 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, Take Your Choice, Erasmus vs. Luther on Free Will. One of the best things about the place I live is the street market that pops up around the corner from my house every Friday. And one of the best things about that market is a bakery stand, which sells the best apple cake I have ever had. It's vital for the philosophical discussion that follows that you understand just how good this apple cake is. So let me describe it. It has a sturdy, biscuit-like base, topped with a thick layer of succulent, cinnamon-infused apples, finished with a sugar glaze whose consistency I can only compare to the first ice that forms on a freezing lake. As long-time listeners know, I yield to no one in my admiration of the elegantly seductive pastry that is the almond croissant. But if you put a piece of this apple cake and an almond croissant in front of me, I would have difficulty choosing between them. I would, by contrast, have little hesitation in affirming that I can indeed choose between them. In the end, I would be able to select one treat or the other, or indeed both, feeling that I have confronted this momentous decision equipped with both an unconstrained power of agency and a nice fresh cup of coffee. Medieval philosophers developed a whole theory of the will in order to explain this feeling of agency. Although the scholastics disagreed about pretty much all the details, in particular, the question whether volition follows the lead of rational judgment or operates autonomously from reason, they broadly agreed that humans do have a power called the will, voluntus, and that we are morally responsible for how we use that will. The idea of the will has a long history, which can be traced ultimately to non-Christian ancient philosophers, especially the Stoics. But for the medieval, the fundamental authority on the question was the 5th century theologian Augustine, who had written extensively about the will. Somewhat ironically, Augustine also bequeathed to later Christians a significant worry as to whether the human will is so free after all. In his diatribes against another theologian called Pelagius, he argued forcefully that humans are in a state of sin and cannot escape from this state without God's freely given grace. This makes it sound as if, in our current fallen state, the will isn't able to choose after all. Or if it is, then not in the way that would really matter, by making choices that would earn us salvation instead of damnation. I might be able to choose apple cake over an almond croissant, but I'm not able to choose righteousness over wickedness, because my defective nature guarantees that I will not be righteous. As we've seen over the past couple of episodes, Luther was more than willing to accept this conclusion. Towards the beginning of his career, he actually echoed the semi-Pelagian view of scholastics like Gabriel Beale, who said that God has graciously promised to bestow grace on anyone who does their best. As late as 1515, we find Luther saying, But deeper reflection on the teachings of St. Paul and Augustine changed his mind. Just one year later, he was insisting that the will is This apparently rather fatalistic teaching, and the range of anti-clerical attitudes that came along with it, led to Luther's break with the Church. When he was condemned in 1520, it was foreholding, among other things, that free will exists in name only. Catholic authors were not slow to issue refutations of Luther's position, and they hoped that the leading intellectual of the day would join their side. This of course was Erasmus. As we have discussed, he was often seen as a standard bearer of the Reformation, and for good reason. His critique of indulgences and other corrupt church practices, and his emphasis on the individual spirituality of the believer, anticipated and helped to inspire Luther. But when he was accused of laying the egg that Luther hatched, Erasmus cried foul, saying, The egg I laid was a hen's egg, and Luther hatched a chick of a very, very different feather. He was reluctant to get involved in the dispute between Luther and the Church. As I've mentioned, he claimed that he left the Low Countries in part to escape pressure to intervene. But around this same time, in 1521, he may have been coming around to the view that he should critique Luther in print. He would eventually do so in a work called On Free Choice, which appeared in 1524. He was thus able to ingratiate himself with patrons like Henry VIII, who at this stage was still Catholic. Alongside this pragmatic consideration, Erasmus was genuinely appalled by the deterministic dimension of Lutheran theology. In general, Erasmus seems to have had mixed feelings about Luther, he says as much in On Free Choice. And as we'll see, he was also rather open-minded about the exact relationship between human freedom and divine grace. But he was sure about one thing, that each of us does indeed have a will that is free to make morally significant choices. Erasmus hoped that by taking a fairly moderate line on the issue, and also a moderate tone in the treatise, he would turn the reformers away from their excesses. He sent it to Luther's colleague, Philip Melanchthon, who responded in friendly terms. He wrote that the work was received well by Luther, which of course it wasn't, and that Luther would respond in writing and with equal moderation, which of course he didn't. That is to say, he did respond in the following year, 1525, but not moderately. He churned out a treatise four times the length of Erasmus's, full