Kyle Harrison
to-read
Erasmus and Luther
Erasmus and Luther: The Battle Over Free Will
- Author
- Edited by James D. Tracy; translated by Clarence H. Miller and Peter Macardle
- Published
- 2012
- Pages
- 416
- Recommended
- Once
Erasmus and Luther
Why it’s on the list: The 1524–26 exchange over whether the will is free — Erasmus’s De libero arbitrio and Luther’s much longer and angrier reply, De servo arbitrio — the disagreement that separates the humanist project of reforming the church from the Reformation that broke it.
Where I heard about it
- University of Austin — assigned in Renaissance and Reformation on its Fall 2025 reading list (November 2025), between The Praise of Folly and Pico’s On the Dignity of Man — so students read Erasmus twice: once as the satirist of the old church, then as the man who would not follow Luther out of it. The full curriculum is on UATX Fall Reading List.
About this edition
Hackett’s paired edition prints both sides of the exchange together, which is the point: you read the argument, not one half of it.
Connections
- UATX Fall Reading List — the curriculum this was assigned in.
- The University of Austin — the institution whose course list this is.
- Erasmus — one of the two authors.
- Martin Luther — the other.
- free will — the question at issue.
- Renaissance
- Christianity