Erasmus�s Readings of Romans 3, 4, and 5 as Rhetoric and Theology

Laurel Carrington

Society of Biblical Literature

November 20, 2006

In late 1517, at the point when Luther first voiced publicly his critique of the Roman church, his elder Erasmus was at the height of his fame as a humanist and advocate of reform. In 1516 he had published his first edition of his New Testament, the Novum Instrumentum, and was at work on a second edition, to appear in 1518.[1] He also had completed and published a paraphrase on Paul’s letter to the Romans, the first in what would be a series of paraphrases on the whole New Testament. He had won great praise for these works, but he also had become the target of harsh criticisms. The list of his detractors is substantial: the young English biblical scholar Edward Lee, Chancellor Nöel Béda of the University of Paris, and bodies of Franciscan, Dominican, and Carmelite critics, to name but a few.[2]

Erasmus thus felt that he was under siege even before the onset of the evangelical reform polarized Europe beyond anything he could have imagined. As Luther’s criticisms of the ecclesiology and theology of the Roman church gained support, Erasmus’s work became the center of yet more controversy, partly because many of the people who went over to the reform had been his admirers and even collaborators in his New Testament scholarship. He was unwillingly drawn into debates with Martin Luther, Martin Bucer, and indirectly, with Melanchthon, Oecolampadius, Pellican, and Leo Jud. The best known of these is the debate with Luther over the freedom of the will, which Erasmus launched with the publication in 1524 of his Diatribe on the Freedom of the Will, a direct refutation of the doctrine that was central to Luther’s position. Luther would rely extensively upon his own interpretation of Paul’s letter to the Romans in refuting Erasmus’s arguments. We find that on examining Erasmus’s comments on significant passages of that epistle, we can achieve further insight into the basis for Erasmus’s quarrel with Luther.

It is not surprising that Luther and his party would accuse Erasmus of Pelagianism. What is less well known is that Erasmus’s Catholic critics made the same accusation, based not on his Diatribe but on his translation and annotation of Romans 5:12 in his New Testament. Erasmus defended himself vigorously against all such accusations, in lengthy Apologia and in each new edition of the New Testament as well. This paper will examine Erasmus’s readings of significant passages from Romans 3, 4, and 5, with a view to clarifying his true position not only in the eyes of his critics, but in the context of his own principles of interpretation. We turn first to the two works that are the foundations of Erasmus’s New Testament scholarship.

Erasmus’s New Testament Scholarship: the Novum Instrumentum and the Paraphrases

Erasmus was originally inspired to turn his attention to a philological study of the New Testament by a 1499 trip to England, where he became acquainted with Thomas More and John Colet. At that time Colet was presenting a series of lectures at Oxford on Paul, including the Romans epistle. Erasmus was impressed with Colet’s humanist learning and with his opposition to the approach of the Scholastics, but he also felt keenly the need to know Paul’s letters in their original language, Greek. Erasmus thus determined to master that language himself. A further source of inspiration for his work came from his discovery in 1504 of a copy of the Adnotationes in Novi Testamenti of Lorenzo Valla, a set of notes on scripture based on a linguistic and historical analysis of the Greek original.[3] This piece became a model for Erasmus’s philological method, as well as a resource for his editorial decisions.

Erasmus’s first task was to use his expertise in Greek to assemble as complete a collection of Greek manuscripts as possible, and try to produce through careful comparative analysis an authoritative edition of the Greek New Testament.[4] He had arrived at the conviction that it was impossible to understand Scripture without a clean and authoritative rendering of the text, which over the centuries had suffered from scribal errors and a lack of education in the original language. Next, he decided to offer a Latin translation that was intended as both an alternative and an improvement on the Vulgate. Finally, he extensive annotations, explaining decisions he had made in favor of one reading over another. The first edition appeared in 1516, and the criticisms quickly followed.[5]

