism and Erasmus |journal=The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism |date=25 November 1999 |pages=44–52 |doi=10.1017/CHOL9780521300087.005|isbn=978-1-139-05363-1 }}</ref>{{rp|45}}

The role models of accommodation{{refn|group=note|"The saintly versatility with which Christ and Paul accommodate their message to their imperfect hearers is one of the highest expressions of their charity, which desires the salvation of all men."<ref name=kinney/>}} were Paul,{{refn|group=note|Erasmus quoted "I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (Cor. 9:22, RSV).<ref name=pabel1995>{{cite journal |last1=Pabel |first1=Hilmar M. |title=Promoting the Business of the Gospel: Erasmus' Contribution to Pastoral Ministry |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=1995 |volume=15 |issue=1 |pages=53–70 |doi=10.1163/187492795X00053}}</ref>{{rp|55}} }} that "[[chameleon]]"<ref name=remer>{{cite journal |last1=Remer |first1=Gary |title=Rhetoric and the Erasmian Defence of Religious Toleration |journal=History of Political Thought |date=1989 |volume=10 |issue=3 |pages=377–403 |jstor=44797141  |issn=0143-781X}}</ref>{{rp|385}} (or "slippery squid"<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Moore |first1=Michael Edward |title=Truth and Irony: Philosophical Meditations on Erasmus, by Terence J. Martin (Review) |journal=Erasmus Studies |date=13 March 2019 |volume=39 |issue=1 |pages=107–113 |doi=10.1163/18749275-03901009|s2cid=171963677 }}</ref>) and Christ, who was "more mutable than [[Proteus]] himself".<ref name=remer/>{{rp|386}}

Following Paul, Quintillian ({{lang|la|apte diecere}}{{clarify|reason=Without further explanation this is incomprehensible|date=May 2025}}) and Gregory the Great's ''Pastoral Care'', Erasmus wrote that the orator, preacher or teacher must "adapt their discourse to the characteristics of their audience"; this made pastoral care the "art of arts".<ref name=pabel1995/>{{rp|64}} Erasmus wrote that most of his original works, from satires to paraphrases, were essentially the same themes packaged for different audiences.

In this light, Erasmus' ability to have friendly correspondence with both [[Thomas More]] and [[Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire|Thomas Bolyn]],<ref name=mackay/> and with both [[Philip Melanchthon]] and [[Pope Adrian VI]], can be seen as outworkings of his theology, rather than slippery insincerity<ref group=note name=slippery/> or flattery of potential patrons. Similarly, it shows the theological basis of his [[pacificism]], and his view of ecclesiastical authorities—from priests like himself to Church Councils—as necessary mediating peace-brokers.

====Inverbation====
For Erasmus, further to accommodating humans in his Incarnation, Christ accommodated humans by a kind of ''inverbation'':{{refn|group=note|"The gospel text for Erasmus, and many others, possessed 'the capacity to transform our inner self by the presence of God as incarnated in the text' (or 'inverbation')".{{check quotation|date=May 2025}} {{cite journal |last1=Leushuis |first1=Reinier |title=Emotion and Imitation: The Jesus Figure in Erasmus's Gospel Paraphrases |journal=Reformation |date=3 July 2017 |volume=22 |issue=2 |pages=82–101 |doi=10.1080/13574175.2017.1387967|s2cid=171463846 }}{{rp|93}} }} we now knowing the resurrection, Christ is revealed by the Gospels in a way that we can know him better by reading him{{refn|group=note|Not a novel idea: see [[Duns Scotus]]' "For as there is no place in which it is more proper to seek Thee than in Thy words, so is there no place where Thou art more clearly discovered than in Thy words. For therein Thou abidest, and thither Thou leadest all who seek and love Thee."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Ward |first1=Timothy |title=Word and Supplement |chapter=The Development and Decline of the Sufficiency of Scripture |date=15 August 2002 |pages=20–74 |publisher=Oxford Academic |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244386.003.0002 |isbn=978-0-19-924438-6 |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/7022/chapter/151358845 |language=en}}</ref> {{rp|ch2}} }} than those who actually heard him speak;{{refn|group=note|Mansfield<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|166}} summarizes Robert Kleinhan that "In contrast to contemporary theologies which centred on grace (Luther) or church and sacraments (the Council of Trent), Erasmus' theology 'stressed the acquisition of peace through the virtue obtainable by union with Christ through meditation upon the documents of the early church's witness to him.{{'"}} }} this will or may transform us.{{refn|group=note|For Erica Rummel "In content, Erasmian theology is characterized by a twin emphasis on inner piety and on the word as mediator between God and the believer."<ref name=rummel1/> }}

