writings, especially in the works relating to his dispute with Luther over free will,
Erasmus articulates his understanding that the origin and accomplishment of
salvation is solely due to God’s grace. Free choice only occurs in cooperation
with grace:‘the whole work is due to God,’Erasmus writes,‘without whom we
do nothing; that the contribution of free choice is extremely small, and that this
itself is part of the divine gift, that we can turn our souls to those things
pertaining to salvation, or work together (synergein)withgrace’.^44 The contri-
bution of free choice is‘exceedingly trivial’,andmoreover‘this very thing which
it can do is a work of the grace of God whofirst created free choice and then
freed it and healed it’.^45
The purpose of spiritual warfare is therefore not to attain salvation, since
this has been accomplished by Christ’s redemptive work on the cross, but
rather to transform the Christian soldier into the image of God through a
specific method of education.
An effective spiritual education, Erasmus contends, is contingent on being a
committed (and successful) spiritual warrior.^46 In his 1516 treatiseInsitutio
principis christiani(The Education of a Christian Prince) Erasmus indicates
that his programme of spiritual warfare and a properly executed educational
programme share the same ultimate goal:‘Such is the power of education, as
Plato has written, that a man who has been correctly brought up emerges as a
kind of divine creature, while faulty upbringing, on the other hand, reduces
him to a horrible monster.’^47
After the weapons of spiritual warfare have been identified and their use
described, Erasmus turns his attention in theEnchiridionto describing this
educational programme—the battle to gain wisdom, the enemy of which
Erasmus describes as‘malice’. The enemy of wisdom is not merely passive
ignorance or stupidity, but rather an active supernatural force:‘The father and
prince of malice is the lord of darkness, Belial, and whoever follows his
(^44) Erasmus,De libero arbitrio, in E. Gordon Rupp and Philip S. Watson (eds),Luther and
Erasmus: Free Will and Salvation(Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1969), 89–90.
A thorough examination of Erasmus’s understanding of free will is beyond the scope of this
present work. See the introduction by Rupp and Watson, or for a succinct summary, see John
B. Payne,‘Erasmus: Interpreter of Romans’,Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies2 (1971), 1–35.
(^45) Erasmus,De libero arbitrio90.
(^46) The link Erasmus makes between piety and learning is treated with great scepticism in
Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine,From Humanism to the Humanities(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1986), 123–44. I disagree with their contention that theEnchiridionis‘gummy
and diffuse’—again the popularity of the work among contemporaries indicates how well the
work was accepted (see note 23). I alsofind their contention that piety and learning in the
Enchiridionare only connected by a kind of‘intellectual sleight of hand’equally problematic, and
respectfully submit a different understanding of the connection between spiritual warfare and
pedagogy in Erasmus’s writings as the solution. James D. Tracy refutes their scepticism following
a different line of argument in‘Erasmus among the Postmodernists’,25–38.
(^47) Erasmus,Insitutio principis christiani, trans. Neil M. Cheshire and Michael J. Heath,CWE,
vol. 27, 259.
Erasmus, Christian Humanism, and Spiritual Warfare 127