His Paraphrases followed a different trajectory. Erasmus had begun work on a commentary on Romans in 1501. He labored on it off and on over the course of two decades, and yet never completed it. In 1514 he turned his attention instead to paraphrase.[6] Paraphrase, the act of recasting the language of a text while retaining its meaning, is a technique that teachers of rhetoric from antiquity had utilized in helping their students become proficient in verbal copia, abundance and variety of expression. In the dedicatory letter to his Paraphrase of Paul’s letter to the Romans, Erasmus wrote, “I thought I should be doing something worth while if I could make Paul speak to men who are now pure Romans and adult Christians, not only in the Roman tongue but more intelligibly; if, in fact, he could talk Latin in such a way that one would not recognize the Hebrew speaking but would recognize the Apostle.”[7] As a rhetorical exercise, Erasmus’s paraphrase of Romans provides a special service in allowing the apostle to shift out of the limits of his historical context to speak to modern audiences, “pure Romans and adult Christians,” leaving behind the Jew whose law has been eclipsed by the Gospel.[8]

Erasmus’s letter is dated November 13, 1517, at exactly the same time that Luther’s 95 Theses were beginning to circulate. Thus the evolution of his New Testament work took place alongside of the beginnings of the Protestant reform. We should look next at the principles underlying Erasmus’s interpretations.

Erasmus’s Hermeneutical Principles

Manfred Hoffmann in his groundbreaking study, Rhetoric and Theology: The Hermeneutic of Erasmus,[9] defines Erasmus as a rhetorical theologian. As a humanist, Erasmus believed in the crucial importance of rhetoric as a foundation both for knowing the truth and doing what is right. In contrast to sterile arguments expressed in technical language, he stressed the transformative power of language, which can act upon the soul to turn a person’s life towards God and away from things of the flesh. Erasmus was particularly caustic in his characterization of the scholastic philosophers and theologians, who were among his most obstreperous critics. These were the people who were so wrapped up in their technical definitions and wrong-headed literal interpretations of a flawed Vulgate that they had lost sight of Jesus himself, the goal (scopus) [10] of all our faith. Erasmus’s philosophia Christi was his answer to the philosophers of the schools: a philosophy consisting of a simple faith in Christ, and a willingness to follow His teachings.[11] Erasmus wanted the mediation of Christ to replace Aristotle’s metaphysics and syllogistic logic as a means for gaining insight into scripture.

Of course, not even the most sublime language could accomplish this if human beings were unable to respond to it. Erasmus adopts from Origen, one of his favorite theologians, the division of the human being into three components: flesh, soul, and spirit.[12] It is the middle part, the soul, that is open to persuasion through language that is rightly used.[13] For Erasmus, the soul is the mediator between the body and the spirit, just as Jesus Christ mediates between human and God. Language in particular is a mediator, between speakers and hearers as well as writers and readers. In the case of scripture, divine language communicates divine meaning to humans who cannot understand it directly. Thus Erasmus views God as the heavenly rhetorician, capable of accommodating His language to the limited ability of humans to hear and understand. The four levels of meaning in scripture, historical or literal, allegorical, tropological, and anagogical, are necessary because no human being can leap directly from his or her limited earthly vision straight to the ultimate sense of scripture. The two middle levels are thus of particular importance as the mediators between heaven and earth. They are able to fulfill this function through scripture’s extensive use of metaphors.

Metaphor is a term or trope that mediates between two unlike things by drawing a parallel, thus rendering them like each other. Metaphor is the model for the mediating activity of scripture, which brings together those who are unlike, God and humans. According to Erasmus, the language of scripture is not simply a technical correspondence between word and thing, which the interpreter needs only to read to know immediately what it means. It is a bridge between disparate entities, which takes into account their distinct positions in history, in society, and in the cosmos. Thus, Erasmus’s introduction to the Romans paraphrase, “I thought I should be doing something worth while if I could make Paul speak to men who are now pure Romans and adult Christians,” acknowledges that the original context for Paul’s letter is different from that of Erasmus and his contemporaries. The Paul of history spoke to people who were recently converted to Christianity, not the “adult Christians” of almost 1500 years later; he likewise used Greek in a manner that bore “the admixture everywhere of Hebrew idiom.”[14] Erasmus wanted his own contemporaries to be able to hear Paul the apostle, not Paul the Jew. Erasmus acknowledges that there will be those who object, conceding that “he who rejects any change in the letter of Holy Writ may use it as a commentary, while he who is free from such superstition may hear the voice of Paul himself.”[15]

Thus Erasmus’s paraphrase, as it replicates Paul by transforming his language, mediates between Paul in his earthly, historical identity as a Jew and his spiritual, eternal identity as an apostle. The term “Jew” in Erasmus’s vocabulary has a specialized meaning: the Jew is the one who is bound to the letter of the law, which in Erasmus’s terms equates with superstition and a failure to allow the language its mediating function.[16] Those who rejected any change in the letter of Holy Writ in Erasmus’s day were the Paris theologians and the monastic orders who tormented him with criticisms; in his eyes they are parallel to the Jews who rejected the saving grace of Christ in the newborn church.

