19AR24-24

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this page = <www.tinyurl.com/AR-on-Fatal-Discord>

AR 24:24 - The Fight for the Western Mind

In this issue:

CHURCH HISTORY - a widely praised dual biography by a secular Jewish author

Apologia Report 24:24 (1,432)
June 12, 2019

CHURCH HISTORY
Fatal Discord, by Michael Massing (former executive editor of the Columbia Journalism Review and recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship) [1] -- this could be the best book related to church history I'm (RP) aware of. HarperCollins calls this an examination focusing on "two of the greatest minds of European history ... whose heated rivalry gave rise to two enduring, fundamental, and often colliding traditions of philosophical and religious thought. Erasmus was the leading figure of the Northern Renaissance. At a time when Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael were revolutionizing Western art and culture, Erasmus was helping to transform Europe's intellectual and religious life, developing a new design for living for a continent rebelling against the hierarchical constraints of the Roman Church. When in 1516 he came out with a revised edition of the New Testament based on the original Greek, he was hailed as the prophet of a new enlightened age. Today, however, Erasmus is largely forgotten, and the reason can be summed up in two words: Martin Luther. As a young friar in remote Wittenberg, Luther was initially a great admirer of Erasmus and his critique of the Catholic Church, but while Erasmus sought to reform that institution from within, Luther wanted a more radical transformation. ... Massing seeks to restore Erasmus to his proper place in the Western tradition. The conflict between him and Luther, he argues, forms a fault line in Western thinking - the moment when two enduring schools of thought, Christian humanism and evangelical Christianity, took shape. ... Massing concludes that Europe has adopted a form of Erasmian humanism while America has been shaped by Luther-inspired individualism."

   Booklist (Feb 1 '18): "Martin Luther begins his ministry declaring, 'I follow Erasmus.' ... Readers see how Erasmus' carefully annotated translation of the New Testament kindles in Luther a passionate faith that God's utterly sovereign grace redeems sinners without their choice, their works, or their rituals of penance. When that faith galvanizes Luther as a foe of ecclesiastical indulgences, church loyalists pressure Erasmus to denounce the rebel. Sharing his desire to end church corruption and disseminate vernacular scripture, Erasmus reluctantly breaks with Luther by repudiating his views on free will and classical scholarship. Though Erasmus' tolerant Christian humanism appears irrelevant during the century of religious bloodshed provoked by Luther's zeal, Massing discerns its partial reemergence in a twenty-first-century Europe united by a secular commitment to human rights, just as he recognizes Luther's abiding influence among America's conservative Protestants, who, in turn, will learn much from this account of the lasting transatlantic impact of the clash between Erasmus and Luther."

   Kirkus (Dec 15 '17): "Both men were revolutionaries, rebelling against the ethical and theological assumptions of the medieval world and the hierarchical, dissolute Catholic Church ... setting the stage for English Puritanism, parliamentary government, the French Revolution, and modernity. ... An impressive, powerful intellectual history."

   Publishers Weekly (Dec 11 '17): Massing "superbly accomplishes the mammoth task [and] manages to juggle the complicated biographies and life work of both Erasmus and Luther while giving the reader a well-written, comprehensive background of pre-Reformation theology."

   In her New York Times Book Review feature (Mar 29 '18), Rebecca Newberger Goldstein writes: "In their disdain for the power-hungry abuses of the church, the grotesque superstitions it encouraged in the laity and the equally grotesque scholasticism it encouraged in the era's theologians, they might have been natural allies.... Like Petrarch, Erasmus searched out the pagan manuscripts disintegrating in monasteries, laboriously taught himself ancient Greek and cultivated a stylistically dazzling Latin. Such achievements counted, for him, as moral achievements, almost on a par with the Christian virtues. He was a firm believer in human perfectibility...." <www.nyti.ms/2MyzlM9>