of his trademark invective. It was called, in a play on Erasmus's own title, On the Bondage of Choice. In a letter he complained that, He starts off in complementary enough fashion, praising Erasmus's eloquence, but before long he's telling Erasmus, He goes on to add, Just as I bear with your ignorance, so you in turn will bear with my lack of eloquence. Erasmus was of course not best pleased, and penned a reply in two volumes, which appeared in 1526 and 1527. Throughout this whole confrontation, Erasmus felt that he was a reasonable man of the middle ground burdened by living in a time of extremists. Catholics continued to attack him as a Lutheran in sheep's clothing, despite the rough treatment he had received from Luther himself. Erasmus's distaste for a strident religious dispute is already made clear in On Free Choice. It devotes a remarkable number of pages to his reluctance about addressing this contentious issue. Remember, he was a champion of peace, especially within the Christian community. While he did disagree with Luther's teaching on free will, he was probably more upset by the fact that with his strident insistence on that teaching, Luther had, as Erasmus put it, lobbed an apple of strife into European culture, if only Luther had gone with apple cake instead. Erasmus reckoned that disputation over theological and philosophical questions was more likely to harm Christian concord that advanced true religion. If it turned out that Luther was right in denying free will, it would actually be better for people not to know this truth, because they might stop trying to be good. Pacifist though he is, Erasmus can't resist offering the following comparison. If bathing in the blood of babies could cure leprosy, it would be better not to advertise the fact. So ideally one should not waste time and talent in labyrinths of this kind. Of course, Erasmus is nonetheless about to devote his time and talent to precisely this thorny issue. But with his long, tentative introduction, he has sought to lower the temperature of the debate. He's also prepared us for the non-technical and non-committal treatment he will offer, one that does not delve into scholastic distinctions, but merely puts forward with simple diligence those considerations which move my mind. It has been well remarked that Erasmus's on-free choice is clear in what it opposes, less so in what it affirms. He's dead set against the view that is nowadays called hard determinism, that is, the forthright rejection of free will that Erasmus associates with Luther. His fundamental objection is that such determinism would undermine moral responsibility. It is absurd for Luther to insist on our sinfulness while denying efficacious free will, because sin would cease to be sin if it were not voluntary. Nor would it make sense for God to punish us if everything we do is done by sheer necessity, and in fact not really done by us, but by God. Conversely, whatever reward we will receive from God can only be merited if we had some part to play. This of course is just the usual argument that proponents of free will give against hard determinists, that their position undermines moral responsibility. Since the context is theological, Erasmus feels the need to back up the point with scriptural citations. He points especially to the fact that the Bible is full of commands and exhortations, with such passages being so common that looking for them is like looking for water in the sea. What purpose could be served by God's issuing commands to us if we are not free in responding to them? It would be, says Erasmus, like telling someone who is bound by unbreakable chains, Get up and follow me. While Erasmus is emphatic that we do have morally significant freedom, he is elusive on the question of how grace relates to this freedom. He would later write that Luther's main sources, Paul and Augustine, leave very little to free choice, and that Augustine in particular so praises grace that I cannot perceive what there is left for free choice to do. He of course accepts the standard Augustinian doctrine that we are born in a state of sin, but depicts this as a weakening of will, not its utter destruction. Though we often become accustomed to sinful ways, to the extent that wickedness becomes a kind of second nature, we still retain the ability to choose a better path. Yet Erasmus cannot say that we have the power to merit salvation without God's help, since that would be outright Pelagianism. So he needs to find a way to explain why, as he puts it, the proneness to evil which is in most people does not take away free choice altogether, even though evil is not fully to be overcome without the aid of divine grace. Erasmus seems to waver between two positions, both of which would enable him to walk this tightrope. The first view is one we have seen in Gabriel Biel. When we exert ourselves to choose goodness, God helps by offering grace. Erasmus compares this to the way we need light to see, but have first to choose to open our eyes to benefit from the light. Once grace has been received, meritorious acts would be a cooperation between the human and God. Yet Erasmus concedes to Luther that it may come too close to Pelagianism to admit that the original effort to turn towards goodness is entirely up to the human agent. So he suggests a second view, according to which even this initial volition also requires God's cooperation. Again, he offers analogies. God's wisdom would assist the well-meaning believer at each stage, as a master craftsperson would guide the work of an apprentice. Or