The Unquenchable Flame: Discovering the Heart of the Reformation

by Michael Reeves

Erasmus was the sort who was always saying how things in the Bible were so much more complicated than they appear at first sight. Thus the masses would either need a great mind like his to understand them, or, if even he could not understand them (and this applied to many things) then they must be numbered among the countless mysteries of that obscure text, the Bible. Given how unclear the Bible was, he deemed that Christians should not try to settle doctrinal questions such as the Trinity, God’s role in salvation, and other such tricky issues. God had left them vague, and therefore they must be unimportant and probably unhelpfully distracting from the more important business of getting on with Christian living. ‘The sum of our religion is peace and unanimity,’ he once said, ‘but these can scarcely stand unless we define as little as possible’. Christianity, to Erasmus, was essentially morality, with a minimum of doctrinal statement loosely appended. . . . Luther’s attitude was very different.