   Among the book's endorsements are these epic words <www.bit.ly/2YYqk0x> from Robert A. Orsi (Religious Studies, Northwestern University): "A stunning work of historical detection, deeply learned and elegantly written"

It may be helpful for Massing's readers to keep the definitions of some frequently used terms on hand, particularly antinomianism and pelagianism. The bulk of the text is set in the 1500s, when the Roman Church was the greatest power in Europe. Massing reveals the hardship, cruelty, and harsh mortality of medieval life and how the Church had become corrupt economically (manipulating its subjects to gain wealth), religiously (Church blessings, benefits and offices were widely bought and sold), and socially (through pervasive anti-semitism).

   Among its aggrieved clerics, two monks in particular were influential in reforming the Church. At first they were unaware of each other. 

   The first monk was a genius intellect who eventually worked to revive the ancient literature of the early Greeks and Romans. He became the first person in Europe who was able to live off the income from his writing. In the process he became Europe's most renown intellectual and an architect of the Northern Renaissance. He named himself Erasmus of Rotterdam and, after 1503, the second monk came to respect him deeply. 

   It was not until thirteen years later that Erasmus slowly became aware of the second monk. Luther was 17 years his junior. Erasmus' written criticism of the Church was helping to inspire Luther's drive for Church reform. Soon Luther's writings began to impress Erasmus. 

   Within a decade, Luther's influence began to surpass that of Erasmus. Despite nearly two decades of interaction (ending when Erasmus died from illness), the two men never actually met. This is the story of their intersecting lives and influence. The discord fomented by Erasmus and Luther attracted followers that took the conflict to fatal levels for years to come.

   Since church history first interested me (RP) in the mid-1980s, I have found more written about Luther than about Erasmus. Luther's biographers typically said little about his abundant flaws. Fatal Discord's attention to the flaws of both Erasmus and Luther brought to mind the biblical story of the prophetic King David. 

   What an irony that Luther's famous emphasis on predestination and a corresponding lack of human free will (which Massing finds more strongly promoted by John Calvin) emanated from someone overwhelmed by doctrinal in-fighting which exploded into a wide trail of human tragedy before it led to substantial church reform. For many outsiders, Massing in particular, all of this hardly suggests an absence of free will.

   Massing's secular overview is impressively comprehensive, yet often as interesting for what he doesn't mention as for what he does. For example, in Massing's overview of the Apostle Paul's life, he describes Paul and Silas as having "managed to escape prison." (That's enough to give angels a wry smile.) Massing is surprised that Luther believed Christ was the conclusive object of many Old Testament passages. And in his description of modern evangelical distinctives, Massing fails to note how acknowledging Christ as the fulfillment of Messianic prophecy is considered foundational. Last, Massing derives conflicting impressions of the gospel as set forth by Jesus, Paul and James without considering how Christians have harmonized them.

   Truly a trip back in time to the very "moment that the medieval gave way to the modern," this reading unfolds the tapestry of history through nations, monarchy, humanism, renaissance, enlightenment, politics and reformation by emperors, kings, scholars, artists, explorers, statesmen, and preachers. Massing demonstrates that the discord of the time existed on many levels and its consequences are still evident in the conflicts of our day.

Matt Smethurst (managing editor for The Gospel Coalition) reviewed Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion, by Rebecca McLaughlin [2] in a way that tells a page-by-page story <www.bit.ly/2WuElBv> of his findings. And oh, what he found! On the way to distilling my remarks about Fatal Discord, I ended up with something similar in the structure of my reading notes: <www.bit.ly/3mwLEXN>

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SOURCES: Monographs

1 - Fatal Discord: Erasmus, Luther, and the Fight for the Western Mind, by Michael Massing (Harper, 2018, hardcover: 1008 pages) <www.amzn.to/2VUJmTt>

2 - Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions for the World’s Largest Religion, by Rebecca McLaughlin (Crossway, 2019, hardcover, 240 pages) <www.amzn.to/2UTnuMv>

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