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Collected Work of Erasmus #46
Paraphrase on John - Collected Works 46
Erasmus yearned to make the Bible an effective instrument in the reform of society, church, and the life of individuals in the turbulent world the sixteenth century. He therefore composed paraphrases in which the words of Holy Scripture provided the core of a text vastly expanded to embrace the reforming 'philosophy of Christ.' The Paraphrases were successful beyond expectation and were quickly translated from Latin into French, German, English, and other languages. This volume is the third Paraphrase to be published in the New Testament Scholarship series in the CWE.
In it Erasmus explores questions that have always been central to Christian self-understanding. Why is the cross folly to the wise of this world? In the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus hints broadly that the cause of human blindness lies in the arrogance of intellectual pretensions, the love of vain-glory, the lust for possessions, the fear of losing the supports that secure a comfortable way of life.
Perhaps nothing will please the reader more the portraits of the chief characters in John's Gospels. We enjoy the simplicity of the lowly woman at the well, we understand the complexity of the distinguished Nicodemus. Above all, we are captured by the portrait of Christ himself. Upon the stage Erasmus has here designed, Christ appears first in the humility of a lowly artisan from a despised country; only to the discerning does his glory flash forth from his mortality, a mortality vividly etched in the scene on the cross. But in the last pages of the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus sets before us in sharp dramatic contrast the resurrected Christ glorious with a radiant holiness.
Like Augustine in the City of God, Erasmus attempts to define the relationship between the two worlds in which the Christian lives - the heavenly and the spiritual, and the earthly and physical.
Volume 46 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.
In it Erasmus explores questions that have always been central to Christian self-understanding. Why is the cross folly to the wise of this world? In the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus hints broadly that the cause of human blindness lies in the arrogance of intellectual pretensions, the love of vain-glory, the lust for possessions, the fear of losing the supports that secure a comfortable way of life.
Perhaps nothing will please the reader more the portraits of the chief characters in John's Gospels. We enjoy the simplicity of the lowly woman at the well, we understand the complexity of the distinguished Nicodemus. Above all, we are captured by the portrait of Christ himself. Upon the stage Erasmus has here designed, Christ appears first in the humility of a lowly artisan from a despised country; only to the discerning does his glory flash forth from his mortality, a mortality vividly etched in the scene on the cross. But in the last pages of the Paraphrase on John, Erasmus sets before us in sharp dramatic contrast the resurrected Christ glorious with a radiant holiness.
Like Augustine in the City of God, Erasmus attempts to define the relationship between the two worlds in which the Christian lives - the heavenly and the spiritual, and the earthly and physical.
Volume 46 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series.
371 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1536
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About the author
Erasmus
1,113 books439 followersDesiderius Erasmus Roterodamus (28 October 1466 – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.
Erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among humanists he enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation, but while he was critical of the abuses within the Catholic Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope, emphasizing a middle way with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, rejecting Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus remained a member of the Roman Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church and its clerics' abuses from within. He also held to the Catholic doctrine of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favor of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.
Erasmus died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in the Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city. A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.
Erasmus was a classical scholar and wrote in a pure Latin style. Among humanists he enjoyed the sobriquet "Prince of the Humanists", and has been called "the crowning glory of the Christian humanists". Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament, which raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation, but while he was critical of the abuses within the Catholic Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope, emphasizing a middle way with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, rejecting Luther's emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus remained a member of the Roman Catholic Church all his life, remaining committed to reforming the Church and its clerics' abuses from within. He also held to the Catholic doctrine of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favor of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.
Erasmus died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in the Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city. A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.
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August 4, 2017
Erasmus, the famed sixteenth-century humanist and contemporary of Luther's, bequeathed more riches upon the Christian world than we've often been adequately grateful for. Neither a translation nor a commentary per se, the marvelous Paraphrasis in Ioannem is its own beast: a heavily expanded paraphrase of the Gospel of John, published in February 1523. At any point, it's simple enough to figure out what verse is being expanded; but Erasmus has produced a moving spiritual work in its own right, complete with a dedicatory letter and an epilogue "to the pious reader." Erasmus, rightly famed as a scholar, has been too little credited (among Protestants, at least) as a theologian and spiritual writer.
