Back to the Sources: Lessons from Erasmus for a Fragmented Faith

In 1466, the illegitimate son of a priest and a physician’s daughter was born who would ignite a fire that changed the course of Christianity. His name was Desiderius Erasmus.

From early on, Erasmus never quite fit in. When the plague took his parents, he was sent to a school run by the Brethren of the Common Life, a movement that emphasized practical devotion and inner faith over outward rituals.

He entered a monastery, became a priest, but longed for books, travel, and conversation. He became a wandering scholar, living out of a suitcase and moving between courts, universities, and printers’ shops. What drove him was a hunger for authenticity: a Christianity that looked more like Jesus and less like institutional corruption.

Back to the Sources

Erasmus was shaped by the Renaissance, the movement that called for ad fontes — “back to the sources.” Don’t rely on layers of commentary, they said. Go read the originals.

For Erasmus, this meant not just Aristotle and Cicero, but the Bible itself. He wanted Christians to hear Jesus and Paul directly, not filtered through church tradition.

His dream? That Scripture would be in the hands of everyone. As he wrote in the preface to his New Testament:

“I wish that even the weakest woman should read the Gospel… that the farmer sing some portion of them at the plow.”

The Game-Changer: A New Testament in Greek

The invention of the printing press gave Erasmus the opportunity to put the Greek Scriptures into the hands of ordinary people. Up to this point, most of Europe relied on Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which often skewed the original meaning of the Greek texts.

In 1516, Erasmus published the first printed Greek New Testament. On one side was the Greek text. On the other, his new Latin translation — often differing from the Vulgate. In the margins, he explained his choices, inviting readers to weigh the evidence themselves.

One of those choices shook medieval theology. Where the Latin had read “Do penance,” Erasmus noted the Greek word metanoeite really means “to change your mind.” That small change shifted the focus from paying church-imposed penalties to turning one’s heart toward God.

Another surprise came in 1 John 5:7–8. In the Latin Bible of the Middle Ages, these verses included an extra line that clearly named the Father, the Word, and the Spirit — often used as proof of the Trinity. But when Erasmus checked the earliest Greek copies he could find, that phrase wasn’t there. So he left it out of his first editions. People were stunned, because a verse they had always heard was suddenly missing. Modern translations, like the NASB, follow the same evidence. The NASB simply says: For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. The extra Trinitarian phrase appears only in a footnote, with a note that it is not found in the oldest manuscripts.

Erasmus also wrestled with other tricky words. One example was the Greek word aionios, which had often been translated into Latin as aeternum — meaning eternal in the sense of endless duration. Erasmus noted that aionios can also mean “age-long” or “belonging to an age,” not always strictly “forever.” His careful attention showed that long-standing translations carried assumptions that shaped theology. Even a single word could carry centuries of debate and doctrine.

Erasmus’ project was, in a sense, a sixteenth-century open-source Bible: side-by-side texts, transparent notes, and an invitation for ordinary readers to judge for themselves.

Prophetic Sarcasm to Call Out Hypocrisy

Erasmus wasn’t only a scholar. In 1511, he wrote The Praise of Folly, a playful book where “Lady Folly” mocked the absurdities of his age. It was funny, but the critique cut deep.

On indulgences:

“What shall I say of such as cry up… pardons and indulgences… measuring each soul’s time in purgatory by these paltry pardons?”

On hair-splitting theologians:

“These most subtle subtleties… of so many Schoolmen… one might sooner escape a labyrinth.”

On the pride of church leaders:

“They will sooner endure the broadest scoffs against Christ than hear the Pope be touched in the least.”

On bishops living like princes:

“Popes, cardinals, and bishops have so diligently followed [princes’] steps that they’ve almost got the start of them.”

It was satire, but it was also prophecy. Erasmus named the scandal of his day with wit and courage.

The Post-Modern Parallel

The parallels between Erasmus’ day and our own are striking.

In the 1500s, the printing press opened Scripture to ordinary people. Today, the Internet, Bible study apps, and AI make it easy for anyone to dig into Greek, Hebrew, and history. Believers can now bypass traditional gatekeepers with these tools. Things assumed for centuries are being reexamined.

Erasmus lived in a time when the Holy Roman Empire was fractured. Today, the church itself is splintered into countless denominations and tribes.

The scandals of indulgence-selling and political manipulation in his time echo today’s scandals of sexual abuse, financial corruption, and the misuse of faith for political power and nationalism.

Both then and now, the cultural moment was larger than the church. Erasmus stood at the heart of the Renaissance, a bridge from the medieval world into the Enlightenment. We stand in post-modernism, another bridge moment pointing toward a new era whose contours are still unclear. As historians like those who wrote The Fourth Turning remind us, such hinge times are turbulent but also ripe with possibility.

Just as Erasmus’ voice unsettled the church in his day, new voices today are unsettling ours. People in the 1500s feared the church was collapsing. Many of us feel the same way now. But Erasmus shows us that collapse is not always the end. Sometimes it is the painful beginning of rebirth.

In Conclusion

Erasmus reminds us that tools matter. They shift power, open access, and force choices. But tools don’t decide for us. They only open the door.

Erasmus sharpened the tools. Others took the hammer and swung. His courage to go back to the sources cracked open space for something new.

We are living through a similar moment. The ground is tilled. The tools are in our hands. The only question is: how will we use them? Will we get stuck in deconstruction, or will we press forward into a Faith Reborn?