Since the Gospels become in effect like sacraments,<ref>{{cite book |last1=Williams |first1=David |title=The Communion of the Book |date=20 January 2024 |publisher=McGill-Queens University Press |isbn=978-0-2280-1469-0 |url=https://www.academia.edu/49003670}}</ref>{{refn|group=note|Margaret O'Rourke Boyle sees it as "The text was real presence."<ref name=boyle/>{{rp|49}} However, this may go too far: "The Christian Faith does not recognize either inlibration or inverbation".<ref>{{cite web |last1=Koch |first1=Kurt |title=Bible Engagement in the Catholic Church Tradition. Conference on the occasion of the annual retreat of the Board of Management of the American Bible Society in Rome |url=http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/it/cardinal-koch/2018/conferenze/2018-10-30-bible-engagement-in-the-catholic-church-tradition-.html |publisher=Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity |access-date=3 March 2024 |archive-date=3 March 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240303043053/http://www.christianunity.va/content/unitacristiani/it/cardinal-koch/2018/conferenze/2018-10-30-bible-engagement-in-the-catholic-church-tradition-.html |url-status=live }}</ref>}} for Erasmus reading them becomes a form of prayer<ref name=sider2020 group=note/> which is spoiled by taking single sentences in isolation and using them as syllogisms.{{refn|group=note|"Erasmus insists in the ''Ratio'' that in the process of interpreting a passage from Scripture it is essential to consider not only what was said but also by whom and to whom it was said, with which words, at what time, on what occasion, and what preceded and followed it."<ref name=pabel1995/>{{rp|65}} In this regard, monk Thomas Merton commented that Erasmus saw the scriptures as books of prophecy not philosophy.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=O'Connell |first1=Patrick F. |title=If Not for Luther? Thomas Merton and Erasmus |journal=Merton Annual |date=January 2020 |volume=33 |pages=125–146}}</ref>{{rp|137}}}} Instead, learning to understand the context, genres and literary expression in the New Testament becomes a spiritual more than academic exercise.<ref name=hoffmann/> Erasmus' has been called rhetorical theology ({{lang|la|theologia rhetorica}}).<ref name=rummel1/>{{rp|32}}{{refn|group=note|This was a fine-grained extension of the medieval theory of {{lang|la|modus procedendi}}, associated with [[Alexander of Hales]] and [[Bonaventure]], that each biblical book requires a different mode of proceeding as history, law, lyric, etc.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Kraebel|first1=Andrew|title=Interpretive Theories and Traditions |journal=Biblical Commentary and Translation in Later Medieval England: Experiments in Interpretation |date=2020 |pages=21–53 |doi=10.1017/9781108761437.002|isbn=978-1-108-76143-7 }}</ref>  }}

====Scopus christi====
{{lang|la|Scopus}} is the unifying reference point, the navigation goal, or the organizing principle of topics.{{refn|group=note|{{lang|la|Scopus}} comes from Origen and was also picked up by Melanchthon.<ref>{{cite book |last=Saarinen |first=Risto |chapter=Luther and the Reading of Scripture |title=Remembering the Reformation: Martin Luther and Catholic Theology |date=2017 |publisher=1517 Media |jstor=j.ctt1ggjhg1.15 |isbn=978-1-5064-2337-1 }}</ref>  }} According to his assistant-turned-foe, Œcolampadius, Erasmus's rule was {{lang|la|"nihil in sacris literis praeter Christum quaerendum"}} ("nothing is to be sought in the sacred letters but Christ").<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Fudge |first1=Thomas |title=Icarus of Basel? Oecolampadius and the Early Swiss Reformation |journal=Journal of Religious History |date=1 January 1997 |volume=21 |issue=3 |pages=268–284 |doi=10.1111/1467-9809.00039 |url=https://www.academia.edu/95316549}}</ref>{{rp|269}}