The dedicatory letter to Prince Ferdinand (later Holy Roman Emperor) has some great remarks on political theology ("Who needs to be persuaded more than they that there is a King in heaven who governs this world and whom nothing can escape ... who needs this more than the sovereign princes...?") and a rousing call that professed respect for the physical volume of scripture is meaningless without fidelity to its contents ("Of what use is it to press a volume close to the heart, if that heart is far removed from what the volume teaches, and what it condemns is sovereign in the heart?").
The paraphrase itself is often beautifully done - in particular, the paraphrase on the Johannine Prologue is exceptionally expansive, spiritually fertile, ("To hold fast to these things in simple faith is the philosophy of Christ; to revere them in purity of heart is true religion; to strive through them towards preparation for the heavenly life is godliness; to be steadfast in them is victory; to be victorious by means of them is the height of bliss"), and theologically rich ("Then what is higher than this glory, that those who before were children of the devil, heirs of hell, by faith alone became children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, and heirs with him of the heavenly kingdom?").
And, of course, as for that best-known verse John 3:16, Erasmus renders it: "God's love for a world in rebellion against him and in bondage to so many crimes was so great that he not only did not avenge the wrongs that had been committed but even sent his only Son down from heaven to earth and surrendered him to death, even the most shameful death of the cross, so that every human being, whether Jew or Greek or barbarian, who believed in him would not perish but would attain everlasting life through the gospel faith" (49).
The whole of it is similarly beautiful in rendering, and is capped off by a closing note ("to the pious reader") in which Erasmus expounds the beauty of authentic Christianity ("They pursue nothing for themselves, they claim nothing good for themselves, they have no ambition except to please Christ. ... Christ promises a share in eternal life, and in the meantime here more real tranquility than the world can provide for its followers. He only wants all trust, all glory, all hope transferred to himself alone"), but also robustly critiques the marked absence of this in his world ("We all alike profess the gospel, and no one performs the gospel. What part of life is not corrupted by lust, greed, ambition, envy, hatred...?"), even critiquing the popular abuse of indulgences and other purgatory-managing devices as stemming from a failure to grapple with the Gospel. Like I said, it's a marvelous work, and complete with a wealth of translator's notes at the end.
A highly recommended resource, whether historically, theologically, or spiritually.
The dedicatory letter to Prince Ferdinand (later Holy Roman Emperor) has some great remarks on political theology ("Who needs to be persuaded more than they that there is a King in heaven who governs this world and whom nothing can escape ... who needs this more than the sovereign princes...?") and a rousing call that professed respect for the physical volume of scripture is meaningless without fidelity to its contents ("Of what use is it to press a volume close to the heart, if that heart is far removed from what the volume teaches, and what it condemns is sovereign in the heart?").
The paraphrase itself is often beautifully done - in particular, the paraphrase on the Johannine Prologue is exceptionally expansive, spiritually fertile, ("To hold fast to these things in simple faith is the philosophy of Christ; to revere them in purity of heart is true religion; to strive through them towards preparation for the heavenly life is godliness; to be steadfast in them is victory; to be victorious by means of them is the height of bliss"), and theologically rich ("Then what is higher than this glory, that those who before were children of the devil, heirs of hell, by faith alone became children of God, brothers of Jesus Christ, and heirs with him of the heavenly kingdom?").
And, of course, as for that best-known verse John 3:16, Erasmus renders it: "God's love for a world in rebellion against him and in bondage to so many crimes was so great that he not only did not avenge the wrongs that had been committed but even sent his only Son down from heaven to earth and surrendered him to death, even the most shameful death of the cross, so that every human being, whether Jew or Greek or barbarian, who believed in him would not perish but would attain everlasting life through the gospel faith" (49).
The whole of it is similarly beautiful in rendering, and is capped off by a closing note ("to the pious reader") in which Erasmus expounds the beauty of authentic Christianity ("They pursue nothing for themselves, they claim nothing good for themselves, they have no ambition except to please Christ. ... Christ promises a share in eternal life, and in the meantime here more real tranquility than the world can provide for its followers. He only wants all trust, all glory, all hope transferred to himself alone"), but also robustly critiques the marked absence of this in his world ("We all alike profess the gospel, and no one performs the gospel. What part of life is not corrupted by lust, greed, ambition, envy, hatred...?"), even critiquing the popular abuse of indulgences and other purgatory-managing devices as stemming from a failure to grapple with the Gospel. Like I said, it's a marvelous work, and complete with a wealth of translator's notes at the end.
A highly recommended resource, whether historically, theologically, or spiritually.
Displaying 1 of 1 review