in another passage that makes me look forward to next Friday, the believer is like a top toddler who wants to get an apple, while God is like the parent who holds the toddler up as it staggers over to get the fruit. Either way, that is, whether or not God's assistance is required even for the human to try to be good in the first place, or only to help those humans who have already made such an effort on their own, there will be a crucial role for both the human well and divine grace to play. And that's good enough, as far as Erasmus is concerned. As he repeats towards the end of the work, this matter is such that it is not conducive to godliness to search into it deeply. As promised then, Erasmus's position is, unlike my approach to pastry, moderate. And this is one thing that outraged Luther. In On the Bondage of Choice, Luther objects to the tentative tone adopted by Erasmus. None of the suggestions made by the great humanist are innovative, so he has contributed nothing towards a solution. But worse still is Erasmus's unwillingness to endorse a solution. Luther astutely detects here a tendency towards the sort of skepticism espoused by some ancient philosophers, like, although he doesn't mention this name, Cicero. Such suspension of belief has no place in religion. Take away assertions, says Luther, and you take away Christianity. Erasmus's learned dithering over the meaning of scripture is equally out of place. Though Luther concedes that we may not understand certain passages, this is always because of textual problems or our lack of understanding of the original languages. Scripture in itself is crystal clear, and it teaches to Luther's satisfaction that neither of the compromised solutions sketched by Erasmus is acceptable, because both give the human will too much scope in earning salvation. The core of the biblical teaching is that Christ's sacrifice, and grace more generally, is a freely given gift from God. And gifts are not earned by the merit or effort of those who receive them. Talk of cooperation with God or making effort to merit grace ultimately makes God's role superfluous. Defenders of free choice are just paying lip service to the need for grace, since they think that the right use of the will guarantees salvation. So when they assert free choice, they are denying Christ. It's worth emphasizing that Luther appeals primarily to scripture and not rational argument in refuting Erasmus. He uses the authority of St. Paul and other parts of the Bible to prove that, as he puts it, free choice is nothing but a slave of sin, death, and Satan, not doing and not capable of doing or attempting to do anything but evil. Despite his attack on skepticism, Luther is himself pretty skeptical when it comes to human reason. He delights in quoting Paul's derision of the Greeks and their philosophy, and says that reason itself must admit its feebleness in comparison to divine judgment. Nonetheless, Luther does offer a recognizably philosophical rationale for his determinism. It's one that Erasmus already mentioned in his own treatise but tried to sidestep, the familiar worry that if God knows what we will do ahead of time, then what we do becomes necessary. Erasmus offered an equally familiar scholastic solution, though he ascribes it to fellow humanist Lorenzo Valla rather than the scholastics. This is to say that foreknowing something does not make it happen, any more than astronomers make eclipses happen by knowing in advance that they will occur. But Luther gives a powerful response to this solution. If God knows and wills all events beforehand, and does so necessarily, then the events too will be necessary. Suppose that I'm already able to know now that come Friday I'll be enjoying a delicious piece of apple cake. It does follow from this that I will eat the cake, but it doesn't follow from this that I eat the cake necessarily because my knowledge is itself not necessary. And this is just a general feature of logical consequence. What follows from contingently true premises is a contingently true conclusion, not a necessarily true conclusion. Thus, if it just happens to be the case that this cake is made with cinnamon, it will follow that the cake tastes like cinnamon, but nothing about that is necessary. By contrast, if you start with necessarily true premises, what follows will also be necessary. For Luther, this is what's happening in the case of divine foreknowledge. God knows necessarily and immutably everything that all humans will do, so their actions are inevitable. This, says Luther, is a thunderbolt by which free choice is completely prostrated and shattered. Doesn't this deprive us entirely of agency, making us like puppets in God's hands? Not quite. Luther says that when God foreknows our sins, this does render our sins necessary in the sense that they are inevitable. But it does not mean that God is forcing us to sin. It is, as he says, necessity of immutability, not of compulsion. He means that sinners deprived of grace do sin necessarily, but also gladly, and even enthusiastically. Luther adds, though, that if determinism turned out to be false and he could be given truly free will, he would not want it. For he would, he knows, simply use it to sin. In this, he is like all other humans. When left to our own devices, we constantly choose evil. It is God's involvement alone that makes goodness possible. So in a certain and very limited sense, Luther thinks that we do have morally significant choice. We choose in the sense of doing what we want, and what we want is always bad unless grace