Erasmus’s paraphrase does indeed alter the language of Paul the Jew in ways designed to separate him from his origins, as for example at the end of his paraphrase of Romans 3:26 and beginning of the paraphrase of 3:27. The biblical verses are “ ²⁶it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies him who has faith in Jesus. ²⁷Then what becomes of our boasting? It is excluded. On what principle? On the principle of works? No, but on the principle of faith.”[17] Erasmus’s paraphrase begins, “Tell me, therefore, you Jew, where is your boasting? Of course this boasting was taken away from you after the divine will made all the races of the world equal with respect to the gospel” (emphasis added).[18] Another example is the paraphrase of Romans 3:31, “Do we then overthrow the law by this faith?”, which begins, “But here some Jew will say: How can this be, Paul?”[19]

To summarize, Erasmus in his hermeneutic moves in two opposing and yet complementary directions: towards simplicity in his rejection of the theology of the schools, and towards complexity in his recognition of the layers of meaning that unfold for the experienced reader. The principle of accommodation, which Paul himself embodies in his missions to all kinds of people, allows for both movements to occur together. Scripture accommodates itself to readers at all levels, drawing those who have innocent minds into the mysteries a little at a time, as they are prepared to understand them.

Erasmus’s Debate with Luther

Erasmus illustrates these hermeneutical principles in his famous debate with Luther, as the combatants clash in their respective understanding of faith and works, freedom of the will, and original sin. Luther for his part will explicitly reject Erasmus’s hermeneutic, laying out not only a different set of beliefs or interpretations, but an opposing approach to theological truth. For example, at the beginning of De libero arbitrio, Erasmus remarks, “For in Holy Scripture there are some secret places into which God did not intend us to penetrate very far, and if we attempt to do so, the farther in we go the less and less clearly we see,”[20] indicating that even experienced readers who are mature in faith are limited in what they can know. For Luther, however, scripture is almost transparent, even to the beginner:

But that in Scripture there are some things abstruse, and everything is not plain—this is an idea put about by the ungodly Sophists,[21] with those lips you also speak here, Erasmus; . . . I admit that many passages in Scriptures are obscure and abstruse. But that is due to our ignorance of certain terms and grammatical particulars, and not to the majesty of the subject. This ignorance does not in any way prevent our knowing all the contents of Scriptures.[22]

Luther is bluntly dismissive of Erasmus’s understanding of human beings as trichotomous: “I, too, am familiar with Origen’s fable about the threefold disposition of flesh, soul, and spirit, with soul standing in the middle and being capable of turning either way, toward the flesh or toward the spirit.”[23] He asserts in its place a stark dualism, based largely on his readings of Paul: “What else is the meaning of ‘You are not in the flesh if the Spirit of God is in you’ (Rom. 8:9) but that those who do not have the Spirit are necessarily in the flesh? And if anyone does not belong to Christ, to whom else does he belong but Satan? Clearly, then, those who lack the Spirit are in the flesh and subject to Satan.”[24] Erasmus in his paraphrase of this same passage writes,

One who is void of the Spirit is alien to Christ. But if Christ is in you, since he is nothing other than purity, truth, temperance, and other virtues, what place is there for vices in you? One who has Christ must express him . . . We express Christ if the body, that is, that baser part of ourselves which tempts us to deadly things by the attractions of desire, is dead and free from all passion for sinning; and if the spirit lives, that is, the better part of ourselves, enticing us to the good, carrying us off by its own force to those things that belong to righteousness (emphasis added). [25]