{{rquote|right|What Erasmus contributes [...] is a counsel of restraint in metaphysical speculation, an accent on the revelatory breadth of the eternal Word of God, and an invitation to think of Christ incarnate as the eloquent oration of God. But the central impulse [...] is the affirmation of the full incarnation of Christ in human existence [...] for the transformation of human life. With that, the ethical capstone of Erasmus' reflections on Christ centers on the responsibility to imitate Christ's love for others, and thus for advancing the cause of peace in personal and social life.|source=Terrence J. Martin, ''The Christology of Erasmus''<ref name=martin2024/>}}

In Hoffmann's words, for Erasmus "Christ is the {{lang|la|scopus}} of everything": "the focus in which both dimensions of reality, the human and the divine, intersect" and so He himself is the hermeneutical principle of scripture": "the middle is the medium, the medium is the mediator, the mediator is the reconciler".<ref name=hoffmann/>{{rp|9}} In Erasmus' early ''Enchiridion''<ref group=note>"Erasmus is so thoroughly, radically Christ-centered in his understanding of both Christian faith and practice that if we overlook or downplay this key aspect of his character and vision, we not only do him a grave disservice but we almost completely misunderstand him."{{cite journal |last1=Markos |first1=Louis A. |title=The Enchiridion of Erasmus |journal=Theology Today |date=April 2007 |volume=64 |issue=1 |pages=80–88 |doi=10.1177/004057360706400109|s2cid=171469828 }}</ref>{{rp|82}} he had given this {{lang|la|scopus}} in typical medieval terms of an ascent of being to God (vertical), but from the mid-1510s life he moved to an analogy of Copernican planetary circling around Christ the centre (horizontal) or Columbian navigation towards a destination.<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|135}}

One effect is that scriptural interpretation must be done starting with the teachings and interactions of Jesus in the [[Gospels]],<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Marius |first1=Richard |title=Martin Luther's Erasmus, and How he got that Way: Eleventh-Annual Margaret Mann Phillips Lecture |journal=Erasmus of Rotterdam Society Yearbook |date=1998 |volume=18 |issue=1 |pages=70–88 |doi=10.1163/187492798X00069}}</ref>{{rp|78}} with the [[Sermon on the Mount]] serving as the starting point,{{refn|group=note|According to philosopher John Smith "The core of his theological thought he traced back to Christ's Sermon on the Mount, rather than Paul."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Smith |first1=John H. |title=Dialogues between Faith and Reason: The Death and Return of God in Modern German Thought |date=15 October 2011 |doi=10.7591/9780801463273-003}}</ref>}}<ref name="meyer1">{{cite journal |last1=Meyer |first1=Carl |title=Erasmus on the Study of Scriptures |journal=Concordia Theological Monthly |date=1 December 1969 |volume=40 |issue=1 |url=https://scholar.csl.edu/ctm/vol40/iss1/71 |access-date=25 December 2023 |archive-date=25 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231225035453/https://scholar.csl.edu/ctm/vol40/iss1/71/ |url-status=live }}</ref> and arguably with the [[Beatitudes]] and the [[Lord's Prayer]] at the head of the queue.{{citation needed|date=January 2024}} This privileges peacemaking, mercy, meekness,{{refn|group=note|Historical theologian Carl Meyer writes "Because the Scriptures are the genuine oracles of God, welling forth from the deepest recesses of the divine mind, Erasmus said they should be approached with reverence. Humility and veneration are needed to find the secret chambers of eternal wisdom. 'Stoop to enter', Erasmus warned, 'else you might bump your head and bounce back!{{'"}}<ref name=meyer1/>{{rp|738}}}} purity of heart, hungering after righteousness, poverty of spirit, etc. as the unassailable core of Christianity and piety and true theology.{{refn|group=note|According to historian Emily Alianello, "Throughout ''Ecclesiastes'', Erasmus seeks to orient his theories of preaching around 'the simplicity of Christ's teaching and example'. Consequently, preaching is not for engaging in controversy, but for bringing salvation, moving the congregation to a moral life and building community through concord."<ref>{{cite thesis |last1=Alianello |first1=Emily |title=Understanding and Presence: The Literary Achievement of the Early Modern Sermon |date=2019 |publisher=Catholic University of America |hdl=1961/cuislandora:213631 |url=http://hdl.handle.net/1961/cuislandora:213631 |access-date=2 March 2024}}</ref>{{rp|71}}}}

