Sword & Trowel 2017: Issue 1


The Martin Luther monument in Dresden


powerfully compatible. In some cases, we can even document a direct im- pact of Erasmus’ ideals and writings in placing someone on the path of reform, especially Ulrich Zwingli, the Reformer of Switzerland. Zwingli al- ways claimed he owed his conversion to a belief that salvation is through trust in Christ alone to a religious poem by Erasmus: ‘In 1514 or 1515, I read a poem


the very ordinances of worship that were meant to draw you to Christ will withdraw you from him. Your religion is a rebellion against the spirit of the Gospel, a falling back into the super- stitions and rituals of Judaism…The apostle Paul, the foremost defender of spiritual religion, never ceased try- ing to get the Jews to give up their confi dence in outward works and rituals, and to lead them to spiritual realities. Yet I feel that the great ma- jority of Christians have fallen back again into that sickness.’ So often we fi nd that Protestant


Reformers across Europe were steeped in these Erasmian ideals. The Reformers added a theological dimension that was missing from Erasmus’ own outlook (specifi cally, an Augustinian doctrine of grace), but the two aspects – Erasmian- ism and Augustinianism – proved


about the Lord Jesus, written by the profoundly learnèd Erasmus of Rot- terdam, in which with many very beautiful words Jesus complains that people do not seek all blessing in him, so that he might be to them a fountain of every blessing, a Saviour, a comfort, a treasure of the soul. So I thought, “Well, if this is true, why then should we seek help from any created being?”’


The printing press


Just as important as the Renais- sance in preparing the soil for the Reformation was a revolutionary new way of disseminating informa- tion – printing by movable type. Perhaps one of the basic reasons why the public mind of Western Europe had not been captured by previous movements of evangelical reform (we think of the Waldensians, the Lol- lards, and the Hussites) was simply that they had come on the scene before the printing press had been invented. In a Europe dominated by the Catholic establishment, the intellectual spread of new ‘unoffi cial’ ideas was far more diffi cult without a


Seeds of the Reformation page 27


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