It is clear that for Erasmus, the individual is not simply one or the other, “of Christ” or “of Satan,” but rather is capable of expressing Christ’s virtues through imitation when Christ dwells within. We are “enticed” to the good, “carried off by its own force.” Such terminology speaks of persuasion, attraction, and response, language that is associated with the art of rhetoric.[26] Indeed, Erasmus in his examination of the scriptural evidence for free will in his Diatribe points to one passage after another in which believers are exhorted to turn away from evil and toward righteousness: “Nearly the whole of Scripture speaks of nothing but conversion, endeavor, and striving to improve. All this would become meaningless once it was accepted that doing good or evil was a matter of necessity.”[27]

Luther rejects Erasmus’s understanding of such exhortations as instances of persuasion, understanding them rather as statements of fact that the just will recognize and the unjust ignore. He turns to Paul for confirmation of his view, as for example in Romans 3:21-25:

But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from law, although the law and the prophets bear witness to it, ²²the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction; ²³since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins.

Luther’s comment on this passage is, that “Paul’s words here are absolute thunderbolts against free choice,”[28] directly interpreting Paul’s opposition between faith and law as a repudiation of free will. For Erasmus, however, there is no such necessary connection between God’s free gift of faith and humans having an unfree will, because humans can be led to abandon their reliance on the law through the mediating power of the language of the gospel. Erasmus’s paraphrase of 3:27 describes the dichotomy between faith and works: “Salvation and righteousness are conferred also on the gentiles. Through what law then? Through that old Mosaic law which prescribes ceremonies? Not at all, but through a new law which demands nothing except faith in the Son of God” (emphasis added).[29] Erasmus explicitly upholds the teaching of justification by faith, but expresses the contrast between faith and law as being between faith and ceremonies, a distinction that he understands in his own context as that between the philosophia Christi and the kind of superstition that is manifested in pilgrimages, worship of relics, masses for the dead, and many practices of those who are in religious orders.

We can see another example of the same interpretation in his paraphrase of the beginning of Romans 3:1, “Then what is the advantage of the Jew?” “But here someone will say to me: If the whole matter depends on a pious life and innocent character and on faith in Christ, what then is left to the Jew by which he excels the heathen?” (emphasis added).[30] This is the essence of the philosophia Christi: a pious life, innocent character, and faith in Christ. We are brought to all of these things by the mediation of scripture. For Luther, however, we are brought out of sin into righteousness only through the intervention of Christ in an act of redemption that we are powerless even to accept or reject. Luther’s concept of sin is all-encompassing, completely destroying in man any possibility of goodness without Christ’s redemption. As we look to Erasmus’s reading of Romans 5:12, we will see that his concept of sin is substantially different not only from Luther’s, but from that of many in his own church as well.

Controversies over Erasmus’s Rendering of Romans 5:12

Erasmus’s paraphrase of Romans 5:12, “[t]herefore as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all men sinned--” is as follows:

And it was provided by the wonderful and secret plan of God that the way by which our well-being was restored would correspond to the way in which we had suffered ruin. Accordingly, through Adam alone, who first transgressed the law of God, sin crept into the world, and sin dragged along death as its companion inasmuch as sin is the poison of the soul. And so it happened that the evil originated by the first of the race spread through all posterity, since no one fails to imitate the example of the first parent (emphasis added).[31]

To describe sin as the poison of the soul suggests that the soul has been adversely affected by sin, especially insofar as sin leads to death. But Erasmus describes the effects of Adam’s sin in its spreading to all his descendants as being manifested in their imitation of Adam’s example. We have encountered another term for imitation, “exprimere,” in Erasmus’s paraphrase of Romans 8:9: “one who has Christ must express him.”[32] The concept of imitatio Christi, which is the title of Thomas à Kempis’s famous handbook, was well known among Erasmus’s contemporaries; however, for Erasmus to speak of sin being transmitted by imitation of Adam was another matter, for it raised the possibility of Pelagianism in the minds of theologians.

For Erasmus, however, there is an additional layer of significance to the notion of imitation: imitation of models was an essential component of rhetorical training during the Renaissance, something Erasmus not only understood but also was moved years later, in 1527, to feature in a work entitled Ciceronianus, a repudiation of a theory of imitation then in vogue among Roman intellectuals. What these individuals had done was adopt the prose style of Cicero as a model that they imitated slavishly. In the Ciceronianus Erasmus pokes fun at these fanatics for clinging to the outer details of Ciceronian rhetoric, failing to incorporate into themselves the principles that were the source of Cicero’s excellence. Erasmus’s preferred approach to imitation was assimilation, which allowed the individual to be himself and yet at the same time express what was worthy in the model. In the case of imitating Christ also, Erasmus wished his readers not to focus on the outer appearance of piety through adherence to ceremonies, but rather to assimilate Christ so that they could express Him in their very being.[33] Conversely, as descendents of Adam, humans have assimilated Adam’s sin as it has spread to his posterity, and as a consequence express this sin through imitation.