The Sermon on the Mount provides the axioms on which every legitimate theology must be built, as well as the ethics governing theological discourse, and the rules for validating theological products; Erasmus' {{lang|la|philosophia christi}} treats the primary and initial teaching of Jesus in the first Gospel as a theological methodology.{{refn|group=note|I.e., Erasmus' method is that Jesus' primary teachings are not things you (whether lay person or theologian) interpret in the light of everything else (particularly some novel, post-patristic theological schema, even if ostensibly biblically coherent), but what you base your interpretation of everything else on.}}

For example, "peacemaking" is a possible topic in any Christian theology; but for Erasmus, from the Beatitude, it must be a starting, reference and ending point when discussing all other theological notions, such as church authority, the Trinity, etc. Moreover, Christian theology must only be ''done'' in a peacemaking fashion for peacemaking purposes; and any theology that promotes division and warmongering is thereby anti-Christian.{{refn|group=note|This is quite contrary to Luther's privileging of his scheme of justification, its associated verses of [[Epistle to the Romans|Romans]] and [[Epistle to the Galatians|Galatians]], and his prizing of vehement assertions and insults. Erica Rummel notes "The similarities between his and Luther's thought were of course superficial."<ref name=rummel1/>{{rp|36}} }}

====Mystical theology====
Another important concept to Erasmus was "the Folly of the Cross"<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|119}} (which ''[[The Praise of Folly]]'' explored):<ref group=note>As with many of his individual works, reading ''The Praise of Folly'' in isolation from his other works may give an idea of Erasmus' priorities different to that given by broader reading, even though he sometimes claimed to be re-presenting essentially the same thoughts in different genres.</ref> the view that Truth belongs to the exuberant, perhaps ecstatic,<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|140}} world of what is foolish, strange, unexpected<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Chaudhury |first1=Sarbani |title=Radical Carnivalisation of Religion in Erasmus's ''The Praise Of Folly'' |journal=English Literature |date=2014 |doi=10.14277/2420-823X/3p |url=https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/article/english-literature/2014/1/art-10.14277-2420-823X-3p_jCA5Wl3.pdf |access-date=20 December 2023 |archive-date=30 December 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231230123918/https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/media/pdf/article/english-literature/2014/1/art-10.14277-2420-823X-3p_jCA5Wl3.pdf |url-status=live }}</ref> and even [[#Sileni Alcibiadis (1515)|superficially repellent]] to us, rather than to the frigid worlds which intricate scholastic [[Dialectic#Medieval philosophy|dialectical]] and [[syllogistic]] philosophical argument all too often generated;{{refn|group=note|This was a long-recognized tendency: indeed [[Aquinas]] wrote in the Preface to his [[Summa Theologiae]] that "students in this science have not seldom been hampered by what they have found written by other authors, partly on account of the multiplication of useless questions, articles, and arguments"<ref>{{cite web |last1=Aquinas |first1=Thomas |title=Summa Theologiae, Prologue & Ia Q. 2. |url=https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-prologue-and-q2 |website=Aquinas 101 |publisher=Thomistic Institute |access-date=23 April 2024 |archive-date=23 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240423034852/https://aquinas101.thomisticinstitute.org/st-prologue-and-q2 |url-status=live }}</ref> }} this produced in Erasmus a profound disinterest in hyper-rationality,{{refn|group=note|"Erasmus saw the scholastic exercise, in its high intellectualism, as fundamentally wrong-headed."<ref name=mansfield/>{{rp|148}} }} and an emphasis on verbal, rhetorical, mystical, pastoral and personal/political moral concerns instead.