intervenes. At this stage, I should mention a potential qualification. I just referred to morally significant choice and have been focusing on that throughout. This is in keeping with the terms of the debate with Erasmus, who even defined free choice as a power of the human will by which a man can apply himself to the things which lead to eternal salvation, or turn away from them. But we might wonder what is going on when the stakes are lower. What if I'm choosing not whether to eat the apple from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, but simply whether to have apple cake or an almond croissant? As far as I can tell, Erasmus has nothing to say in his treatise about such morally insignificant choices. But some readers think that Luther makes room for them. He says that within the earthly kingdom, we do have the power to choose, but that this gives us no choice over the things of heaven. And he also says that we freely dispose over animals the way that God does over us. This makes it sound as though Luther is not a pervasive determinist after all. He's only a determinist when it comes to the choices that really matter, that is, choices that bear on sin, righteousness, and salvation. Against this interpretation, though, we should consider that his argument from divine foreknowledge clearly applies to all actions, not just the important ones. If God knows immutably and necessarily that I will go for the apple cake this time, then I am necessarily going to do it, albeit that I do so willingly, without compulsion from God. And it's been argued that when Luther says we do exercise choice over earthly things, he means not that we actually have alternative possibilities open to us, but simply that they fall under our jurisdiction or authority. A nice test passage for this is one where Luther says, Free choice is allowed to man only with respect to what is beneath him and not what is above him. This looks pretty clear. He seems to be saying that we do have freedom, of the kind Erasmus envisioned, but only over trivial earthly matters. But he goes on to add, Even this is controlled by the free choice of God alone, who acts in whatever way He pleases. The question here is what control means, that God is necessitating our lower actions, as He does the things that bear on salvation, or only that lower actions fall under His theoretical control so that He could intervene if He wished, like by making me pick the croissant on this occasion and leave the cake for another member of my family. If Luther is somewhat unclear on this, it's perhaps because he didn't much care. Like Erasmus, he was focused on free choice as it bears on issues of reward and punishment. Unlike Erasmus, he was, appropriately enough for a determinist, completely determined to show that we cannot merit reward on our own, though we do deserve punishment, because when we sin we are doing what we want. This by the way is how Luther deals with the many biblical passages cited by Erasmus in which commands are laid upon humans by God. He of course rejects the inference that we must have freedom as to whether to follow the commands, since it is pointless to tell someone to do something they cannot do. Instead, for Luther, they call our attention to our sinfulness and encourage us to put faith in God, who alone will enable us to fulfill the commands through His grace. If like me you find that rather unpersuasive, then Luther would tell you to stop being so presumptuous. Here, much though he would be loath to admit it, he is on common ground with Erasmus. For all his insistence that the teaching of the Bible is clear and that Christians need to make clear assertions about matter of such importance, Luther, no less than Erasmus, cautions us against arrogance in matters of belief. We are in no position to judge whether God is being just or fair in His dispensation of grace. It may seem arbitrary to us that some humans should be given grace and some not, but why would we ever have expected to understand the ways of God? We should not feel troubled by this ignorance, but rather liberated. When the philosophers drive to understand and rationally explain everything as abandoned, what is left is faith in God. If we feel doubt about His saving generosity and whether we will receive it, we should remember that such doubts come from the devil, and that to ask for proofs or guarantees from God is itself a sin, a failure to trust Him. As events would prove, this reassuring message was not enough. In the coming generations, Europe would be wracked with anxieties over predestination and the apparently arbitrary separating out of the elect from the damned. But through it all, the epistemic modesty shared by Erasmus and Luther would become a signature feature of Protestant culture and philosophy in the Reformation as a whole. With some exceptions, thinkers of the 16th century did not typically go so far as Socrates, avowing knowledge only that they knew nothing, but they did usually admit that they couldn't know everything. Having looked at Luther and Erasmus in this episode, we will turn next time to a man who was like an amalgam of the two. A brilliant humanist who much admired Erasmus's achievements, he was also a staunch supporter of Luther and his movement. He helped to divine and promote the Lutheran teaching that was based on Scripture alone, despite being sorely tempted by the attractions of ancient rhetoric and philosophy. So make the right choice, if you can, and join me next time as I discuss Philip Melanchthon, here on The History of Philosophy, without any gaps.