The means by which rhetoricians assimilate Cicero is through extensive reading of his works; likewise, Christians assimilate Christ through reading scripture. But how might people learn to imitate Adam’s sin? We can find an answer in Erasmus’s annotation to his translation of Romans 5:12: Translating the Greek εφ ω παντες ημαρτον, Erasmus chooses quatenus omnes peccaverunt, “inasmuch as all have sinned,” over the Vulgate version, in quo omnes peccaverunt, “in whom all have sinned.” Erasmus’s translation suggests that all people have sinned without specifying that sin lies at the very basis of postlapsarian human nature, whereas the Vulgate shows the sin of Adam as automatically transferring itself to all of his descendants. In his note to this verse, Erasmus writes, “But if sin here is understood as the withdrawal of the divine grace that was in Adam before he sinned, or a certain natural propensity to commit sin, which seems ingrown in all (although I think [this propensity] proceeds from example rather than from nature) – these are the punishments for sin more truly than they are sin [itself]”[34] (emphasis added). We imitate Adam’s example through our assimilation of the sin that we learn from observing others.

Unfortunately for Erasmus, this approach to original sin was at odds with the accepted teaching of the church. He was immediately taken to task after the publication of the 1516 by Edward Lee, an Englishman who had taken a post in the theological school at Louvain,[35] and was thrown on the defensive in several protracted battles, both through his Apologiae and in his expanded annotation on that verse. Erasmus claims the support of Origen—“[Origen demonstrates] with proofs that individuals have sinned by their own sins,” with the exception of Christ, who alone repulsed sin; concluding, “I think it is clear enough from these words that Origen interpreted this passage in terms of the sin of imitation, as did the scholiast.”[36] However, Erasmus immmediately qualifies these remarks by pointing out that he does not question the existence of “some original sin,”[37] and adds that he does in fact condemn Pelagius’s view, but that “the dispute is concerned only with the sense of this passage, whether properly it refers to original sin.”[38] While it may seem that he is dodging the issue, his comment in fact reflects his belief that interpreting any passage from Scripture should reflect the context of the passage in relation to the chapter and book in which it appears, and ultimately all of Scripture; interpretation should not be a mining of individual passages for doctrine.

Erasmus’s annotation cites examples from the Fathers—Ambrose, Theophylact, Chrysostom—in support of his contention that Rom. 5:12 does not necessarily lead to any conclusions about either the nature of sins (whether they be freely committed by individuals in imitation of examples) or the sin of infants. His argument is that the passage supports more than one interpretaion, and that for him to suggest an alternative does not threaten or injure the church in any way.[39] This being said, however, it is clear that Erasmus did not uphold a fully Augustinian doctrine of original sin, which claims that sin is not just a propensity but that is part of the very nature of all human beings, including infants.

Conclusions

Erasmus’s interpretation of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, based on what we have observed here, is an illustration of his most deeply-held convictions. First, we clearly see reflections of Erasmus’s belief that language has the power to bring harmony out of disorder, including out of the disordered relationship between humans and God. Second, he believes that humans, even in all our weakness, are able to particpate in the discourse that brings us closer to God. In our capacity for sin we are strongly inclined to learm how to imitate the examples of those around us, who in turn imitate their predecessors, all the way back to Adam. As a remedy for sin, Erasmus focuses on Christ’s mediation between heaven and earth and the reconciliation He has effected, so that our souls may be brought to turn away from the flesh and toward the things of the spirit. Erasmus’s respect for the teachings of the church does not preclude his openness to more than one interpretation of any given passage of Scripture; indeed, his very belief in the freedom of grace enables us to explore the multiple dimensions of scriptural language without fear of violating strict rules. Because we are justified by our faith, we can live with the knowledge that God’s love is steadfast, and that our slavery to ceremonies has been superceded by the free gift of the Gospel.

