day and night on the law of the Lord, you will have no fear, day or night, but
you will be protected and trained against any attack of the enemy.’
To gain these necessary exegetical skills, the spiritual warrior needs to
engage in, as he puts it,‘a kind of preliminary training in the writings of the
pagan poets and philosophers’.^38 Here we recognize the same justification or
methodology of pillaging the Egyptians cited in the patristic and medieval
authors by both John Behr and David Lyle Jeffrey in their chapters in this
volume. However, Erasmus warns, while the Christian warrior can learn
from pagan authors, great care must be taken not to follow their moral
teachings. After this‘preliminary training’, the teachings of the church fathers
provide the best way to learn how to correctly interpret the Scriptures.^39
Regardless of how well the individual is trained in exegetical methodology
by reading pagan sources and the church fathers, nothing will be gained unless
the Christian soldier‘approach[es] the sacred Scriptures with washed hands,
that is with the greatest purity of mind’.^40 A reciprocal and mutually reinfor-
cing relationship therefore develops between the sacred knowledge gained
through reading the Scriptures and the believers’purity of mind that is critical
to successful spiritual warfare.
While the supernatural forces arrayed against the Christian soldier are
powerful, they should not cause dismay, however, for God has already defeated
the enemy through the saving work of Christ, as Erasmus writes:
Bear in mind that you are not pitted against an enemy who has suffered no
defeats, but against one who has already been crushed, routed, despoiled, and
even led away in triumph by us in the person of Christ our Head, by whom
without a doubt he will be defeated also in us.^41And yet while the Christian soldier is assured that the ultimate victory comes
through Christ, it is still necessary tofight:‘You must ascribe all victory to
him’, Erasmus writes,‘who was thefirst and only one, himself free of sin, to
suppress the tyranny of sin, but this victory will not come about without your
effort.’^42
The necessity for action might suggest that Erasmusfinds some sort of salvific
merit in good works; however, nothing could be further from his intentions.^43
While it does not come through quite as clearly in theEnchiridionas in his later
(^38) Erasmus,Enchiridion33.
(^39) Erasmus,Enchiridion 34 – 5. Erasmus would play a very significant role in the revival of the
study of the church fathers in the Renaissance period. Most of his later career would be devoted
to editing, translating, and publishing the collected works of Ambrose, Augustine, John Chry-
sostom, and Jerome.
(^40) Erasmus,Enchiridion 33 – 4.
(^41) Erasmus,Enchiridion29. (^42) Erasmus,Enchiridion30.
(^43) Although good works have no salvificefficacy, as will become clear below they are a
necessary component of thephilosophia Christi.
126 Darren M. Provost