====Theological writings====

Several scholars have suggested Erasmus wrote as an evangelist not an academic theologian.{{refn|group=note|Historian William McCuaig wrote "I will however defend the view that for the historian evangelism is the category to which Erasmus should rightly be assigned."<ref name=mccuaig /> Historian Hilmar Pabel wrote "an essential aspect of Erasmus' life's work [was]&nbsp;... his participation in the responsibility of the bishops and all pastors to win souls for Christ."<ref name="pabel1995" />{{rp|54}}}} Even "theology was to be metamorphic speech, converting persons to Christ".<ref name=boyle/>{{rp|49}} Erasmus did not conceive of Christianity as fundamentally an intellectual system:

{{blockquote|Yet these ancient fathers were they who confuted both the Jews and Heathens [...]; they confuted them (I say), yet by their lives and miracles, rather than by words and syllogisms; and the persons they thus proselyted were downright honest, well meaning people, such as understood plain sense better than any artificial pomp of reasoning [...]|Erasmus, ''The Praise of Folly''<ref>{{cite book |title=In Praise of Folly |author=Erasmus |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30201/30201-h/30201-h.htm |via=Project Gutenberg}}</ref> }}

Historian William McCuaig commented "I have never read a work by him on any subject that was not at bottom a piece of evangelical literature."<ref name=mccuaig>{{cite journal |last1=Mccuaig |first1=William |title=(Review) The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol 44 |journal=The Medieval Review |date=1994 |volume=44 |issue=9 |url=https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1994/1994.09.05/ |access-date=25 April 2024 |archive-date=25 April 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240425030244/https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/1994/1994.09.05/ |url-status=live }}</ref>

{{blockquote|We may distinguish four different lines of work, parallel with each other, and complementary. First, the establishing and critical elucidation of the ''biblical texts''; alongside it, the editions of the great ''patristic commentators''; then, the ''exegetical works'' properly so called, in which these two fundamental researches yield their fruit; and finally, the ''methodological works'', which in their first state constitute a sort of preface to the various other studies, but which—in return—were nourished and enlarged by them as they went along.|source=Louis Bouyer<ref name=bouyer1/>{{rp|498}} }}

Apart from these programmatic works, Erasmus also produce a number of prayers, sermons, essays, masses and poems for specific benefactors and occasions, often on topics where Erasmus and his benefactor agreed. His thought was particularly influenced by [[Origen]].{{refn|group=note|"Without denying the presence of theological mistakes in Origen's corpus, Erasmus felt that an irenic attitude toward Origen was more helpful to the Church than one of censorious criticism. Erasmus believed that Origen had seen further into the mind of St Paul than Augustine had done."<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Scheck |first1=Thomas P. |editor-first1=Ronald E. |editor-first2=Karen Jo |editor-last1=Heine |editor-last2=Torjesen |title=The Influence of Origen on Erasmus |journal=The Oxford Handbook of Origen |date=17 February 2022 |pages=483–504 |doi=10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199684038.013.28|isbn=978-0-19-968403-8 }}</ref> }}

He often set himself the challenge of formulating positive, moderate, non-superstitious versions of contemporary Catholic practices that might be more acceptable both to scandalized Catholics and Protestants of good will: the better attitudes to the sacraments, saints, Mary, indulgences, statues, scriptural ignorance and fanciful Biblical interpretation, prayer, dietary fasts, external ceremonialism, authority, vows, docility, submission to Rome, etc.  For example, in his ''Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary'' (1503) Erasmus elaborated his theme that the Incarnation had been hinted far and wide, which could impact the theology of the fate of the remote unbaptized and grace, and the place of classical philosophy:<ref name=franceschini>{{cite journal |last1=Franceschini |first1=Chiara |title=Erasmus and Faustus of Riez's De gratia |journal=Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo |date=1 January 2014 |volume=XI |issue=2 |pages=367–390 |url=https://www.academia.edu/35244712 |access-date=23 March 2024}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|
You are assuredly the Woman of renown: both heaven and earth and the succession of all the ages uniquely join to celebrate your praise in a musical concord. [...]

During the centuries of the previous age the oracles of the gentiles spoke of you in obscure riddles. Egyptian prophecies, Apollo's tripod, the Sibylline books, gave hints of you. The mouths of learned poets predicted your coming in oracles they did not understand. [...]

Both the Old and the New Testament, like two cherubim with wings joined and unanimous voices, repeatedly sing your praise. [...]

Thus indeed have writers religiously vied to proclaim you, on the one hand inspired prophets, on the other eloquent Doctors of the church,  both filled with the same spirit, as the former foretold your coming in joyful oracles before your birth and the latter heaped prayerful praise on you when you appeared. |source=Erasmus, ''Paean in Honour of the Virgin Mary'' (1503)<ref name=franceschini/>
}}