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Abbreviations:

CWE: The Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974-- )

LB: Jean Leclerc, ed., Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami opera omnia (Leiden, 1703; repr. Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1962)

LW: Luther’s Works (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1955-- )

WA: Martin Luthers Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe (Weimar, 1883--)

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[1] The title of the 1518 and subsequent editions was changed to Novum Testamentum.

[2] See Erika Rummel, Erasmus and his Catholic Critics (Nieuwkoop: De Graaf Publishers, 1989), 2 vols.

[3] Erasmus found the manuscript at the Premonstratensian Abbey du Parc, near Louvain, and published an edition of the work in the following year.

[4] See Jerry Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983) and Albert Rabil, Jr., Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian Humanist (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1972).

[5] For a discussion of Erasmus’s annotations as they evolved through the five editions published in his lifetime, see Erika Rummel, Erasmus’ Annotations on the New Testament: From Philologist to Theologian (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986).

[6] See the introduction to CWE 42 by John B. Payne and Albert Rabil, Jr. Erasmus’s paraphrases did not meet with the same resistance as his New Testament.

[7] CWE 42, p. 2; “videbar mihi facturus operae pretium, si effecissem ut Paulus jam mere Romanis, ac plene Christianis, non solum Romane, verum etiam explanatius loqueretur: atque ita loqueretur Romane, ut Hebraeum quidem non agnoscas, agnoscas tamen Apostolum loqui” (LB VII 771).

[8] For a discussion of Erasmus’s use of the Jew as a symbol of bondage to rules as opposed to the freedom under grace of Christ, see Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

[9] Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994

[10] See Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle, Erasmus on Language and Method in Theology (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 72—81 for an analysis of Erasmus’s use of this term.

[11] Erasmus developed this concept in several of his most significant works, including the Enchiridion militis Christi, a handbook for a pious life that he first published in 1503 and later in 1518, and the Paraclesis, his introduction to the first edition of his New Testament

[12] Origen Commentarius in epistolam ad Romanos 1.5 and De principiis 3:4.

[13] As we shall see, the fact that the soul is capable of responding to teaching is the basis for Erasmus’s belief in free will.

[14] CWE 42, p. 2; “admixtam Hebraei semonis proprietatem” (LB VII 771).

[15] CWE 42, p. 3; “ut ei, qui nolit quicquam in sacris Litteris immutari, commentarii vice sit futurum; rursus ei, qui vacet hujusmodi superstitione, Paulus ipse loqui videatur” (LB VII 771).

[16] See n. 8, above.

[17] All biblical citations are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977

[18] CWE 42, p. 25; “Dic igitur Judae, ubi gloriatio tua? Nimirum ademta est tibi, posteaquam divini voluntas omnes orbis nations aequat in negotio Evangelii” (LB VII 787B).

[19] CWE 42, p. 26; “Verum, hic dixerit Judaeus quispiam: Quid ais Paule?” (LB VII 787D). It should be pointed out that there are some passages where Erasmus’s Paul does refer to himself and the Jews in the first person; e.g. Romans 3:9: “Sed ut ad rem redeam: quid dicemus? Num Judaei potiores sumus Ethnicis?” (LB VII 786B).

[20] CWE 76, p. 8;

[21] Luther is referring to the scholastic theologians.

[22] LW 33, p. 25; “Sed esse in scriptura quaedam abstrusa et non omnia exposita, invulgatum est quidem per impios Sophistas, quorum ore et tu loqueris hic Erasme . . . Hoc sane fateor, esse multa loca in scripturis obscura et abstrusa, non ob maiestatem rerum, sed ob ignorantiam vocabulorum et grammaticae, sed quae nihil impediant scientiam omnium rerum in scripturis” (WA 18 606).

[23] LW 33, p. 275; “Nota est ad mihi fabula Origenis de triplici affectu, quorum unus caro, alius anima, alius spiritus illi dicitur, Anima vero medius ille, in utram partem vel carnis vel spiritus vertibilis” (WA 18 774).

