Erasmian Interpretation
Given today is the anniversary of the death of Desiderius Erasmus (October 27, 1466), here is a brief selection from the first chapter of Forde’s The Captivation of the Will (p. 27).
“We can see that a major parting of the ways begins to announce itself already in the interpretation of Scripture and in the argument about assertions. It is hardly surprising to find that the opponents disagree on Scripture itself. Erasmus wants to use Scripture to build his theory. Since this theory is rooted in the claims of free choice Erasmus cannot but find Scripture ambiguous and contradictory. Some passages in it appear to be for free choice and some appear to be against it. What is to be done? The interpreter must come to the rescue. The interpreter must go to work on the text to resolve the alleged contradictions. For Luther, as we shall see, it is just the opposite. The text goes to work on the interpreter to do what it talks about.
It is consequent, therefore, that the argument about Scripture should take the form of a battle over the claritas, the clarity, of Scripture. This means, of course, that the fault is attributed to Scripture, not to the interpreter. The question, putatively, is whether Scripture is unclear, not whether the interpreter is unclear! The difficulty in the whole procedure lies in the fact that Scripture does not deliver “the goods” sufficient to turn free choice theory into reality. The “scheme” drives only to a collision. To save the theory one must claim that the ambiguity is the fault of Scripture, not the fault of the interpreter. Interpreters of an Erasmian type are driven to take refuge in the Scriptures’ supposed lack of clarity. Where one encounters passages casting doubt on free choice or rejecting it altogether one must take refuge in tropes, figures of speech that end up explaining those passages away. What Luther was doing with Scripture was a symbolic interpretation, not allegorical. The allegorical is an exegetical trick used when one already knows what the text means, but uses a trope to escape the text and preserve the initial theory in the face of clear words to the contrary.”
