Editing Erasmus (section)

===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>}}