[24] LW 33, p. 274; “Quid enim aliud hic vult: Vos non estis in carne, si spiritus Dei in vobis est, quam necessario in carne eos esse, qui spiritum non habent? Et qui Christi non est, cuius alius quam Satanae est? Stat igitur, qui spiritu carent, hos in carne et sub Satana esse” (WA 18 774).

[25] CWE 42, p. 46, amended; “quo qui vacat, is a Christo est alienus. Quod si Christus in vobis est, cum is nihil aliud sit, quam castitas, quam veritas, quam temperantia caeteraeque virtutes, quis est vitiis locus? Christum exprimat oportet, qui Christum habet. . . . Hunc sic exprimimus, si corpus, hoc est, crassior illa pars nostri, quae cupiditatum lenociniis ad mortifera sollicitat, sortua sit, et omni peccandi libidine careat, vivat autem spiritus, hoc est, melior pars nostri, ad honesta sollicitans, et ad ea, quae sunt justitiae, impetu suo rapiens” (LB VII 801F—802A).

[26] Cf. Quint. Inst. Or. XII.x.61, in reference to the abundant style: “Sat ille, qui saxa devolvat et ponem indignetur et ripas sibi faciat, multus et torrens iudicem vel nitentem contra feret cogetque ire, qua rapiet.”

[27] CWE 76, p. 36

[28] LW 33, p. 263; “Hic Paulus mere fulmina loquitur adversus liberum arbitrium” (WA 18 757).

[29] CWE 42, p. 25 (italicized portion added in 1532); “Defertur et Gentibus salus ac justitia. At per quam tandem legem? Num veterem illam Mosaicam, quae ceremonias praescribit? Nequaquam, imo per novam legem, quae nihil exigit nisi fidem erga Filium Dei” (LB VII 787C).

[30] CWE 42, p. 22 (italicized portion added in 1532); “Sed dixerti hic quispiam, si summa rei pendet a pietate vitae et innocentia morum, ac fide in Christum, quid igitur reliquum fit Judaeo, quo praecellat Ethnicum? (LB VII 785B).

[31] CWE 42, p. 34; “Itaque miro et arcano Dei consilio curatum est, ut restitutae salutis ratio, cum accepti exitii ratione congrueret. Proinde quemadmodum per unum Adam, qui primus pratergressus est Dei pracesciptum, peccatum irrepsit in mundum, peccatum autem mortem comitem secum traxit, quandoquidem peccatum animae venenum est, atque ita factum est, ut malum a principe generis ortum, in universam posteritatem dimanaret, dum nemo non imitatur primi parentis exemplum” (LB VII 793A-B).

[32] See p. 8 above. CWE 42 translates this term as “imitate.”

[33] It is important to note that the meaning of “to imitate” isn’t exactly the same as the meaning of “to express.” To express Christ suggests a stronger sense of identification with the example than the imitation of the sin of Adam.

[34] CWE 56, p. 140; “Quod si peccatum accipitur pro subtractione gratiae divinae, quae fuit in Adam antequam peccaret, aut pro naturali quadam pronitate ad peccandum, quae videtur omnibus insita, quanquam arbitror hanc magis ab exemplis proficisci, quam a natura, haec sunt poena peccati verius quam peccatum” (LB VI 585C-D).

[35] For a thorough discussion of this controversy, see Robert Coogan, “The Pharisee Against the Hellenist: Edward Lee Versus Erasmus” in Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 39 no.3, (Autumn, 1986), pp. 476-506. See also John B. Payne, “Erasmus: Interpreter of Romans” in Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, vol. 2 (Jan., 1971), pp. 1-35.

[36] CWE 56, p. 144; “declarans argumentis singulos pecasse suis peccatis. . . Ex his arbitror satis liquere, quod Origines hunc locum interpretatus est de peccato imitationis, quemadmodum ille Scholiastes”(LB VI 587A). The “scholiast” is a commentator on Paul’s letters bearing Jerome’s name, but although Erasmus included the commentary in his Froben edition of Jerome, he knew that it was pseudonymous. The author has been shown to be Pelagius, although Erasmus did not realize this.

[37] CWE 56, p. 144; “aliquod peccatum originis” (LB VI 587B)

[38] CWE 56, p. 144; “tantum de huius loci sensu disputatio est, an proprie pertineat ad peccatum originale” (LB VI 587B).

[39] CWE 56, p. 148, 150; LB VI 588E