Luther's response to Erasmus came a year later in 1525's On the Bondage of the Will, which Luther himself later considered one of his best pieces of theological writing.[note 15] Other writers are repelled by it.[note 16]: 6
Hyperaspistes
In early 1526, Erasmus replied immediately with the first part of his two-volume Hyperaspistes; this first volume concerned biblical interpretation. The second, larger volume was a longer and more complex work which received comparatively little popular or scholarly awareness;[note 17] the second volume concerned free will, with paragraph by paragraph rebuttal of Luther. Erasmus regarded Luther's doctrine of total depravity as an exaggeration, and noted that an inclination to evil did not exist in Jesus nor in his mother. [1]
"What the Church reads with profit when written by Augustine, Luther ruins with atrocious words and hyperboles,...(like)...the absolute necessity of all things."
— Erasmus, Hyperaspistes II
As with John Fisher's Confutation, Luther did not respond to the Hyperaspistes.[6]: 509
On Grace
In 1528, Erasmus produced his editio princeps of Faustus of Riez book On Grace from the mid to late 400s. Faustus "teaches that God’s grace always encourages, precedes and helps our will; and whatever free will alone will have acquired by virtue of the labour of a pious mercy is not our merit, but grace’s gift."[20]: 375
Catholic and Protestant
Erasmus and Luther's debate had great impact, with Catholic writers including Erasmus placing an increased emphasis on grace and faith (i.e. what God does rather than how humans should respond), while many Protestants,[note 18] notably Luther's second-in-command Philip Melancthon, and the later Arminians (such as Wesleyans) adopted aspects of Erasmus' view. Some historians have even said that "the spread of Lutheranism was checked by Luther’s antagonizing (of) Erasmus and the humanists."[21]: 7
American/German Reformed encyclopaedist Philip Schaff summarized it: "Melanchthon, no doubt in part under the influence of this controversy, abandoned his early predestinarianism as a Stoic error (1535), and adopted the synergistic theory. Luther allowed this change without adopting it himself, and abstained from further discussion of these mysteries. The Formula of Concord re-asserted in the strongest terms Luther’s doctrine of the slavery of the human will, but weakened his doctrine of predestination, and assumed a middle ground between late Augustinianism and semi-Pelagianism. In like manner the Roman Catholic Church, while retaining the greatest reverence for St. Augustin and endorsing his anthropology, never sanctioned his views on total depravity and unconditional predestination, but condemned them, indirectly, in the Jansenists." Even Luther, in a late work, "reaffirmed the distinction of the secret and revealed will of God, which we are unable to harmonize, but for this reason he deems it safest to adhere to the revealed will and to avoid speculations on the impenetrable mysteries of the hidden will": the avoidance of speculation and dogmatic assertions on adiophora being core points in Erasmus' On Free Will. [22] where so-called "semi-Pelagianism" here includes synergism.
The Sixth Session (1549), Chapter V of the Council of Trent defined a form of synergism similar to Erasmus'.[23]
Dutch theologian Jacob Arminius developed a softer form of Calvinism by adapting a version of Erasmus' infant-and-apple analogy: Arminius' analogy for the gift of faith was "a rich man gives a poor and famishing beggar alms by which he may be able to sustain himself and his family. Does it cease to be a pure, undiluted gift because the beggar extends his hand for receiving?" This formulation perhaps re-casts Erasmus' positive requirement for co-operation (itself an effect of prevenient grace) as a negative requirement of being ready and not refusing.[24]: 116
In 1999 the Catholic Church and the Lutheran World Federation (later joined by many other Protestant denominations) made a Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification on a common understanding of justification, concluding that the theological positions mutually anathematized at the time of the Reformation were not, in fact, held by the churches.
A 2017 survey of U.S. Protestants found that fewer than half accepted a view similar to Luther's sola fide, including in "white mainline churches" [25]
